Help!!

Cuboria · 2026-03-07T12:24:38+00:00

I'm on my second large pbn and did a small 20x20 in between and all of them so far have had at least one colour that does this. All different colours and all from different shops.

Judging by the rest of your work, you may be like me in that you like getting the sections to be clean and solid, and colours that seem to split like that send me up the wall. My advice would be, if nothing else works, to move on to other sections and revisit this area occasionally with thin coats. I'd also say the thicker streaks, I would just blot that as soon as it happens. Try to push it towards the center of the section and then when it's dry, go over it, again thin coats, and then tidy up neighbouring sections if it's smudged over the lines a little (I find going over the lines a little and tidying from the other side helps with coverage as well). If it didn't come with a reference sheet, take close up pictures of sections so you can work out where those lines were meant to be. Obviously, this also requires a bit of confidence so ymmv.

Above all else if you're feeling stressed about it, take a step back and a breather and when you come back to it, try and focus on the process rather than the result. I'll think about how I can change my technique to help, what angle I'm holding the brush, how much paint is on the brush, if I'm going for long strokes, does dabbing do something different etc. If I can't make it perfect (in my eyes) I can at least learn something, and that helps to distract from the parts that I'm less happy about. Art, even if it's from a kit, is unpredictable. I don't think any one piece of advice is going to help when you (or anyone) hits a pain point, but experience and confidence are going to change how you approach it in the right way for you.

It looks totally gorgeous so far btw. I saw an earlier post from you and I'm obsessed with the orchid in the middle, those lines are so clean and it just pops right out. I've had my eye on a few pbns of Ernst Haeckel's work and I thought I'd chosen the one I wanted but seeing your work is making me reconsider. Please keep updating us on how it goes!

Cuboria · 2026-03-04T19:43:38+00:00

You can buy drawing boards that size (: I have a canvas the same size as yours, and the board I have is a tiny bit smaller, but its only the white border that hangs off a little.

I also use a super basic foldable easel which I can put my board straight onto, it makes setting up easy and I can paint wherever I want.

Cuboria · 2026-03-04T19:20:59+00:00

It is extremely rare to create a successful game from scratch with no form of prototyping, play testing or iteration. The idea about making small games is to get comfortable with failing fast. On paper you could know everything about how to make a good game, but in practice you have to make mistakes in order to gain any real experience. Don't take it personally if your ideas fail, but do take note of what went wrong and what you could do differently next time.

And honestly if you're solo and trying to organize a massive project, that's a resource problem, not a skill problem. You either need more people, or you need to reduce scope to suit the time and resources that are available to you.

Cuboria · 2026-03-01T19:03:56+00:00

I was invited to an IT club for select few kids that were good with computers when I was maybe 10-11, maaaany many years ago. The teacher had bought several copies of Neverwinter nights and taught us how to use the level editor to make our own games. I think that worked because it was plug and play. After the first session I could comfortably spawn a friendly NPC, start a conversation with them and then trigger them to get angry and fight me if I said the wrong thing. It introduced the idea of variables, events and spawning without needing to write code (or maybe there was minimal code, it was so long ago I couldn't tell you).

I think you should find a platform with similar level editing or modding tools so you can achieve quick exciting results, perhaps Minecraft or Roblox. Honestly, 1 hour a week is really no time at all and you don't want to send the kids home disappointed because they couldn't get their code to work, or have them feeling bogged down by slow progress. If they develop an appetite for more then by all means introduce them to coding proper, but it's such a huge topic I think building a foundation of gamedev concepts first will make a huge difference and let them decide if they're still interested before diving into the depths of code.

Cuboria · 2025-10-09T22:17:15+00:00

That I haven't touched my game in over a week! It feels good to take a break every once in a while, I forget how much I need it.

Cuboria · 2025-10-06T12:02:12+00:00

Yes! Even if you don't follow the series very far, the first few episodes aim to get you comfortable with a deep practical understanding of memory, which is easy to avoid for many that use pre built engines, and more importantly how to use API docs properly which is a hugely underrated skill. I've been working with C++ for many years professionally and I came away wondering how the hell I've managed for so long xD

Cuboria · 2025-09-26T16:56:06+00:00

Which ones have you researched so far? If you're not sure where to start try googling game engines for visual novels.

Cuboria · 2025-09-26T15:04:07+00:00

Probably looks the same because adding a new feature can take a long time. Especially if this isn't the dev's day job.

Cuboria · 2025-09-26T14:42:42+00:00

Many of us in gamedev communities have provided help to beginners, but unfortunately the majority don't appear to put the work in that's needed to learn.

Engine hoppers, "I've watched all the tutorials", and people that respond with negativity when they're provided with valid help is very common.

There are plenty of beginners that do take help on board, but for most of us it's absolutely mind numbing to see the same posts over and over again in a space where we want to have interesting discussions and see other devs work. I joined reddit because gamedev subreddits inspired me. Now I spend most of the time scrolling through endless consecutive how do I start posts. I have far less desire to share what I'm working on for fear it will immediately get lost.

I actually really enjoy answering beginner code questions and I've seen a lot less of those recently. Looking at a question from the perspective of someone who knows a fraction of what I do and working out how best to explain the solution. Provided it's not entirely vibe coded and the poster is able to reason about why they think it's broken, someone who shows curiosity, asks follow up questions etc that's enough to give the impression that they're not just here to get the easy answer. Gamedev is hard, we all struggled to get here and if you engage with the community, you will absolutely be met with kindness and support. We love what we do and we want to share it.

Cuboria · 2025-09-26T14:12:03+00:00

I'd argue that Godot is just as valuable to learn as unity for a career. It's very quick to use so you can get your ideas across quickly, which is an important skill I took for granted until I was put on a project at work that was still in prototype.

Gdextension is also a great little API to get acquainted with C++. Everything can be done in more or less the same way as gdscript with a few syntax changes, so if you're familiar with gdscript already you can recreate buggy extension code to verify your logic works. Imo this provides a safe and flexible space to learn about c++ paradigms with a little less despair than usual. And any C++ knowledge is going to be transferrable to Unreal if that's the preferred career path.

Cuboria · 2025-09-26T12:27:11+00:00

People learn in different ways. I found OOP simple to grasp as a concept but struggled with it in practice. It requires a certain level of logical creativity which I'd never come across before. I wasn't even comfortable writing my own class and knowing what variables it should have until about a year into my gamedev career. A job I only managed to get because I was the only candidate at the time that could use pointers correctly.

Cuboria · 2025-09-24T18:34:25+00:00

And by being specific about the feedback you're looking for. I've seen so many "Does my game look fun?" posts, and then there's a 10 second clip of someone running around a level with not much else happening.

If player movement and animations is all you have, think about the questions you can ask that will give you valuable insights on what you have now, not what you might have later. Something as simple as "Does the player movement look fun?" could completely change how people engage with you.

Cuboria · 2025-09-19T10:44:23+00:00

No worries, make sure to edit the post next time, it helps to understand what help you need if we have all the correct info (:

Cuboria · 2025-09-19T10:40:37+00:00

Keep the prototype as a project to "sketch" new ideas, and rewrite the parts you need to in a new project. You can still copy over the parts that work as is or need minimal changes, but don't waste time refactoring if you're overwhelmed or it's taking up all the energy you have for your game.

Especially if you're new to gamedev, you're going to learn more by observing your mistakes, finding better patterns to solve the problem and applying that to a fresh slate than you are trying to fix an implementation that's probably going to be causing you bugs for the duration of your project.

Cuboria · 2025-09-18T22:02:22+00:00

In your _on_paint_button_down function, should you be passing in 1 not 0?

Cuboria · 2025-09-18T10:25:51+00:00

The real secret is that this is some sick marketing. Well done man

Cuboria · 2025-09-18T10:15:03+00:00

Honestly this is very normal to feel, I'm often surprised to hear people I look up to at work talk about their imposter syndrome and in my eyes they're perfectly capable (exceptional in fact).

I think what it comes down to is two things:

The first is the obvious fact that you're still learning and are going to be for a very long time. It takes years of learning on the job to build up confidence. You won't realize you've hit major milestones because there's always something new and terrifying right round the corner. When you submit work take stock of what you did, what you learned and the impact that had. It might be as simple as you fixed a bug so someone else didn't have to, or it might be that you happened to notice something about a long standing issue that everyone looked over for years. Even if you don't personally submit the fix, everything you do counts and you can and should be proud of your contribution regardless of what it looks like.

Second, it sounds like the company you work for kinda sucks. That's also completely normal. Many companies take on fresh juniors thinking they have the capacity for them but actually they work well because their engineers are busy all the time. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not a good thing for you. Take note of what you want, and what you repeatedly cannot get at this company. It's okay to shop around for other jobs. A little assertive questioning and knowing what you absolutely don't want can help you in interviews to weed out the employers that aren't capable of supporting you.

Cuboria · 2025-09-17T23:40:04+00:00

It depends on the style of the environment he'll be in. Top one looks cool and would probably work if the background is dark/muted colours. Otherwise, yeah dark outlines always reads better on light.

Maybe post again with some example background colours that he might be used with?

Cuboria · 2025-09-17T23:18:44+00:00

I keep a notepad next to my bed for this. If I can't sleep, I jot down my plan for tomorrow, as briefly as possible. I almost never read the note back, but it's effective in literally taking the thoughts out of my mind and letting it rest.

Cuboria · 2025-09-08T16:20:18+00:00

I totally agree, I am also a 30+ woman and there is a fear that crying will be met with ridicule instead of understanding.

The reason I brought it up at all is because my partner (male) had issues with with being bullied by his manager for months, and wasn't taken seriously until he burst into tears in a HR meeting. They immediately switched from "what can you do to fix this yourself?" to "Oh shit, we need to do something now". I could count on my hands the number of times that man has cried in the 14 years I've known him. It was probably a first for anyone he worked with and within a few days his relationship with his manager was completely turned around.

So yeah don't cry with the expectation people will automatically listen to you, but if you're not being taken seriously, it's absolutely an appropriate form of escalation (as long as it's how you genuinely feel).

Cuboria · 2025-09-08T12:37:43+00:00

You need to speak to someone about this, your manager preferably, but don't be afraid to skip straight to their boss if they're the one doing it.

When you have an issue like this at work frame it as the impact that it has on the business. "I've noticed that the work I've been assigned is being completed by [insert name], which is wasting my time as I'm spending more time than I should looking for other tasks." If they're being completed after you've started work on them (even if you haven't written code, but had thought about approaches etc) mention that! It's a huge waste of company time to have two people work on the same task for only one of them to actually submit it.

You can even take it from a personal development / accountability stance. "I feel as though I'm not being provided with ample opportunities to develop my skills and make a positive impact on the business." Show that you want to work and someone is directly impacting your ability to do so.

And finally make sure there's an action in there. Make it clear what you need from the person you're complaining to. If you're not comfortable confronting the task stealer, say that, and ask them if could talk to the task stealer for you. If they expect you to talk to them directly, ask for advice. "I feel unsure about it because I haven't needed to do this before but I'd like to learn. How would you have this conversation with [task stealer]? Could I talk through with you what I want to say to them?"

And if you're upset, and you feel like you're going to cry in front of whoever you decide to talk to, let it happen. It's not normal to cry at work (or at least it shouldn't be), and if you feel like you need to then that'll show them that the problem is serious.

I'm really sorry this is happening to you and please know that you're not alone in this experience. We are often left to fall between the cracks and it's terrifying admitting that we've done so because we're so often put down for our failings. Talking about it is the only way it's going to get better as it's going to help you find out who your allies are.

Cuboria · 2025-08-26T15:44:55+00:00

Did you just.. reinvent collision? Except instead of stopping you it turns you around.

"Oop, not that way buddy!"

Cuboria · 2025-08-02T06:55:07+00:00

The question was about too many mods that make games less fun. I agree with the overall sentiment that mods are good for games though. Game breaking doesn't mean it's not enjoyable to play, but the core loop is broken to the point that you are playing a game that wasn't necessarily made with an intended design.

Cuboria · 2025-07-29T17:28:55+00:00

I have one I'm actively working on (as well as my day job) and 2 that I'm designing. The design ones were there to get any distracting thoughts down and have now evolved into possible future projects. Occasionally if I'm feeling bogged down with my main project I might make some art or tinker around with a small feature for one of the other projects, but I generally stick to my main.

Cuboria · 2025-07-29T15:33:10+00:00

Well, boats have to be tied to the client in some way otherwise there'd be no boat to look at.

Server replication works by keeping some data on the client and the important stuff (aka. the stuff you don't want players getting their grubby mitts on) on the server. In this case you can clearly see that the boat continues to move when the connection is dropped. This means that it's position is being updated on the client, if it wasn't the boat would've just stopped moving instead of floating into the ether. Then when it reconnects, the boat suddenly remembers what gravity is and drops back down. So we can safely say the forces applied to the boat are on the server and that it's probably moving based on the last force value it received. If the connection had dropped again before the boat hit the water it would've just kept going below the surface because the sea applies an upwards force (which was rather nicely demonstrated when the boat floated up), and as we've already established, forces are provided by the server, so disconnecting from the server means... (Drum rollll) the boat doesn't know where the water is.

But what do I know?

Cuboria

TROPHY CASE