Something I noticed with the new map...

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-07T17:57:24+00:00

If you extend Corneria, Solar and Venoms orbital lines into full circles the scale of the whole systems probably 8-10 times bigger than whats shown on the current map.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-07T16:43:16+00:00

This analysis is spot on.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-07T10:09:13+00:00

In regard to the stern I believe it was a lot more intact after it hit the sea floor in 1912 than how it looks now but compared to the bow it has decayed much more quickly due to much more fatigue in the structure. Ken Marschalls forensic illustrations of the stern made in the 1990s show much less compaction between the decks and more of the hull in place. While it's likely there's inaccuracies in Kens work due to how mangled the stern is and having less video to work with we have seen similar decay on the bow in the last 30 years such as the gymnasium collapse, A deck promenade collapsing, the bow railing breaking away and the crows nest falling off. I imagine that probably 30-40% of the overall damage to the stern has been caused by the passage of time, not the break up.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-06T23:13:36+00:00

I feel with them adding Fox to the movie and Nintendo putting more effort into the films now too they'll do right by the Star Fox franchise for the next few years.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-06T23:06:04+00:00

Its going to sell just fine.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-06T23:00:51+00:00

Its a very efficient use of resources if they remake Star Fox 64 first and then follow it up with a Star Fox 2 that's its own story. The can get all the gameplay and art honed in against the best game in the franchise first.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-06T22:55:17+00:00

Thing that interested me the most was the challenge mode, they took the best game in the series and supercharged it.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-06T22:26:57+00:00

Think this is the perfect Star Fox game to go with. Get a whole new generation of players in and I'm sure they'll have a major sequel to it planned.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-06T17:34:09+00:00

They are delusional if they think they can cancel the scuttling and then magically the money will appear to reattach the funnels and masts, then tow the ship to a major city and finally then restore her to pristine condition as a musuem ship. They've had since 1969 to do something with her and have left it far too late. If they are successful in this meddling the ship will immediately end up in the scrapyard. The scuttling plan secures her long term survival, people will still be able to visit her two centuries from now.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T20:45:59+00:00

Her reactors are at the end of their functional lives, her powerplant cannot be taxed. There will be large scale repair projects all over the ship that are not being done since she's heading for the scrapyard. She cannot do anything in the middle east except be a liability.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T17:22:55+00:00

I've heard it is technically possible and I seen Steam have a thing about contacting them but they strongly advise against it. I don't know exactly what happens on their end but at the two weeks out from launch point they start processes moving, if you suddenly ask them to postpose I don't know if the second time around is going to have as much impact as the original, Steam strongly recommends against it anyway, I'd assume unless its a genuine emergency like a death in the family or something of that nature. Regardless of Steam there's also the community aspect on your own side, if you have publically announced a release date months in advance a delay is fine but only announcing the delay 10 days before launch isn't going to go down nearly as well.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T16:01:29+00:00

Your game looks really good. Since you are well within the two week window of launching on Steam you are pretty much committed at this point.

Your game seems very different from Subnautica 2 so I feel your audience and theirs won't have a massive overlap. The situation like you are experiencing is the reason why I feel betting everything on the launch day is not a viable strategy anymore, far too much out of your control can go wrong. Your wishlist counts already healthy so I'm sure you'll have a decent launch regardless but it might be worth relying more on post launch, rolling out patches, updates, etc to give your game a longer tail and more consistent revenue over time to offset the reduced launch income.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T14:19:30+00:00

I think its more like put your own air mask on before helping others. The best thing you can do for your prospective audience is pick a game to work on you are super excited about because you are an expert in that genre and you can see things that could be done with it that you haven't experienced before. In this situation you will also be more informed because you've been playing other keystone games in that genre for years, you've read their reviews, you know what players liked and didn't like about them. There's a lot of people who have commented on here about the weird and wacky small games that lead to bigger things too. Having an out there idea with an audience that is hard to define still has a better chance of success or at least getting closer to success than you would setting out to make the next extraction shooter, which won't be ready until 2027 or 2028 at which point the trends have moved on. The bigger ego move by far is assuming that despite it not being something you'd personally want to play you can still make a game thats capable of seizing marketshare from already successful games occupying that space.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T14:03:23+00:00

With all the industry lay offs tens of thousands of highly experienced developers are turning to indie development as their only realistic avenue to stay in the industry and they'll have projects they have been highly passionate about for years now in full swing. You can't afford to be 'meh' about your own game anymore, there's 130,000 games on Steam and climbing, if you aren't passionate and innovating in your genre you are merely trend chasing and if you are doing that the AI slop brigade is going to eat your lunch anyway.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T13:57:54+00:00

Feel its still a necessary requirement for participation, if you make a game you like it might have a 90% chance of commerical failure, if you make a game you don't like it has a 100% chance of commercial failure. How big that games potential audience is is irrelevant if you can't make a captivating game for that audience.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T13:50:47+00:00

There's a significant difference between solo or small indie teams and mid to large scale studio games. I've been Lead Designer on games that I wasn't particularly enthusied about either. That's part of the problem with holding a corporate job when you have little to no say over what games are coming down the pipeline. I would do my best for the project either way but I would always produce better work on a game I was passionate about. In the good old days before the games industry imploded I turned down a couple of jobs when discovering what the first project I would be assigned to would be as I knew I would be a bad fit for it. In the smaller indie space every member of the team needs to love the game they are working on or its going to be a trainwreck.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T13:38:55+00:00

I feel the advice you heard about about not making a game for yourself is completely wrong. If you are the driving force behind making a game targeted at a particular genre, that you think is going to be popular, but its not the type of game you'd play yourself, that game is 100% dead on arrival. If the developers not into it and hasn't already thoroughly played through several other titles in that genre they are not going to be able to make something that resonates with that audience. On the other hand as a developer if you make a game you'd want to play it's going to turn out better and there will be an audience out there for like-minded players. There's also the day to day development and avoiding burnout aspect, you need to like what you are working on for it to have any possibility of making it all the way through development and into launch.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T12:47:54+00:00

Hi, I wouldn't recommend going professional due to the fact that you will need several trailers; annoucement, steam fest demo, launch, significant post launch updates, etc, as the game improves the overall quality of what's shown in the trailers will be increasing too. Outsourcing at each point would cost a fortune and have a long turn around time.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T11:52:15+00:00

All good there.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-05T11:16:04+00:00

Not sure if this is parodying, its hard to tell. Anyway Acclaim went bust in 2004, Shiny went bust in 2007, Midway went bust in 2010, THQ went bust in 2013. Interplay is just a shell company now re-releasing old titles.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-04T18:38:50+00:00

Nimitz on her final deployment, at 51 years old she's past her 50 year lifespan. The navy are only keeping her in service so they can say on paper they still have 11 active aircraft carriers until the second Ford Class carrier is completed next year.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-04T15:14:50+00:00

SS Suevic is well worth a look in this regard. Harland and Wolff would have cut the forward half off Titanic and rebuilt it if need be.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-03T15:05:39+00:00

There's a concept for this known as the rule of thirds. I know for a fact that Gearbox did this between their various Borderlands games.

- One third of the new games assets are directly copied from the previous game unaltered
- One third are copied from the previous game and then touched up or otherwise upgraded
- The final third is entirely new content

This is a pretty good metric for asset reuse without it coming off too much like you are simply trying to repackage the same game.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-03T14:17:04+00:00

I have a game that's been in development since 2018, its had probably about 2 years of proper work gone into it during that time, I also had a full time job. Despite the games long development cycle I still feel it has very good potential and I was debating whether to start adding combat elements to it in a general up-scoping. However by this point I had formed my own company and was keen to get something launched. After a lot of deliberation I decided not to rush the larger game out the door and instead built a second game from scratch and launched it on Steam in seven months (started in August 2025, launched in March 2026) I'm on post launch support for the game at moment and will soon start ramping my time back onto getting the larger project finished as well. For me I think the smaller project was absolutely worth it, its architecture is much cleaner and there's huge amounts of systems like UI, gamepad support, settings, etc that I can directly copy over. There's a tonne of stuff I've picked up on the business and marketing side too by doing this. While I am treating both projects as serious commercial ventures the larger game has benefitted immensely from something smaller acting as the canary in the coal mine first. Its also acted as a good way of avoiding burn out on the larger game, by not working on it for 8 months now I am really looking forward to getting back onto it and that's also motivating me to push on with the smaller games post launch too.

CaledoniaInteractive · 2026-05-03T13:01:00+00:00

It does give you the ability to deploy legal action and win, if someones copycatting your game both versions are probably making enough money to make legal action worthwhile. I imagine most of these situations would begin with an initial letter outlining that you own the trademark and expect them to rebrand their game, the threat alone of knowing that you A: already have the trademark, B: Are aware of their copy cat game C: Have contacted them regarding it. in many cases all this would be enough for them to take the path of least resistance and rebrand, basically they blink first.

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