That's great to hear. Are you planning on releasing a new build soon?
That's a great idea.The game has a really good feel to it so if you amplify it with your current idea, I'm sure it will be awesome.When will we get to see a new build. Have you added any more abilities to player? .If you don't mind me asking. what does the progression look like for the player?
I saw someone mention on X the other day that they hate the idea of the enemies scaling with player power. And I have to agree.
I HATE monsters scaling with player power.
In fact i'll share with you a little story about skyrim I had, Antonio
I'm a bit of a min/maxxer nut myself, I'm pretty good at getting a talent tree and finding the best means of maxing power, or finding broken aspects of gameplay in an RPG.
So in Skyrim you get all those talents, and the vast majority of them make you stronger, but I was playing for the long haul. I was going to max my social skills, get all the lowest prices for my regents, and I was focusing on blacksmithing as well, so my plan was to start weak, but finish STRONG. I'm also the player that saves every Megalixer for the final boss and when I get to him, of the 85 I have in my inventory, I use maybe 2 haha.
Well I get about a month into the game, I'm digging the hell out of it. But I notice that I am getting my ass handed to me ALL THE DAMN TIME, and it's just not that i'm terrible at video games, it's also that something just seems "Off".
So I went online to investigate WTF was going on because the game was becoming more and more unplayable the further I got into it, and I was JUST about to start trying to turn my talent points into actual power.
It was only then that I found out about the nature of rubber banding difficulty in Skyrim.
Suffice to say, fuck no we're not going to do that, enemy scaling difficulty is a bag of balls, and more a design principle suited to large teams where they need band aid solutions to solve problems stemming from lacks of communication
I'm too damned pretentious as a designer to surrender to enemy scaling difficulty!
That said... I have mulled over some elements of blanace that would invalidate power progression XD. What can I say, i'm a big of a hypocrite!
So let me explain, in most games you have fire and ice and lightning, and they're just different colors for the same tired damage formula's of magic.
I'm thinking of adding a damage type called "Pure" damage, and what this damage will do is a raw, undiminished percentage damage to your existing HP pool (aside from maybe shields, but to a lesser extent). And this essentially does the same thing. But I think having big hits is kinda important to have sometimes when you're facing things like bosses and mini bosses, or certain lumbering enemies.
What's great about this damage setup that I hope the players don't figure out is it creates only the ILLUSION of danger, because if you're tanky enough to survive 50 hits, but I have some mechanic that saps away 30% of your existing hits on top of those normal hits. You can still withstand a bevy of punches to your face, but as you watch your health bar get smashed towards zero, you're going to FEEL as though you're in danger, even if you're not!
There are so many little tricks such as this that i'm gearing up to employ to make the game feel thrilling and fun. This is probably one of the only trick I know of in my head now that I think about it, but it sounds cooler if I sound that.
Point is, I'm absolutely 100% a progression nut, I even posted my top 10 games on twitter the other day and most of them are games for people who just like to grind for power for months on end. Dota 2, World of Warcraft, Diablo 2.
I am a gear, power leveler, stat, talent tree nut! So rest assured I'm not coming into this half assed and running into the same problems as other teams as we go, we know this shit like the back of our hand. When we're not working on SeaCrit and "Goofing off" we are playing higher end progression games with inventive power progression and we're min maxxing our asses off. That is absolutely my jam and all the unseen work we've been working on over the years feeds into this! (And also all the sitting on our ass and playing other games XD)
It's a delicate balance. You need for there to be rules in your game of progression. If a player has that special run where they find all the right rare loot, and all the right bonuses and hit it big with finding lots of goldfish and got rich and bought all the cool stuff, they need to be powerful, no rubber banding mechanics in the game should trivialize that.
I really appreciate the continued interest Antonio, it's actually a really huge compliment.
It's kinda like when you bring food to a pot luck, of course everyone is going to say "OMG, your casserole was AMAZING", but if you look at the pan and there's only 1/5 of it eaten, you know you're a failure!
The greatest compliment you get can get as someone who makes something is for people to say they want to consume it!
I'll write a blog on this subject of skills in just a bit, going to meditate on it a bit and devise a plan for a blog post and for work today and it'll likely inspire work for today so i'll upload a video on that as well.
This should be fun!
I know I said I'd get to work yesterday, but I ended up slamming 2 cups of caffeine and playing DOTA 2 all fucking day.
Hypocrisy, thy name is IllTemperedTuna.
So TODAY, today is the day we get up off our ass and become the vengeance of gamedev, yesterday we had noobs to pwn.
XD I hate to admit it, but I always end up as a stealth archer in Skyrim. I don't know why I can't get a solid battlemage build going in Skyrim, even though that is my go-to build in Daggerfall. I recently picked up Morrowind because a lot of folks say it's the best in the series. I haven't played it yet since I'm currently playing Elden Ring.
I learn a lot from your blogs. You share so much wisdom, and your game is great! Your honesty about your daily struggles is motivating, especially because you always seem to figure things out in the end.
I have a hard drive full of half-baked projects because I’m too stupid to focus on gameplay first. But after playing your game last year, I made a decision to prioritize gameplay above all else. (It’s still tough. Whenever I get something working, I immediately want to jump into Blender to make assets.)
Do you have any more game dev wisdom to share? I recently started working on a multiplayer game. I’ve never made one before. I've only worked on single-player stuff, and even then, it was mostly asset creation. I’m slowly making progress, but man. There's so much stuff to do, and I haven’t even started on the 3D assets yet!
Whew, that's a lot of responsiblity to think anyone would be following along on this journey and actually think I have any idea WTF I'm doing! I'll do my best to give you some multifaceted advice, because what the right path to take in gamedev has to be the most random, "Who the heck knows?" sort of question EVER!
I don't even know what the heck I'm doing, so I feel a little weird giving advice from the position of abject failure!
Ok, i'll try to just be straight up, and bear in mind, sometimes the best thing you can do is just be stubborn and follow something if it's really calling you, follow your gut. It's not a guarantee of success, but it'll likely give you your best chance or at least be what you want to do stumbling down this rocky road.
My first bit of advice would be don't do multiplayer, eveyrone wants to do multiplayer until they start making a multiplayer game, to say nothing of the hidden pitfalls of your game just never being played since no one can find anyone to play a round with.
Multiplayer tends to be an evolution you make when the time is right, or at least that's how it used to be back in the day before everyone and their uncle was chasing some break out multiplayer hit right out of the gate for all the wrong reasons.
If I could go back in time and do something diferent after being a stubborn goof ball just pursuing SeaCrit with reckless abandon, it would be to make an idle game.
I friggin' LOVE idle games, and I think they have a lot of room to grow and evolve and the bar for making a break out hit idle game is SO much lower than to make a popular 3d beat 'em up.
https://cheerfulghost.com/games/candybox2
Too often as solo devs just starting out we want to make a Science based dragon MMO, but there is so much more room to try other things, inventive things with less limiting overhead of fancy graphics and netcode , and they're also easier for people to try and to put up on various websites.
The best advice is probably to just run and don't do gamedev this place is a meatgrinder, and the industry is fallen apart, and the storefronts are all locked up, and flash is dead, and in every conceivable way the asshole deep pockets could make this hellscape harder to succeed in, they have done so.
But if you're like me you just really want to make a game and have a damn the torpedoes mentality.
I wrote this article some time back, but it still holds up:
https://code.tutsplus.com/cubes-vs-space-marines-making-a-great-game-in-your-bas...
I think I've got some pretty decent insights in there about how to get started on this crazed journey.
Everything in gamedev is a contradiction. If you spend too much time on one project, you might be putting all your eggs in one basket and waste time on a game that's a dud. You also don't learn broader skill sets or force yourself to go through the motoins of retooling workflows in a wax on wax off manner. Jump from projec to project and you wont develop the habit of pushing things to actual completion, learning to set your standards high and invest into something you're truly passionate about. You kinda learn to chase that feeling of butterflies in your stomach like someone that goes on too many first dates, and then wakes up at 35 and realizes they're old and alone...
But in this era of game jams, I do feel like you can be a bit of a diamond in the rough if you learn to actually stick to something and give it the time these systems demand in this era of instant gratification!
At the end of the day, I would say just do what really calls to you. If that's multiplayer, stick with multiplayer, if it's an action RPG make that actoin RPG.
The trick is finding a way to make it doable, how do you simplify it? Because the truth is, that this industry learned the hard way, is the player won't know all the manhours put into something, they don't care how many years you put into assets, and rigging and all that jazz.
All they care about is the ratio of Secret Sauce you can put into every bite of your game. So for all our dreams of making these high end games with fancy graphics and assets and high art, a lot of players just wanna play match 3 games with images of candy in it!
Finding success in gamedev will NEVER be easy, the various pitfalls just trying to keep motivatoin up gets to be soul crushing after years of time, to say nothing of fickle player bases and chaotic markets, and industry manhandling.
TLDR: My advice would be find a game that's successful, that was RELATIVELY EASY TO MAKE, that you're passoinate about and you think you could be called to put your own spin on it.
When you think about it, there are genres of hugely succesful game that have only scratched the surface of what's possible! Idle games, games like peggle, card games, heck look at Balatro! Balatro is a fantastic example of taking a game that's easy to pick up and play and already has universal appeal and it throws a whole new layer of digital depth to it!
I do want to stress though, that you're probably asking the wrong guy as I have no idea WTF I'm doing and haven't had even the slightest bit of success after all these hard fought years, but I'm really stubborn.
So I would have WAYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more confidence in explaining how to FUCK UP your game development ROFL.
But there it is, that's my attempt at helping you course correct to a project that might suit you.
OH and I would recommend you check out Jonas Tyroller on youtube if you haven't already, that dude is AMAZING for helping other people find the right path of making a game, and the dude walks the walk too, which so many people don't appreciate. Guy is a total work horse and puts the hours in and deserves every bit of his success, I don't know where he finds the time to make YouTube videos on the side, I spend most my free time on youtube watching people bitch and moan about modern marvel movies.
Anyhow! Don't be shy about any follow up questions you might have Antonio. Hope this helped you in some way shape or form!
Yeah, I'm already subscribed to Jonas. I like the way he can break things down.
Thank You for the advice.it helps a ton! I know that you've been toiling away at SeaCrit but as I've said before, your game feels great. I love the stylized assets and art style.Also. The gameplay is top tier.. I know people will love the game.
I do have a lot of questions to ask but I don't want to bombard you with them XD.
You've touched on a lot of topics that I was thinking about. scale/scope especially. The Multiplayer game is kind of a test run. I wanted to learn a bit more about it since I see that multiplayer games are booming these days. I do love single player games more though
But the types of games that I love vary in scale alot and that is probably where I struggle the most. number 1 on that list would be survival type games. I have tried scaling it down in so many aspects but it still bloats. Games like frost punk or Surviving Mars,Anno, or even the first person stuff like the forest,subnautica ,The Long Dark. The gameplay mechanics are great but these are not ideal for a solo dev.
I think I am asking the right guy because you have a game that you're passionate about and that is what I like. I don't want to make a game just because it's trendy.
Oh. How modular should a system be before it becomes too modular? Also. How would one prioritize mechanics in a game that is exploration heavy?
Hey thanks dude! I would say make systems as modular as they need to be. But it's fine if once in a while or out of the gate you take a system or two too far.
That's how we learn! Sometimes we'll not make things modular enough and they break and they have strange internal logic that is a pain to work with, and we learn to spend a bit too much time. And at some point you're going to make a system you spend FOREVER on, make it perfect and allow it to work with other systems, and then you're going to find that you gotta take some of that functionality out and it was a big waste of time.
But there are no wastes of time in gamedev, so long as you learn from it! Unless of course you're just checking things off a TODO list for some crappy corporate tittle that makes no sense and you'll have no control over the stupid decisions of the future.
The only way we're ever going to figure out better ways of doing things and better stratagies is to try these things. And never not do something just because you figure someone else wouldn't. Because we'll all try different things and who knows, maybe you stumble across some new practice that defines your style or helps you come up with workflows that work for you.
Because there is no right or wrong way to do things, there's only the best way you've found so far that works for you.
Just finished your article. Dude. That's some great writing and knowledge that you've shared.
I see you've mentioned that you've been apart of mod teams in your profile. I'm tackling the talent trees and mod teams articles later today. what have you worked on ? Do you follow the skyblivion team and the efforts as well ?
I've only worked on failed stuff no one has heard on! At least on mod teams, I can't even remember most of it, one project had a little funding and I made beer money on it doing some unit artwork for a command and conquer clone.
The stuff you've heard on I worked on proffessionaly while I was in the industry. I did some water particle work for Days Gone, and a bit of particle stuff for the Magic the Gathering card game. I have no idea how much of my work actually made it in these games though.
I do notice the token particle effect seems to be largely what I made, and I got this crappy wallet asset into BioShock 2. I was one of the many artists that got an email from the guys managing the outsourced art on that game telling us we weren't allowed to claim we worked on that game. Well I prefaced that I did SHITTY artwork for it, assholes! Does that allow me a fraction of your wonderous glory!
Ha, to be fair the art I did for that game was in fact ass, so I gotta behonest, if you liked the art style of that game I can't take any credit to be fair, but it's cool to say I got an art asset into that game! My abilities as a particle artist were a more developed than as an environment artist.
Haven't seen too much from skyblivion, but I'm on the side of any small group of passionate startups outshining these idiot mega corporations run by money grubbbing douche nozzels any day... OBVIOUSLY
Nah actually it wasn't a scummy move. The art I did for that game wasn't up to its amazing standards. The artists who truly contributed to that game's amazing standards deserve the credit 100%.
This industry is riddled with people who think everyone needs all the credit. I absolutely did not help make that game better! But it's pretty cool knowing the crappy wallet I did made it in! I had also done some tomato assets and a lathe that I guess didn't make it into the game because they took that particular bit of story out.
