There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen
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Love my rare productive days where I actually cross things off my mental list of anxieties.
I have been chipping away in 15 minute bursts. For some reason a feature only worked after implementing, removing, reimplementing, removing, reimplementing a third time. No idea why it didn't work earlier but finally I can stop bashing my head against the one thread on the issue that exists 🥲
Nice! And yeah, sometimes you've got to take things a bit at a time. I try to do at least a little work on my games every day, even if it's just 5 minutes. That gets me through the lean times where I'm feeling unmotivated and ensures the project doesn't die completely.
I work in large chunks on my projects. I recently had a weekend where I got loads done, but have yet to touch it since
I started porting my OpenGL renderer to Vulkan a few weeks ago, been slowly chipping away at it for a bit each day and I'm starting to feel like it's a very big mistake, I might just scrap it all and stick with old faithful, it was a decent learning experience though.
Nice! I experimented with light probes last weekend and absolutely fucked my visuals and lighting. The low poly (synty) models I'm trying to use are super jagged on my Quest.🙃 Think I gotta rebuild the scene from scratch.
That's cool! I've just been figuring out shaders myself. They're really useful.
Shaders are a headache but so goddamn satisfying to see in action
That's cool
Lol not really.😅 Because....
I have no idea what I'm doing! Shaders are cool, but I never know what's gonna run right on the quest or just mess everything up. So I've not messed with them much. Not a lot of up to date docs on mobile vr dev for unity beyond basic setup.
Play around with it enough and you'll figure it out over time. At least, that's how it usually works for me.
What shaders have you been working on? Do you have a favorite effect you've made?
I was struggling to sync game time and shader time in godot so I could make the effect that the health bar has a bit of an animation every time it takes damage
Nothing too fancy yet, really. Enemies flash white when you hit them. The hero flashes yellow when he's charged his flame attack. The dungeon's master key icon on your map is a black, semi-transparent silhouette until you collect the key. Basic stuff, but still good to have, and I'm looking into doing fancier stuff in the future.
I love it when you get stuck into something, all the distractions become muted because you just need to get through the part that you're focused on, and you can just push through it until it's done. So gratifying.
Oh, hey, I haven't heard any game dev stuff from you in a while. How's it going?
It's not! Too busy struggling to earn enough money to survive, and then trying to purge the stress generated by struggling to earn enough money to survive.
Oof. Sorry to hear that. I wish Kor had done better so you wouldn't be stuck in such a situation.
Yeah well, me too of course, haha. Hexbear helped elevate it just above the precipice of utter obscurity, but without more reviews, it shall sit where it sits. In the meantime, I'll just keep sharing it with new people, and wait for something to change.
I've found it's a lot easier to get people to read/watch/play what you've made than it is to get those same people to leave reviews.
Dude, it is literally impossible to get people to leave reviews. I went to that con a couple months ago, and had like two dozen people tell me, to my face, that they'd leave reviews. Not a single one of them did. Same goes here on Hexbear, a couple people recently assured me they'd drop a review, but then never did
Of course plenty of others did do so before that, and they're honestly the reason I feel any sense of success whatsoever.At the end of the day, I'm mostly just glad that they actually played the game, though. Reviews are a way that fans of the game can ensure that Steam pays me more for the work it took to make it, but it also just means the most to me that people actually appreciate the game itself. The more people who get to do that, the more satisfied I will be with the obscene amount of work it was to make it.
Dude, it is literally impossible to get people to leave reviews. I went to that con a couple months ago, and had like two dozen people tell me, to my face, that they'd leave reviews. Not a single one of them did. Same goes here on Hexbear, a couple people recently assured me they'd drop a review, but then never did
Oh that's so real to me and I hate it.
I've found for my own work that there's a nearly-impossible margin between "being too pushy about reviews" and "hinting in a way that is not noticed or outright ignored.
At the end of the day, I'm mostly just glad that they actually played the game, though. Reviews are a way that fans of the game can ensure that Steam pays me more for the work it took to make it, but it also just means the most to me that people actually appreciate the game itself. The more people who get to do that, the more satisfied I will be with the obscene amount of work it was to make it.
I have to take comfort that most people that read my work seemed to enjoy it, even if they don't leave reviews and sometimes just privately message me and say they liked it. Yeah it feels good to read that but it'd mean a lot more if they just posted a few sentences where the algorithm can pick it up AAAAAAAAAAAAAH
algorithm
Even just the word makes me feel so tired at this point
Hard to avoid feeling embittered by the knowledge that so many people are forced to work pointless jobs they hate purely to justify the validity of the system of our collective oppression, while artists are spurned for charging half the cost of a fast food burrito for something they spent 3 years meticulously pouring their soul into. What the fuck even is this reality, man.
I know how you feel all too well.
Quality truly does not matter, nor does effort, when compared to the impact and significance of being born rich, being connected, or just being so cynically ruthless and pandering that you roll out cynical pandering trash that presses as many easy dopamine buttons as possible for the largest possible batch of consumers.
I just wish you could like, opt-out of capitalism. I would happily renounce any contention for the ravenous accumulation of capital, in exchange for having my basic needs met. With any other game, when it's this rigged, the only option I would ever consider is to simply not play. But of course, the system doesn't work unless enough people are forced to be cogs endlessly worn down.
It's bleak, even Jokerfying, to contemplate the possibility I could have conceivably written something as sloppy as, say, "Ready Player One" and with a little initial nudge of failson privilege or at least friends in high places it could have been very profitable.
Games can be quite similar: some of the most profitable games are creatively bankrupt while pressing lots of addiction buttons for monetization purposes. RAID: Shadow Legends is only one of the most infamous examples.
I never really considered the importance of leaving reviews and other algorithm-related stuff until somewhat recently.
I do want to support devs in what little I can muster, but when it comes to reviews, I feel like I'm just too head empty
when playing games to write something actually constructive 
That's the thing, though: because we're just trying to satisfy an algorithm, it really doesn't matter what you write. I always just tell people they can leave a review that just says "Game is really cool, I like the dialog" or whatever, and that counts.
I think a lot of people feel pressure to say something thoughtful about a game, but it's really not necessary. And as far as I'm concerned, knowing that they played it and liked it is plenty enough for me. I literally only care about Steam reviews because of the algorithm deciding how many people get to see my game at all.
BRB, gonna dash off some quick reviews for, like, all of the indie games I've enjoyed.
I actually just noticed one of my friends wishlisted the game. Wishlisting also helps with the algorithm too, right?
Either way, I'm gonna go buy a copy for her.
Hot dang, thanks!
Wishlisting does help, yeah. Though it's much more important before a game releases.
Let me know what she thinks if she plays it!
Congrats. I keep planning to do an 8 hour session over the weekend, but end up watching random youtube videos instead.
Small, manageable, discrete goals. Focus on the most crucial stuff first. "I want to make a video game" is a huge and daunting task. "I want to have a character that moves when the player presses the arrow keys" is easy. Then you move on to, say, "I want the character to shoot a bullet when the player presses a spacebar." "I want an enemy that dies when shot with a bullet." "I want the enemy to move." "I want the enemy to shoot back." "I want the player to have a health bar that depletes when they're hit by a bullet." etc. etc.
Congrats! This week I just finished my studies to become a game dev too :D
Building creative forces. 
