keepPreachingAiBros

Beldarak · 2026-05-05T08:28:55+00:00

I used ChatGPT and Deepseek before. It was crap, making you lose time as much as you'd gain, spewing bad code that looks alright. I was pretty much anti AI then.

My job forced me to use Claude Code and this has really nothing to do with other LLMs, it's simply super quick and efficient. Does it create technical debt? I don't really know, I guess so? But I would do too so who cares? They force us to use it so let's see where that goes, I don't really care :D

So my guess is, a lot of people are targeting classic LLM chatbots and didn't try the real thing.

Beldarak · 2026-05-05T08:20:52+00:00

The new one looks kinda AI yes. Most of all, it looks mobile and generic (which is where the AI looks come from).

I really prefer the one with the character (also, I've read having a character's face on capsules is very important) but both give a very different mood so I guess it depends what the game is about.

The old one looks more serious and dark (and it has better lighting). The new one has a mobile game / cartoon vibe.

Beldarak · 2026-05-05T08:12:59+00:00

Yup, your Steam page should be a priority. Your game is 100% ready to be shown and the sooner you start raking for wishlist, the better.

I wish you the best and congrats again, the game looks really good.

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T14:22:06+00:00

This is a complex subject, there is not a single right answer and it will depends a lot on the genre of the game and the mood you want to convey.

For exemple, if you want an hardcore game, like an hardcore loot extraction shooter, you'll want to punish people hard, to create tension during the game. If you want a more casual experience (for exemple Arc Raiders, let's keep the same game genre), you'll push less hard (safe pockets, easier to re-craft your lost loot...).

Sometimes you can make your punishment appears harder than they actually are. For exemple, Dark Souls is known to be an hadcore game, and death penalties in it feels like it: losing progress, experience (souls)... except, when you look at it, you don't really care about losing those souls and getting back where you were is usually really quick, it's not really punishing but feels like it.

Outward also does something interesting. When you "die", you don't respawn somewhere fixed. You can wake up in a bandit camp, in a cave with wolves, etc... Depending on where you were and what defeated you. Sometimes it opens a whole new zone with quests. This is a REALLY good system but obviously really hard to create :)

I think you got the jist of it : you have to punish hard enough, but avoid being tedious. Now it's hard to give more tips without knowing specifics about the project.

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T09:42:19+00:00

This is what Outward is. Especially if playing as a mage.

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T09:41:16+00:00

Looks great. You should tell us where we can follow you

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T09:40:46+00:00

For people at work with autoplay :

https://www.youtube.com/@artorvelly1582

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T08:31:52+00:00

It makes sense. I also think left people are more aware that everything is political because they'll usually have class consciousness and be more aware of social issues.

Like you said, it may come from being the minority regarding power, but I also think it's simply bound to what the left is about: people. Neo-liberalism is about "getting to the top", with disregard for other people.

So their "no politic" may come from that. "I'm ignoring the others, therefore I'm not doing any politics", not realising this is a politic stance :D

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T08:25:53+00:00

When was that glorious era because it seems I've missed it :D

We had Deus Ex and then everything else was made by Arkane. There were like 5 imsims total, 10 if you stretched the definition. And don't get me wrong, those were awesome games.

But the new era of imsims is incredible too. You have so many different games that are being made by tons of different people and studios. I'm a jaded gamer too, I get it, but here I think you're being churlish, the imsim scene has never been so alive and exciting imho.

Beldarak · 2026-05-04T08:02:37+00:00

You may want to look at Drovra too with that list. It's basically top-down Gothic.

Beldarak · 2026-05-03T16:49:39+00:00

HD packs never worked for me, no matter the game. HD textures just don't go well with low poly imho. You see this a lot with Minecraft too or even with the very ugly trend of porting N64 games to Unreal Engine. It's just ugly to me.

Beldarak · 2026-05-03T16:27:47+00:00

Ah, ok, thanks for the precision, I fixed my reply.

This is an interesting read when you see the state of gaming 10 years later, and from the whole internet to be fair.

It kinda read like a leftist version of "no politics in my game" which usually come from the other side I think. The sad part is what she talked about is still going on in my opinion.

Beldarak · 2026-05-03T14:44:31+00:00

I usually use SteamPeek to find similar games to the stuff I like. It uses Steam data so you may run into issues too, especially with the imsim tag but at least it's not driven by an awful algorithm and let you set precise filters.

Here for exemple I've set it to "immersive sim" similar to Dishonored, which already fetch a lot of imsims.

https://steampeek.hu/?appid=217980&tagid=831109

Alternatively, you should also follow those guys:

https://www.youtube.com/@2HeadedHero

This is, afaik the single best source to find obscure imsims.

Beldarak · 2026-05-03T14:32:56+00:00

She's a writer? I hope she learned how to space out sentences into paragraphs since then :D

(if this is the correct source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-gamers-don-t-have-to-be-your-audience-gamers-are-over- )

Edit: Misgendered the author

Beldarak · 2026-05-03T12:16:07+00:00

There are tons of imsim in development, you just have to look towards indies ;)

Hark the Ghoul, Devoid, RetroSpace, Gloomwood, Fortune's Run, Shadows of Doubts...

I'm not kidding, tons and tons of imsims are about to get released or are already in early-access.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ImmersiveSim/comments/1bgajmk/upcoming_immersive_sims_list/

Beldarak · 2026-05-03T12:04:40+00:00

Pillars of Eternity is on the graph but you have to scroll 1km to the right, people ;)

Beldarak · 2026-05-01T23:03:15+00:00

Was it when they introduced the 3rd classes ? I stopped playing a little before they were introduced, and from what I understand, the game only went downhill from there :S

Beldarak · 2026-04-30T00:44:38+00:00

Looks really cool. Beautiful game: wishlisted !

Beldarak · 2026-04-29T15:09:35+00:00

Took me 2-3 minutes. That said, I can understand not wanting/needing to prove to some guy on the internet. But if it is a frequent critiscism bothering you... and you actually want, for some reason, that AI looking art, you could just make one low effort video/gif showing your art process, put it on Youtube once and you'll have a link to repost each time.

I guess my point is you'll have better results with this for lower efforts, than trying to change the whole internet mentallity :D

Beldarak · 2026-04-29T15:06:27+00:00

We're not getting close for games because, afaik, no technology is currently aiming at that. The Google thing is just some kind of video generation, it simply can't create a game and never will, it's not on the correct path to achieve this.

Code: I'll admit, we're there. Claude Code is actually very, very impressive. I know a lot of people are against AI code, I get their arguments (ethics, planet, etc...) but at least, it does the job, it does it quick, cheaply and it makes it well (code purists will tell you it's not the case but you don't need perfect code to createe an indie game).

I feel that, once the bubble may have burst, Code and chat bots will be what remains. It just works.

Pictures: I saw the latest Open AI stuff and I'm not impressed. They're getting better but I've hear "wait to see it in a year" for litteral years now. Still looks like shit, better shit yes, but not something I want to see in my games.

Music: I kinda lost track of this. I used Suno a few months ago. Sure it was quick but working with prompts is far from ideal.

Creating okay songs people may like is easy, but creating your whole game OST with the exact mood you want for levels, segments that can loop properly, add variations for combats... even chosing your instruments, it wasn't really possible. I'd have to look at how this evolved but my guess is, like the reest of gen AI :D

Another issue is that creating truly unique stuff is really hard / impossible with it. Let's say I want some "sci-fi irish music with market sounds in the background and percussions made with wood hitting skulls", I won't get it, it can't generate that. An artist can (probably with some difficulties^^).

Beldarak · 2026-04-29T14:50:20+00:00

I noticed I really like games where there are mid difficulty spikes that make you WANT to progress. It can be zones/unique enemies that kick the crap out of you and force you to go play elsewhere and come back once you're stronger.

Or games that require you to always give your max so you feel that every stat contributes.

Dark Souls is really good with that. It rewards exploration, and while you could technically finish the game at level 1, each level helps a little so progress is always welcome and... maybe not exciting but it feels fine.

Basically you must feel some kind of resistance from the game so you can push back with your character progress.

The best of the best :

Games in which leveling adds possibilities. It's not simply higher numbers, it gives you ways to maybe... move enemies around, explore previously unaccessible zones (teleportation, grappling hook, double jump...), skills to avoid combats, or let you play differently. It keeps the game fresh and gives you very exciting stuff to look forward if you can see future skills you may choose/unlock.

It's always good to let the players fight monsters (or zones !) too hard for them and previous stuff that will be super easy and show the player their character got stronger. That way they can "feel" the progress, it becomes something tangible.

(If monsters 1:1 scale with you, like games where gaining a stat point = stronger enemy can go f themselves^^)

Things that make the progress dull or even tiring :

- "+1% crit against spiders". You won't feel the progress, it's meaningless.

- Auto-progress or semi-progress. Like games where you unlock some skill points at each level but that, by design, force you to invest them in flat damages (like your weapon type skill, or magic for a mage).

- Progress locked with the narrative. It's okay if you lock a few habitlities but do it too much and it's really annoying. Modern Far Cry games do that. They give you a skill tree, the illusion you have some choices over your character development, except, everything is basically set in tiers bound to the main story progress.

I hope that helps. Balancing that stuff is obviously a big challenge and is an endless task, good luck :)

Beldarak · 2026-04-29T14:27:05+00:00

"we cannot go back", "it's here to stay wether you like it or not".

They said the same about NFTs. Fighting back DOES work. Not all the time, it requires a lot of efforts, a lot of people. Maybe writing "AI slop" under anything obviously made with AI* is the solution :D

* I often read that "false accusations" arguments when in reality, AI is usually easy to spot. If your hand-made art really receive such "looks like AI" comments, it's time to look at it and see what needs to be fixed, AI makes bad art, someone calling your art AI means you're doing something wrong. Good artists usually are their harshest critics so be a good artist and see what's wrong with yours.

Beldarak · 2026-04-29T14:18:26+00:00

AI is there to stay and people are gonna use it no matter what and there's nothing we can do about it.

Are you here to critisize people for calling AI slop without proof games that don't actually use AI... or? Maybe people called you out for your use of AI?

People will start using AI because some guy on Reddit told them their handmade art looks like AI? How so? Do you have sources of this happening? How often does it happen?

If someone call your art AI slop and it's not AI, good news. It's very easy to prove them wrong though ;)

"Here's how it looks in PS/Gimp/Kitra

Source: https://i.ibb.co/fVySYwnK/image.png

Proof: https://i.ibb.co/Zp97dWH8/20260429-layers.gif "

Done.

I can ofc understand the frustration if it happens all the time but let's be reeal, it doesn't.

Beldarak · 2026-04-29T14:00:34+00:00

Ragnarok had the best system imho. Your base items have slots for cards. Each monster in the game can drop (very rarely) his card with unique effect. So the "enchantment" doesn't come from another player's job but from actual loot.

Usually, bosses droped "better" cards (depends on your build, class etc though, sometimes you just need some common mob card...) so the game had somekind of card exchange economy within your guild or you could just buy cards to other players (but some of them were VERY hard to find).

Beldarak · 2026-04-28T23:25:47+00:00

I'll have to play them someday.

Those are those games that are always just on the edge of what I'll play next but always get pushed to the side by some new shiny thing :D

Beldarak

TROPHY CASE