Seeking Guidance for My First Clickteam Fusion Project

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  • Hello everyone,

    After a long hiatus, I'm excited to dive into something Finally with Clickteam Fusion. I've recently purchased the developer version and had a breakthrough in another project, which has reignited my passion for game creation. However, I find myself in need of some guidance and assistance.

    As a first-time creator, I could really use some advice on both the business side of things and the technical aspects, especially since coding is a bit of a challenge for me. Here are a few areas where I would appreciate your input:

    1. First-Time Creator Advice: What are some essential tips for someone who is new to game development? Any business-related advice would also be greatly appreciated.
    2. Coding Assistance: I'm making progress with my ideas, but my coding skills are not the most elegant. Is there anyone who might be willing to review my code or offer some pointers?
    3. Studio Essentials: As an artist, I have a complete studio setup for asset creation, including music, story, art, and sounds. Are there any other essential elements I should consider for my studio?
    4. UI Design: While I feel confident in my game design skills, UI design is an area where I lack expertise. Any advice or resources on creating effective and engaging UI would be invaluable.
    5. Unconsidered Concerns: Given that this is a decades-long design project with ambitious goals, what potential concerns or pitfalls might I not have considered?

    This is a one-shot opportunity for me, and I want to make the most of it. Your guidance and helpful suggestions would mean the world to me. Thank you for bearing with me as I gather my thoughts and seek your expertise.

    Thank you and espeicially for your time
    Darkechibi

  • Hello Darkechibi,

    you seem to be a well organized person, and I have no doubt that this, plus your skills, will bring you everywhere you desire.

    Because of that, this is my first suggestion: do believe in what you can. Just make, try, and you will see how your programming skill will take off.

    Which leads to my second suggestion: start small at first. Make a clone of a simple game ( even if, IMHO, there's quite no game which can be considered simple ).

    And here is my last - but not least - hint: have fun and don' t get frustrated if at the beginning it does not run as you expect :)

    Fusion is a really powerful software, but you have at first to understand the logic behind.

    About coding assistance: try to group small tasks inside groups of events, so that you can activate/deactivate it. Give each group a meaningful name. Pay attention at the sequence/flow of yor program. And if you want to use fast loops, learn first how they work and take a look at the object scope. There are tutorials on that topic.

    Take care,

    Sergio

  • First-Time Creator Advice: What are some essential tips for someone who is new to game development? Any business-related advice would also be greatly appreciated.

    Ensure you're familiar with fastloops, foreach loops, and their quirks - fastloops don't work well with spreading alt values, foreach loops run like last action in an event, etc. Get familiarity with object selection and how it works in conditions and newly created objects. Qualifiers are also useful.

    Coding Assistance: I'm making progress with my ideas, but my coding skills are not the most elegant. Is there anyone who might be willing to review my code or offer some pointers?

    You can get feedback on Please login to see this link., although generally optimisation is finding a way of turning repeats into a pattern, and writing less code that way. You don't have to be that experienced for it; just switch to event list editor, and see if, content of text aside, there is repeating icons, repeating actions across several events.

    The less code you have, the better it will run. The less repeats, the less chance of typos in one of the repeats. Setting ten alt values can be done in a loop, rather than in ten actions; if there is a pattern to how they're set. And if that's the only time you set those values, it may not be worth turning it to a loop.

    More than 4 conditions is generally bad. Any repeats of actions that is 4+ is generally bad. Add code comments and event groups; some people use Unicode emoji in their event group names for easier identification. There is also object folders by right-clicking objects on top right. Make sure you have consistent naming and capitalisation, and use Ctrl-Shift-F to search your code later.

    If you are at all familiar with other coding engines, you might find Please login to see this link. is good for optimising and cleanly dividing your code into modules, as it is halfway between traditional coding languages and Fusion - you have access to functions, scoped variables and the like, but all the actual implementation is done by you in Fusion events.

    Studio Essentials: As an artist, I have a complete studio setup for asset creation, including music, story, art, and sounds. Are there any other essential elements I should consider for my studio?

    Marketing is key to success in a project. Arguably it's more important than code quality - gamers have powerful computers that are more than capable of dealing with all but the most unoptimized code, and they generally won't notice if you're using the whole CPU or a tiny fraction of it - but they will care if it starts lagging. Demanding too much resources would also affect streamers. Still, optimise later, unless you will be using that code pattern again and again; the more you optimise a code, the less flexible it is.

    So try to put some effort in marketing once you have something shiny you can put in a trailer or GoFundMe. But don't try to start your own Discord, or a daily blog, or something; let there be a community first, then create a place to gather. (Obviously, for your private testers, do as you want to keep communication up, but don't demand busywork.)

    UI Design: While I feel confident in my game design skills, UI design is an area where I lack expertise. Any advice or resources on creating effective and engaging UI would be invaluable.

    Besides considering both keyboard and mouse support (and controller support, say with SDL Object), the best customisation for UI is completely self-designed. However, you run into pitfalls of scaling for each screen, and the fact that OSes' built-in accessibility support only applies to the OS's controls; for example, you cannot write Japanese IME by Fusion's "on key pressed", or have Narrator automatically read out the text of an image.

    Try to account for resizing early and you won't have much to redo later; and I would also suggest not trying to make a one-size-for-all-devices UI, like Microsoft did with Start Screen fiasco and giant tablet-friendly icons in Start Menu... including on devices that didn't have touch support. Ultimately, though, accessibility and extra UI should be later design, and something you get testers for. Designing for a very limited testing group, like sip-and-puff users, may be completely turning your game's design upside down. Try to find a balance.

    If you're coding for different platforms, be aware some objects aren't portable to all platforms. You can check on Manager or Darkwire extension list which are portable. And don't bother porting until after you have a finished product you're shipping, as you'll likely need multiple MFAs or have a mammoth amount of code.

    Unconsidered Concerns: Given that this is a decades-long design project with ambitious goals, what potential concerns or pitfalls might I not have considered?

    Generally, estimate things will take three times longer than your initial guess. If you end up disappointed, you're not far off; if you get it done in time, you're lucky. The brain suffers from task optimism bias, where it thinks about all the steps in a task it knows how to do, and doesn't consider things like debugging flaws, things it didn't consider, etc.

    If you don't have time for three times as long, you need more resources, not to be optimistic that it won't really take that long.
    Work on self-improvement, not just progress; you'll be faster later.

    And people won't steal your product. They have their own babies and they won't have that motivation for your project.

    Darkwire Software Lead Programmer (C++ & C#)
    Please login to see this link. | Please login to see this link. | Please login to see this link. | Please login to see this link.

  • I've been messing around with Clickteam Fusion for years. I first found out about it in a gaming magazine from the 90s with a game about coconut monkeys, if I remember right. It took me almost a decade to get a copy, and when I did, I was totally lost. Math isn't my thing, so stuff like alterable values and loops were super confusing. But I kept at it over the years.

    Recently, some big changes in my life have made me really want to create something. Dealing with illness and needing a change has pushed me to finally go after my dream of game design. I’ve got a plan—starting small but hoping to grow it into something bigger. Right now, I’m focusing on quest games, like those classics Kings Quest and Space Quest. I know there are many out there but I think its a good starting point for me

    My user interface is almost done, and I’ve learned a lot about fast loops and for-each loops, though I’m sure my code isn’t the best. It’s working, but I’d love to find someone to help me review and improve it, especially if I can get some funding.

    Despite guesswork, my UI is coming along nicely. I do have a problem with a qualified group overlapping the same group and can’t figure out how to get the objects to move the way I want. Asking for help here is a bit scary for me since I’m not the best communicator, but I’ve got some great people helping me organize my thoughts and that keeps the social fear down somewhat.

    I struggle with social anxiety, but with help recently I feel safer trying to communicate. I’m really grateful for that. What I need now is advice on how to get my idea out there. Crowdfunding, Steam, and dealing with social and financial stuff freaks me out. How do I protect myself and show people what I’m trying to do?

    Is there anyone that does code review for other folks?
    Crowdfunding sounds like a nightmare for me because i dont like most communcation.
    Is getting a game on Steam still worth it? I know It used to be a grand idea but again i'm out of all the loops. FinallyI have no clue about advertising. I can create ads and the content, but how do I get them out there and make people care? I'm pretty much a recluse, so I need advice about the world itself.
    Thank you! Any advice or suggestions would be supremely appreciated.
    Darkechibi (and Team)

    Thank you so much for the replies so far, I must say. this is going better than expected!

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