Acquired Stardust
Discoholic 🪩
ellievsbear
Cosimo Galluzzi
noise dept.
One Nice Bug Per Day
Xuebing Du
Kiana Khansmith
NASA
cherry valley forever
🪼
Keni
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Andulka
Cosmic Funnies
tumblr dot com
i don't do bad sauce passes
Today's Document
taylor price
YOU ARE THE REASON
seen from Dominican Republic
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from France
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Nepal
seen from Nepal
seen from Nepal
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Bulgaria
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from South Korea
@mykria
I'm wrapping up the first version of the procedural dungeon/scenario generation stuff and added a new augmentations for NPCs which doubles their stats (as a way to make hard versions of normal enemies for 'stage bosses'), except there was a bug where it would double their stats every time the class was instantiated so things got out of hand QUICKLY.
I've been spending the last week or so on two things that really shouldn't be done concurrently
I'm trying to overhaul the tutorial, and by overhaul, I mean create one at all. The plan, as of now, is that instead of starting in grandma's house, you'll start in her back yard and Beeble won't let you in until you solve a series of challenges (just two very simple ones right now).
That work got swiftly interrupted by procedural 'dungeon' generation after watching a deep dive into Lufia 2 (SNES) and discovering there's an entire roguelike in that game! It really inspired me to stop sweating the details of how every scenario should be built and just grind out a system. Technically, I had already programmed a generator previously, it just was never used beyond testing so it was very crude - now having to go back and dynamically draw walls and doors and think through how enemies scale as you progress and how rewards work has meant a complete overhaul of what came before it.
It also reminds me as a solo dev how you can't afford to 'miss' on too many decisions on a project, lest you be relegated to constantly reinventing enough wheels where it's effectively impossible to develop the impactful stuff. I can feel the weight around this 'dungeon' stuff in a big way as I'd like to have it be a really big part of the experience and it has the shape of a system where the decisions around how much/little to abstract will have big impacts later on.
Press on!
🤷♀️
One of the things I noticed a lot during the in-game playtesting at the expo was how unintuitive it was when chatting with NPCs. In a game of this style (or any style really) it's very unexpected that you can type chat messages to an NPC (wat? is this everquest????) so people were constantly clicking the messages and didn't know how to dismiss the window.
There are always so many things that are obviously bad to me when I make them, but I get used to using the bad things and so I forget how bad they are. In-person playtesting is always so lovely for fleshing out this stuff.
This 5 minute fix was so long overdue given the backlog but I'm trying to prioritize some of the really high-impact UI stuff these days.
Despite them being quite bad (pictured) I'm finally starting to feel like most of the building tools are where they need to be. Just today I had to rewrite the trade specifications so that subtypes of items can be sold (for example, a book with specific text (the object model was naively considering all books you'd sell would be treated the same)).
This was inspired by the need to an 'Equipment Cache,' which is an object that, when opened, generates a piece of equipment for you (using the same general guidelines as the equipment that drops from enemies).
During a play session I was really struggling to get some specific upgrades I wanted, and really was craving someone who could sell me equipment (reminder: every equipment in game is generated and unique and drops mostly from enemies that are among your 'level' or higher).
Anywho, I've been neglecting content for a while (it doesn't help the last cycle wiped out a bunch of big changes I was happy with that I now have to redo (kept postponing exporting everything and got caught off guard)) and I'm hoping now that I have fewer excuses to keep building up the systems-side of the game, I'll be more likely to poke around and continue building out the world.
<3
The Oracle is in town for the Lamplight Festival. 🎃
The generator is obsessed with keys today. 🔑
Just started playing Doom Eternal. I'm usually roughly 90 years late to every popular game, so I'll get to Starfield in 2042. Being a quake junkie as a youth (I have multiple quake posters in my place) I'm so into doom rn. The level of customization is almost laughable at points (like, I'm not complaining but my god it seems like overkill), but seeing all the open threads they left to make an absurd amount of customization possible inspires me for Mykria. :thinking_face: I'm starting to throw up links on the game directory sites as well in hopes that they pay out in weeks/months/years as I continue to get content cooking (there still isn't enough there imo).
For those with a pure heart, the path leads the way.
Lots of changes coming soon. I'm going to PAX now so am planning on getting some stuff tightened up by then so I can send people to the game (<dozens_of_us.gif>).
Deadlines are always very cool and fun (which is what makes jams so productive I think) so I'm going to pretend I'm on a little mini-game-jam.
It'll never be perfect, but we PRESS ON.
The rose tenders provide upkeep for the garden which greets you upon entry to the headquarters of The Emerald Mask.
It's best to keep your distance from these particular flowers.
Working a bit more these days on the narrative focus. World-building stuff is always very fun, but much like a technical project, becomes daunting once things become ‘real’ and you have to make seemingly irreversible decisions.
It would also be very easy to ignore the fiction in this kind of game, especially considering the current mechanical elements orbit so heavily around the combat, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized 1) how important stories are in our lives (big topic) and 2) how much of my memorable experiences in games are tied to story.
#2 is an interesting revelation for me, because as a younger person, I was hyper focused on competitive games (starcraft/wc3/quake/dota) and would ignore story elements at all costs in games that forced them. Now, I find myself playing through Oblivion (for the first time, mind you) to appreciate the story it tells and where that story meets the hard, gamey mechanisms at play. I realize that the moments that forged deep memories in multiplayer experiences were about the stories - some were forged by the human interaction exclusively, while others were supported/enhanced/or built entirely by the narrative of the gameworld.
I’ve been watching HxH for the first time and it’s reminding me of this trop of having a context or challenge to put characters through (is this an anime trope? idk?). It’s an intoxicating idea to me - perhaps there’s something here I can use to start players off in the world of Mykria.
Still working on world reset stuff, but have also moved onto 'relics' which will be the way you obtain boons (random upgrades) for the duration of each Mykria.
Had fun with some procgen stuff based on the lore and always like seeing results that surprise me.
Worked a lot on the sound system this weekend, among 900 other things. I think sound, and particularly music are very very underrated in games. We tend to notice music and ambiance only if its outstanding, but the keys and melodies shape your experience even when you don't notice them (maybe especially so). Most of my attempts from the weekend will be thrown under the ‘failed experiments’ bucket, mainly as I was trying to find a way to make the sound more dynamic and interesting (I admire the soundscapes of Caves of Qud and Botw).
It’s quite demoralizing to have so much time lead to nothing tangible, but listening to the talk about Noita made me feel better, as the game transformed for years before it found its footing (not to mention while having a team > 1 person working on it).
Solo game dev is hard for a lot of reasons, but one of them is certainly that it constantly challenges the relationship with your own expectations, which has so much to do with motivation.
In addition (and more interestingly) I’m trying to pull the trigger on the world reset mechanisms. As of now, goal is to have the world reset every 6 or 8 days (anything but 7), but the details and technical implications are quite tricky for a persistent world.
Went on a procedural rabbit hole this weekend experimenting/thinking through weird and interesting ways to have the world 'reset' on a very regular basis while producing interesting effects. With all players sharing the world and without instancing, having world resets is an idea I've kept coming back to in order to keep a roguelike feel and open up the design space further (whacky augmentations/builds are fun but break normal MMOs). As that cooks, much needs to be done with combat stuff and worldbuilding. Many of the systems feel like they're in a 'good enough' spot to start building on top of, which is very encouraging.
<3
I've always really dug the snes aesthetic