Hit a #raylib limitation tonight (needed uint32 samplers in a shader). Because raylib is so unintrusive in it's design, I just sidestepped it and used opengl directly for the problem, then continued with raylib afterwards like nothing happened. Thats a good ass API.

I'd like to write some compute shaders but after looking at the vulkan boilerplate I think its gonna be faster to just do the calculations by hand

Behold, Ted Dot Cool's key art for KOROMEKE! Ted crammed so much sauce into a couple of thumbnails, I can't stop staring at them. See the full piece is on the steam page (just above the wishlist button 👀) #gamedev #indiegame

noodling on a genomics visualiser, things are going poorly

Just finished Moutwashing! I'm amazed at how much horror it evokes with a little bit of mystery in the gameplay (spoliery #gamedev thread)

the arcs design gets me giggling and kicking my feet bro FOR EXAMPLE that tiny card defines starting positions and resources, resource availability, map size, two player handicaps, and movement options in about TWENTY SECONDS so many constraints in like 2 rules!!! #gamedev

Really cool series of videos that highlight why Stephen Sausage Roll is compelling. The solutions that must go through a single node are an interesting #gamedev lesson, probably many more to be found in this kind of analysis. youtu.be/AK8OLuRBFTw?...

I’m like 30 pages into Gravity’s Rainbow, is the whole thing about bananas??

Noodling on the live background for KORORMEKE. I'd like something that is more discrete and colourful, but it'll be difficult to get that without becoming too noisy. #gamedev

Just finished implementing the last of my ideas for board upgrades in KOROMEKE. Tomorrow I need to go on one of those loooong #gamedev walks to see if I can squeeze any more water from this stone of a brain.

Places that would be trivial to reach in other games are their own tantalising adventures here. The levels are having a really playful conversation with platformers as a genre, and being able to pull off this level of delayed gratification in such a short game is wonderful. #gamedev

Finished @managore.bsky.social’s Leap Year recently and GOD DAMN it hit good

ordered a latte in Italy and they gave me a cup of milk, holding my L with grace

the lion does not concern itself with breaking up 1000 line switch statements

Here's the number of upgrades added to KOROMEKE over the last few months. Need to squeeze out a few more board upgrades before the art catches up, but then it's time to blast through all of the dice ideas I've been cooking up 😤 #gamedev

if you can't find the holy grail then you lose KOROMEKE, sorry to all my gamers who aren't pure of heart #gamedev

Prototyping #gamedev mechanics to keep the end-game compelling. You can play the moving cups game before losing to get a second chance BUT each attempt makes the odds worse in future. Heavily inspired by the end-game in @colewehrle.bsky.social's Oath, one of my fav's.

In #gamedev, spacial games (platformers, shooters, etc) have complex, rich, and intuitive relationships between entities (I have line of sight on this character, I am above this platform). There's infinite design space outside of these intuitive relationship, but they're much harder to communicate.

KOROMEKE just hit 30 wishlists!!! That is to say that wishlisting now gives you eternal bragging rights as a double-digit tastemaker #gamedev

This upgrade brings much more depth to the table than I expected. It adds some ripples to otherwise uniform boards, making the decisions a lot juicier. Calculating the best way to partition jewels to get the max return on a bear was a satisfying moment from my last playtest. #gamedev

Tonight's #gamedev introduces the squirrel upgrade! It stows all connected jewels onto a single tile which makes it best pals with the bear, who collects any jewels that are on their lonesome.

I also used this as an excuse to try out #raylib and I'm kind of blown away. ~2 hours to port the program over and it runs MUCH faster. That makes a lot more possible in the simulation (and I get to write C, yay).

Added seasons and breeding to the #gamedev herd experiment! The bison group into smaller herds but collectively migrate with the sun to be near the fertile grass. Populations boom in the good season and start to tank in the off season.

A little #gamedev experiment from this evening, simulating migrating herds. The "bison" try to move together as a herd while staying on fertile tiles, always on the way to greener pastures as they eat up the good grass.

You can now take the scenic route in KOROMEKE! The 'wander' upgrade creates detours between the loops, letting your pawns hangout off the beaten path. #gamedev

pickup sticks anyone? (this is a bug pls pray for me) #gamedev

An easy mistakes to avoid in #gamedev. Player actions that funnel all states into a single state can suck the momentum right out of a dynamic system. Players no longer have a strong engagement with the game state because they know they're only one action away from known territory.

players have had it too good for too long, finally a game for the screamers

A very common “optimise later” situation in #gamedev is deciding whether to compute or cache 🧵

In #gamedev fundamental features can be so easy, and features on the fringe can be excruciating. When you're deep in the pain you've gotta remember Brian Moriarty's words - Awesome things don't hold anything back. Awesome things are rich and generous. The treasure is right there.

My thesis for lostness vs fun in #gamedev. Silksong and Animal Well spend most of their time in "where tf am I (good)", but it's a very risky game. Rain World was great, but it did nudge me into "where tf am I (bad)" a little too often for my taste.

bro they call me Estragon the way im Waiting for #Godot

I think an under appreciated aspect of the Last Judge runback in #silksong is that it acts as a tutorial for the harder platforming stuff in act 2. If you’re as bad as me, you get 1000 tight reps of bouncing on bells without realising that you’re in a tutorial.

My 14 yo brother is probably the funniest person I know he’s got zero access to money but spends his evenings moonlighting as a 50 year old that lowballs people on facebook marketplace lmao

Working with an incredibly thorough and thoughtful playtester at the minute who creates unhinged strategy charts to find exploits. Literally living the #gamedev dream

I’m really trying to get better at communicating what’s special about my #gamedev work. Getting into the shoes of someone who’s never seen the game after being fully immersed in it is so tricky!

A run in KOROMEKE lives and dies by how sweet your combos are. Check out what’s possible in the new gameplay trailer! #gamedev

An in-code color picker was added to the Godot-4.5!!! I’ve spent so much time copy pasting hex codes, this is going to be so much nicer 🥹 Thank you @dugtrioramen.bsky.social !!

New vid by 2swap is just insane. Felt like it was peeling open a third eye for looking at puzzle and game design intuitively youtu.be/YGLNyHd2w10?...

I’m working on a lot of dice UI for KOROMEKE right now and its so sick that @countlessnights.bsky.social has dropped an absolute MASTERCLASS just in time with Dice A Million

Working on my first new project since internalising @cmuratori.bsky.social’s guidance on code organization and HOLY COW are things moving faster

I mean c’mon game of the year

TWO WEEKS UNTIL SILKSONG WHERE DO I FIND A BABYSITTER

Some of the most common game dev advice I've heard is "read a graphic design book" and as KOROMEKE grows more complex I am really wishing that I had a read a graphic design book

Spotify just served up maybe the best discover weekly ever after a months long dry spell, we are SO BACK.

Solved a project threatening game design issue with a single line today and I'm feeling very smug about it 🧵