@GameDeveloperDotCom The strategy will be the same as with DRM: just keep pushing it until people give up on pushing back.

This is John Walker, btw, an individual who previously described Might and Magic as "a series of increasingly terrible dungeon crawlers", but this easily replaces that for me as his signifying quote.

"I’ve played maybe 372 [Next Fest] demos, all of which were poop."

Yup OK, I've never liked this bozo's attitude, but if this is really how an indie games blog approaches Next Fest of all things, I'm done.

“Being despondent about the state of games media is evergreen. And yet, failures such as this seem to dig a deeper and deeper hole that the remainder of worthwhile writing to be found there will be buried inside of.”
~
this is good critical writing. absolutely recommended reading: https://breakingarrows.substack.com/p/one-year-later?r=2ieh0
~
#GamesMedia #Journalism #Writing #IndieGame

@davidgerard "Here are some unexplored options, which we encourage AI safety researchers to consider:"

How about "don't connect a mailer daemon to an LLM?" I could have told them that one before they started.

Today I pushed a pretty big update that I have been working on since before Next Fest, which mostly focuses on QoL improvements. I really could have kept going, but I got my priorities done (including some accessibility items) and I wanted to put it out there.

Honestly my favorite is probably just the block-shaded health bars. The old ones clashed with the portraits, but it took me a while to decide what to do with them.

https://midnightspiregames.itch.io/minerva-labyrinth/devlog/971842/v064-quicksave-cursor-repeat-target-highlights-and-more

#IndieDev #GameDev #MinervaLabyrinth

Someone just posted on my itch page to tell me they've been coming back to my 2D #KSP clone for years, and that's the best feeling. I had no idea anyone was playing it, and have never gotten positive feedback on it in the six years it's been up. If you like an #IndieGame you should absolutely let them know. Don't assume they know, especially if it's a free game. This goes for any #creative product really. Making things and releasing them to the internet to be judged by strangers will fill anyone with doubt, no matter how obviously good their work is. Tell them.

I really underestimated how much QoL and GUI improvement I needed to do. I had hoped to be comfortably on the road to release by now, but I'm still doing a ton of polish and small usability features.

The good news is that I intend to keep making RPGs, so this effort should not just make this game better, but the next one as well. Though I'm starting to stress about my release timeline.

#IndieDev #GameDev #SoloDev

@eyeofmidas @sinbad My employer fits that description, but I blame that on management more than the developers. Our code base is constantly in churn because someone that we never see or speak to hands down a mandate that Foobar is passe now, we have to migrate to Barfaz; or that some app X has to be sunset and merged into app Y, but meanwhile we have to create a whole new app Z and migrate some other functionality out of Y. Even part of their AI propaganda is doing code migrations faster. 🙄

@sinbad Meanwhile, I am clearing out the new requirements with a bit of analysis and a few lines of code here and there. Updating existing code as often as possible, not bolting on a shit-ton of extra maintenance and confusion. It's already causing problems and we're not even done yet, since folks are sometimes unable to explain what the Copilot test that they introduced is supposed to do.

@sinbad I'm starting to see this in our unit tests, as a quality gating change has required us to overhaul our test suite. Copilot apparently tends to follow a particular comment pattern when producing unit tests, so they are instantly recognizable. I am starting to see a lot of redundant, unhelpful, badly-written tests that follow that pattern cluttering the code base - exactly what I warned the team would happen if we relied on Copilot to speed through this.

Why I Refuse to Use "AI"
https://benui.ca/why-i-refuse-ai/

@mortoray Yeah, now I understand why some games take control away or create contrived scenarios where an NPC just really wants you to view the status menu. I don't want to spend considerable development time implementing something so distasteful, but maybe I need to? 😒

@ivydupler Honestly not a bad idea, for recognizing some of the many, many games that are well-made and worth playing, but that were overshadowed by the half-dozen that everyone talks about.

@mortoray It is worse when you do provide those tips and they don't work. That is way too common and I don't know what to do about it.

@johnaustin @antnisp @sinbad We haven't been mandated -yet-, but signs are pointing that way. Word has come down that the execs are starting to get irate that our group isn't using Copilot enough (they monitor this).

Given their newfound fanaticism for AI and their predilection for idiotic and counterproductive metrics in general, I would not be surprised if they start evaluating us based on how many AI responses we accept per month or some such foolishness.

@EntangledPear @eternal_skies_tcg Yeah, my game is in a small subgenre with simple amateur graphics and sound, and that's generally not what streamers/showcases/etc want from indie games. A few have kindly shown it, but most reject it, even when it seems like it'd be a good fit.

If you know of any YouTube channels that cover PC indie RPGs that don't look like Secret of Mana, I'd be interested (both as a player and a developer).

I feel like Two Cakes is a pretty different scenario than Two Thousand Cakes, unfortunately.

#GameDev #IndieDev #SoloDev

@EntangledPear @eternal_skies_tcg This type of thing is maddening. "That was in the tutorial," "that's in the options menu," "this character explains what to do," etc.

I've looked around a bit for small streamers or YouTubers that seem like they might be interested in my current project, but I keep coming up empty. By definition, the ones most likely to surface are the biggest channels that play the most popular games. 😒

@grumpygamer Did they reiterate afterwards how much time and effort they were saving with AI?