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How to get better at searching specific game mechanics?

A topic by BungerColumbus created Aug 15, 2024 Views: 104 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(3 edits)

EDIT: I think I got the gist of it. In the mean time I had also found a really great channel which seems to explain more of these mechanics in detail called (The Coding Train). I think he has a video for almost any topic.

Hello fellow devs. Yesterday I posted on reddit asking how to improve my code in order to achieve the same type of movement available in games like Slither.io or Terraria's "Eater of Worlds" enemy. While my code was able to replicate something pretty similar I knew it wasn't the same.

But, I eventually I stumbled upon Inverse Kinematics and I realised how those are literally what I tried to achieve and what you can see in both of those games. This isn't the first time this happens. The same happened when I tried to find a way to make my enemies route around obstacles (Context Steering) or make a better movement for a platformer (Coyote Timing, Edge Detection, Apex Modifiers, Jump Buffering etc).

Instead of wasting my time searching "How to make an enemy similar to the worm-like creatures of Terraria" on the internet, I want to find those specific words which can cut through all the useless tutorials and get me an idea of what I actually want to achieve.

TLDR: Where can I find all of these keywords like "Inverse Kinematics", "Context Steering"? If there is a book having all of them I am willing to buy it and read all of it.

(+1)

I would assume some sort of guidebooks in relation to programming and game design. Especially ones that focus on a combination of both, seeing as you want to look into gameplay mechanics and how to implement them.

That being said I would not know of specifics other than looking up those kind of guides in proper places. So maybe someone with more knowledge can add something to this topic.

(+1)

Obtaining information is both a hard and an easy task in our day and age.

Things I would try.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_kinematics#See_also

See also sections of wikipedia.

People making tutorials about such things.

Asking a search engine. But it might help to give context. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=game+development+How+to+make+an+enemy+similar+to+the+w...

The general topic is algorithms. And they are problem specific. Or task specific. So specify your task and add the word algorithm to a search. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=game+development+obstacle+avoidance+algorithm&ia=web

(+1)

Thanks a lot for the advice. I found the channel (The Coding Train) and what I can see is that they make a ton of videos explaining not only game mechanics but a lot of other stuff in general. I am gonna use it as a source of information from now on. I had also gotten the advice to use ChatGPT when looking for the logic of something more complex as it can sometimes give me better answers than a search engine.