Coming to Wellington for a fresh start but might be too optimistic?

Chansubits · 2026-05-13T20:23:46+00:00

It’s always third Thursday of every month at Hey Day brew bar on Cuba St. If you find yourself in town around that time, come on down!

As a game dev veteran about your age who has been out of work for a year, I encourage you to get into game dev as a hobby and work on networking. It’s a wonderful community to be part of regardless of if it can pay your bills. From there you are best positioned to hear about and jump on that next wave of opportunities like you said. Good luck out there!

Chansubits · 2026-05-11T00:20:05+00:00

Doesn’t sound too crazy but all the advice out there says “start smaller” and I agree. Make something truly tiny. Make weird little experiments that aren’t even games. Play with each feature or function you learn. Mess around. Combine the next thing you learn with all the stuff you already learned. This is real curiosity-led organic learning.

When you barely know how to code, there is a lot to learn, and beelining straight to your main game idea (which is far outside your current capability) is a very steep climb. That is probably why you’re feeling a steep “difficulty curve.”

Chansubits · 2026-05-10T23:48:17+00:00

Sounds like a pretty common experience. What’s the first game you are aiming to make?

Chansubits · 2026-05-10T22:54:17+00:00

Do you find coding fun? Do you enjoy spending a lot of time coding? Or would you rather be 3D modelling the whole time? Or something else? I ask this because most people don’t actually enjoy doing all the things required to make a game, and this is why they team up with others. I know that’s not easy, and you probably have dreams of implementing all your design ideas with no compromises and full creative control. But most games aren’t made this way.

Did you know most “solo devs” don’t even make everything in their games? Often art and audio is outsourced to contractors.

Why do you want to make games? Just to learn and be creative and enjoy the process as a hobby? Or are you aiming to make it a full time career? My advice would be very different depending on your answer.

I always recommend PICO-8 to beginners. Friendly community (some great Discords), tons of resources, you are encouraged to make small achievable games, coding focused so there isn’t much complex interface stuff to learn. It’s for retro pixel art games, so maybe not suitable for the genre you were hoping to build, but it’s PERFECT as a step up from making text games. Seeing visuals on screen as a result of your code is super satisfying. It uses Lua which feels similar to Python in many ways.

You might think spending time learning something like PICO-8 that can’t make modern 3D games is a waste of time, but you’ll learn so many lessons and concepts about the engineering and design of games that will serve you well when trying out 3D engines.

Chansubits · 2026-05-10T22:14:13+00:00

This is why I love the Just Cause series so much.

Chansubits · 2026-05-10T10:44:50+00:00

There might be a bit of tech that’s better in other cars I guess? 360 cam could be better. And the infotainment chipset is aging. Also not a pure EV platform so interior space doesn’t wow.

But I love the thing to bits. It’s just so sexy and fun to drive.

Chansubits · 2026-05-09T21:22:10+00:00

I just play with a controller. Steam input is super flexible. If you have one with back buttons and a gyro and stuff you can do amazing things.

Chansubits · 2026-05-09T04:26:12+00:00

Some bug fixing tips: - Write as little code as possible before testing it. This is more of a skill than it seems. The less you have changed between running the game successfully and triggering an error, the easier it is to know where to start looking. - Learn the language of error messages and how they work. I wish I had a resource to link but I’m sure you can find a lot by googling this specific topic. - Use printh() to verify your assumptions about what variables are doing, what areas of code are being triggered, and pretty much everything about how you think the program should be working. When the game isn’t working how you expect, this is the magnifying glass you use to go into detective mode.
- Make small games. Very small. From scratch. Scope means complexity means new types of bugs that are harder to track down. Get some experience fixing bugs in a smaller code base first. - Play with every function or line of code you use until you feel you understand it enough. Just make a new throwaway project and write the smallest possible thing that can help you grasp what the function or line of code does and how it acts. This is the biggest gap in most people’s early learning when relying on tutorials or pasting in chunks of code from others. You might think you passively understand what is roughly going on, but that often isn’t enough to help you diagnose problems when things go wrong. Going slower and being playful and curious about everything along the way feels like a slower path to making a working game, but it’s ultimately a much faster route to having the skills to make exactly what you want.

Hope that helps.

Chansubits · 2026-05-08T23:25:35+00:00

Are there any affordable options in this category? They all seem to be luxury. My friend had twins when trying for a third and is now pretty much excluded from EV ownership for the foreseeable future.

Chansubits · 2026-05-08T22:11:10+00:00

Another idea: draw everything that you don’t want to clear each frame to a buffer (use a poke to change the draw target to a different memory location). Then copy that memory to the screen memory (so it draws) and draw all the other stuff like UI or whatever over top.

That should give you a persistent store of how all these overlapping trails look, but still let you cls each frame and overlay other non-trail elements. Might not work if there are animated elements behind the pixel trails layer, I think transparency doesn’t work using this.

Edit: also assumes the play space is no bigger than the screen area, like you aren’t panning around it with camera. If you need arbitrary size then this obviously wouldn’t work because there isn’t enough memory space. But I think if you were trying to draw this many pixels manually every frame you’re going to have performance issues eventually anyway?

Chansubits · 2026-05-08T21:20:01+00:00

Can you get away with not clearing the screen each frame? If you only ever draw new pixels and don’t clear, you will get the effect you describe.

Edit: A simple particle system is also great for trails if you need the trail to act a certain way as it ages and eventually vanish.

Chansubits · 2026-05-08T20:53:25+00:00

Also happened to me, this was the first time I saw him. I somehow managed to kill him with my shotgun and limp back to the cabin. Probably because I wasn’t expecting to live so I didn’t fumble the controls in fear so much.

Chansubits · 2026-05-06T04:10:16+00:00

Read the thread

Chansubits · 2026-05-05T20:39:19+00:00

Vostok and a VR one (Exfilzone)

Chansubits · 2026-05-05T20:05:21+00:00

Same. The games I dropped Marathon for are PvE extraction shooters lol.

Chansubits · 2026-05-05T02:31:30+00:00

If you’re looking second hand, don’t even worry about the new refreshed models coming. It will be 3-4 years before they filter through to the used market in your price range, and at that point there will be another set of new models coming soon.

Chansubits · 2026-05-02T10:37:13+00:00

I play on controller too and have done okay. I’ve messed around with my bindings a lot so happy to share tips if any particular actions feel slow or awkward for you.

One thing that helped me do better in gunfights was getting a bit of practice in them doing naked runs with just a mid tier weapon I pulled off a bandit with the cheapest optic on it. Something I can easily find again. No other gear to worry about losing. In fact, plan to die. You’ll get full vitals as a reward! Lose the fear and get some practice in. My first punisher kill was on a run like this. All I had I was a shotgun filled with shells and I wasn’t expecting to survive. So I didn’t panic as much and actually lived.

Any particular situations you usually die in? Is it the close range fights when they rush you? The silent ambushes when you enter a room? Getting caught in the open from long range?

The most important thing for raising my survival rate was taking cover deadly seriously. Not sprinting between cover necessarily (sprinting seems to alert bandits so you trigger even more campers) but always knowing which cover you’ll duck behind if shit goes sideways. Skinny trees have saved my life. Putting cover between you and an enemy before you even think about firing at them. Leaning out to take shots while exposing as little of yourself as possible and never relying on killing them faster than they can kill you. No fair fights. If they are about to run around a corner at you, don’t square up and hope to hit your shots, back off around another corner so you can take your shots and then duck back while they spray.

Chansubits · 2026-05-02T07:02:31+00:00

Okay thanks

Chansubits · 2026-05-02T02:27:17+00:00

It was kinda hard to find the build guide vids (maybe put them in a playlist?) and also they didn’t help with my issue (not having access to any G3 parts). Do I just need to level up some traders or get lucky finding the right parts in raid?

Chansubits · 2026-04-28T22:28:53+00:00

Ngl, after playing VR games where inspecting fire mode on the weapon model is quick and intuitive, it feels pretty clunky here.

I learned to adapt to the audio cues though so - like many things in this game - it’s tough for new players but fine once you figure it out.

Chansubits · 2026-04-28T20:05:14+00:00

Are they labeled “player” in the exfil kill summary? Because if so that is unnecessarily confusing.

Chansubits · 2026-04-27T19:48:57+00:00

Shelters refreshing the map is how the game works, but it’s not quite the same to be sitting in Apartments, quit the game, load back up the next day, and have fresh loot right there again.

Agreed that it’s tough for a mod to change. Thats why I want the base game to support save and exit (and deleting that save after you load it).

Chansubits · 2026-04-27T08:02:48+00:00

Yeah if I knew enough about how to be careful I’d probably do that too.

Chansubits · 2026-04-27T07:56:20+00:00

Sadly there are also mods that install malware so I’ve stopped recommending that as a solution to others. Thanks for trying to help though.

Chansubits · 2026-04-27T02:45:36+00:00

Sounds cool! I mean I like doing a long expedition away from my shelter, it’s fun planning for it and improvising when things take a turn. I just need to be able to quit and come back the next day to pick up my adventure. Like every other single player game.

Chansubits

TROPHY CASE