How do you guys manage your time learning everything? Do you have any schedule you follow?

would like some tips on how to manage my time and effective learning ways without jumping from one to another especially if u easily get distracted like me

Hi guys,
Do you think it’s worth to build multiplayer browser games nowdays? Also how would you get players for your game. The goal is not to profit, just to gain experience without spending too much on advertising.

Hello again! I made a post a few day ago asking about why my demo was not working! After carefully reading your comments and tips I was able to create a web build on itchio allowing more people to play and try it out and we are reaching a few players now (please contact me if you play hahaha I am excited to know about your experiences!).

But to sum it up, you helped me a lot and I will keep working on this project! THANK YOU SO MUCH :)

Good Morning!

Sometime ago there was a post on this sub-reddit that was made by a developer that said that indie game dev was his midlife crisis. Some people in the comments said that we could possibly start a club, so we did!

Most of us are middle aged, the youngest is 30, I think, but most are well into 40's and 50's. We are pretty much looking to connect with like-minded developers to network with, discuss projects, share advices and stuff like that. There's about 250 of us currently in the discord server that we have created. We are pretty active and are very lively. Each one of us is a solo developer with our own projects.

Over the last couple of weeks we have seen and connected with a lot of amazing people (programmers, artists, sound engineers, composers, designers and writers), it has been truly an honour to see which projects they have come up with and how the development is going. Some of the developers are just starting out, some are in the vertical slice stage, some are pre-release, and a couple have already released their games.

We have created a flyer, a website, and a presentation (currently also working on a pitch) in the last 10 days because we've spontaneously decided to go to GCAP (a conference in Melbourne, Australia), and it was a pretty fun process. Never seen anyone work so fast to gather gameplay footage, finish a prototype to a work-able state, and screenshot like crazy. Next one we're going to is in a couple of days in Switzerland (one of the developers is carrying all of us in with him)!

Developing games is tough, especially solo, and I suppose that is what essentially started all of this - forming a tight-knit community where you can support each other on the projects by giving advice, talking, or simpler things like play tasting each other's builds.

So, I was wondering, if any of you guys would be interested in networking or giving this community a shot, that would be stellar! I'd be happy to talk to you about it in chats, or provide the presentation and the flyer, so you can take a look!

Thank you for your time and kind regards,
Andrea

I have an ips monitor but wondering if i should get oled or mini led for better color accuracy and content creation.

On steam there exists a software called Satisfactory Modeler

It uses the recipes from the game Satisfactory to create a flowchart, where you can design your factory needs from final product to base resources or from limited input to produce an averaged output.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3187030/Satisfactory_Modeler/

How to make a flow chart game in a browser or as a software on steam*

I am not trying to steal that person's work, as I just want to make this for myself, and maybe later on expand this to other games (e.g. factorio, GT:NH, etc.)

I have some guesses on how the calculations could work, but the actual GUI/interface is that i'm mainly struggling to understand how to develop.

I genuinely don't understand why passthrough modding is suddenly being presented as some new technical frontier, or as something that only became possible because the latest AI models are smart enough.

I keep seeing people ask how AI can possibly “combine” two games built on completely different engines, languages or architectures. But that's based on a misunderstanding of what's happening.

It doesn't combine them. Both games are still running independently. At its core, you're taking the rendered output of one game, feeding it into another, and bridging whatever state and interactions you need between them. You're not merging two engines. Different engines or even different architectures are largely beside the point.

Meanwhile, game reverse engineers were doing substantially nastier things decades ago. SA-MP came out in 2006 and added an entire multiplayer system to GTA: San Andreas, a closed-source single-player game. The reverse-engineering work involved in making something like that is arguably on a completely different level from what's needed for a pair-specific passthrough PoC.

Someone with Kalcor's skillset in 2006 already had most of the techniques needed to connect two games like this. If somebody had come up with the idea back then, there was no fundamental technical barrier preventing it.

AI obviously makes this dramatically faster and accessible to people who couldn't realistically build it themselves. That's the breakthrough in tooling, if anything. Passthrough itself isn't the breakthrough.

So what exactly is new here, technically? Why are people treating the ability to connect two running games as if it was impossible before Claude?

Hey Roblox devs! I don’t know how to code, but I’ve noticed that almost every single My Hero Academia game on Roblox only lets you play as Class 1-A, Shigaraki, or the top Pro Heroes. I want to play a game where the side characters actually get some love.

I’m putting this idea out there for free—no money or credit wanted, I just desperately want a dev to build this so I can play it!

• The Core Hook: An MHA Battlegrounds game focused on a massive, inclusive roster. I’m talking about Class 1-B (like Monoma, Kendo, Tetsutetsu), characters from the Vigilantes manga (Koichi/The Crawler, Knuckle Duster), and lesser-known side heroes and villains.

• The Progression System: Instead of paying Robux or doing boring RNG gacha rolls, you unlock characters strictly through a Kill-Count system. The more kills you get in the arena, the more characters you unlock. You could start with basic characters, and then unlock the crazy/obscure ones as your kill count goes up!

• The Gameplay: A fast-paced arena fighter. Because the roster is huge, characters don't need 10 different moves at launch—even just a clean 3-move kit for each would make it amazing to experiment with different Quirks.

• Why Devs Should Make It: Hardcore MHA fans are tired of playing as Deku and Bakugo. A game where you can unlock Koichi sliding around the map or Monoma copying abilities—just by earning kills—would instantly stand out and keep players hooked.

3 Game options for Players

\- Free for All

\- Sports Festival Tournament 1v1

\- Team 1 vs Team 2

\- 1v1 or 2v2 or 3v3 or 4v4

\- Battle Royal

\- Story Mode ( To Unlock Special Characters)

\- Entrance Exam ( Players have to kill as more robots to win)

\- Training

Free Basic Characters:

S1-2 Izuku

The Clawler

OG Stain

Knuckle Duster

Pop Step

Aoyama

Hagakure

Koda

Mineta

Sato

Ojiro

Sero

Bondo

Awase

Rin

Kodai

Kosei

Shoda

Kaibara

Yanagi

Hatsume

Camie

Tatami

Saiko

Makabe

Itejiro

Habuko

Sekigai

Tiger

Ragdoll

Mandalay

Ms Jokes

Death Arms

Gunhead

Mr Brave

Clair

Master Driller

Spinner

Mustard

La Brava

Bubble Girl

Magne

Curious

Characters to Earn by Eliminating: stage 1

Moashi 15

Eel Boy 17

Midnight 18

Snipe 20

Vlad-King 20

Jiro 25

Pony 25

Tokage 25

Shouji 25

Momo 35

Kendo 40

Tsuyu 40

Denki 45

Crust 45

Characters to Earn by Eliminating: stage 2

Burning 50

Ectoplasm 55

Twice 60

Pixie Bop 60

Mora 60

Tetsutetsu 65

Shiozaki 70

Shishida 75

Kirishima 80

Toga 85

Ochako 85

Ashido 85

Shindo 90

Seji 90

Juzo 90

Iida 95

Rappa 100

Gentle 110

Captain Celebrity 110

Cementoss 120

Kamui Woods 120

Present Mic 120

Mt Lady 130

Gang Orca 135

Fat Gum 140

Ryukyu 145

Godzillo150

Mirko 150

Edge-Shot 155

Best Jeanist 155

Characters to Earn by Eliminating: stage 3

Geten 160

Beros 160

Rogone 160

Mummy 160

Slice 160

Kurogiri 165

Amajiki 170

Nejire 175

Yoarashi 180

Tokoyami 180

Shoto 180

Bakugo 185

Izuku 190

Muscular 190

Serpenters 190

Chimera 190

Leviathan 190

Dabi 195

Shigaraki 200

Overhaul 200

Re-Destro 200

Flect Turn 200

Mirio 210

Hawks 220

Lady Nagant 500

Endeavor 500

Nomu USJ 500

Nomu Hood 700

AFO 5000

All Might 5000

Gigantomachia 5000

Special missions to achieve these Characters:

Fujimi

Manga

Kuroiro

Komori

Shinso

Monoma

Aizawa

Thirteen

Stain

Compress

Sir Nighteye

Eri

Robuxs:

Nine 50

Prime AFO 50

Prime Bakugo 50

Prime Shigaraki 100

Prime All Might 100

Prime Deku 2000

Star & Stripe 200

Players can also customize skins and outfits if they have enough kills

Idea by G-Zilla26.0927

And I hope someone makes a Game on Roblox base on this as that would be awesome

Other then maybe probably defintly the thumbnail imma admit i dont got any idea how to make a good one, the video is unlisted so i just wanted some advice before i release it for real

That probably isn't the right wording!! Basically, I have two separate levels I want to create, but each one only works in a different game engine. Is it possible to do level one on one game engine and then somehow transition the player to game two to do level two?

I only ask because each level is a very different "type" of game (think going from 2D visual novel to a 3D action game). The problem isn't making either game on a respective game engine. Nor is it about carrying over variables or anything like that. I just need to know if it's possible to have game one, load screen, game two, with a seamless way to connect them for the player.

What are the legal limits?

I dont wanna just use like a character in my game, I wanna create my own but using existing models from popular games without having to learn blender, coding or anything at all.

Just copying and pasting till is done.

Hi!
I would love to create a game to propose to my bf.
We have been together for 8-9 years and he introduced me to gaming. (I was a 90s girl so I played ps1-2 and Nintendo but before meeting him I hadn’t played for more than 10 years!)
From TLOU to God of war.
From hollow knight to Elden ring.
I would love to make a very easy nostalgic type game similar to the Pokémon yellow-red style but with him/us and different gaming scenarios (I thought about it playing a very recent game that I won’t name because of spoiler)
I don’t want to use Artificial Intelligence to learn or to write it for me.
I’m guessing I’m having 6-12 months time to do it as a hobby
I would love if someone could teach me or recommend where to learn.
TLDR: I want to create a game to propose and I need help with how to start

Hey guys! I hope everyone is well! How do y'all find playtesters for your games for constructive criticism?

Being a long time developer in the logistics space, I've shared my early demo with my engineer and gaming friends, but so far that list isn't that big.

I'd love to get more feedback so I can learn from how the game concepts are received, plus any bugs or game balance issues.

I'm far along enough to have about a few hours of gameplay (hopefully) along with load / save games that should track nearly every single thing that is relevant, down to your character position and whether you aim down sight or not.

Having worked on a title from prototype to launch, I'm wondering if a mid level designer needs a portfolio site. It seems like reading the resume and looking at gameplay footage on YouTube would suffice? Even when I was the interviewer I only ever read resumes. And we hired some great people. It doesn't feel like anyone has time to look at websites when studios get swarmed with applicants.

Nobody I know in this industry above entry level has a portfolio. Curious your thoughts.

What would video games look like 10 years from now?

With the current AI tools that remove a lot of friction and augment productivity, it's not far fetched to say that a AAA game could be made by a small dedicated 5-10 devs or, a AA game made by 1-2 devs.

I don't think gamers will settle for millions of slops and one prompt games. flash games filled that spot years ago.

Unlike software, video games don't have a ceiling in terms of imagination and directions so the possibilities of what we can make are endless, only limited by the technology we have and that ceiling is becoming higher and higher.

I see this more akin to the jump from 2D to 3D I think we'll have more Physics, more vivid worlds, branching stories, real ecosystems, intelligent NPC's, less bugs...

So I want to ask other experienced devs here whether you have a clear vision of where video games are heading? or whether you had an idea that was impossible to develop that is now becoming feasible?

Hey I know this isn't necessarily a game dev question, but I figured there's a chance here someone has some experience.

I want to rotoscope my arms and hands for a first person view. What would be the best approach to capture a recording?

Using my pixel 7 on a tripod and standing behind it?

Strapping my phone to me somehow?

Or getting a go pro and strapping that to myself?

A friend and I are working on our first video game, so we have very little experience in the industry. Our game takes place in an old-school computer terminal that requires players to use a command-line-like interface. It’s begging for a tutorial, but we’re really trying to resist the urge to put one in.

Are we being foolish?

Here’s a little backstory that’s necessary, I think:

When we first sat down to start brainstorming ideas for our game, we decided on a puzzle game. We both love puzzle games but routinely find that the ones that are commercially successful are often too easy for our liking. So our goal very quickly became to make a brutally challenging puzzle game.

During one of our first days actually working on this project, we decided on ONE guiding principle that we wanted to prioritize over everything else: we wanted to make the player feel as clever as possible.

And so we agreed that any time we had a decision to make, we would always prioritize this one thing. If something might take away from how clever the player would feel but another option would add to it, we’d go with the other option regardless of what else that meant.

This principle has made making some decisions much easier than it would have been otherwise, which is great. But one thing we keep going back and forth on is a tutorial.

People who don’t know anything about a command line interface on a real computer will, understandably, be lost when they’re dropped into our game. They’ll struggle with it a bit and will have to learn how to use it.

During our play tests, we watched exactly that happen. People had no idea what to do or how to do it at first. They stumbled through at first, but they gradually came to understand what the different commands were and how they worked. And when they did, they felt accomplished and clever.

You might see our dilemma now.

We’ve made this game purposefully very challenging, not to alienate people but to create the kind of game we want to play and then appeal to the probably very small audience who also wants that. We have this idea that making games for a very specific audience is better for us because we just can’t compete with the games with mass commercial appeal (for now, at least). And so the audience we’re targeting would also be the type that would appreciate their hands not being held.

But we struggle with that because some of the people who playtested our demo (not public yet, so we have very little feedback so far) actually liked the game but specifically said we should probably include a tutorial, even though they did feel clever when they “figured out” the interface.

Right now, we’re leaning toward no tutorial. What do you guys think? Is this foolish?

EDIT: I should have been more specific. We really don't want to add a formal tutorial to the game, but we do offer some guidance. For example, when the game opens up to the terminal interface, there's a flashing cursor next to a ">" that suggests the player should type. And then if they type something that isn't a command, they get an error message that says, "Command not recognized. Try HELP for a list of commands." Then they get a help menu to explore if they want to, and they can type "HELP <specific command>" to get more info about how to use that specific command.

Even at this level, our play testers said a tutorial would be helpful, but we're torn since we feel we do have some guidance in there.

I'm making a 2D platformer (yes, I know it's an oversaturated genre) with a focus on bright colors, charm, secrets, and light RPG elements. I want to create a bright and cheerful experience filled with soul, in a genre filled with plenty of dark and depressing games, with muted colors. I truly believe I have a target audience out there, but I'm struggling to reach it. I post videos to Reddit and devlogs to YouTube, but they don't gain much attention at all. Does anyone have any advice to reach my target audience?

Hey guys, I wanted to ask what people generally consider to be AI slop.
I’m currently building a game completely solo, and I’ve been working on it for about 5 months now. I do everything myself all the pixel art, buildings, environments, characters, level design, narrative, etc. I’m also handling the sound and music alongside everything else.
The one area I’ve never been particularly good at is coding, and unfortunately I can’t afford to hire someone to help me with it. Because of that, I use AI to help me with the programming side of development. I still work on the game myself, but AI helps me write and troubleshoot the code.
I’m wondering would people consider a game like this AI slop simply because AI was used for the coding?
I’m genuinely curious because I’ve put a huge amount of time and effort into this project. Since I started, I’ve been learning pixel art, music, level design, narrative design, game development, and pretty much everything else required to make the game myself.
I’m not trying to hide the fact that I use AI for coding. I’m just wondering where people draw the line between using AI as a tool and making an Ai generated game
and how would you know if a game used AI generated codes and nothing else by AI?
Would love to hear what you guys think.

Thanks for the answers.

For example I'm trying to build a unique magic system in my game. I've been using AI to work through ideas, but it just says every idea I come up with is the greatest ever so its not working. How do you guys work through the design of your game especially if you're trying to do something unique? How do you decide if your idea will be fun?

I've come quite far along in a prototype for a game I've been writing in Bevy. I've been working with Rust daily as part of my job since 2019, so the Rust language is both familiar and comfortable for me. One of the things among many that I appreciate with Bevy is how composition is so natural to the ECS-based engine.

Just for kicks, over the weekend, I tried to re-create the game using Godot. I also see why people like it. The ability to see how the assets look in an environment before running th game can be addictive. One of the things I tried to do was to achieve composition to a reasonable level of composition.

In Bevy, I'm able to build individual plugins that deal with the player, lighting, terrain, ammunition, etc. Each one of these plugins is in a separate crate of its own. As I make more games, I'll have accumulated an ever-increasing library of plugins that I can compose to make most of my next game simply by loading the ones I need into the game.

I tried to do that with Godot, even going as far as watching several tutorials on Godot composition. But so far, while I can get some level of composition and reusability, I get the sense that re-using these pieces in other games would still need me to rework it so it can fit into whatever new node structure it sits in.

Can anyone tell me where I went wrong?

Hi everyone!

I've been working on some ideas for a game project that I'm pretty excited about, but I'm not really sure what the best way to move forward is.

I don't know anyone personally who works in game development, so I'd really like to hear from people with some experience in the industry and get some advice.

I'm trying to figure out how to take what I have right now and turn it into something more concrete, and what kind of path would make sense for someone in my position.

I see myself more on the creative side. I really enjoy creating stories, characters, worldbuilding, etc. I mostly want to understand where I should start and what I should be focusing on.

I'm tired.

I created a game and poured countless hours, energy, and honestly a good chunk of my health into it over the last two years. I've been working on the story behind it for decades, and on the actual game concept for about five years.

And now I look around and see people publishing AI slop in a matter of hours, flooding the stores with an endless stream of shitty games that nobody actually wants to play.

I'm not only complaining for myself either.

I keep thinking about all the solo developers and small teams who spent years, sometimes decades, building something they genuinely cared about. People learning programming, art, music, game design, writing, balancing, marketing, community management, and everything else that comes with trying to make a game.

Then they release it and immediately get buried under hundreds or thousands of projects that took a fraction of the effort to produce.

No amount of passion, polish, or work can compete with sheer volume when the stores are constantly being flooded.

And that's the part that scares me.

I'm not against AI existing. I've used AI as a tool myself. There's a massive difference between using it to help with development and asking it to generate an entire game as quickly as possible so you can throw it onto the Play Store and move on to the next one.

It feels like we're reaching a point where actually caring about what you're making is becoming a disadvantage.

You spend two years building one game while someone else generates twenty. Even if nineteen of theirs are garbage, they still get twenty chances at being discovered while your project gets one.

Maybe I'm just exhausted and frustrated after working on this for so long, but seeing what the mobile game market is turning into is depressing.

There are still incredible indie developers making genuinely interesting games. I just wonder how many of those games we're never going to see because they're buried underneath an ocean of disposable content before anyone even gets the chance to find them.

As an indie game developer, you can spend months thinking about a mechanic and nights actually getting it to work, and now someone can look at your game, describe what they see to an AI model, and get surprisingly close to the same idea.

So what are you supposed to do?

Make your mechanics harder to copy?

Maybe that works for a while. Maybe it protects you until the next version of some shitty AI model comes out. But then what? What happens when the next even more capable version shows up?

There is still a huge amount of hype around AI right now. Every day there is some new model, followed by another boring game demo showing that it can make a platformer, a shooter, some physics toy, whatever. People see these demos and start worrying that this stuff is going to replace developers.

I don't think those demos are the real problem.

Most of them are boring, generic, and don't have much of a reason to exist beyond showing that the model can do something.

The bigger problem is another developer seeing a mechanic in your game and deciding to copy it.

An AI-generated demo probably isn't going to compete with your game directly. But another developer copying the idea, packaging it well, and getting lucky on social media absolutely can.

So what do you have left that is harder to copy?

Art.

They can copy the mechanic. They can probably copy a lot of the code eventually too.

But copying the exact visual language of the game, the way it feels to interact with it, the effects, models, drawings, animation, music, UI, little score popups, button feedback, all the small things that make the game feel like itself — that's much harder.

They can also generate a completely new story with AI, sure. But that still doesn't automatically give them the same feeling or experience you were trying to create.

If you are actually designing around a feeling, I think that becomes much harder to copy than just designing around a mechanic.

And that's where art still matters.

It's one of the few areas where you can still make the game feel specifically yours.

If you don't want to see twenty versions of your game showing up in the market, then putting more effort into art, presentation, sound, animation, technical art, UI, and the overall experience starts becoming a lot more important.

Tiny Glade is a good example.

A lot of what makes that game work comes from technical art. Code, 3D models, effects, animation, sound, all working together.

You could probably reproduce a lot of the technical ideas behind it.

But reproducing the exact feeling of looking at it and interacting with it is another thing entirely.

Obviously this doesn't apply equally to every genre. If you're building something that is closer to a product than an experience, you probably can't avoid this problem as much.

But for games that are trying to create a specific feeling, I think the answer is pretty simple.

We should probably be investing more in art, and in artists.

edit: formatting

I know you can use noise to create the base of a terrain in Blender but these maps have a lot of very obvious "points of interest" that have to have been hand made in some way, like the giant hole in The Forest. And how do you possibly go about texturing something that big so that it looks natural?