this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Weekly WIPs, Wins & Whinges (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/gamedev@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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Hi all! Posting from my alt account on lemmy.blahaj.zone because it's been brought to my attention that we have users here from Beehaw and of course they can't see anything I'm posting with my main account @TeaHands@lemmy.world.

Sorry Beehaw folks, I'm still getting to grips with mod duties here.

Anyway. As part of the "try things and see what sticks" approach to community engagement, welcome to the new weekly chat thread!

Whether you have progress to show off à la Screenshot Saturday, a Monday morning gripe about unreasonable expectations on your team, or a Wednesday win, this is the place to share how your gamedev week is going.

You know game devs, if there's one thing we love more than making our own stuff it's living vicariously through others, so share away and let's see what everyone's been up to!

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[–] TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To kick things off then. Progress on my little solarpunk city builder has basically ground to a halt the last couple of weeks among illness and other priorities. So it feels good to be back on the horse this weekend.

I've done some planning, picked out focus tasks for the weekend, and first up is to tweak this model a bit. It's the central "hub" building in my city and it's a little too six-way symmetrical for my tastes.

Here's how it currently looks in-game, I'm still in the prototyping stage so there's not much visual variety (all the house tiles are the same etc), but tackling that is a nice low-hanging task to ease me back in.

rolls up sleeves

Let's get to it!

[–] TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Progress was made! 😄

[–] Pydin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks awesome. Very clean.

[–] TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks. I feel like this screenshot maybe makes it look further along than it actually is but never mind 😅

[–] saffron@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is so pretty! Are the little capsules going to be people?

[–] TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! Yep, I've been learning how to do AI navigation for the first time so currently they wander randomly around town. Including over bridges between hexes that are currently invisible and only exist in the code 😅

[–] saffron@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Awesome! That does sound complicated though!

[–] TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Luckily gamedev Mastodon took pity on me and pointed me in the right direction for the nav stuff lol, I would definitely have been lost otherwise. Still, another thing checked off the "to learn before I'll feel like a real game dev" list! 🙈

[–] saffron@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok I think my server might be acting up again but let's see if this will post!

I'm doing the My First Game Jam, only 4 days left and I'm kinda struggling, but it's been a learning journey for sure. I had this ambitious idea for a 3D tile-based puzzle thing, but the real puzzle is how I thought I could pull it off solo! Don't even have anything pretty to share, I did have this one model animated but it seems to be broken now😅

Definitely gotta get the hang of scoping down, but I got some awesome tips from my jam advice thread, it's all good! 🙌

[–] Pydin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Hey! I'll be honest I can't really tell what this is (was?) going to be, but you're building something while people like me are navel-gazing and never getting started. Give yourself some credit!

[–] Pydin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hi all. First post on Lemmy, I guess I'm a natural lurker.

I wrote this up as a separate post but honestly it's more of a rant than anything so I figured it could just go in here.

I'm Pydin, I'm a Unity developer from the UK who just graduated last year and was lucky enough to fall straight into a job. It's ok, but we mostly work on mobile games and the workload is pretty intense. At uni we mostly used Unreal so Unity has been a big change but it's decent enough.

Anyway the last few weeks - but particularly since signing up here and seeing what other people are working on - it's really made me realise how draining it's been to work in essentially a mobile game mill. I have a lot of free time outside of work, so I'm thinking it might be time to get back to what drew me to games dev in the first place.

Problem is, all the games I want to make are waaaaay too big. Even the process of coming up with a surmountable idea seems insurmountable. In the uni days we were given a lot of constraints and weren't really trying too hard to make something release-worthy, or we'd be working in teams and my part would be more doable. But now it's just me, and it's a bit like standing on a precipice staring into the void. So that's my rant, great first contribution to the group I know.

I've been doing a lot of reading around this already, but if anyone has any wisdom to share I'd appreciate it.

[–] TeaHands@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Hey no worries, we all need a good rant on occasion. Welcome to the community and also to Lemmy! Lurking is totally acceptable btw, albeit kind of a foreign concept to me 😄

We were just talking about scoping in another thread recently and I'm gonna straight-up quote @hodgepodgehomonculus@lemmy.blahaj.zone because honestly their advice in that thread was great. Basically it was to break down your scope into bronze/silver/gold like so:

  • Bronze is something you are sure you can complete in the time frame.
  • Silver is where you think you can get to if you really push yourself and nothing bad happens
  • Gold is where you can go if everything goes right all the time.

That's in the context of a game jam and the time constraints that come with it, but I think it's great advice in general. Whatever your personal limitation might be, whether it is in fact time or maybe it's budget or even your own skill level, there will be a "bronze" level game you can make without too much trouble. Focus on that first, and have your silver and gold stretch goals waiting in the wings for if you complete your original plan. Maybe add a diamond tier for the real pipedream stuff, or whatever works for you!

A lot of solo projects I follow tend to sort of splutter out and die after a few months and it's almost always because the dev finally stepped back, took a lot at how long their ideal scope would take, and understandably noped out. A bit of planning ahead and being realistic with yourself works wonders.

[–] midnightspire@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

I've spent the past few months revising and reworking some core mechanics, filling out skill sets, and improving the GUI and QoL. This week I am starting design on the final dungeon, which has been challenging to work on. Since it's the final dungeon, I feel like I need to step up the complexity while still keeping up with thematic elements, so it's going more slowly than the simpler early levels.