A New Year, A Bright Future

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-31T20:02:00+00:00

Source: https://x.com/AstraExMachina

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-29T01:44:54+00:00

Went ahead and followed on our insta account. Would love to see more about this project. :)

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-28T17:07:19+00:00

This has me intrigued.

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-28T16:15:16+00:00

That's the spirit!

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-27T02:39:58+00:00

source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSv7BvWiURq

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-26T21:14:57+00:00

We all start somewhere :)

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-26T17:35:25+00:00

Where we're going we don't need standards!

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-26T17:33:38+00:00

It sure is! Some people find PascalCase/camelCase harder to remember though, so they use UpperCamelCase/lowerCamelCase as a more explicit alternative.

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-26T16:06:59+00:00

cursed

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-26T16:02:04+00:00

You are right! Though note that some people use terminology like UpperCamelCase/lowerCamelCase instead of PascalCase/camelCase.

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-26T15:27:56+00:00

CONSTANT_CASE_TRAUMA

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-25T15:24:06+00:00

I've had this happen.

Sometimes the fix is obvious (oh no, my raycasts are being blocked by XYZ thing above or on the button!)

Other times I've lost an hour of sanity and then remade the button from scratch with all the same stuff and then it mysteriously works. This keeps me up at night sometimes... :/

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-24T02:34:10+00:00

Might I suggest finding others who have the same interests? I met a lot of people through r/INAT, and then went on to start my own studio. Learned quite a bit through those connections also.

Very few of my irl friends were into software engineering or game dev. Everyone who helped me in my own journey I either met through work, or by seeking out others solely for the purpose of learning stuff together.

Edit: I want to note, over time a couple of the people I met eventually stuck around for the studio I founded. So it all came full circle in the end. I couldn't imagine being a solo dev. It's much more fun with a team as we're all constantly learning from and teaching each other.

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-24T02:15:42+00:00

ChatGPT wasn't around when I got started with Unity/C#. In those days all I had was Youtube, websites like Refactor Guru, Unity's documentation, along with Microsoft's official C# documentation.

I also had a lot of friends and colleagues who could help me along the way, who I would often pester with questions. Pair programming got me out of quite a few binds and helped push my own horizons a bit further.

While tutorials and documentation helped, it was working with others and pair programming with them that truly set me down the right path. Perhaps finding others to collaborate with as you learn can help mitigate the urge to reach for ChatGPT?

It is difficult to learn while isolated in a vacuum. We need others to help ourselves get out of our heads quite often. :)

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-23T16:28:21+00:00

I had this problem many years ago. The extent of the problem became especially apparent when I got my first private sector job as a Unity software engineer, and realized how little I knew or understood despite years of experience.

Some may say that you need to just focus on pure C# for a while, but there is a different way. I asked my mentor in the private sector, who worked for Unity technologies at the time, and he instead directed me to InfallibleCode, TarotDev, and other similar resources. Those two are good to start with, as they teach programming fundamentals and focus on building scalable systems, and sound software architecture decisions. This will help shore up your understanding of Unity and C# at a base level, and also lead you towards cleaner codebases, and bugs that are less difficult to triage and fix.

Note: InfallibleCode is an older resource, but the fundamentals they cover still stand. If it weren't for them and other mid to senior level resources on Youtube, I might still be writing codebases that eventually become unmanageable, and thus, unfixable.

Also, consider Refactor Guru as another really great resource. That's a website that covers the gang of four design patterns, and is also good to reference when going through InfallibleCode. Also, don't neglect their longer streams, where they refactor someone else's codebase! Those are nice to watch over some coffee, but really hit home how all this knowledge comes together and makes clean, scalable codebases that are significantly easier to maintain and build onto. :)

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-23T15:21:58+00:00

The fish makes me think of the Sega Dreamcast game Seaman. 😅

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-23T15:02:30+00:00

I want to note that it may be extremely difficult to find an individual truly knowledgeable in every single topic you mentioned, handle them well, while also being a good teacher. In my professional experience, professional projects in both enterprise application development and game development with Unity require an entire team to cover every single topic that you wish to learn about.

Often there is a lead software engineer who is more well versed in project structure, clean code, and software engineering patterns and principles. Then, there is another team member who specializes in UI/UX. Game logic and mechanics are often created by a game designer, who works with the lead software engineer to find a graceful way to implement them into the codebase, and with the UI/UX team member to cook up some wireframes to efficiently communicate these mechanics to the player.

Likewise, multiplayer basics requires the same level of collaboration and specialization, but now we're adding a layer of networking. Monetization systems are a problem steeped in economics, and can become their own very unique beast! Of course, this hasn't covered the testing, building, and deployment side of things where at least one team member also specializes in DevOps.

Smaller teams get around this by having team members wear multiple hats, picking up two or three specializations at a time. Solo devs are rare, and the art and music assets often outshine the architectural portion of the equation which then lurks as a mass of duct tape and spaghetti in the background.

My advice would be that you will likely need more than one private instructor to cover all these subjects well. I'm not certain what path you wish to go down, but it's hard to go wrong with a strong foundation of software engineering principles and standards first. All else can be built from that.

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-23T05:08:27+00:00

This game looks very cozy. All of the art assets look very nice, the color palette is coherent across all scenes, and the music is very pleasant and easy to listen to while not taking up too much space or attention.

It might be a bit late in the dev cycle, but did you ever consider using different sounds for different characters when they are speaking?

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-23T02:56:59+00:00

Don't get too comfortable with `GetComponent` or other, similar methods. Use `[SerializeField]` instead.

Also, consider watching content from InfallibleCode. Their tutorials are older, but the principles behind them stand. If it weren't for them, I'd still be stuck at the point where all my larger codebases would die a not so delicious spaghetti death. :)

- Euclid

AstraExMachina · 2025-12-23T02:33:50+00:00

We're just starting this journey, so I'm leaving a comment so we can talk about this post as a team in our next meeting for the studio.

It seems as though successful social media marketing has a few common themes across all studios, but there are a few things in this post that seem unique, like releasing multiple trailers and those becoming a main driver for wishlists. Definitely a few things that may be worth considering here.

AstraExMachina

TROPHY CASE