Have a busy week of travelling followed by a week of holiday so Trainsweeper updates shall be slow for a little while. Did enjoy this watch though about balancing safe bets against moonshots to try and carve out a space for your business www.youtube.com/watch?v=WueQ... #gamedev #indiedev

Added stations and radio transmissions. Big update in progress for train car buffs and stats. This is going to allow for tons of interesting choices for which train cars to get, what order to use them in, and which upgrades to equip. Can't wait to start adding them! #gamedev #indiedev #godot

Explosion particle effects are now in and mine functionality is working again with the new grid system. Also experimenting with having the camera's zoom affect the volume of positional sounds (like the explosions). Back to working on some train upgrades and cars tomorrow! #gamedev #indiedev #godot

Getting somewhere recreating Will's pixel explosion (link below) using particles. Particles are on the left and pixel art on the right. Lacking some artistry still but I think I can close the gaps. #indiedev #gamedev #godot #pixelart

Forgot to mention, as a part of the grid and rail track rework I added switchable tracks! Now you can build more interesting routes without needing to remove and replace lines. #gamedev #indiedev #godot

Didn't even manage to open Godot today 😪 I have been daydreaming about particle systems to add to Trainsweeper explosions though. Does anyone know if there's anything similar to godotshaders.com but for particles? A reference library of cool particle effects would be super handy. #gamedev #godot

I always enjoy People Make Games videos but this one had me smiling, laughing, and reflecting throughout the whole thing. A beautiful intersection of artists and creators. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8N...

Got a bit distracted watching the $200k stolen Lego story this evening but did squeeze in a little time to start wiring up placeholder SFX for minesweeping interactions. Slight headphone warning on the mine explosion. #indiedev #gamedev #godot

Got inventory and train management working again. Upgrades are back on the menu boys! Hope you're all in for a good weekend 🌞 #indiedev #gamedev #godot

Got a little bit distracted adding some juice to the main menu, back to fixing equipping train car upgrades now. Looks like I need to figure out how to capture the mouse in Godot movie maker mode too 🤔 #gamedev #indiedev #godot

Minefield fog shader now working again after the rework for speedy load times. Also been doing a little mood boarding for some other cool games to take inspiration from. #indiedev #solodev #gamedev #godot

Finally sorted some splash screens for the game startup. Required moving the map setup to its own thread to prevent the loading animations getting blocked. Turns out using multi-threading with local to scene shaders can really lag scene instantiation! #indiedev #gamedev #godot

Another benefit of the map/track rework is that there's no longer a speed limit required to stop the game from breaking. You may experience extreme G forces at stations now though 😅 Time to try out the bullet train sprite 🚅 #indiedev #gamedev #godot

In the middle of a substantial update to incorporate feedback from the 0.1.0 release of Trainsweeper. I've completely reworked the map loading so there aren't any lag spikes when loading in new chunks. Now we've got a window of grid cells that load data as you move around. #indiedev #gamedev #godot

What a great weekend! Took a trip to the Lake District and got my first ever donations for my game dev work 🥳. A huge thank you to whoever the anonymous donors were 🙏

Trainsweeper has made it to 0.1.0 🥳 I'm looking for playtesters so if you think anyone might be interested please share 🙏 #indiedev #indiegame #gamedev

Mission system is now in for Trainsweeper. Starting with 3 themes so you can pick based on your strategy/opportunities. Systems are coming together and now you have some solid reasons to push across the map. #indiedev #gamedev #godot #minesweeper

By fire be purged! 🔥🔥 Got the bug problem under control, also added train engine health and damage so you definitely have to deal with them now. #indiedev #gamedev #godot #minesweeper

The vector rave has been debugged but now we've got bigger problems. I should probably add a flamethrower... 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜 #indiedev #gamedev #minesweeper #godot

When debugging vectors turns into a rave 😂 #gamedev #indiedev

Trainsweeper 0.0.9 is now up 🥳 overhauled the item and storage system. Cars now have their own storage rather than a global inventory. Be careful if you cargo containers full of loot get too close to a mine 💣 #indiedev #indiegame #gamedev #minesweeper #pixelart

Choo choo 🚂🚋🚋 #indiedev #gamedev #minesweeper

A bunch of improvements for train movement and now on to some fun upgrades! Gave the vision booster some oomph, added a vision mapper to remember where you have been (even after unequipping 😗), and added a vision caster so you can reveal cells outside of your usual range. #gamedev #indiedev #godot

Set out to make managing your train cars more fun and disappeared down a rabbit hole of collision objects and math scribblings for a week. I have emerged though and now you can manage your train car couplings and the cars can be destroyed too! 🧨 #indiedev #gamedev #godot #minesweeper

Boing! #indiedev #gamedev

A chunkier update today for Trainsweeper 0.0.6. Have done a small UI pass to clean things up, added range and equipped indicator for the grappling hook upgrade, streamlined the start of the game to get to gameplay straight away, and plenty more! #indiedev #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #minesweeper

Grappling hook! Had fun seeing what a mid-game multi-car train might look like too 🚂🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋 #indiegame #indiedev #gamedev #minesweeper #godot

Fun little side quest to replace the fog sprite with a pixel art fog shader. Turns noise into a moving fog cloud, sampling 16x16 pixels to match the other tiles and handles all the corners for me 🥳 #indiedev #indiegame #gamdev #pixelart #godot #minesweeper #trains

Collected a bunch of updates into Trainsweeper [Alpha] 0.0.3, but obviously mine count colours are the most important! Facepalmed earlier when I realised how long I went before adding them 🤦 mangomoose.itch.io/trainsweeper #indiegame #gamedev #minesweeper #godot #pixelart #trains

Dialogs and tutorials are now being driven by a new dynamic control system! This makes it super easy to add in new ones which I have been doing to make the game intro smoother. You can give it a go at mangomoose.itch.io/trainsweeper #indiegames #gamedev #godot #minesweeper

Final push to reach my goal of starting a new game this year. Alpha for Trainsweeper is now available on Itch! Much more to add but this is a good point to see what people think of the idea. #indiedev #gamedev #minesweeper #godot #indiegames mangomoose.itch.io/trainsweeper

Trainsweeper (working title) demo is coming along well. Just finished the basics of the upgrade system to unlock abilities and added a simple dithering effect for the field of view. Next up is improving the generated events out there in the world. #indiedev #gamedev #minesweeper #godot

I'm back! Contracts have kept me busy recently but I've been working on a new game. Been following a tutorial to generate 2D sprites from 3D models for the trains in my minesweeper variant, it's been a ton of fun! #indiedev #gamedev

Whitematter is now available on Steam! If you like cognitive puzzles that challenge your spatial reasoning skills, rather than timing and agility, this indie first-person puzzler game may be right up your street. store.steampowered.com/app/3454540

Super psyched to announce that I voice your friendly(?) facility Scientist in "Whitematter," a really neat sci-fi puzzle platformer out today! store.steampowered.com/app/3454540/... Keep an eye out for her voicelogs if you're looking to dial up the ✨horror✨ of your gravitational shenanigans... 👀

Have been tweaking the swarm behaviour, core mechanics, and game look over the past month. Recently got busy with work and can't quite find the fun in the game idea for now. Going to put this prototype down and move on to the next. Latest build at mangomoose.itch.io/project-ohm #indiedev #gamedev

Request approved, turret inbound #gamedev #indiegamedev #indiedev #godot #indiegames

We are at 10,000 bugs! The swarm is truly upon us. Dialed in the compute shader and added in Godot's WorkerThreadPool for parallel processing of all that data. Now it's time to figure out how to fight them, lock and load boys. #indiedev #indiegamedev #gamedev #godot #indiegames

Have been having fun learning how to animate thousands of meshes for the game prototype using Blender, vertex animation textures, and Godot MultiMesh. A common theme is emerging, offload it to the GPU! #gamedev #indiegame #godot #indiedev #blender

Swarm tech just got a major upgrade! Navigation now works using the triangles from the generated terrain, multiple flow graphs to prevent dead zones, and blending with the boid behaviour. Unoptimised prototype code is managing to hold up at over 60 FPS with 3000 boids 🥳 #indiedev #indiegame #godot

Hold the bridge! #indiedev #indiegame #gamedev #godot

Couple of updates for the bug swarm base builder prototype. Added vertex shader animations for the enemies so we can keep the swarms in the thousands and added a one click button to toggle buildings on and off. Playtest prototype in comments! #indiegames #indiedev #gamedev #godot #rts #swarms

Playable prototype is now available! If you're into 'diverting power to weapons', frantically managing everything like a WoW healer, or just fending off huge swarms of bugs please give it a go at: mangomoose.itch.io/base-builder... #indiegames #strategy #godot #rts #gamedev

It actually feels like a game! 🥳 Added building resources back in, a factory to produce them, a battery to store extra power if your network isn't fully utilised. Hit the feeling of redirecting power around your base as the swarms start to come in #indiedev #indiegames #gamedev #basebuilder #godot

Experimenting with combining flow field pathfinding with the boids to get the swarms moving through the terrain. Added in some height map data to have them avoid climbing walls too. #indiedev #gamedev #basebuilder #GodotEngine #indiegames

Got the aliens swarming and interacting with the ground/bullets again. Stress tested up to 10,000 buggy boys! Making use of compute shaders and Godot servers to get the required performance. #indiedev #indiegames #godot #basebuilder #rts

Progress on the base building prototype. Multi level map generation, map textures, cables can build on slopes and connect 1 to 1 (makes pylons essential now for splitting routes), and experimenting with enemy waves. #indiedev #indegames #gamedev #godot #basebuilder #rts

Updated camera controls, new power emission visualisation, enemies are now attracted to power signals, buildings can now be destroyed and power routes react, minerals can now be extracted to complete the level, and some banging tunes! Good day 😎 #indiedev #indiegames #basebuilder #gamedev #godot

Added a power 'emissions' view to the base builder prototype so you can see the electromagnetic noise you're broadcasting out into the world. Enemies will be attracted to this so you'll need to think about how and where you're using your energy. #indiedev #gamedev #indiegames #basebuilder #godot