Finished the outer worlds. I just rushed through it in the other half to reach the end. It's a really well crafted game where it matters (the dialog, characters, companion quests). Yet I didn't care for the story or the characters... Oh well, maybe I expected a less cheery mood overall.

Now playing Disco Elysium, and can't let go. Love the ostentatious wordiness of it, and the psychological approach to stats/skills.

Also playing The Outer Worlds, but without otters (I feel cheated).

It's good. Great actually, narrative wise. The characters are interesting, everything looks really good, I'm enjoying that part of the game a lot. Got about halfway through I assume.

But it lacks a punch. The game is way too easy. I'm just breezing through it and am getting a bit bored of that part of the game. There's too much loot everywhere, enemies are too dumb, and I feel like I got the best weapons right at the start of the game. The higher difficulties don't offer a real challenge either, supernova (the hardest) is just tedious. I'd like to be able to pick a few of its offerings and ditch the rest.

I don't feel like my character's level progression is really doing anything at all.

Doing mostly 2D, I find game maker tempting sometimes. But overall I like my Unity workflow, its jack-of-all-trades approach to being an engine suits me (mostly) just fine.

Looking forward to garbage collector upgrades when I finally move away from 2018.3, and am hopeful to see some preview packages getting a stable release by then

Unity seems to be stretching itself really thin. Leaving a lot of things semi-done, while starting numerous new things all the time.
I find the amount of things constantly changing overwhelming so I ceased updating for a while.

Really like the look of this, curios to find out more about lore and mechanics

Haha, glad you noticed.  Whenever I add details like that I wonder if anyone will ever even see them. I usually justify adding the little things because even if people don't specifically notice, I hope it will at least add to the overall feel.

That's a legit justification, without secondary animations things can feel off and stiff without quite understanding why.

Also really nice work, the character feels great. I'd consider adding a 5-10% variance in shadow size, depending how high the char is in the air relative to ground. (but only if the camera position is low enough to justify small details like that)

Also, just wanted to add that Pareto's principle (the 80/20 rule) is a topic which warrants reading into irregardless of what you're applying it to. Richard Koch did an good book about it in a very approachable manner; and lots of entrepreneurs have been quoting it for years

["chaos"]

That's a lot of useful info to dig into, awesome!

But basically, we're all at the mercy of network effects, and small variances in those network effects at the very beginning of your "product"'s lifecycle are very important. Now, I believe quality is incredibly important, but so is novelty and getting to a new market early — and in my case, humor seems to be a booster. If you come in late, probably the best bet is to have the assistance of one or more people who already are "super-nodes". But I'm not entirely sure. As the Cornell paper notes, there's a lot that seems up to what they describe as "chaos"

This more or less reinforces my (entirely intuition based, off of subjective data) understanding of how it works. It's definitely not all up to quality, as in all industries a lot of quality work gets swept away. I feel like novelty has more influential power and I've observed it happen in games, music, tv shows, books... it just (usually, bot not always) needs to be backed by enough quality to give it wings. Undertale feels like a prime example.
And then there's the mix of luck and effort in getting it before others.

Randomness can't not be a major player though, but I don't see it as an absolutely defining one.

@michaelpzno Eh, I don't mind contempt for the audience sort of stuff. That's pure satire in my book and I love it. The audience needs contempt sometimes. Everyone needs a good hard slap on occasion (if it doesn't fly over their head)

Steaming frustration because your own games can't amass the similar popularity is understandable. Anyone doing this commercially would like to go viral and it sucks when you work hard and it keeps not happening. But man it sounds victimized and woe-is-me, I don't see how that helps you at all. Psychologically speaking, blowing off steam rarely actually blows off any steam, it just reinforces negative thought patterns.


@Golds I never stumbled on you games before yesterday. I just woke up and giving shit game a try needed to be done. I fucking nearly had a heart attack and then spilled my coffee laughing when that big head came up and destroyed my no doubt fueled reminiscing. Really fun(ny)! I can totally see why it went viral.


Now this is how I feel virality works. You stumble on something which makes you feel, it entices a strong reaction (usually a positive one) and you just have to share it with others to see their reaction. There are no forces governing what goes viral and what doesn't. And I don't believe it's exactly random either.

It's all about the work itself, and where you find the initial few eyes (who have a good reach, and liked a thing).

I'm mostly blowing off steam. And look at it from my pov: a game literally called "shit game" that its creator says is bad gets 100k views? Thats a panty twister.

Haha touche, I can get that.

I may have chuckled too hard at his flappy pipe though, and it piqued my interest enough to scroll through his other offerings. So I can kinda get the 100k views for novelty and quick, cheap amusements.

michaelplzno everyone likes what they like, getting your panties in bunch over differing tastes is rather comical though

this is the battle this forum needs to re-fight to be good again

Get with the times Joe. It's no longer whether games are art, it's whether they're high (art).

I couldn't get past the word sublime, which is just so narrow and weak to define any kind of artistic expression...

While it's definitely like a favored word of art snobs, I don't see how it doesn't apply to satire for example? Many great satires after all are quite pedantically crafted and delivered with a great deal of care and subtlety to pack just the right amount of punch.

In the end appreciation and what each of us gets out of anything, and whether we deem it "art" is very subjective, no matter what some council or another says or wants to propose as a norm. I find we value "art" that's in line with our own values and experiences. Such works are the only ones capable of communicating and actually resonating with us.

Pedantry and delicacy simply seem like values resonating with Moriarty to me.

Or in the words of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux: "The Sublime is not strictly speaking something which is proven or demonstrated, but a marvel, which seizes one, strikes one, and makes one feel."

The quick synopsis of my thesis is, simply, that art is something that people do, and the medium is irrelevant.

Well put. I see games as just one of many sorts of vessels for expression, which may deliver something sublime, kitsch, or whatever else through intent (or not).

On the topic of art, games and Ebert; Brian Moriarty had an interesting GDC talk several years back

Freelancing is something that can be done from distance.

Yeah, that's the major upside. I'm in central Europe, and the majority of my clients are somewhere in the states. I've been using Upwork.com for the past ~8 years. Don't know how it compares to other freelance networks (there are some programming exclusive that I heard about at one time or another and forgot since), but it has been decent to my needs.

How about freelancing with your current skills?

I'm in a sorta similar situation - a supportive working partner while I spend most of my time working on a game.
I do graphic design freelance gigs though. While they do eat up some time, they bring in money. (The upside for me is, I live in a cheap country so I don't need a lot of these gigs. Additionally they don't require as much brainpower as programming, so I can listen to audio books while working)

I have no experience with Patreon, but feel (and may be wrong) that it works for people who bring in steady useful content to others; or are already established artists.

@Job your video got nuked, do you have an alternate? Why do we suffer so Job?!?

@lilHermit, your video didn't make it through my tractor beam either?

Yo, I'm not lil... I think!?

Idk about your tractor beam; I see both videos fine over here.

Also @JobLeonard, thanks for sending me on a Skunk Anansie re-listen spree, it has been a while.

This whole album (Hurricane), after a while, but this one sticks out right now

I like the full hd look

Thanks for the tips! I'm definitely more interested in it for general web beautification/interaction use than games related, so p5 sounds perfect.