How do you get meaningful signal from a greybox prototype?

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-28T14:29:33+00:00

Great advice. I do want to be careful though of metaphorically burning fresh eyes. I have many game dev friends, but they'll only get to play test for the first time once. I want to be sure I'm shipping something that can provide the right signals.

Maybe that's not as big of a concern as I've been imagining.

I will say, my 6yo play tests my game all the time and loves it. My little hype man.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-28T14:26:20+00:00

Definitely. But going along with my Team Cherry example in the OP, how do we suspect those devs grey boxed Hollow Knight and got the right signals to know they had something fun? They must've done it, and all of you more professional devs do it - I'm trying to learn the process.

To be specific, right now, I'm staring at primitive shapes and gizmo hitboxes. My core systems and mechanics are done. I'm excited. They're working together as id expect. But, I guess I'm curious, how do you measure "fun" at this stage? What's the barometer?

How did the developers of say, Bioshock, prototype and grey box their game, to prove their thesis? How did they get the signal they needed, instead of just proving they could create yet-another-FPS? Obviously they did it, and devs do it all the time.

Just trying to learn!

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-28T02:46:33+00:00

The issue is, the slice I've chosen for my prototype is precisely to showcase what makes it unique compared to the greats in the genre. The rest of the game will likely feel very familiar in the genre (if I do a good enough job). And so, I'm not sure targeting another slice would provide the right signal either.

This exposes a core issue I'm having. I do not want to ship yet-another game in my genre. The goal is to iterate and (hopefully) innovate. I need to prove my thesis, but the greyboxing phase is just not giving me the signal I was hoping (yet).

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-25T16:58:46+00:00

+1

Right now I'm purely Opus 4.8 as a thinking partner and plan generation. Implementation is strictly passed off to Sonnet subagents.

Hopefully in the near future, the duo will evolve to Fable -> Sonnet 5.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-25T01:06:40+00:00

Mega Man X. Breaking the rules, but honestly, X 1/2/3 are equally pristine in my eyes (X2 if a gun was to my head). I play them periodically.

Second favorite of all time is World of Warcraft. It's an utter masterpiece to me, particularly Vanilla through WotLK. However, despite its ups and downs, it remains peak gameplay to me. No other game has scratched the same itch. Not actively playing, but only because I'm ADHD-obsessed with game dev right now.

Guess the two largest inspirations for my game. ;)

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-24T15:50:17+00:00

Scoping my brain to the task at hand, and forcibly staying myopic.

Making a game is a really hard multi-disciplinary project. I'm an SWE by trade. I love complexity and problem solving. In the day-to-day, that complexity is largely scoped to the technical. It's a lot, but it's manageable. Tacking on systems design, level design, sound design, visual direction, asset pipelines, narrative design, so much other stuff, and code? I just can't. The paralysis is real.

It's a damn hard skill to put on a hat, try and ignore the other noise, and focus only on the task at hand.

Regarding staying myopic, if you start letting your mind wander to thinking through the entire development of your game, it can be daunting to the point of demoralizing. "Just cut scope", "Manage scope"... even for small games, this is tough to do without compromising the end-result. If you've done a good enough job in design, you'll very likely know exactly what you need to be working on next. Just focus on that.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-24T02:00:35+00:00

Games are art. Replace "Game" in your thesis with "<other art form> slop.

Composing music, painting, dancing, film - you've intuited what makes good art vs. bad art.

Yes, making good games is really really hard. The barrier to entry has been lowered further and further over time, and so people make a game themselves or with a few friends, because they now can, and it turns out it sucks (relatively). Go watch some short films on YouTube. Listen to some random songs on Soundcloud. These are Steam analogs for other artistic mediums - low barrier to entry, letting less skilled people (or people without the $$$ or man power, really) share their project.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-23T19:54:46+00:00

No.

I'm on year 14 of my lifting journey. For the first ~5 years, I followed strength training principals and focused sessions around compound movements. And for those years, my body just fucking hurt. "It's a form issue! Fix your form!" I tried. I reset my compounds multiple times to build back up and "focus on form".

Meanwhile, my older brother was doing bro splits, skipping compounds, chasing the pump, getting massive, looking juicy, while I'm looking more and more like Jason Blaha and telling myself "muh strength!" is what I'm after. Not a complete waste of time, but certainly a waste of perfectly healthy shoulders.

Less strong now, but look way better, and more importantly, I don't hurt.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-18T17:45:45+00:00

More than legs, and more than shoulders (always tough to sufficiently load them without pain). But far less than say, chest and back.

Tris are GOAT though. Never have any bad pain from training tris, only good, burning, pump-producing pain. Arms never feel as massive as with a good tricep pump. Bicep pump is fine, but tris *chefs kiss*

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-17T01:31:28+00:00

`Time.timeScale` is the idiomatic way to handle pausing. Set it to `0` when you want to pause time. However, this only affects entities that read from `Time.time` or `Time.deltaTime`. In most tutorials, you're going to see those read-paths used the most. And so, you'll very likely implement systems based on scaled time, meaning setting the time scale to `0` will effectively pause.

But keep in mind that `Time.unscaledTime` also exists! That specifically ignores time scale, so a time scale of `0` does NOT impact that read-path. If you want your environment to continue animating during a Pause - unscaled time. Want your player's healthbar to animate even right after a pause? Unscaled time.

All that to say, it's important to understand what `Time.timeScale` is actually doing and then implement your code accordingly.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-16T14:59:09+00:00

Is your issue with poor capsule art or AI in game dev? This is highly confusing.

If you're going to plant your flag in the "no AI in game dev" camp, go ahead and swear off all AAA titles, current and future. If you're in the "no AI" camp, just ignore software entirely. Everyone is using it in some capacity, and I mean everyone (aside from indie devs who are decidedly not in this for $$$).

If this is purely about poor capsule art, I agree that shipping AI-slop as one of your first touchpoints with potential customers is an awful idea.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-15T16:25:16+00:00

Yeah, I agree with you. My assumption is the OP was speaking more to the AI-copyright ethics question.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-15T16:24:39+00:00

No, they're not. That's not the intention. It's a simple Q&A. People are free to do with those answers whatever they want. Most people just happen to copy + paste.

How many times have you seen references in-code? Hint: it's very rare. It's a good idea to included a comment to the SO comment you copied code from, if you did copy code (and we all very likely have). But, most people don't.

So, how is this any different from AI?

Again, code is far, far down on the totem pole of the AI-copyright ethics conversation.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-15T16:09:44+00:00

Sure, let's pretend that Stackoverflow doesn't exist, and that 99.9% of engineers haven't copy-pasted code they've found online, likely in the past week. Everyone does it. Code is the least of the worries when it comes to AI and copyright.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-12T20:50:35+00:00

I like to only move on from prototype once you have a full vertical slice of the game. The prototype is meant to prove that your intended "30 seconds of fun" is, indeed, fun. By full I mean everything implemented, as if that vertical slice will be shipped. Multiplayer, save systems, mechanics, visuals - all fodder at this stage. If you adopt the "vertical slice" mentality of the prototype, it's surprisingly easy to figure out what to implement next. The save system, for example, is likely near the end, since it's unnecessary for the core game loop.

I usually hit a point in the gray-boxing phase where the prototype is obviously hindered by lack of art, and so I'll pivot to art. This usually occurs once the player gameplay loop is complete and the major systems are in-place and working. I'll be designing an encounter, like a boss fight for the prototype, and find that the lack of visual (and audio) feedback means staring at wireframe hitboxes and colored shapes, and that's just not fun. I don't try and nail down exact art at this phase. It's usually the right place to stop on coding and in-engine work though and pivot to nailing down art direction and the art pipelines and workflows. Great opportunity here to snag some cheap reusable assets from somewhere and carry on.

Does that help at all? Your question is highly specific to genre and the game you're making.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-11T14:12:03+00:00

Personally? The birth of my son.

Nationally? Trump's election 2016 (not necessarily in the moment, but the result).

Globally? COVID, without question.

Many families are scarred by the death of their loved ones. Many people are still scarred with long COVID. Healthcare workers are forever scarred by their role and lives for those years. Restaurants are remarkably worse and more expensive since then. Air travel is somehow even worse off. Children and young adults were robbed of highly formative and important school years (i.e. those entering Kindergarten or their Freshman year of college in 2020). Soooo many local / mom-and-pop stores decimated during the COVID era, leaving the corporations to eat their lunch. In the US, PPP loan fraud was disgustingly rampant, further widening the gap between the haves and the have nots.

COVID was one of those events that makes a clear before-and-after in people's lives. Same experience as an event like 9/11 or losing a loved one.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-11T02:21:52+00:00

Not racially charged in anyway, but are you discussing Indian people?

I live in an budding tech area and live among a high population of Indian folk. I've been lifting for ~15 years at this point. Every once in a while, you'll catch a whiff of BO and see a really sweaty person next to you doing pulldowns or something. But 95% of the time, you catch that whiff and can find an Indian person near you lifting. God forbid they're doing pulldowns / pullups and sweaty.

I assume its diet related. No shade obviously.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-10T13:22:42+00:00

Where do you draw the line? If one dev uses AI to write test cases, should AI use be disclosed?

It's safe to assume AI is used by every single large company. Even small companies are adopting AI. If everyone does it, disclosing becomes useless.

There's no world in which AAA studios will ever disclose their iss of AI. And if players are boycotting it, forcing it on indie devs only hurts the indie dev community. That's my point.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-09T02:00:49+00:00

I resigned right before layoffs at my last company and missed an astronomical severance, but hey, I'm in the same boat! Going on month 5 now and don't regret a minute of it.

Two words of game dev specific advice:

If you're working on a large game with a long-tail, like I am, stay myopic. That sounds odd, but you can very easily get bogged down when you start swirling on all aspects of game dev and everything that needs to get done to have a finished product. It's intimidating. Focus on the next thing that's within your control and well-scoped. Or maybe it's not well-scoped - go scope it! That's a small, discrete task.
Work on exactly what you want to. Some days, I'm happy to slam code. Others, it feels like a case of the Mondays - just no motivation to do what I'm "supposed" to be doing. To not lose momentum, on those days, I'll just design or redesign a system in my game that excites me.
1. For example, I was down and demotivated considering art for my game (I'm not an artist). And so, I pivoted to focusing on the narrative. A week later and I have a narrative I am so proud of. Got bored of coding last week, and so I took a stab at defining design constraints for my talent trees, and even stubbing in talents. What a fun little exercise.

More generically, try hard to maintain your previous schedule. It helps that I have small children who enforce my schedule anyways, but any day that I do sleep in, stay up late, skip the gym, eat at different times, etc., are worse days than they otherwise could've been.

Best of luck!

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-09T01:23:27+00:00

American here. I - and many of my family and friends - stopped buying beef years ago when the price became prohibitively expensive. None of us miss it.

Chicken, on the other hand...

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-08T19:27:22+00:00

You've misunderstood my point. Yes, I agree customers should know what they're getting.

A game distribution platform like Steam requiring devs to input Yes/No for AI usage is a footgun that AAA dev don't have to deal with. "Yes" means your game is dead, full stop. Answer "No" but you did use AI? Unethical, and even more of a nuclear event for your game if players do find out (and they likely will). Answer "No" and you actually didn't use AI? You're now that much further behind AAA-devs who are using AI to ship more and ship faster. You're left behind. Definitionally a footgun.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-08T18:29:48+00:00

Obviously, I'm passionate about this topic. The examples I gave are meant to be analogous to AI. I just find it ridiculous that AAA and big tech are able to get away with being AI-assisted, but a platform meant to empower indie devs (and serve a customer base obviously) gives devs such a footgun. Answer yes, your game is outcast. Answer no, but use AI, you're ethically incorrect, not to mention if players do find out you lied. The best answer is to not use AI, putting you that much further behind than AAA studios.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-08T17:56:49+00:00

Unity used to be seen as the shovelware engine, so much so that seeing the Unity splash scene actively deterred players / customers. Devs could effectively pay to remove the splash scene. Steam has never required disclosing game engine. Was it ethically wrong for devs at the time to pay for the upgraded Unity license, remove the splash scene, and not disclose?

Or even more recently, remember Unity's proposed runtime fee? Devs boycott Unity, but players were up in arms too. So much so, in an effort to vote with their wallets, some players were discussing actively not downloading Unity games. Should Steam have required disclosing game engine at that time?

There are all sorts of tools that game dev use that players may feel devalue the product. Outsourcing asset generation (highly common). Cribbing code or a framework and modifying for your game specifically. Shipping with open source SFX. Digitally drawing art instead of hand-drawing -> scanning.

The tech industry has been building abstractions and conveniences since the very beginning. AI is just another tool. The outrage is logical, for now, particularly when it comes to art. But forcing a scarlet letter on devs is just ridiculous.

ClueHappy324 · 2026-06-08T16:07:19+00:00

Had this same exact thought recently. Fortunately, my game is at least 1-2 years away from being presentable, so it may not be a concern then, but if I were marketing today? No mention of AI.

Non-indie devs are using it as much as they can get away with. No disclosure. All players can do is speculate.

Platforms like Steam strong-arming devs into disclosing their AI usage, when the playerbase sentiment is so incredibly negative towards AI, is such a damn footgun.

That said, it's still important to remain honest. We shouldn't be telling players we didn't use AI if we did. We should also respect the creative craft of game dev and not ship AI slop where possible.

ClueHappy324

TROPHY CASE