itch.io

Thanks for the kind words!

Sorry to hear that :( I can definitely think of some 'tubers that I would be sad about passing away... though I can't say there are any that I have such a deep attachment to.

I did recently lose an IRL friend to depression/addiction/guilt. She thought she was a burden, but I didn't think so. I wanted to listen, and to help. I hope you have someone you can talk to, and that you can allow yourself to be helped... for those of us on the other end, we do it by choice, and it makes our own lives better. And if not, well then it would be our responsibility to say that we aren't prepared to handle it (hopefully in a respectful way)

Making games is a great outlet, and it's damn hard so it will certainly keep you busy for a long time :)

You don't just have to make games though, in the "traditional" sense. Many people create and consume other types of digital medium for the benefit of their mental health, such as visual novels, zines, bitsy stories, and so on. These don't have such high requirements in terms of mechanical skills like coding so could be a good choice if you are looking for a way to express your thoughts.

did I won yet

thanks!

Arka

I've never been so amused by a frustrating interface, lol

Ha, I understand... I also have a tendency to shut myself in my cave and not talk to anyone, and really have only managed to break out of that in the last few years...

One strategy you could use, is to try focusing on the other aspects of your game for now, and just use placeholders and/or crappy animations... then you can share it as a demo or prototype and see if any artists want to jump on board. It is easier to find collaborators when you actually have a foundation that they can work on. It can be tough though as you'll be staring at your junky placeholders imagining how pretty they could be while forcing yourself to work on the rest of it ^.^

Well, here's one solution... don't animate! If you hate animation and don't really want to learn it, maybe you should look for ways to create a game without having to animate a character. If you really do want to learn it, well, you're gonna have to spend years practicing just like every other good pixel artist. You've reminded me of this very nice video from Indie Game Clinic (specifically the first few minutes):

They are looking for a programmer, not an artist. It doesn't reflect well on you to copy and paste the same boring advertisement everywhere, especially in places where it isn't relevant. 

Because predators, obviously. *Shakes head in parental*

None of you shitters should be sharing your age at all. 

Marking accounts seems like a difficult thing to implement fairly, I wouldn't want people who made an honest mistake to get a visible reprimand just because they didn't follow directions or something

That sounds like a massive project even for a team of veterans. As a total newbie working solo, you're just not equipped to make this masterpiece yet. Start with one, teeny tiny chunk of your grand idea. Like make a game where you just raise one creature (i.e. virtual pet). That should keep you occupied for a few months :P

There is no trick. Big studios spend years developing games like that, with teams of experienced artists, programmers, designers, and so on. 

Lol, pure comedy. You can't possibly understand my point of view if you aren't able to read and comprehend my sentences. If I say I like debating, and then you assume that I want the debate to end, you are just not able to communicate, let alone discuss.

OK, I changed the option based on your input, you can now set the offset to 30px which would have been the equivalent of 15 previously. Let me know if that works better!

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! And I will definitely change the offset with your suggestion... I was thinking of just making the step size larger, right now it only moves the paddle 2 pixels away for a maximum of 20 which is probably too "fine", as 2 pixels makes almost no difference. Maybe it would be better to just have the options be 10px, 20px, 30px which is also less cryptic :)

Also... do I recognize your name or is it just a coincidence? lol

You've really gone off. Again, I said I can't argue with your nonsense. And you reply "if you want to keep arguing..."

Haha, that's kinda what I thought, wasn't sure if there was something specific that I was missing.

I'm alright... I will reply soon <3

I have also seen non-spam games that are submitted to multiple jams, which the reason for should be obvious: Creators are looking for ways to gain exposure, and for good reason... they worked hard on their game and if it isn't breaking any rules, it is in their best interest to get more eyes on it.

That said, it dilutes the uniqueness of each jam. To me, a game jam should be an isolated event, not a database of everything that fits the prompt. It should be like going to a specific location and crafting something on-site. You wouldn't bring that creation to the next craft-jam and say "look, I made this here, too!" This just turns into a snowball of duplicate entries... as an audience member, I would rather see fewer submissions, with each one being unique to the single event that it was made for.

I LOL'ed at the very sad book. And I was confused after writing about grasshopper.

Also, why are there screenshots of you editing the thing? So meta...

Haha, no way, I don't do the "agree to disagree" thing, I actually enjoy debating and I don't get offended when people challenge my ideas. However it is not possible to have a debate with you if you are just going to reinvent what I say. 

I said:
What happens when the AI does become extensive enough that you can just say "make me a game"?

And you replied with:
If you truly think you could ask AI to make it for you and never play my version of it, then that's your choice. 

What? How did you go from "What if" to "Well if you truly believe that"? People say "what if" about things that aren't true. So if you come back with "well if you think that's true", you are just not understanding the point of a hypothetical. So no, this isn't 'agree to disagree' - you are wrong in treating my hypothetical as something that I believe is true now (literally the opposite of a hypothetical). This makes your response objectively irrelevant, and you can either revise your argument based on what I actually said, or not do so and continue speaking to phantoms.

I'm sorry, I don't see any point in continuing here, you are misunderstanding everything, replying to ideas that were never put forth. I say "What if XYZ" and you reply with "Do you really believe that XYZ?" The whole point of a hypothetical is to explore something that isn't true, so your question is totally absurd.

Your were born to code without any help. You did not need to read a book about the subject, hell watching a youtube tutorial about the subject mae you laugh because you knew it all before you clicked on the link. Never a help from friend's who also coded... nope.. you understood the meaning from the very start, and lesser being's may someday understand the meaning.. given time. But for now.. your it, codeJesus.

This is getting truly bizarre... I never implied such a thing, you are just conjuring this image out of nowhere. I don't necessarily have to be good at a thing to say that you are bad at it. Keep it real, you made statements that directly show your disinterest in learning:

I mean, if you have an idea you want to implement and your not shure what to do, you could ask a fellow coder for assistance, but then they might scratch their head also while your scratching your's to figure out how to do the thing you want. Then you both work on it, trial and error and a week or so goes by and you figure out some method that works, but the time it took to come up with a solution took away time from the rest of the games development and not only for you, but kept your fellow coder's time away from what they were working on.

I was not about to ask a friend coder to help me on that. That's a lot of math and angles, and most important TIME. could take day's, maybe a week or two.

So i turned to deepseek AI, and i told it exactly what i wanted, and in around 20 seconds or less, it posted the code i needed to do it. That code needed ajustment from me, with my added code it worked flawlessly and efficiently, and it even recomended way's to make it more efficient like pooling the instantiated objective icons and a lot more info I did not think about.

God forbid you would scratch your head, be forced to learn about "a lot of math and angles", or have to read for more than "20 seconds or less" about how to make programs efficient. If you hate the idea of doing that stuff, that's OK. It would be ridiculous to expect everyone to want to be a programmer. But if people start using AI output and then declaring themselves programmers, that's an issue. It is also an issue if you are fed answers from other people, or copy and paste all the time... when faced with an actual problem you will fall apart.

I made the comparison to basketball as a general answer to the question, is AI cheating. The example doesn't apply to your case exactly because as you said, you only used the AI for this one problem. But let me ask you this. Is it cheating if a basketball player uses the Auto-Shot machine for ten percent of their shots? One percent? Is it OK for a pro player to cheat on just one shot? Is it OK to steal as long as you only do it sometimes?

What happens when the AI does become extensive enough that you can just say "make me a game"? I'll tell you what happens: your development career ends right then and there. Why would I ever play your game if I can just generate my own faster than you can even begin to share yours?

You're getting carried away with incorrect analogies. None of the things you mentioned are in any way similar to an LLM. You don't just ask a compiler to compile any old code. You give it specifically formatted code and it returns predictable output. Syntax highlighting is also a linear, automated process that is specific and predictable. As for using other people's textures, yeah if you stole them and used them without permission, absolutely cheating, obviously.

The things you mentioned are just tools. LLM is not just a tool, it completely replaces (or aims to replace) you as a creator. It also spits out wrong answers, something every techbro loves to ignore. Compilers don't just randomly compile your code in a different way. Highlighting doesn't happen differently because the thing made a different statistical calculation today vs yesterday. Calculators don't mess up unless they are broken.

Using AI isn't the same as using a tool such as a table saw. A table saw is a tool that makes it easier to cut in a straight line. The equivalent to AI would be a machine that, you drop a piece of wood in, say "make me a chair", and then it makes potentially a chair (but maybe not). You can't tell me the person who uses that is a carpenter. They are simply using the Automagical Carpentry Machine and feeling real proud of themselves for being able to push the button.

You are misrepresenting my statements. I said that you can learn from your friend, but that there is a difference between them feeding you answers, and you actually understanding the meaning behind those answers.

Using a calculator is cheating if you are learning arithmetic. Furthermore, this is the same old bad analogy that every AI pumper keeps making. A calculator takes input and gives predictable output. An LLM on the other hand takes input and just guesses at the most likely answer based on a huge pool of data. Completely different, I don't even know how you could begin to compare the two since a calculator is never wrong (unless it is programmed wrong or malfunctioning), whereas your LLM is frequently wrong. It doesn't apologize to you - it outputs words that look like an apology to humans that are too gullible to know the difference.

Lol... you literally asked if you were cheating, now you're mad that you got a response? I never said anything about my own programming skills. Just that I think having a machine statistically spit out answers for you is cheating. Cheaters are never good at the actual game, they can only be good at cheating. They think that the end result is all that matters. That is what I was responding to in regard to judging your code. MagnusCart implied that you will only be judged on the end product, so it doesn't matter how you get there. In other words, they think it is fine to cheat as long as the resulting product looks good. By the same logic, someone who uses a machine to shoot baskets for them is a good basketball player.

Having a friend improve your code isn't learning. The learning part comes when you reach an understanding as to WHY their changes make it better. There is a reason good teachers ask you to explain your answers. Now that's not to say you can't learn from the code that AI produces for you, but just like Googling everything, the instant gratification makes it so easy to just get answers and never really learn. Ironically, people end up learning only when the AI does things wrong, because then they actually have to engage with the problem.

You should also consider that even calling it AI is questionable. It doesn't solve problems, it only conglomerates data and produces answers based on statistics. This is why it sometimes produces wrong answers. Not because it was mistaken about the solution to a problem, but because that wrong answer was simply calculated as being the most probable. 

It's already 0%, lol

What the hell is going on

Cool concept, however I think I encountered a bug, after placing a piece the screen disappeared:

 If you're already a competent coder, ai will act as an enhancer

Not according to actual research.

you're not being judged by the quality of your code

First of all, you should definitely be judged by the quality of your code, and 10x more harshly if you're letting AI do it for you. However, this isn't even relevant to the question: am I cheating. Cheating and getting bad results is still cheating.

Am I cheating?

Let me ask you this: If a basketball player has a machine that pushes them around the court and shoots the ball for them, are they cheating? Or just "using an incredibly helpful resource"?

Thank you!

And crop those screenshots to not include your taskbar and open tabs, lol

I think it also bears mentioning that Itch is a developer-centric community. Yes, there are players around as well, but a lot of them probably don't even have a registered account and therefore aren't going to be able to comment on your projects. Even if they do have an account, they aren't necessarily compelled to comment.  Players who do have accounts are mostly here for a specific type of game, not to play all of our "my first/second/third game" projects in genres that they don't care about. So unless you have in-game interaction between players, or some other space for players to interact such as your own website/forum, it is unlikely that you will form a big community here. Niche interests can sometimes explode, and maybe projects that have a special appeal to other developers will get more interaction, but these are rare occurrences. It's just unreasonable for this to be your expectation, or to beat yourself up over not having a big following on Itch. If you have a really good product, and you bring it to the right market, it will do well. This is a pretty small market with certain specific interests. People who come here for visual novels are not going to care about your platformer, even if it is an exceptionally good game, they just aren't here for that. That isn't to say you shouldn't make platformers and upload them here, but if you want to reach more people you'll need to bring that to a market where people are actually looking for that specific thing.

Heh, I will admit, it has a certain charm. Kinda reminds me of things I made years ago with Clik & Play. I think if this had actual levels to explore it would be more appealing, as the arena is pretty basic. Also, a delay between enemy shots would be good.

Not sure which game you are referring to, there are two on your page... I tried Alien Games and I couldn't even get past the intro text, no keyboard input seems to do anything. Bubble escape works but, it is pretty basic in terms of gameplay, just dodging the same projectile over and over. It is fine for someone learning game development but just doesn't offer much to the player.

I would focus on just making something fun. Building a community around a game requires several things, first of all it needs to be a game that catches a lot of people's attention and that they want to keep playing for more than one session. Then there would have to be some reason for players to interact with each other in relation to the game. For example, people like to talk about different character builds for RPGs. They are not going to talk about how they got a high score in bubble escape, as there's one and only one strategy involved. You can't really force a community - it will build itself if people like the game enough and have something to connect with each other.

Quick update:

• Removed the exit button
• Made it so you can shoot down by moving the paddle to the top of the screen
• Tweaked first boss enemy to be a bit tougher

Sounds pretty ambitious... what is your expertise, such as coding, art, audio? This looks like a medium to large team will be needed.

Also there are some issues within your concept... in fact it is not very detailed at all, more like a list of advertisements and very generalized features. For example:

Battles take place on a hex or square grid

Well which one is it? A detailed concept should have this decided.

Players summon from over 100 unique heroes, including knights, mages, beastfolk, dragonslayers, and mythical creatures. Each hero has their own class, detailed skill trees, and evolution paths (e.g., Knight → Paladin or Dark Knight). Affinity system builds relationships between heroes, unlocking team buffs and special story interactions.

Woah, over 100 heroes, with their own skill tree, and relationships between them? Special story interactions? (not just story for each individual?) That's a huge project by itself. Later in the document you mention at Beta time you'll have ~30 heroes which will supposedly take 9 months. Chances are it will take longer, but even so, that sort of means 100 heroes will take about 30 months.

Frequent live events with special bosses, limited-time heroes, and story chapters.

Fully voiced dialogues for main characters and important story scenes, supporting multiple languages

Sounding more and more ambitious here. Voice acting in one language is a big deal. And live events... well, you're going to need staff to support that every month.

Thanks for your comment Ofihombre! Yes, I should probably remove the quit button for the embedded version.