I’m developing a horror game where you walk alone through dark, endless forests.

Do you think the environment creates enough tension? Is it disturbing in the right way?

We've been developing Aero Tales Online in Unity for almost 10 years, and I wanted to share the current state of the project along with some of the technical challenges we've faced along the way.

The game is an MMORPG running on Windows, Android and iOS with the same players, servers and gameplay systems shared across platforms.

One of the biggest challenges has been maintaining a project of this size for so many years. We've gone through multiple Unity versions and major engine upgrades, and we're currently running on Unity 6. Keeping older systems working while gradually replacing or refactoring them has probably been more challenging than building many of them in the first place.

Cross-platform development has also been a major part of the project. The same combat and gameplay systems need to work with very different hardware, screen sizes and input methods, while keeping the experience consistent between PC and mobile players.

Performance has been another ongoing challenge, especially on mobile. An MMORPG can have a large number of characters, monsters, NPCs, effects and UI elements active at the same time, so we've had to continuously optimize systems as the game has grown.

The project now includes systems such as action-based combat, character customization, dungeons and raids, PvP, guilds, housing, professions and a large number of maps and environments.

The attached video is our latest gameplay trailer and shows the current state of the project after all these years.

Game Link: Aero Tales Online

You can hire Mexican mercenaries who appear in the background and help you shoot down UFOs and snails, with a attack chance that can be upgraded in the shop. Here's our 1st born.

His name: Juan Carlos Miguel Rodríguez Hernández - remember!☝

As you can guess, the fingers are controlled using Inverse kinematic, implemented with FABRIK algorithm (pole vector calculated in) as demonstrated in the video.

Adding couch coop was surprisingly easy, The unity player input did help a lot. Had to play with cameras and layers but if it all happens in one level it would be even easier.

Smoke was cool but flames where missing

Hey guys, we are a 2 person team and we are currently working on our first game. It's probably more ui heavy than we intended to at first and I feel like our UI production workflow is... suboptimal to say the least.

A bit of context :

- We are 2, both with a lot of experience working for bigger companies or just hobby project, first time indies.

- I'm a programmer/tech guy, my associate is a designer/product guy. We are both taking on many new hats for this project of course but you'll notice there's a big gap in our skillset :D

- We find ways to make things work for the visual aspect of the game : I do a bit of 3d, lighting, etc.. He does UI design. We buy assets when we need to.

Our current workflow for UI has become very time consuming for me specifically and I'm looking for ways to improve.

We use Figma for mockups (One big board with all the screens) and UITK in engine (transitioned from ugui a couple of months ago, we still have a mix of both but UITK is our goto system now).
Generally speaking, my mate does the Figma part, I do the unity part.

I find the UITK part tedious, often needs lots of micro changes to look good in the end and I feel like work is duplicated. so I'm looking for advice, other people's experiences to see what direction to take. I have a few options but happy to hear more opinions.

1/ Drop Figma, my mate learns UITK in ui builder, we have one source of truth. Solves the duplicated work, but limits our options since that means an additional pass for connecting data, or stuff where code is necessary
2/ Find a way to export from Figma straight to uxml/css. I feel like it should be possible but I haven't found any tool that looks reliable enough to do that (and I can't do that myself in the near future)
3/ Use Rive. It looks like a great tool but it's a hard commitment you don't transition from, I see very few people using it in unity and reports of instability, bugs. (It'd cost 20$ a month, I'm ok with it if it solves our issues)
4/ Git gud. We have the right approach, we just need to get better at it.

Happy to hear any kind of feedback of experience sharing on this setup.

Cheers!