itch.io

I've read a lot of books on game design, and there are only two of them that I'd recommend.  You're already reading one of them.  The other one is "Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation" by Steve Swink.

If I have several free spaces for e.g. furnaces and then try to build just one furnace, it automatically builds multiple furnaces at once.  Is that intentional?

As far as assets are concerned, if I use them in a commercial game and I have the option of paying, then I pay.  Because I can afford to, because artists deserve to be paid, and because I am not a deadbeat.  That doesn't mean I want to become an art critic.

I enjoyed Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.

Not quite what you're looking for, but maybe close enough: https://taylormccue.itch.io/trauma

Maybe leave a review?

If I search for the "No AI" tag, click on any result, then click on "more information", I can see "No AI" among the list of tags.  So you can see if something is marked as "No AI".

However, the converse for the "AI Generated" tag is not true.  If I search for the "AI Generated" tag, click on any result, then click on "more information", I can't see "AI Generated" in the list of tags.

I don't know why it works this way, but if it's AI-safe, then it should have the "No AI" tag which is visible, and if it doesn't have a visible "No AI" tag, then it's not AI-safe.

Interestingly, I can get some search results by searching for both "No AI" and "AI Generated" at the same time.

Today I learned that 32 bit Windows 10 is a thing.  The only reason I still support 32 bit Windows is that I don't have a copy of 64 bit Windows XP for testing that my games still run on Windows XP.

Never heard of it.  What's Sprunki, and why should I care?

Counterpoint: I want to be able to support games I like by giving them a positive review, even if I purchased them on GOG instead of itch.

There is a clear legal difference between human brains and computers.  There has to be in order for copyright to work, because every time I consume a copyrighted work, I am creating a copy in my brain.  I can legally read a short poem and have a perfect copy of that in my brain.  If I later write down the poem that's now in my brain, that's when I'm breaking copyright - not before.

There is a legal technique called clean-room design to create a functional clone of something without breaking copyright law.  It involves two teams of engineers working together.  The first team examines the original and writes a specification.  The second team creates the clone according to the specification without looking at the original.  In order for this technique to work, the following all have to be true:

• It is legal for the first team to examine the original.
• Examining the original taints the first team.  Because they now carry around a copy of the original in their brain, any clone they create will now legally be a derivative work.
• The specification that the first team creates is not itself tainted.

Any argument that it should be legal to do something on a computer if it's legal to do the same thing in a human brain is either an argument against copyright itself or an argument in favor of government thought control.  I can sort of get behind the former, but our governments and courts have decided differently.  The latter is completely unconscionable.

AI feeds on hand-created art in the most literal sense.  Without hand-created art to train on, there would be no AI art.

The problem with most AI models is that they are obviously infringing on copyright by being trained on unlicensed copyrighted materials.  This is likely to bite the companies that produce these models, and those that use these models, in the ass in the near future.

I have no problem with AI algorithms so long as you train them exclusively on your own art.  I have a problem with copyright theft, where people take other people's art, remix it through an AI algorithm, and claim to own the copyright on the result.

Hi.  There's a pinned "introduce yourself" thread right on top of the page.  Please use that instead of starting new threads just to introduce yourself.

The "market" for AI assets is based on scamming less savvy buyers who think they're buying handmade assets.  Same as the "market" for counterfeit brand-name goods.

Thinking about it some more, if you really want to do this kind of giveaway, then you should structure it as a raffle where everybody gets a chance to win, not just the guy at the top of the leaderboard.  Maybe each time somebody finds a ghost, they get a small random chance to win money.  That way players don't have to choose between investing ridiculous amounts of time to go for a win and giving up entirely.  Each player can increase their chance of a win, no matter how far behind they are.

Just be careful that you don't break any gambling laws.

This would completely kill my interest in the game.  I'm not interested in winning the £20 because that's less than minimum wage for the amount of time I would have to invest, and I'm not interested in losing because losing sucks, so not participating is the only option left.  Also, I would be disturbed that you are tracking the amount of time I spend in the game.

I can't play your game because I have noone with which to play it.  Which pretty much sums up the problem with indie multiplayer games.

A lobby would help.  Local multiplayer (multiple players on the same computer) would help.  A single-player mode would help.  But a multiplayer needs a certain minimum popularity in order to survive at all.  A single player game can survive as long as at least one person wants to play it, but a multiplayer games needs at least two people who want to player the game at the same time with each other, and these people need some way to find each other.

I do not wishlist or buy on Steam.  If it's available on itch and/or GOG, I buy from itch and/or GOG (whichever is cheaper).  If the game is only available on Steam, then I don't buy it.

I like many art styles: pixel art, digital painting, voxel art, low-poly 3D.  Pixel art is my favorite out of these, and (for various reasons) the only one that I actually used for released games so far.

It might help to explain what you're talking about.  It sounds like you're using a game engine, but which one?

Each file requires opening a tcp connection, negotiating a tls connection, and sending a whole bunch of headers both ways.  All of this costs network bandwidth and computational resources on both the client and server sides.  Too many small files is definitely bad for performance, although how many is too many depends a lot on the context.

I want my games to have a consistent style.  Therefore my concerns when buying asset packs are:

• How similar is it in style to what I already have?
• Is there a lot of stuff in the same style?
• Do I have the skills to produce additional assets in the same style?

FYI: otome games = games with a female player character who can romance (or be romanced by) one or more male characters.

Being able to filter out specific tags like "rape" and "horror" and "furry" and "visual novel" would make it much easier to find the porn that you want.  Remember that what you want isn't necessarily what anybody else wants, which is why tags exist in the first place.

Why is nobody talking about this:

• Because most people on itch.io have learned that itch.io is only usable with the NSFW filter turned on, so we go elsewhere for our porn.  Out of sight, out of mind.
• Because the feature that would make itch.io usable without filtering out all NSFW content, filtering out games based on multiple tags, is pretty much a dead meme at this point.  It's by far the most requested feature on itch.io, but we've all given up on it ever actually being implemented.

What?  No, you should only create one project, set the price to the price of the paid version, and click the "This file is a demo and can be downloaded for free" checkbox for the free version of the game.

A Dream of Burning Sand - now with free downloadable demo.

So long as it doesn't interfere with me making money from my games, I want them to be distributed as widely as possible, which means being uploaded on as many archive sites as possible.  I've already converted several of my paid games into free games so that they can reach a wider audience, and I hope to do this to all of my paid games before I die.

A Dream of Burning Sand - now with free downloadable demo!

I don't keep my tabs open and I don't have bookmarks to other pages on the site, so I start at the home page every time I visit itch.io.

As a Linux user, I tend to ignore games unless they either run in a browser or have a Linux version.  As a player, I'm more likely to try a browser game, but I'm more likely to come back to a game if I've downloaded it.  As a game developer, I use a "try in browser, pay to download the full version" strategy.

What game?

This does not look like review bombing to me.  It looks like a game getting a popularity boost because some community starting talking about it, with the predictable backlash because not everybody in that community likes the game.

I don't know, I searched for "cave" and the first relevant result I found was on the second page.  And it's not like cave assets are particularly rare.

I'm not a great fan of equipment damage in games.  I mean, yeah, stuff breaks in real life, but having to replace equipment every thirty minutes is neither realistic nor fun.  So I would use a system where you need a skill roll to successfully block with a shield, but the shield takes either no or only minimal damage on a successful block.  Probably less damage than the weapon, actually.

Also, don't underestimate just how effective a shield can be.  I've play-fought both with and without shields (SCA and Dagorhir), and let me tell you, you never want to be the guy without a shield fighting somebody with a shield.  The guy without the shield needs to actively protect his whole body.  The guy with the shield mostly needs to actively his head and feet, because the shield already protects most of his body just by being there.