Any other game devs lurking about?

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I work at a small game studio and I figured there might be others out here.

Might be enjoyable to discuss game news, tech methods and what not.

Things that go well, things that go badly.

For instance, I suck at arriving on time at the office, because I usually sleep like garbage.
On the upside, I get to make cool art .

So, any of you nerds out there? xD

I *might* count as one?

From a purely technical standpoint, I'm a contractor, I suppose. I've worked with a developer by the name of Arcen. Have made a game, an expansion for that game (named Starward Rogue), and two expansions for a different game.

My role is generally unusual though. What I do is *very* specialized in these projects. All of them are games that involve bullet-hell elements; I create the patterns for those and balance the difficulty in other ways. I was contracted because the devs wanted to do some stuff with those kinds of things, but it's not exactly their specialty.

Interestingly, I had no true professional experience before that. Hell, I dont even work a real job (dont need to). But I'd helped alot with testing and fixing over the couple of years that I'd known them, and they knew of my knowledge in the genre and asked me to join for those games. Oddly I was immediately put in a position of authority over the project. I'm sure this made sense somehow (it did work out well though). I remember the moment when I fully realized just what I'd gotten myself into, when at the start of the project I asked "So, what do you want me to work on first?" and the head developer said "Well, what do you think you should do first? Whatever it is, do that" and I'm just like "oh god I'm going to screw this up, arent I". But no, it worked out, nerve-wracking though it was.

I got really lucky though, in that this is a very open-minded developer who was absolutely fine in dealing with me and my screwball issues. They worked with me on the whole autism thing, and I didnt have any sort of required hours or whatnot. I generally worked on the game when I bloody well felt like it (within reason of course) and added content as it occurred to me. Not exactly the normal way this sort of thing goes. The good thing was, the sort of stuff I was making didnt take long to make; so I did not have to do like boatloads of hours each week. The time was pretty short each week, actually. So I still had lots of free time.

Bugfixing however can go screw itself. I often would just sit here yelling at the screen, as if that accomplishes anything. The worst one was right after release, this guy was streaming the game on Twitch, and a bunch of us were watching, and he gets to this one boss (the stuff I make includes all of the bosses in the game) and... the damn thing just sits there. It doesnt DO anything. Just.... sits there. On a stream! Ugh! I can tell ya, I was none too pleased about this.

Other than that, I tend to randomly get involved in other projects from other indie devs that I like, usually from the standpoint of internal testing/reporting and offering ideas and suggestions. Which is always alot more complicated than I expect it to be.


So that's where I'm coming from on that. I deal pretty much entirely with indie games, never the big ones (couldnt care less). I only deal with aspects of gameplay mechanics and related content; I never assist with things like art or story elements (that'd be a disaster).

I do know alot of news stuff related to the indie side of the industry, but I know little about the tech side. Never been good with that whatsoever.


So... yeah. That's all that.

Uh... not sure what else to talk about here.

I've heard of Arcen. And that's a pretty interesting journey. and from what I know about those types of games, the bullet patterns are one of the most crucial parts of the whole game.

I just do art, so I dont have to do a lot of bug fixing, thankfully. Some models are a headache, depending on how they need to be set up, or if i find a n-gon (polygon with 5 or more vertices) lurking somewhere...

Or if an unwrap channel doesn't export, or something like that.

I'm currently working on my first non-student project game. it's a multiplayer game, so when you mentioned streaming... yea, i can imagine that being tense as s**t. And then when something brakes... xD

And as for what else to talk about, news is always good to discuss. Because ooooh boy, there is a lot of dumb things happening in gaming, all the time

I've done quite a bit of programming, but I've never worked anywhere professionally.

I am working on an indie game that got Greenlit on Steam, though. And I briefly worked on the original Nexuiz, back when it was going to be the world's first MMOFPS.

Yeah, the bullet patterns in that sort of game pretty much make or break it. Which is why I'd been so worried about it. I was thinking, if I screw this up, the entire freaking game will fall apart. Everyone's work down the drain. Ugh.

They work out though and reviewers typically like that alot. The problem I had though was getting them to work in that type of game. It's a bullet-hell game, but it's also a roguelike along the lines of Binding of Isaac. So, I've got to make all these increasingly complex patterns for enemies to fire, yet the game is going to randomly choose enemies from assigned categories in each room (fortunately the rooms are all hand-crafted, and enemy spawn positions are specifically set). So I've no control over just what it'll pick, yet the patterns all need to mesh in such a way that it'll never make an undodgable situation, as that's pretty much the cardinal sin of bullet hell games. It was... irritating, at times. Bosses on the other hand were static and easy to make despite being the most complicated to create.

Anyway it sounds like what you're making is... way more complicated. My job was pretty simple; I'm hardly a master programmer yet they set it up in such a way where I could easily make content despite that (and despite being absolutely horrible at math of any kind. But you mention "polygons" even once and I know that'd be utterly beyond my capabilities, that's for sure. That and I know art is pretty darn tough to do.

Also yeah, this industry is just stuffed with stupid crap happening. I mean I dont even play AAA games but even I know about the lootbox crap, or this new "games as live service" thing that companies like Ubisoft are scheming to make. Every time I think that side of the industry cant sink any lower... someone throws it a nuclear jackhammer, and down it goes, into the abyss...

And on the indie side.... Steam is a bloated mess! They have no curation at all, which is infuriating. We had alot of trouble getting Starward even noticed by anyone, but it did okay in the end, I guess. But I've known plenty of other devs that make games I think are just incredible, but nobody buys them, because nobody knows they exist. It's just a losing situation for everyone involved.



What the heck is an unwrap channel?

Steam is a mess. Always flooded with DLC or BS games. The idea of the platform is fantastic. The execution needs a lot of work, still.

Getting noticed on there has been one of our biggest worries. I've heard just about the same from every dev out there. And then you have people who make garbage games or steal games, and make a bunch of money. So frustrating to see happen.

As for unwrap channels....
you know how you have a texture map that goes over a 3d model? the unwrap channel basically lets the model know which of the textures goes where on the model. think of it like a cardboard cutout and you paint the texture in the lines.
And you sometimes need several of those channels for the texture and a lightmap, which has to unwrapped differently, to be optimised for lighting, instead of texturing.

And the big AAA guys are... so greedy. I'ts really nasty to see. What gives me hope, is games like the new God of War. A good single player game, without any shenanigans.