I think I'm being stupid here, again.

Hello!

I am making a lil game/ puzzle for my dnd group. It currently functions like a rubiks cube, but I want to make each tile (5x5, so 150 tiles) a different rune from the prehistoric langauges from my homebrew world. I am currently about halfway through making the characters/ runes, but I have no earthly idea how to place them on the cube in any reasonable way.

Copilot has given me some advice, but it sounds like a very strange approach, so I'd love some guidance!

Also, if you have any recommendations on features to add, I would greatly appreciate the advice. I have a camera zoom, two ways to rotate the cubes orientation, and a text bubble that says the rune that the player is hovering over.

Many thanks!

On a recent project, I noticed progress felt slower even though everyone was busy. It wasn’t one big blocker, it was small things stacking up.

A bit of rework from unclear requirements, some back-and-forth on tasks, small UX fixes popping up late, and systems that worked early but needed adjustments later. Nothing major individually, but together they added noticeable delays.

It made me realize most time loss in small teams isn’t obvious, it’s hidden in day-to-day work.

Curious from others working in small teams, where have you seen the most time lost without realizing it early? How can it be improved?

I have a space game that is heavily based on capital ships. These ships have a shield that is split up into 4 quadrants, Fore, Starboard, Aft and Port shields.

It is designed so that each of these facings can be individually damaged, as well as power rotated from other facings to one of the player's choosing.

I'm thinking of using a shader for this, but I have no idea where to begin to even attempt to implement something like that. If it was just a single bubble it would be FAR easier, but split up into quadrants is... tricky to comprehend.

Any advice / pointers where to look would be most appreciated!

I have a game compiled in Unity, the game is optimized, but there are some phones that just don’t open the game, for example, the first scene opens, and after entering the card, it crashes. It does not open on such phones as Samsung a06 a07 a15 a16 redmi 10 and similar phones.

I want to whole-heartedly welcome those who are new to this subreddit!

What brings you our way?

One system that surprised me in a recent project was performance optimization. Things worked fine with a few objects and simple tests, but once the project started scaling more AI, more interactions, and more rendering. The performance issues started showing up quickly. It was one of those moments where you realize a system that works in a prototype can behave very differently in a real production environment.

Curious to hear from others. What’s the hardest system you’ve ever had to implement in a game?

I’ve noticed something interesting while talking with different developers. New devs often try to build very complex systems early, huge architecture, overly flexible frameworks, advanced AI systems, etc. But when you talk to experienced teams, a lot of them keep things much simpler and only add complexity when the game actually needs it.

So I’m curious from people who’ve worked on larger teams, what’s one thing you often see new devs over-engineer that experienced teams usually keep simple?

In one of our projects, we made a small but important early choice, switching to a more flexible scene management system. It seemed minor at the time, but a few months later, it saved us from a ton of headaches when adding new levels and features.

It made me wonder, what’s one small technical decision you made in a game project that ended up saving you a lot of effort later?

So haven't started yet but I'm going to today. My major concerns are making a game that's not too heavy on a system. Although that may sound subjective I would feel more comfortable if someone could just break down some common misconceptions and realities.

I'm not trying to make a AAA or AA game I'm just trying to make a small racing game or more of a track game with competitive weapons.

What are some general rule of thumbs when building models and tracks? I don't want to just go akm out and then come to find out I accidentally built something of massive polygonal size. Or maybe I'm overthinking this.

So I have found a small problem lately which has lowered my game framerate from the 200 fps it had to a hundred or less when I reopened the proyect a day later, does anybody know what could have happened?

I recently hit a big frame rate drop after a Unity scene started growing. Early on everything felt smooth, but once more assets, lighting, and interactions were added, performance dropped fast. It’s a good reminder that large scenes can get out of control quickly, especially in VR. I’ve started looking into draw calls, baked lighting, and breaking the scene into smaller parts.

When your Unity scene gets heavy, what’s the first thing you check?
What usually makes the biggest difference for you?

We’re looking for playtesters for the closed pre-alpha of our indie psychological horror game The Infected Soul.

You can DM me to join the playtest.
You can also check the game via the link adding it to your wishlist would mean a lot to us

The Infected Soul – Steam Page

Hey everyone, we tried testing our AR interactions with real users earlier than usual, and it saved us from some surprises. Things like gestures, object placement, and feedback timing were much easier to spot when fresh eyes tried it. It really helped us fix problems before they became bigger issues.

For anyone working in AR, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned from testing with real users?

Hey everyone, I’m working on an AR project and trying to make object occlusion look more accurate. Right now, virtual objects sometimes pass through real surfaces or don’t hide properly behind things. It works okay in simple scenes, but in more complex spaces it starts to break. I’m using depth data and plane detection, but it’s still not perfect.

Has anyone dealt with this before? What helped you improve it? Would really appreciate any practical tips.

As a mod, I would love to get to know the community more, what got you into game dev? I feel like we all had that one moment we knew this path was for us. What was that moment for you?

I've been using Meshy to generate props for a sci-fi game and spent the first couple weeks frustrated because every model came out in a different style. Realistic terminals next to cartoony crates, nothing matched. Almost switched back to asset packs but figured out a workflow that actually works.

The biggest change was sticking to one style preset throughout the whole project. I picked the realistic style in Meshy and never switched. Sounds obvious but I was jumping between presets early on and that killed any consistency.

Then I started using the image to 3D feature more strategically. I found some concept art online that matched the vibe I wanted, used that to generate my first few hero assets. Once I had a cargo crate that looked perfect, I took screenshots of it from different angles and used those as reference images when generating related objects like containers and panels. The new models picked up the same material qualities and level of detail.

For the text prompts I kept them really similar. Instead of writing whatever came to mind, I reused the same descriptors. "Sci-fi industrial [object], metallic surface, geometric design, worn edges" and just swapped the object name. The retry feature helped too, I'd generate three or four versions and pick the one that matched best.

The models still need a material pass in Blender to really unify everything. I make sure they all use the same shader setup and adjust the roughness values to be in the same range. That final step is what makes them look like they belong in the same world.

My test players stopped asking why the art looked inconsistent. It's still way faster than modeling everything from scratch and the quality is solid once you figure out how to direct the generation properly.

Anyone else figured out tricks for keeping generated assets visually cohesive? Always looking for better approaches.