I think the JP fonts are thinner so they don't take up as much space.

Relevant Tom Scott video.

Edit: VNs also tend to use pretty large fonts for English in my experience.

You're describing roguelites. Since you didn't use the term I assume you're unfamiliar with it. Go research roguelites.

Hello Tower, I will try to create a page where the mechanics of it, the machine, are clearly explained. Now I try to explain it here: She thinks every 10 seconds. She is reconquering based on a budget, but it is enhanced if people draw more. Every 15m the LLM chooses a larger target to turn off its lights. She advances along her border but if a player reconquers she can go after him with more determination. It must be taken into account that a painted light has a protection of 72 hours, only a declared fence can with it. I hope I have explained a little more to you. Anyway, I'm going to try to implement that more clearly in the game. If you have any more questions, tell me and I'll answer you.

Looks really cool, I'll definitely check it out! I'm currently working on an action based autobattler roguelite where you're a robot that improves yourself through modules.

Very different from yours still and just came into alpha testing but will definitely follow yours and see what design choices you made.

Thank you!

Not my style of game but I support anyone creating something and chasing their passion, the art style is cool - best of luck!

I saw those posts, saw that you mentioned using an llm, thought "why does this need to be an llm" and moved on.

You're on Lemmy and posting to art and gaming communities. Everyone there is justifiably against genAI. You dun goofed with your marketing and game design.

You want human feedback yet the entire post is LLM?

So, I dabbled with this for a bit today. "Steady Beacon 98" made it to #4 with a max of like 90 tiles or something. The biggest problem I found was I have no idea what was happening.

You say the intro was reduced from 8 paragraphs to 4 steps. This is great for reducing onboarding friction, but there needs to be some fuller explanation somewhere, a flat explanation of the mechanics of the game. How often "she" gets to move (every 10 seconds, I think?), how that expansion works, how those "targeted attacks" are determined, etc. And it should be in plain language, not the "every storey she takes she raises as her own cold cube in the void cell beside it" prose that's great for the front end but terrible for the manual.

I think that is only partly true. I'm in the creative field and field and while there are parts of the job, part of projects, clients etc that are certainly not fun I'm still overall very happy that I chose this path.

But I have my pride, and my pride cost me an entire weekend.

Any project others use is a project that they depend on. I'm sure lots of vibe-coders have intentionally or unintentionally forked your projects, both those projects are only as good as they are stable. I'll always trust someone who learned their own code and therefore have some idea of how to maintain it over someone who pushed bad code and will ask for fixes from the same AI that suggested the buggy code.

Thank you for what you've done and I'm sorry you feel so down about it. Your work is inspirational and your wealth of knowledge is motivational.

Pong source code is available in many languages. You could have also made it in a second if you copied someone else's work.

Now seriously: I make games for myself for 8 years now. It's really really easy if you don't have to please someone else. They are fun too (for my use case: 1 or 2 thumb controlled bullet hell games for long train rides)

However actual video games are hard to make. Can you make music/sound effects? Otherwise you have to pay for it. Can you make sprites/3D models? Otherwise you have to pay for it. There is balance (data science or you gotta pay for it), there is accessibility (you don't wanna trigger someone's epilepsy / can they play your game if they are missing a thumb?) Do you want a story (pls don't), can you write it(pls pay for it if I have to suffer through a cutscene)?

if you believe sum of all the costs would be smaller than the earnings, go for it. Otherwise it's a very fun hobby like painting or playing the guitar.

I like this video if you have 52/(youtube speed factor you can handle) minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmwbYl6f11c

Eh, its not really that hard, it's just time consuming and tedious. The work itself isn't difficult.

Stay true to yourself. Code because you like it!

I'm a consultant, and our management has been telling us we need to get with AI. Everybody's is now using it, and I feel like I'm the only one in the company who isn't biting. I've not even tried it, basically. I'm scared that it will set me back and it will get me to not get new work.

But I just. Don't. Want to. I want to code my own shit and do my own work and be proud that it's mine, and my brain work that goes into the end result. I hate this new shit.

AI aside, coding is a lot of fun but actually making a game is very hard work. There's a lot that goes into it, not just code, and every one of those things is immensely complicated.

I wouldn't even think of the money aspect.

I learned through making games before AI became a thing. It's a great way to learn and have fun doing it, but you will quickly burn out if you expect to be making something sellable in a short time frame. Every game engine has a lot of intricacies so there's learning the software on top of it as well. There is more involved than a simple flask app for example, even if it's just beginner stuff.

That's mainly because when you do anything for money you usually have to do all kinds of other crap that isn't fun at all.

AI has lowered the bar so much that I now get endless joy just from reading real human writing and seeing the hand-made projects of real people no matter how amateur I would have judged them to be 5 years ago. There is tremendous value in just doing something your own way and telling people about it. I'm excited to see what you create, and you have your whole life ahead of you to work on your craft. Have fun!

If you want to get started in game dev I suggest you to start doing game jams!

I second the commment saying that you should see it as a hobby first, because getting money out of it is going to be very, very hard. Only let it grow into a business if a game idea really captured you and an audience, and be prepared to spend a ton of time in marketing instead of coding.

I think that if you are not having fun and you are not passionate about the game you are making, the games will also be less fun to players. Give it a try but don't burn out and don't take it too much as a job you have to complete!

Anything you do for fun stops being fun the minute you do it for money.

I'm not an expert by any means but I feel you should get into gamedev only and mostly for the enjoyment (not to earn money). I think it is probably possible to earn money with games but the indie market is very saturated already and with all the big studios kicking out people constantly this is not going to change, so it'll not be easy. But if you're having fun and maybe earn something along the way go for it!

You seem to be really good at this. Hang in there.

I've just spent the entire weekend coding a simple command-line tool to remote-control a camera. My repo proudly says "This code was not made with AI".

I hate programming now, in the age of AI. I've given up all my open-source projects. It's all abandonware. AI killed all the fun out of this job for me. But I needed this tool to take photos, and there was no way in hell I'd let a machine make it.

AI could have made it in 5 minutes and, while not as good as my code (I reckon), it would have been plenty good enough and fit enough for the purpose. But I have my pride, and my pride cost me an entire weekend.

Thank you, your words motivate me to push forward. I'll check out those Steam games for inspiration.

This is a really cool idea. Nice write-up. I look forward to seeing how it progresses.

Did you see that there was a Steam sale recently for programming-related games? You might get some game-design ideas from existing programming-themed games. https://store.steampowered.com/category/programming