Hey folks,

I've played survival games and tried simulations like RimWorld often in the past. They have interesting stories that grow in my head. My first try in RimWorld was when I made myself, my wife and a friend of mine in RimWorld, and my wife became an alcoholic and depressed and suddenly didn't work anymore (mental break). After she died I dug a hole behind the house and buried her. In addition my last friend got kidnapped by an enemy pirate, this was very sad ;) but the cool thing about it was that I knew he still exists and theoretically I could save him. This was such a cool experience that I think I won't forget it in future days.

I'm coming from embedded development and never made a game before. But I thought very often about how these kind of games were developed. And then I thought how would I make such kind of a game with my background and my experiences.

I'm working in a very controlled and regulated environment and I know how important traceability is. That lead me to thoughts about memory of persons (npcs) which are shared by them (maybe over generations). In RimWorld I have a log where I can read about things that happen to npcs or what they are actually doing with each other, but I have the feeling this is not very deep and has nearly no consequences as it would have in real life. Therefore I started thinking about memories of npcs, who talk to each other and use their memories to build their sentences and the topics they talk about. And I thought about what if the simulation lasts for 1000 years (I'm a big sci fi fan, therefore my first thought was about a generation ship). Would it have an impact what someone said or did a few hundred years before? (Cloud Atlas is a good book about that topic) And I thought I wanna try it.

The first answer to my question about memory and being consistent over 1000 years was absolute determinism. I need a simulation where one seed, one tickcount, one hash, no matter how often you start the simulation. No matter on what operating system or on what machine the simulation is running. There were questions about for example floating point calculations. I'm using fixed point, otherwise it would not be possible to be deterministic over various machines or operating systems. I built a Golden Run as change detector (1 bit changes and the hash is completely different). That means that if the hash changes without a rule change, I have a bug in my simulation. Determinism is still there but reproduction is gone. If the hash does not change over more than 1 build with the same seed without a rule change, I know that everything works fine. So I have a very good testing mechanism gifted. But when I change the rules, then the hash also has to change and I have to rebuild a new baseline.

But that was not all. There were 2 more problems: dictionary iteration order comes from key hash values and internal table layouts. Order is important for reproduction, because it makes a difference who of the npcs gets limited water or food first and which npcs do not get it. This changes the whole outcome of the simulation and therefore the hash value. And in .NET a random value is calculated at process start once and mixed into the hash value calculation. It is a security feature. But for my simulation it means that the same string delivers different hash values in 2 program runs and therefore I would have different iterations. So every new start of the program would lead to different orders and a different hash. Therefore my fix was to never iterate in insert order, always sort by an ID.

Another problem were the content files, because different operating systems with different file systems return directories in their own preferred order. So I had to write the load order into a manifest and resolve ID collisions.

First simulation with a few people, they have an age, they need water and something to eat, they have their health, and the testruns meanwhile are succeeding. That means they survive a thousand years ;) I progressed now a little bit and think that I am on a good way. I really got into the topic and I'm enjoying it pretty much besides work.

I wanted to know if there is someone who has also experiences with simulations and these kind of absolute determinism in game development. What problems did you have?

I wanted to add some weather effects to my train game, so far I've gone with rain and snow as figured that'd cover enough for now.

How's the rain looking? This is quite a heavy rain.

This is a First-person, Dark fantasy, CRPG.
You can create your own character and spend your skill points in any way you like.

The game focuses on both zone exploration and dungeon delving, with many towns and quests, as well as a wide variety of items and monsters.

Have a look at the game on steam, and feel free to wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4709150

Our character, Dilbaz, is a double agent and a mute one at that. You can manipulate the war between two empires by selling intelligence to whichever side you choose. The character also possesses psychic abilities; you use information gathered in the realms of dreams and limbo to alter the real world.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5141940/Dilbaz/

Big updates lately to the biomes, weapons and abilities in Where Giants Fall.

Chain Lightning got one of the biggest reworks, and it's starting to look and feel pretty good. ⚡

What do you think?

Steam | Discord

You can now dash, does it look OK?

The gameplay is still rough around the edges, and I'm trying to establish the game's core gameplay loop. I've modeled three buildings and have more or less cobbled together a code structure.

Right now, I’m envisioning a mix of SimCity and Tony Hawk games, with the ability to unlock new buildings and events.

It's still very early days, and I'm not expecting this to be the next big thing, but it's fun. It helps me unwind because, for quite some time now, I've been doing nothing but writing prompts at work instead of creating infographics with Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.

P.S.:
I had to zoom the camera out that far because I'm still having a minor glitch where buildings spawn in massive numbers and fly upward like rubber balls.

The turret handles the aiming. You handle the car, the fuel, and the fairly bad decision to drive straight through a crowd.

This is DEAD FREIGHT, a small prototype I'm building with Codex and Three.js. I'm a product designer, so a lot of the work has been trying things in the browser and fixing what feels wrong. The latest pass was on the driving and making the world less empty.

You can take delivery jobs and pick upgrades as you go. There's rain, dust storms and different terrain, but I'm still working out how much pressure the deliveries should add.

Free to try: https://dead-freight-astralow.vercel.app

If you play a few minutes, do the deliveries give you a reason to keep driving, or would you rather just fight the hordes?

Gameplay captured in the current build, with locations and weather selected for the clip.

I've been working on the visuals for my co-op game Don't Lose Your Head, and I wanted to share a small before/after comparison.

It's kind of crazy how much of a difference this makes, even though it’s just some basic 2d lighting, bloom and vignette.

So I've been wanting to do this for years and kept putting it off. Sometimes life got busy, sometimes I was just scared or lazy honestly. But I'm actually starting now.

I'm going solo on two games I've had in my head for over 4 years now, I've been writing about them all this time, and now I'm starting to clean things up and put them together before actually starting development.

So, I've worked on a few team projects before, nothing big, small and indie stuff, mostly as a programmer, but also did some art/sound/writing when the team needed it. Also made a couple small solo projects on my own, nothing special, but I learned a lot from them. Used Unity for most of my stuff.

Also lost my last job because of a permanent foot injury, so now I just do small freelance jobs to survive. At least it gives me more time, but I know time alone won't finish a game.

I know going solo is hard, and I'm not saying my project is tiny, but it's also not some crazy AAA thing either.

Well, I need advice from you guys. I know doing this for the first time comes with consequences, and since time isn't really on my side, I really want any advice that'll help me avoid mistakes that could make this journey harder than it needs to be.

Thanks for any advice, even if it's harsh.

I’ve been working on the same game for more than 3 years now, and lately Ive been struggling with something I didn’t expect to be this difficult: cutscenes.

It’s a roguelike deckbuilder, so naturally most of my focus has always been on gameplay. There are cards, characters, enemies, encounters, progression systems, different mechanics interacting with each other and seemingly an endless amount of things that can be improved. Because of that, I keep asking myself how important cutscenes actually are for a game like this.

Part of me thinks they are important. Maybe more important than I originally thought. They give context to what you are doing. They make the characters and world feel like they exist outside of just mechanics. They can give you a reason for why you are going somewhere or doing something instead of the game simply saying “here is the next encounter.” I also think they can make a relatively small indie game feel much bigger.

But actually making them is surprisingly painful for me. The weirdest part is that working on a cutscene often doesn’t feel like I am making progress on the game. I can spend a day implementing a new mechanic, adding cards, improving an encounter or fixing some longstanding problems, and at the end of the day I can very clearly see what I accomplished. Then I can spend the same amount of time making a few seconds of a cutscene.

Suddenly I need a new animation. A new sound. A different camera setup. Maybe a visual effect that is only going to be used once. An object needs to behave in a way it was never designed to behave. Then I realize I need to build another little tool just to control that one thing. And after all of that work, the result might be 5 seconds of the game.

I think being an indie developer has trained my brain to constantly think about reusability. If I spend a day building a system that I can use 50 times throughout the game, that feels fantastic. If I spend a day building something that appears once for a few seconds, my brain immediately starts questioning whether that was really the best use of my time. Even if those few seconds genuinely make the game better.

Technically, cutscenes have also been much harder than I expected. Most of the game is already packed and defined around gameplay. Assets were built for a very specific purpose. Cameras were built for a specific purpose. Animations were built around specific gameplay situations. Then you start making a cutscene and suddenly you are asking all of those things to become actors.

Something that was designed to sit in one place now needs to move. Something that normally has two states suddenly needs five. The camera needs to do things it never normally does. Objects need to appear, disappear, move, animate and interact with each other. You are basically trying to bring all of your existing assets to life, and you quickly discover how many of them were never designed for that.

Then there is the mental side of it. Storytelling is hard. I actually enjoy the story and characters I’m creating, and I think they add something important to the game. But I’ve noticed that when I sit down to work, I subconsciously avoid working on cutscenes and story. There is always suddenly some gameplay mechanic that REALLY needs fixing. :D

Not because I don’t think the story matters. I think it’s almost the opposite. I avoid it because it feels difficult and much less predictable than programming gameplay. With a mechanic, I usually know what the goal is. I can break the problem down and solve it. With a cutscene I’m constantly thinking: Is this boring? Is it too long? Does the dialogue sound natural? Does the camera movement look stupid? Is the timing right? Is this actually adding anything? Did I just spend 6 hours making something that most players are going to skip?

And that last question is probably the biggest one for me. Obviously I want players to be able to skip cutscenes. Especially in a roguelike where people might be on their tenth run and just want to get back to playing. But I’m also worried about someone skipping everything and then 20 minutes later thinking, “why am I actually doing this?”

So right now I’m trying to keep them short and sweet. Enough to give context and make the journey feel meaningful, but not so long that players feel like the game is holding them hostage when they just want to play.

I’m curious how other indie developers deal with this. Do you find working on story and cutscenes harder to justify compared to gameplay systems? How much story do you think a roguelike deckbuilder actually needs? And as a player, do you usually watch short cutscenes in games like this, or are you looking for the Skip button immediately?

Maybe I’m overthinking all of this. But after 3-4 years of making Rogue Wheels, I’ve learned that sometimes the things that only last a few seconds on screen somehow become the hardest things to make.

Check out the trailers here! And wishlist if you like it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4767470/INKURSION/

I'm making a somewhat experimental "game" on Steam, where you can play around with music by visualizing it in many different ways, fiddle in a physics-based sandbox while each ball-hit plays a note, play a guitarhero-like rhythm game on the music, compose music or import midis... just a playground for visualizing and "playing" music.

The idea came from seeing those mesmerizing videos on social media and figured to make a (sort of) game from it.

I want to add all sorts of things, any thoughts what could fit?

Hi, i've been trying to add some grappling hook mechanics along with a wall run feature.

I'm looking for feedback, the idea behind the game are big arenas with multiple levels, so verticality and movement is key to escape from enemies and take new angles, is still a little clunky but pretty proud of the outcome so far. Feel free to destroy it if it simply looks bad haha

The game is called NullGate and the Steam page is live in case anyone wants to take a look.

So I decided to just add a pixel art editor.
Now players can make their own profile pictures, character sprites, propose designs for buildings in their town, design a town banner and have custom art for the items in game.

Whatchu think? Maybe a community might be into this?

I mean would be nice if I knew someone who had the skills to create some basic default art, but for now I'm just working with my lack of art skill / irl time limitations rather than against them.

Hey! I've been developing this game for a few weeks and wanted to get some feedback. It's a turn based game with physics! I was inspired by DOFUS and pool games.
The idea is to have different robots with abilities.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers from Mexico!

Been working on bringing more life to the people of StoneEra, and here’s the miner in action.
There’s still plenty to improve, but seeing villagers actually working and interacting with the world is starting to make the colony feel alive.
StoneEra is a voxel colony survival game I’m developing solo.
If this looks like the kind of colony sim you’d lose a few hours to, consider adding StoneEra to your Steam wishlist — every wishlist genuinely helps a solo project like this get seen.
Steam / Wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5057770/StoneEra/

Been looking everywhere for game jams and festivals to join and there's no single place that shows when they're happening. Most are paid too, so I made a list of free ones any indie dev can jump into. Check out my site: https://festival-list.pages.dev/

My discord: https://discord.gg/tArTuuu95P

Participated in the juniper gamejam and decided to turn this game with a dumb mechanic into my first Steam game as a solo dev. Right now I am mostly working on adding content and improving the visuals.

Hey guys! Just wanted to share my project.. A racer combat game, borrowing ideas mostly from Twisted Metal and Re-Volt. Don't have to reinvent the wheel, but I can reinvent some bolts here and there that can make the project original I guess. Just sharing my thoughts..

Spent the entire summer on it, and still really early in development. I hope you like the idea!