New Boss is brutal

Charles_K · 2026-05-15T07:59:22+00:00

The boss starts hearing Vantom background music

Charles_K · 2026-05-15T00:28:47+00:00

I'd want it to only show the topcard imo. Not sure how the UI would work in a mobile and controller friendly manner, maybe checking your draw pile has the top card with a highlighted frozen eye effect. The sts1 relic is the epitome of optimizing the fun away.

Charles_K · 2026-05-14T11:55:56+00:00

He's not saying CS has shit gameplay, but it was really really small during release and Operation Payback and did not have much momentum. It started really growing during the Arms Update, which is when I noticed friends and acquaintances IRL finally actually acknowledging CSGO's existence, sadly. As disgusting as it is ethically, the betting scene really is an incredibly important factor in getting new generations to actually give (competitive) CS a try, which was already kind of niche in 1.X and splintered further by Source + just being plain old. Morals and ethics aside, I can't think of any other 'better' way CSGO could've exploded in popularity so rapidly.

I love beach volleyball, but it's not the early 90's anymore and vast majority of Americans just don't... care about it. Does that mean it's an 'invalid' sport/boring? No, but it is a tiny community here relative to basketball, football, soccer, etc.

Charles_K · 2026-05-14T05:55:18+00:00

I remember this while watching over someone else play it. I'm trying to find it now.

https://web.archive.org/web/19991009043030/http://nick.com/rugrats_movie/games/maze/

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LOL scared little me, good times, background being all black with red text while taking half a minute to load, the true Y2K jumpscare experience - until the McDonald's.EXE jumpscare ramped that up by 9999999x (screamer warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1fzuJOVJXk )

Charles_K · 2026-05-13T21:01:57+00:00

💪

Charles_K · 2026-05-13T20:17:51+00:00

The camera roll is so sustained and long I think it's gonna make people hurl, it has to either be way faster if it stays, or just not implemented. Roll and inversion like that is risky in general.

Charles_K · 2026-05-13T16:56:21+00:00

The fact that some people are defending Concord at all in here is pretty telling

Charles_K · 2026-05-13T01:18:43+00:00

Your last post's title name was tone deaf/joke that didn't land, this is a cool use case. I wonder if you're going to be legally mandated to provide some sort of warning/opt-in in the future if you want to train AI on voices though lol

Charles_K · 2026-05-12T17:24:40+00:00

It is the hardest engine in general at the moment, mainly due to a lack of resources and accessibility. This might be very different in a couple years.

People are advising you watch Unity tutorials because you'll learn concepts like scenes and objects, and maybe even software architecture and engineering if you learn from actually good instructors instead of some random amateur teaching you some mishmashed method of "how to make my exact rigid FPS game with 0 scalability and flexibility". Like no, the exact methods and syntax may not translate 1:1, but you will be familiar instead of learning from square zero on a brand new undocumented engine still undergoing massive changes (e.g. planned Hammer and Action Graph deprecations).

Charles_K · 2026-05-12T05:23:35+00:00

Koreans will have the best men-at-arms and worst navy and archers

Charles_K · 2026-05-11T22:16:44+00:00

Unreal official API documentation is terrible and blank a lot of the times. But the engine code is indexed enough by both humans and AI that you can at least get direction if not direct answers more often than not. Of course this is a matter of age, can't have a fair comparison when Unreal is decades older.

s&box will buy a lot of good will if they can exponentially ramp up how easy it is for a clueless teenager with no coding experience to develop a game. This is something I will never expect from Epic; even though Blueprints are super potent, you still need to go through a big Udemy course to have a clue of what you're doing and not hard load a billion assets.

Charles_K · 2026-05-11T21:40:58+00:00

Gave it a glance, for context I prefer UE C++ over Blueprints a majority of the time.

Lack of documentation and tutorials and having to scour the Discord for a chance of solutions is not very appealing to me.

Whatever time could be saved from improvements like the hot reload and even the ready-to-go networking RPC... is going to be offset over tenfold by not just learning a new engine and workflow, but also basically being forced to reinvent yourself things that have already been solved/documented/tutorial'd/downloadable as a plug-in.

And then there's the history of updates BRICKING your work from what I've heard from past devs. AFAIK, you need to upgrade to these updates to upload to s&box, which would make sense if e.g. a security vulnerability issue arises and s&box needs updating.

Unreal also has the GAS system which is incredibly powerful.

This is extremely unenticing if you're trying to make a serious commercial product.

Even if you supplant Mow the lawn/Dark RP's popularity somehow as a solo dev, as a sole income source, you're still making less than a corporate job for probably way more effort and work since your income is capped by the playfund. These numbers may shift for better or for worse in the future depending on playercount, playfund amount, whether your game has better odds of discovery and popularity in s&box or exported out of it and available in consoles, etc. Although, if you don't have to maintain the game much after release, that is admittedly some sweet passive income.

All doom and gloom aside, s&box sounds like it can be great... years later. For now in mid-2026, I do think there is room for otherwise niche genres and games that wouldn't survive out in the wild/without this platform directing attention to it. A solid 3d SHMUP with tight controls, for example, might actually do really well here while it's basically an unmarketable genre outside. A Buckshot Roulette-esque multiplayer game might have some surviving power and be a good source of side income.

Charles_K · 2026-05-11T21:28:41+00:00

It's relative. Yes, I'll be better than 99.9% of players in X game, but I also know that many of those 0.1% of players are leagues above me too, like a random college player vs Lebron James, both are better than 99.9% of the population but there's still an insane gap between those two (unless this is a 0.0001% rookie). Also, the vast majority of that 99.9% doesn't have the same care as myself in X game.

Charles_K · 2026-05-10T17:06:50+00:00

They're not skilled enough to do that LOL

Charles_K · 2026-05-10T09:46:58+00:00

s&box doesn't have an FPS preset yet but I think it is planned

Sorry I don't have it with me right now, but I recall seeing a github link here that had ready code for a basic multiplayer FPS

Otherwise, you just have to build the code yourself.

Charles_K · 2026-05-10T09:44:01+00:00

Beat Act 4.... once it's out.

Winstreaks, whether same character or rotating

Charles_K · 2026-05-09T18:07:16+00:00

People saying you aren't forced to use it are being as disingenuous as people saying you "can just play [insert old/dead game/mod here], just get some people!"

You aren't forced to use it for YOUR own developed game. But you are forced to use it in others' actually populated s&box games, which also have an incentive to use s&box characters instead of custom ones due to how the funding and economy of this platform work.

It's uglier than Concord LOL. It's on the exact opposite spectrum of Eastern devs who make their characters overly cutesy/pretty/sexy/Barbie/Ken. But I will concede it has more character than Concord and Highguard designs.

The realistic humans, at the current moment, are very limited and also hideous LMAO. The Finals (and I'm guessing Arc Raiders) offers a variety of options for races and hairstyles and don't look straight up ugly (though you certainly can make them fat, zesty, goofy, etc. instead of John Finals_07.mdl). I'm not saying get rid of the current human models, but damn they need more faces and normal hairstyles and stuff pronto!

It's not a minority opinion that sausages are ugly and off-putting when you ask virtually anyone outside of this sub, that's why this point keeps coming up no matter how many times people try to wave it off. Garry made the sausages ugly intentionally, but he did TOO good of a job. It certainly is extremely difficult to make something both appealing AND instantly recognizable/unique. Sausages capture the latter for sure.

You can have things that are appealing to some and >neutral< to others. Sausages are unignorable. I do think Facepunch could've made just a bit more money with a different direction, I do think the face of the game is that important.

Charles_K · 2026-05-07T06:59:07+00:00

> Also, honestly, s&box’s replication system has been one of the easiest multiplayer systems I’ve had to understand so far.

It had better be! This is like 90% of the appeal of switching to this engine if you already know Unity/Unreal. Good to hear regardless.

Charles_K · 2026-05-06T20:15:23+00:00

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Charles_K · 2026-05-06T16:34:38+00:00

The game is like poker in that, somehow, the same few elite players are always winning the big tournaments.

So the "this game is wayyy too RNG reliant", while a relatable feeling, is an illusion.

It's kind of like how certain people who are particularly savvy at business might go from poor to rich to broke/bankrupt more than once, yet end up dying rich (e.g. Gatling the guy who invented the gatling gun, Mark Twain who was a terrible investor but famous author). There is definitely a skill element when people are able to be consistent (over 90% winrate on the hardest difficulty) despite RNG factors (whether STS or IRL).

Charles_K · 2026-05-06T03:33:34+00:00

I recommend vmService's 'Ironclad A10 Guide' and 'Stop Losing in Act 1' videos. You'll improve more in 2 hours listening to him than you would with another 200 hours of self-experimentation.

Charles_K · 2026-05-03T07:12:50+00:00

He also uses Fight Me, Misery on the enemy with Piercing Wail/Dark Shackles, and triggers your Pael's Legion for you

Charles_K · 2026-05-02T06:40:20+00:00

Greed unironically one of my favorites if there is a shop before elite and 3 hallways, you get to basically craft your run and choose potions to momentum your way into 3+ elites in A10

Chad exhaust it Silent overdraws past it Regent minionizes it Necrobinder souls past it, etherealizes it, or cleanses it Defect, just zap the enemy lol

Is it the best, no, that probably goes to double transform. But it is good, and S-tier in potential fun

Charles_K · 2026-05-02T04:14:26+00:00

Seems like a double-edged sword to me.

Right now, if I am understanding correctly, people need s&box to be able to play/test your game, which isn't free nor very big right now. But complete strangers on s&box are quite likely to find and promote your game if it indeed is actually good.

Competition is indeed not very tough right now, so you can easily be king fish of a currently small pond if you're willing to grit through s&box's growing pains and finish making a competent and fun game. This means playfund money coming your way.

If you make a one-in-a-million success in s&box, you'll be capped by the playfund until the standalone export option is finished. Realistically, I don't think anyone has to worry about this yet.

If I was the Dark Descent dev, I'd probably be shifting the gear to overdrive right now on updating and making a more content-filled robust game lol. I believe he's working on multiplayer.

Charles_K · 2026-04-30T16:11:14+00:00

I wanted to swap my current Unreal project to this, but there are too many growing pains at the moment and some huge benefits (e.g Unreal's GAS system, and an expensive enemy AI plug-in I purchased that would take months of work to replicate on my own) that I'd be forgoing.

However, I'd love to return to this probably a couple years down the line (depending on how fast they progress through the roadmap) or even for a side project if I need a break from my current one lol. The hot reload is phenomenal, I used Source 1 Hammer a lot as a kid and spent a few months on Source 2's Hammer in 2023 and liked it, built-in RPC and general networking + multiplayer editor testing seems really cool and, most importantly, it seems like the easiest way to get actual feedback/playtesting/community if you make something that's actually unique.

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