Programming curiosity

[cyrex]

I am learning to program and want to make something similar to don't starve (Not that awesome, but taking small baby steps). What recommendations can the developers in Klei give me in other to create some basic game. The areas I find hard to get to know are:+ How to create the amazing animations. Are they svg, javascript, webgl, sprites, how are they made?+ What are some thoughts into not creating a game that is resource hungry, but lightweight as your?+ If I were to start on something as big as dont' starve, what languages should I study, what should I know between the languages and how should they relate to make it easier to develop, add content and fix bugs?+ What tips and hints can Developers give me in other to orient myself better to this kind of gaming world?

[Excess]

+ Being a game which was opened in early beta, how do you manage the different builds?+ In what programming language/s do you develop Don't Starve?+ How was your experience developing a game as a Chrome App?+ Having several programmers working along side each other, how do you manage not to **** other programmers things up?+ Do you all work on the same building or is more of a work-from-home talk-by-skype kinda deal?

[Kevin]

+ How to create the amazing animations. Are they svg, javascript, webgl, sprites, how are they made?

Our animators (who are awesome!) work in flash. We have a custom pipeline for exporting the data into a format that the game can use. At run time, it's all matricies and bitmaps.

+ What are some thoughts into not creating a game that is resource hungry, but lightweight as your?

Figure out what the most expensive part of your game is, and then try to maximize your re-use. Our most expensive thing is animation - which is why Wilson uses the same few "I'm doing something" animations for almost every interaction.

+ If I were to start on something as big as dont' starve, what languages should I study, what should I know between the languages and how should they relate to make it easier to develop, add content and fix bugs?

It's a long, hard road between learning to program and making a complete game. I'd say the best thing to do would be to make a really small project for yourself - like a pong or tetris clone, and figure out how to do that in Unity or Pygame.

+ What tips and hints can Developers give me in other to orient myself better to this kind of gaming world?

Make (and finish!) simple things, until you are ready to start making complex ones! Edited October 18, 2012 by Kevin

[Kevin]

+ Being a game which was opened in early beta, how do you manage the different builds?

Painfully. We have three SVN branches (dev, staging, and release), and it's a constant dance to make sure that the right changes merge to the right location at the right time. This is something that we're still figuring out.

+ In what programming language/s do you develop Don't Starve?

The engine is written in C++, and most of the actual game code is in Lua. There is some javascript holding the Chrome version together, and our server backend (and most internal tools) are written in Python.

+ How was your experience developing a game as a Chrome App?

It's great for distribution, but there it can be very challenging to get usable information about bugs.

+ Having several programmers working along side each other, how do you manage not to **** other programmers things up?

We tend to have particular areas that we focus on, but we do step on toes from time to time. That's what revision histories are for

+ Do you all work on the same building or is more of a work-from-home talk-by-skype kinda deal?

We all work within throwing distance from each other

[burfl]

+ Is this a NaCl project? It struck me as odd that it is compatible only with Chrome until I remembered reading about NaCl, and noticed that the startup screen says "Loading executable".

[burfl]

Also, I love that you guys are so active in the forum and that you are willing to discuss this topic. What an awesome developer.A bit off topic, but have you guys considered porting to the Ouya? It would probably be a huge PITA to port the engine to Java and there would likely be performance impact concerns, but if it's do-able, I have a feeling that's going to be a big market for indie devs like you. They asked for $950k on their Kickstarter and got $8.5 million. Android is popular. Console gaming is popular. $99 gadgets are popular. And XBMC is popular. I like it and bought it either way. Keep up the awesome work!

[Kevin]

Yup! You are currently playing the NaCl build. Internally, we do most of our development and testing with a normal Win32 build. Soon, this will be available through a Steam beta.

We're all pretty used to working with cross-platform development here at Klei. I hope to create native mac and linux ports at some point as well, but that will probably be post-release if it happens.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Kevin

[Kevin]

A bit off topic, but have you guys considered porting to the Ouya?

I can't speak for Klei as a whole, but I'm personally taking a wait-and-see approach with the Ouya. I will be pleasantly surprised if it actually takes off. :)As far as porting in general goes, any normal computer (mac, linux) should be pretty easy. Well, not easy, but at least straightforward. Things get trickier when you have to adapt the game's controls to something radically different from mouse and keyboard. I'd love to see a tablet or even console port, but there would be some serious work involved in re-inventing the control scheme, and then making sure that the new ported version stays working with our frequent update schedule. It's not impossible, but it is expensive in terms of opportunity cost for a small team like ours.

[burfl]

Can't wait for the Win32 build. The viewable area is quite small in my browser tab/window. A Linux port would be amazing, as I have found so few good games on Linux (and this game is good). Keep up the amazing work! :)And now I'll try to offer something relevant to the topic as penance for derailing the thread: is there a good reason you guys choose to use SVN instead of any other source control, such as Git? Is it a simple matter of familiarity/preference?

[Kevin]

In the latest build, you can press f11 to go full screen and then use ctrl+ and ctlr- to zoom. You can almost get full screen that way.We use SVN because we're familiar with it, and it's free. In my previous life as a triple-A dev, we used Perforce. I haven't found a project to use git with yet, although I've heard good things. I think Tatham uses git with some kind of svn bridge for feature branches sometimes.Game projects are kind of a nightmare scenario for source control. We have lots of big binary source art files, and usually at least half of the team is non-technical.

[burfl]

I knew the F11 command, but the Ctrl+/- trick has allowed me to make it much bigger, thank you Kevin.