Wishlisted! Looking really great so far. I'd seen the characters a while ago, but the locations are really coming along nicely.
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Wishlisted! Looking really great so far. I'd seen the characters a while ago, but the locations are really coming along nicely.
Y'all ever figure out the reason behind a bug that's so stupid, you literally facepalm? My Unity game was working great in editor but an entire feature was broken when I ran a build. Every fix just revealed another problem, until I realized that about ten or so game objects weren't appearing in the build (none had mesh renderers so I only realized it when I added Debug.Log under Start() in a script that was attached to half those objects and my player log had no messages from any of them). I finally realized that those ten objects were children of an empty that was tagged as EditorOnly............ D:
it's fine I just lost like 5 hours of my life to a stupid mistake I swear I checked for lmao!!!!! Thank goodness I finally set up source control a few weeks ago so I can revert all the changes I just made to my code.
it's fine I just lost like 5 hours of my life to a stupid mistake I swear I checked for lmao!!!!! Thank goodness I finally set up source control a few weeks ago so I can revert all the changes I just made to my code.
Spent the past few days trying to get some boring stuff working under the hood (i.e. scene transitions/fading effect, trying to figure out Timeline/Playable Director in Unity) but was also able to work on the aesthetic a little bit and play around with color palettes/color grading.
Would like to play with the parallax scrolling a bit more and try to implement some particle effects to spruce it up.
I agree, such a nice vibe! I love how the animated bg adds some subtle depth to the scene.
About once or twice a week, yes. Usually accompanied by a loud "I'm such a fucking moron". :)
It would probably have to be a mod, I don't think they can pass on thread ownership / post editing privileges. It's probably easiest to just wait until next year and have someone active make the 2021 thread (I nominate HandsomeCharles :) ).
Haha, thanks! Thats funny because I was going to nominate you!
I think it might be easier to wait until next year's thread too. I think most of the info there should still hold out and be relevant until the end of the year.
Oh... Oh... Now that explains some things.
Anyway, spent the past few days learning proper workflow for animating from the first-person perspective, particularly in regards to animating weapons and arms as separate armatures so that different arms can be swapped in like most modern games that don't have special Viewmodel rigs that bake the arms and guns together (I'm looking at you, pre-Left 4 Dead Valve games.) - There's unfortunately not many resources out there regarding FPS-specific workflow, so some deep-digging had to be done.
A decent start but will need some finer polish when I have the time to.
Two tips I have for anyone else going down this same road as me:
1. Don't even bother trying to directly coordinate the animation of the weapon and hands together - It's much smoother workflow to instead animate which of the two will be primarily driving the motion and then animate the other of the pair around it afterward. In the former example, the gun firing was the driver, so I focused on that first and getting down the exact timings of how the slide and hammer should move, and then animated the recoil in the hands based off of that afterward - And for the latter (Empty Mag Reload), the gun itself shouldn't be doing anything but having the slide locked and ejecting the magazine, so the motion of the hands grabbing a new magazine and sliding it in was animated before I even touched the gun's rig, of which the only real animating I did was keyframing the constraints on the magazine - And of course shrinking the bullet-bone out of existence so I don't end up on IMFDB's Naughty List of incorrect FPS reloads :V
At first I made the mistake of trying to animate both of the pair together, and boy did it result in some terrible looking jank that took way too long to make - Once I dropped that mistake and prioritized the primary driver of the motion, I became 5X faster instantly.
2. At least on UE4 (I don't know what Unity's equivalent is), Sockets are your friend. My initial attempts at animating this had the Receiver bone parented to the Hand bone and essentially had the gun floating away from its Origin - Instead, this is now animated such that that Receiver bone stays firmly at Origin with the whole skeleton parented to the Hand Bone and animates from a static position, with all the motion of the gun being on the Hand bone/socket that it will be in in-game rather than coincidentally floating next to the hand.
Anyway, spent the past few days learning proper workflow for animating from the first-person perspective, particularly in regards to animating weapons and arms as separate armatures so that different arms can be swapped in like most modern games that don't have special Viewmodel rigs that bake the arms and guns together (I'm looking at you, pre-Left 4 Dead Valve games.) - There's unfortunately not many resources out there regarding FPS-specific workflow, so some deep-digging had to be done.
A decent start but will need some finer polish when I have the time to.
Two tips I have for anyone else going down this same road as me:
1. Don't even bother trying to directly coordinate the animation of the weapon and hands together - It's much smoother workflow to instead animate which of the two will be primarily driving the motion and then animate the other of the pair around it afterward. In the former example, the gun firing was the driver, so I focused on that first and getting down the exact timings of how the slide and hammer should move, and then animated the recoil in the hands based off of that afterward - And for the latter (Empty Mag Reload), the gun itself shouldn't be doing anything but having the slide locked and ejecting the magazine, so the motion of the hands grabbing a new magazine and sliding it in was animated before I even touched the gun's rig, of which the only real animating I did was keyframing the constraints on the magazine - And of course shrinking the bullet-bone out of existence so I don't end up on IMFDB's Naughty List of incorrect FPS reloads :V
At first I made the mistake of trying to animate both of the pair together, and boy did it result in some terrible looking jank that took way too long to make - Once I dropped that mistake and prioritized the primary driver of the motion, I became 5X faster instantly.
2. At least on UE4 (I don't know what Unity's equivalent is), Sockets are your friend. My initial attempts at animating this had the Receiver bone parented to the Hand bone and essentially had the gun floating away from its Origin - Instead, this is now animated such that that Receiver bone stays firmly at Origin with the whole skeleton parented to the Hand Bone and animates from a static position, with all the motion of the gun being on the Hand bone/socket that it will be in in-game rather than coincidentally floating next to the hand.
Hey everyone! First-time poster, long time lurker.
I have been tasked to help make a 2D vertical STG (or Shmup). I'm not exactly an expert at the genre so I was wondering if anyone has any pointers or resources to designing one? My role is more design-focused (where to place enemies in the stages, how do they move and shoot etc) since we have most of the core engine working. The hard part for me now is designing it! :P
I have been tasked to help make a 2D vertical STG (or Shmup). I'm not exactly an expert at the genre so I was wondering if anyone has any pointers or resources to designing one? My role is more design-focused (where to place enemies in the stages, how do they move and shoot etc) since we have most of the core engine working. The hard part for me now is designing it! :P
First of all, congrats on the project/role. As for resources on the subject (level and enemy design in a 2D context), here are some books and articles I personally find useful:
- As reference mainly: Kremers, Rudolf, Level design: concept, theory, and practice, A.K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, 2009
Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice
Good or bad level design can make or break any game, so it is surprising how little reference material exists for level designers. Beginning level designers have a limited understanding of the tools and techniques they can use to achieve their goals, or even define them. This book is the first...www.routledge.com
- Any standard engineering dynamics textbook that deals with the dynamics of bodies in 2D motion. For example, Andy Ruina's Introduction to
Statics and Dynamics: http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/Book/ - Read up on human gaze behavior. Via these articles for example:
- Rayner, K. (2009). The 35th Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture: Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(8), 1457–1506. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210902816461
- A. Borji, D. N. Sihite and L. Itti, "What/Where to Look Next? Modeling Top-Down Visual Attention in Complex Interactive Environments," in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 523-538, May 2014, doi: 10.1109/TSMC.2013.2279715.
I hope that can be of some use to you.
I am completely new here and in game dev altogether. Wanted to give map design a go, and in about 2 hours work I came together on a Dam. Here's what I have so far.
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Cool progress!
The shield stands out a bit to me, as if the player's arms are in impossible positions, but it looks really nice.
Wow thanks Rösti! Didn't expect to get some high level stuff so this will be super useful in general!First of all, congrats on the project/role. As for resources on the subject (level and enemy design in a 2D context), here are some books and articles I personally find useful:
Without going into engines (Unity, GameMaker etc.) or languages, I still would like to suggest you also take a look at Marmoset's Hexels. I find it very useful for prototyping 2D designs.
- As reference mainly: Kremers, Rudolf, Level design: concept, theory, and practice, A.K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, 2009
Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice
Good or bad level design can make or break any game, so it is surprising how little reference material exists for level designers. Beginning level designers have a limited understanding of the tools and techniques they can use to achieve their goals, or even define them. This book is the first...- Any standard engineering dynamics textbook that deals with the dynamics of bodies in 2D motion. For example, Andy Ruina's Introduction to
Statics and Dynamics: http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/Book/- Read up on human gaze behavior. Via these articles for example:
- Rayner, K. (2009). The 35th Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture: Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(8), 1457–1506. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210902816461
- A. Borji, D. N. Sihite and L. Itti, "What/Where to Look Next? Modeling Top-Down Visual Attention in Complex Interactive Environments," in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 523-538, May 2014, doi: 10.1109/TSMC.2013.2279715.
I hope that can be of some use to you.
Didn't know you were lurking in here! I'm going to check out those links, thanks for posting them!
TheWorthyEdge Welcome to the club! That's not bad for a first go! Anything in particular you'd like to focus on or would like to do?
CptDrunkBear That tank is really cool, love it!
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Oh my, this week has been a tough one! I started out by beginning implementation on moving obstacles, which threw up a load of errors and bugs. Took a while to get through those, and then... progress was "stalled"....
Turns out someone (Who I'd want to make a good impression with) wanted to see some of my code examples, and all I had to show was PWAH. Cue frantic cleaning up, refactoring and optimizing! It's been non-stop this week. Every spare minute I've had has gone into looking over all the existing code and tightening it up. It also made me very embarrassed about my positively monolithic player class.
On the plus side, I discovered quite a few bugs due to this (and subsequently fixed them). I also managed to get the game update GC allocations for my game code down to ZERO which is fantastic! (By "Game update" I mean no GC allocations happening from normal gameplay loop stuff. Instantiation notwithstanding) There are a few left as part of the camera logic (In culling) which I didn't write. I might be able to fix it, going to take a look later.
The other plus side to this is that by making this thing "presentable", I have also by proxy made a little 5 level demo. So, anyone want to try it out? I feel like this would be a good point to get some feedback on how the game "feels". (Its got a mix of placeholder and old art but its functional)
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Unreal Engine releases an app that uses Face ID to capture 3D facial animations | AppleInsider
Unreal Engine's new Live Link Face app brings big-budget movie-style effects to the iPhone, with Face ID able to animate 3D characters in real time or capture face tracking data for later use.
appleinsider.com
Man I don't know how useful this will end up being but I'd been hoping to see a quality implementation of this ever since FaceID was announced. It's also pretty much my main reason for wanting to see Face ID on Macs as well. Facial capture is completely out of my price range but something like this opens a door to it. Even if the end results aren't perfectly accurate, its feels like it would be a huge leg up as a starting point before manual adjustments.
Hopefully its not just UE but we see something similar from Unity or from Autodesk for Maya/3DS Max.
Uhmm...pretty much just create a multiplayer TPS map designed for 2v2.
Well, regardless of the reason, congratulations on getting the game refactored! Possibly the thing I love most about working alone for once, is being able to refactor what I want, when I want, without having to ask for permission (or forgiveness :D).
Also absolutely do share your game, I'd love to provide feedback! I'm behind on trying games and giving feedback to other members in the thread too, I really need to make a point of setting aside some time to do so.
It's an incredible feeling coming from corporate jobs to do this. Not writing 1000 unit tests for 3 lines of code either :D
I've been using a lot of Unity's prefab/prefab variation stuff. That can be a nightmare to refactor if you don't have it setup correct first time. With code it's fun to write some really ass code and then refactor it out.
Nothing like going in and editing a whole function to change a ton of references in multiple functions because you think you need to do it to get one tiny thing to work and... then it doesn't work anyway.
GAHHHHHH
GAHHHHHH
Trying to get the in game economy working. So landing on stations you can now trade resources, see the price history of specific resources at the given space station etc.
I haven't abandoned my city builder project completely. I might start adding combat logic to it:
It's not efficient to work in more than one project at a time but I realized that worrying so much about being efficient was backfiring by reducing my motivation so I think I'll just work in whatever I want a day at a time. Luckily I saved some funds in my last freelance jobs so I think I can work in more than one project at least for a few months.
It's not efficient to work in more than one project at a time but I realized that worrying so much about being efficient was backfiring by reducing my motivation so I think I'll just work in whatever I want a day at a time. Luckily I saved some funds in my last freelance jobs so I think I can work in more than one project at least for a few months.
Working on some "faux" lighting using overlays - it doesn't quite seem right though. If anyone has some tips on how to make things look like... well... lighting, and not overlays, in terms of colors to use, color separation and blending, etc. it would be appreciated.
I'm trying not to go too overboard with it, I don't want it to look too modern, so I'm avoiding using actual lighting in Unity through the Universal Render Pipeline and just used basic sprite shape overlays instead. I even played around with the Sprite Shape Editor, though I found the spline editing was kind of finicky (I probably just need to get better at it). But I'm thinking I should probably just design a few overlays in Photoshop or Illustrator that I can reuse instead of trying to make them in Unity?
I think I might try to pixelate the edges of the overlay shapes, they're quite clean right now, which doesn't quite match the feel of the pixel art? Maybe I'm overthinking it.
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Working on some "faux" lighting using overlays - it doesn't quite seem right though. If anyone has some tips on how to make things look like... well... lighting, and not overlays, in terms of colors to use, color separation and blending, etc. it would be appreciated.
I'm trying not to go too overboard with it, I don't want it to look too modern, so I'm avoiding using actual lighting in Unity through the Universal Render Pipeline and just used basic sprite shape overlays instead. I even played around with the Sprite Shape Editor, though I found the spline editing was kind of finicky (I probably just need to get better at it). But I'm thinking I should probably just design a few overlays in Photoshop or Illustrator that I can reuse instead of trying to make them in Unity?
I think I might try to pixelate the edges of the overlay shapes, they're quite clean right now, which doesn't quite match the feel of the pixel art? Maybe I'm overthinking it.
I think it's looking perfectly, fine, the issue is that you seem to have the overlay layered under most of the objects in the scene, so it's not affecting them. It's only showing on top of the floor, so I'm guessing you have your layers like floor -> light -> furniture instead of floor -> furniture -> light.
Yeah, it looked a little too bright with the overlay on top of the objects, even with transparency adjusted - I thought this might be okay even if it's not technically "correct" but if it stood out to you I guess I might consider applying it to the objects as well.
Ok so I think I have a basic basic basic gameloop
I think what I'm going to do, having just read Derek Yu's book Spelunky (where he talks a lot about FINISH THAT GAME) and what with having Weltall in here implicitly yelling FINISH THAT GAME merely by existing, is try and WRITE DOWN any further ideas I have about this for later, and in the meantime, just try and get this single level to a releasable state.
Like having finished this battleregion control object I have lots of ideas about wave spawners and whatevers that act as modulable blah blah blahs that you can slot enemies into etc etc but... no! I felt a sense of satisfaction when the stupid STAGE COMPLETE text popped up even though you are way too powerful in this version already and can basically just infinite enemies into walls!
scope down, stupid
I think what I'm going to do, having just read Derek Yu's book Spelunky (where he talks a lot about FINISH THAT GAME) and what with having Weltall in here implicitly yelling FINISH THAT GAME merely by existing, is try and WRITE DOWN any further ideas I have about this for later, and in the meantime, just try and get this single level to a releasable state.
Like having finished this battleregion control object I have lots of ideas about wave spawners and whatevers that act as modulable blah blah blahs that you can slot enemies into etc etc but... no! I felt a sense of satisfaction when the stupid STAGE COMPLETE text popped up even though you are way too powerful in this version already and can basically just infinite enemies into walls!
scope down, stupid
Then there's a pretty cool trick you can use: have two identical, overlapping light beam sprites: one on top of everything, and one on top of the floor but below the furniture, like now. Then, by playing around with each lightbeam's alpha, you can get the brightness on each part exactly right, while also making it seem as if the light affects everything. :)
*standing ovation* I'm cheering for you so hard! <3 It's looking really great already, you have the feeling of weight and impact nailed down, which is the hardest part!
We need a variant of the Simpsons' "dig up, stupid" that says "scope down, not up, stupid!" :)
I can give it a try, would be cool to actually play it after seeing it here on the forum.
That looks great, already looks like a very interesting combat system with those air combos!
Next up (beyond some quality of life improvements and bug squashing) was black hole effects and shaders:
Whoa, trippy! And yet that's how black holes' event horizon is currently understood to bend light, great work!
Hey all - I failed to post during the development of our bad physics skateboarding game, but I've got a Unity question now that would help with a few game objects even post release. The short of it is: how do you make custom convex mesh colliders? Is there a way in an outside program like blender?
The explanation behind the ask is that we've got some objects that move and rotate, but do not exert any real physics on the player because as of now they are non convex colliders; the mesh has holes through them and unfortunately convex just doesn't cut it. I'll add a screenshot of the blender objects once I get back to my desk.
EDIT: Here's one of the objects in question.
So the player ideally needs to be able to move through the object and fall down the holes, all while the cylinder rotates. Right now, all of that happens, but the cylinder can't exert any force on the player.
The explanation behind the ask is that we've got some objects that move and rotate, but do not exert any real physics on the player because as of now they are non convex colliders; the mesh has holes through them and unfortunately convex just doesn't cut it. I'll add a screenshot of the blender objects once I get back to my desk.
EDIT: Here's one of the objects in question.
So the player ideally needs to be able to move through the object and fall down the holes, all while the cylinder rotates. Right now, all of that happens, but the cylinder can't exert any force on the player.
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Thanks and yeah definitely trippy! It was a cool shader to work with and the math for the Einstein ring / gravitational lensing was surprisingly simple.
This already looks like it plays great, keep pushing! The two level fighting mechanic reminds me of Dragon Ninja, I played that a ton on C64 in my youth.
Trying to find music to put in a game. I see several persons offering music with a CC-BY 3.0 license. It seems permissive at first glance. However, what are the implications of this part?
Does the game have to be released with the same licence and are you not allowed to add DRM to the game? Does this make it hard to sell the game on Steam?
Does the game have to be released with the same licence and are you not allowed to add DRM to the game? Does this make it hard to sell the game on Steam?
DRM on Steam is not mandatory though. I guess there's a list of Steam games without drm somewhere. From what i tested, Shovel Knight is completely drm free on Steam, atleast.
Also, i'll probably not find it, but these days i saw a CC-BY 4.0 music on ccmixter that was used in a GTA V radio. Not saying it means it's okay to use in drm because of that, tho, i'm not 100% sure either.
Well, I was trying to make this for the GMTK jam. But after a while i realized it didn't fit the theme (Out of Control).
I was thinking the enemies with their action countdowns would get out of control and possibly starting to have them counting down in real time as well but I went away from that.
Basically, you have a deck of number cards that are used to activate your skills each turn. So you put a 6 into the sword and deal 6 damage. Pretty simple. Some of the fun stuff was some skills allowed you to put multiple cards into a skill and the total would be the damage, healing, etc. Also, have a skill that does double damage on a pair..so if you put a pair of 2's into it...you dealt 8 damage instead of 4. Have a few more ideas like skills that require a specific total to activate, skills that can only accept numbers above a certain number and vice versa., and so on. Definitely inspired by Dicey Dungeons again, a game that keeps popping into my design for some reason. Though, I really think I may have hit on something that does something different with that formula. The deck of numbers you build makes it more predictable what skills you can safely use or not, and what you can build towards. RNG can still mess you up, but you have control of what numbers go into your deck after the initial ones you start with.
Idk, maybe I should go more in that Dicey Dungeons direction and have enemies use equipment and a deck of numbers vs you as well.
I actually have a single floor playable with a shop and enemy encounters..so maybe i'll 'polish' up the prototype and put it on itch to try and get some feedback on it. It'll still look bad, lol.
I was thinking the enemies with their action countdowns would get out of control and possibly starting to have them counting down in real time as well but I went away from that.
Basically, you have a deck of number cards that are used to activate your skills each turn. So you put a 6 into the sword and deal 6 damage. Pretty simple. Some of the fun stuff was some skills allowed you to put multiple cards into a skill and the total would be the damage, healing, etc. Also, have a skill that does double damage on a pair..so if you put a pair of 2's into it...you dealt 8 damage instead of 4. Have a few more ideas like skills that require a specific total to activate, skills that can only accept numbers above a certain number and vice versa., and so on. Definitely inspired by Dicey Dungeons again, a game that keeps popping into my design for some reason. Though, I really think I may have hit on something that does something different with that formula. The deck of numbers you build makes it more predictable what skills you can safely use or not, and what you can build towards. RNG can still mess you up, but you have control of what numbers go into your deck after the initial ones you start with.
Idk, maybe I should go more in that Dicey Dungeons direction and have enemies use equipment and a deck of numbers vs you as well.
I actually have a single floor playable with a shop and enemy encounters..so maybe i'll 'polish' up the prototype and put it on itch to try and get some feedback on it. It'll still look bad, lol.
Woah, you have some beautiful art happening in that game. Can I ask how the card system is going to work? Is it like a more in depth way of selecting a response based on what you've seen up to that point?
Also I also just put my game on steam, how did you share it in that way to where it has sort of the steam card with that "add to wishlist" button?
You can use the media tag with a steam url and it will generate the card.
Our artist is a joy to work with. Just trying to make a game that lives up to her work!
The card system has evolved a ton, but the loop right now is that you gain cards by interacting with the environment, solving puzzles or talking with people. So if you pick some berries off of a bush you would get "berries", if you use an axe to chop some wood you might get "thwack", and if you pissed off your friend you might get something like "regret". At points in the story there are blank spaces where you play one of the words you have. At the end of each day, we will probably empty out your hand of unused cards to encourage players not to horde cards and to keep the scope of the game manageable.
So you sort of carry your previous decisions around with you and use those to affect the story moving forward.
i'm trying to figure out what I would consider as a checklist for even releasing something as 'a single level' on itch. Actually started a trello board for myself. I wish I had done some gamejams when I had more free time, lol. Any tips? Looking for 'game jam milestones' or 'game jam checklists' mostly gets you stuff about people who apparently don't eat or drink and keel over on day two or something which seems... absurd
obvs I'm not actually gamejamming this but it'd be nice to know if I'm missing anything
obvs I'm not actually gamejamming this but it'd be nice to know if I'm missing anything
You could try splitting the model into multiple convex chunks and using Unity's convex setting for the collider.
You could also maybe fake this section, using a static concave mesh collider and rotating the player while applying forces to them.
As far as I'm aware Unity does not have a good way to do proper physics for moving shapes like this.
It's cool that the space station appears twice. How does the effect hold up when objects are closer like an accretion disk?
I really like your neon nature look!
so far i'm just making graphics, but maybe this will turn into something down the line
Well, what I do when I'm making a prototype is try to think of the features needed for the minimum viable product. For the type of games I make (mostly strategy) they tend to be long but for an action or arcade game I imagine it would be enough with items for:
- Basic Player controller.
- Basic camera behaviour.
- Basic enemy AI or behaviour.
- Basic Main Menu.
- Placeholder assets, visual effects and audio.
- Losing and winning conditions.
The idea is that you can always expand these later so no need to add anything advanced or final yet (well, personally I tend to use final assets from the beginning but that's just me being an asset store junkie). Also performance and refactoring can be tackled after the prototype or even at the end.
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Unrelated to this but I was thinking that among all the newbies that want to collaborate in projects there's scarcity of people that specialize in the basic functions of an engine. I mean, there's lots of novice coders, writers, composers, etc. but sometimes a project just need a person that knows how to create a terrain and place props in Unity or Unreal so the lead programmer can deal with actual code (also time consuming and repetitive tasks like generating lightmaps or even using custom tools created by the programmers).
I just felt the need to mention that, I think newbies that are trying to gain experience could download a popular engine and learn to use it, see how far they can get without learning to code or making art. It's not a glamorous job but to me it seems like a better "first step" than QA.
I'm starting to think this is the way to do it. The more I learn about movement and physics, the more I realize that the way to get it to "feel right" is to not use physics - or at least not rely on it all the time.
Thanks! This is giving me something solid to shoot for (though I actually have a lot of these already thankfully)
No kidding, wow. I'd feel anxious just trying to create a game where I felt her talent wasn't wasted. No pressure though! :D
In my experience the thing that you almost always undershoot and leave for last is menus (both the main menu, and especially the pause / options menu). It's a combination of it being comparatively more boring work, and sometimes taking more than you expect because it deals with skills and assets that are very orthogonal to the game itself.
Even beyond my own stuff, I've seen plenty of itch free games where, e.g., pressing Esc kicks you to the main menu and makes you lose all progress, instead of actually pausing. It may seem like a small thing, but it makes a huge difference in my estimation of how much the author cares about their own game, and therefore how much I should care, if that makes sense.
This is a good one too. When starting to make a game, we usually make first more of a "toy" than an actual game. It's easy to leave it at that and think people will be happy playing it forever, but without at least a "lose" condition and some way to keep score, without some kind of feedback to know if you're doing good or badly, it soon becomes pointless to play.
Oh, that's definitely all good stuff. My stuff is definitely still in toy state. Actually if you lose a battle you still get to choose a reward and proceed at the moment. Not something I would leave before putting it on itch but definitely some stuff to think about. Really just wanna hammer out everything essential to the loop, and get that out there for some feedback.
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