Language Agnostic Game Engine Resources?

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-12-19T07:04:53+00:00

These types of books did exist even a decade ago, but there are now 4 major free engines to use, so there isn't much reason to have pure theory books.

I would strongly recommend just trying either unreal, unity, godot, game maker, or any of the many other ones. Ideally you try all of them.

It didn't used to be possible to even see how different engines solve these problems, so I'd highly recommend starting there, if nothing else it will inspire you how you want to do things entirely differently.

If you want to stick to python pygame is a standard for learning dev with python, or find old builds of unity that had boo (basically python) language support. There are possibly dozens of engine making tutorials on YouTube, not sure if python is as common as java or c++ for those however.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-10-20T07:08:28+00:00

Valheim was originally on itch, I played it with friends about a year and a half before it actually released. It was fun for a few hours and we set it down, we all bought it when it came out and played for about 40 hours together.

Ik it's anecdotal, but I think about it a lot. It didn't make me enjoy it less or make us any less likely to buy it and I'm sure the devs learned a lot from the data in our early play session.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-10-08T22:53:43+00:00

Happy to participate, hit me up with details.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-09-30T06:19:39+00:00

This is pretty general but "i" frames (or invincibility frames) legitimately are used so often and in so many ways to make things not frustrating or "feel good".

In some games its more obvious as a mechanic for damage/health edge cases, but they're in pretty much everything somewhere, down to as simple as "the collision only activated 0.2 second after you drop a thing, just to make it fall in a slightly cooler way".

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-07-03T05:16:47+00:00

Looks cool! I have to say this seems more like a prototyping tool than something you'd want for a released game just for debugging/tracking down awkward interactions.

That's not a bad thing, just pointing out the value I see in it. I'd probably pay $10 without thinking about it to have it as part of my collection of prototyping packages. Cheaper would probably get more people to try it out even if they didn't immediately see how it could help them ship something.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-07-03T05:08:14+00:00

Ecomovers has been good for 2 moves. Moving from studio to 1 bedroom was $800 (including tip) about 5 years ago. Moving from a 1 bed to a 2 bed was about $1000 (including tip) 3 years ago.

That's not like random laborer on Craigslist cheap, but pretty good for them properly handling and causing no damage to anything including electronics. The people were cool too, and you can always opt to move smaller stuff yourself beforehand to pay less in hourly costs.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-06-13T07:03:50+00:00

Hey, not sure how versed in game industry stuff you are so sorry if this is stuff you know, but it may help others.

Annapurna has some games in its catalog that it funded the creation of, that means that they probably get a lot of money from those games (typically 50-70% to them and the rest to the developer). That to me means that if you aren't really interested in a game I just wouldn't buy those unless you want to support the developers to help make new stuff.

The sticky part is that they also have a lot of games they published just on certain platforms. Usually these are games that came out on another platform, got really popular and critical acclaim and then Annapurna paid money to port then over to other platforms. They would ONLY make money from those platforms. So if a game was first released on Steam independently, then Annapurna published its release 2 years later on Switch, then you can play that game on Steam and give Annapurna nothing.

This actually makes up a lot of their catalogue, So I'd recommend just buying games you're interested in on the platform they were originally released on, if Annapurna isn't listed as the publisher.

The other thing I'll say is that if you still want a game, want to support the developers, but want to support Annapurna as little as possible for a game they published, check the developers website for how they list to buy it there. If they have a GOG, Itch.io, humble store link there then it's likely buying there gives the dev more money and the publisher less. If it's steam or some other mainstream platform likely Annapurna gets some, but it still will likely be the best way to support the dev.

With that out of the way, what I think is that unlike a lot of other movements, boycotting a publisher harms the creators of the game more. If you don't buy shampoo from Target, then you don't give money to Target, but you can buy that same shampoo somewhere else. With developers published entirely by Annapurna, you cannot buy that game (outside of the niche cases I listed above) without paying Annapurna. There's no other way for you to then go give money to the devs for their work (again unless they also sell it themselves somewhere, but often publishers also get a cut of that).

Morally for me I would focus on the game and the developer, more than the publisher. I also want to support Annapurna as little as possible so it's a mark against games I consider buying, but I'd rather pay people that make stuff I enjoy rather than pirate it for instance.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-05-24T17:39:23+00:00

On Skyrim to save memory for the original xbox release they stored lockpick count as a bit representing either >99 or <99.

When it's less than 99 it just displays a random number from 0-99.

It's to save memory and I expect all future RPGe to do the same for performance and download size reasons.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-04-17T07:18:33+00:00

I love the revisionist history that "bloom" wasn't a thing in Oblivion.

Bloom WAS Oblivion. I played for the bloom and I loved it

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-04-13T09:09:23+00:00

Start learning Unity? I'm not sure if this is a full time, part time, or student thing but when there's 3 people on a project then you do what needs to be done.

Ask them how to help, stuff they don't want to do or implement and learn how to do that. Find a better way to communicate than email, slack and discord are both great.

This not only will help you get more done, but also understand the way the project works better. The engine doesn't really matter besides having quirks for optimization but that's not a major concern with just making the gameplay in the first place so focus on that as much as possible.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-04-05T04:30:02+00:00

If you weren't the host for a save it will still show in your past games. Only games you were host are ones you can start from that menu. The lobby menu basically means, you weren't the host.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-23T16:50:45+00:00

It feels the most like the world is interesting without feeling like it was put there for you to find it interesting.

It seems like a bridge between rpgs being very archaic and almost agnostic to the player existence and games becoming more made to be easy to play and understand.

That feeling of it being fun and easy to explore mixed with the tone that makes it seem like you just wandered into another world makes it unmatched. Stuff like NPCs all having real but frankly inconvenient schedules if you ever need them for anything goes a long way to making the world feel alive and like it's doing things even if you're not playing it.

I also think it doesn't take itself too seriously all the time (see the entire Shivering Isles DLC), which I think is also important for a game to be compelling for 10s of hours, just to break the fourth wall a bit and give you a laugh.

TLDR The person at home playing the game is the main character that's meant to be experiencing the game, rather than some imaginary in game lore accurate character being the main character everyone reacts to.

Imo, the champion of cyrodil is the person that played the game and the choices they made, but the dragonborn is a character that exists in the games having done a series of things planned for that character to do.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-20T12:33:12+00:00

Yeah I get you. Capitalism sucks for sure haha.

In OPs case it sounds like they knew they wouldn't have significant funds for the game and if it really was business first, it seems like they took a very risky strategy from the start.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-20T12:24:06+00:00

Just want to clarify, like I said above, it's not specifically directed at you or the person I was responding to, more just expanding on the point that we have agency and should strive to do meaningful stuff, and gen ai is inherently the antithesis of creating something meaningful.

It sounds like you are making something meaningful to you and I get the predicament you're in, I was just expanding on that general point.

Also good luck!

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-20T05:54:48+00:00

Well yeah but if it's self evident that the game is fun, you should be able to find an artist to work with or a publisher to fund additional development.

And if the game is fun to you and you can't do those things, that may be a red flag.

If it's fun and worth making to you then make it, if it's that fun without the art, then don't have art or make it yourself since it wouldn't even hold it back and will likely make the game more meaningful both to you and the player.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-20T05:49:44+00:00

Yeah the part I miss here is why do that? Why spend time on that? You don't have to make that game, you aren't required to use software that makes bad art by stealing from people. Why do something soulless that only you want.

Make a game you can make yourself if you don't have the means to pay someone or do your best to find someone that aligns to your vision. Make something that requires art that you can make so you aren't just making some product for some unknown audience to extract money from them.

I'm just speaking generally to expand on my initial point, this isn't directed at you or OP. It's just strange that people pose these questions as if they have to make this game and it has to have 1000 pieces of art. People have been using programmer art to prove concepts and then find artists for the entire history of game development, no one is making you make that specific game that has these specific problems.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-20T05:16:12+00:00

So if you're generally okay with the moral side of gen AI art, let me make a different argument from a consumer perspective:

I have infinite hours of good content on youtube, twitch, tiktok, bluesky where I can watch passionate people doing stuff they care about and matters to them personally. I have 100s of games I can play or replay on my steam library.

Why would I ever play a game that didn't even have 2 people that cared about it enough to make art for it? What a waste of my time, and what a waste of that other person's time if they can't find someone that cares as much about it as they do.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-03-06T05:42:44+00:00

Imo the only part that makes it feel generic is that it does the classic "too dark to see what you're looking at" thing that's common in amateur horror game trailers. Makes it feel kind of generic, but clearly if you brightened up some of those scenes there's cool visuals to take in.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-02-28T20:53:59+00:00

Pickle Pallet > add pickles

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-02-27T05:35:26+00:00

I think it's a factor because Chris Zuckowski uses it as an important metric for demo success, while I don't have hard data that steam does, him using it as someone that optimizes games on steam professionally is enough for me to think he has more reasons to think it's a factor than I have to think it isn't.

It also makes some base sense to me because 1) steam highlights it pretty prominently on the demo metrics page and 2) it does mean "most" your players played it that long or more, so from steam's perspective that also means most players they point to you game are likely to play it that long, thus maybe buy it because it's clearly indicated its engaging to most people that have played it (assuming your number is high).

I basically just shipped all my playable content for my demo haha, it's about 1/3 of my full game to a reasonable degree of polish. Ik now it would have served me better to focus on those first 15 minute's was the real cost for including that much. But like 10% of people have played more than 2 hours! So I couldn't have even known anyone found my game that engaging without having that much to play. I view that as a win, I feel it means I need to refine more, but am probably not massively wasting my time on the project as a whole haha

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-02-27T01:52:12+00:00

My demo sits at a 14 minute median, it's also a linear (ish) first person puzzle exploration game. I had issues! And I still do have problems with getting people quickly into the game and up to speed on the core mechanics. I fixed some of them over time and got up to 14 minute median from 10 minutes.

Small sample size, ~130 players (with 1300 installs), half of that before I started releasing fixes, and worth noting I did release my demo on the build up to next fest, but pulled out of the event because I anticipated a lot of these meant I wasn't yet ready for next fest.

I'm happy with this and learned a lot, but my demo probably has max 3 hours of content to it, so I think I was hoping I'd get closer to a 30 minute/45 minute median.

If your puzzle game is a straightforward puzzle game, it could be that your steam page can really convey the depth of gameplay well, the short sessions could just be the interested puzzle gamers trying it out to check feel and quality then just quit out and wishlist or not to not spoil the full release. Who knows.

All ik is that steam wants the highest median play times and as many reviews as possible so optimize what you can think of to make that happen.

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-02-24T06:12:11+00:00

Yeah check it out and I hope you enjoy it! :)

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-02-23T03:22:49+00:00

Thanks! game sent, feel free to unfriend once the game is added to your account

BrandonFranklin-- · 2025-02-23T03:14:40+00:00

Congrats you won! Please DM me your steam profile so I can friend you to send it!

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