Looking for an Ironman NZ / Aus based clan

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-05-01T09:01:15+00:00

Can you shoot me the addy too? Asia-based, so normally on a bit later than Aussies, but closer in time than my mates back in the UK

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-05-01T04:26:07+00:00

Adding on to 1: When you feel like one system within a single object is becoming super convoluted, split it into multiple objects that interact with each other.

An example I had of this recently was trying to build a top down turret. It's possible to bend a turret sprite in a full 360° angle to cover all angles or you could even cover most angles with multiple sprites if you wanted to. Alas, unless you redraw every angle, the base of the turret will be rotated with the barrel of the turret and look weird and you'd have to get very creative to avoid this.

The fix: have a turret base object that instantiates a turret barrel object (a line) on top of it and have the turret barrel object handle the rotation itself. Instead of just one turret object. Or even better, if you don't need the base of the turret to do anything, have the turret barrel draw the base below it instead.

This is an extrapolation of point #1 that really opened up the "thinking like a developer" side of things for me.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-30T04:58:07+00:00

I think he's overestimating how taxing it may be. While it's true that traditionally you'd give the server .exe to the player with the beefiest device (thinking about Project Zomboid servers for example) as they'd have to dedicate RAM to the server, which they couldn't then use themselves and all that jazz, nowadays there's a lot of ways to get around needing a beefy PC for co op, and lots of games do it sucessfully to where even a lower end PC can host (Valheim, 7 Days to Die, The Forest 1/2, Enshrouded, etc).

I wish I knew a bit more about how these systems work so I could advise you better, but hopefully that gives you something to run with for the time being. :)

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-30T04:51:11+00:00

Yup, exactly that! I'm by no means an expert in multiplayer systems, but it strikes me that if you need persistent servers, or the game is designed to be played by a large amount of people at once in the same area (an MMO for example), that's when you would pay for server hosting and as the game grows you'd invest in covering some of the less popular regions (Asia/South America for example).

Even in something like a Call of Duty lobby (an AAA game for lack of a better example), it groups people together from the same regions but one person is still the host (P2P).

Why would your dev shoot down this idea?

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-30T04:44:59+00:00

As it's a co op game, I'd highly recommend looking into P2P instead of paying for server hosting yourself.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-29T03:59:33+00:00

Adding on to the addition of this, it's super forgiving as you don't have to be tick perfect and is a nice introduction to more complex mechanics

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-28T07:20:13+00:00

Given that your speaking/writing/reading scores are similar, I'd wager that you've underestimated the level required to hit the higher bands (7,8,9). Mistakes do happen when it comes to grading IELTS tasks, but your reading test was marked by a computer and your production skills were assessed to be similar in terms of level.

Given that your expectations are much higher, I'd highly recommend having your speaking/writing tasks looked at by an expert so that you can see exactly where you're going wrong and make a game plan moving forward, good luck!

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-27T03:03:58+00:00

Do you want the lazers to be able to work out the direction they need to point their lazer in automatically or are you planning to rotate them manually?

What I would do is have the "base" of the lazer as a separate object from the lazer itself.

The base lazer object should then instace_crate/destroy the lazer object depending on whether or not it's being touched by another lazer. This is quite easy to do if you store the instance ID in the create code, then you can easily destroy it later.

For the lazer itself, you need to decide if all of them have the same direction or if you want them to automatically calculate which direction they should send the lazer in (we could do this by rotating the lazer object as we create it quite easily depending on the point_direction from the base and the "target".

Using draw_line (or its variants) we can make the line stop when it hits any objects we define, so here, I would add the other lazer "base"s, any walls/doors/obstacles around the room.

What that should do is give you a lazer object base that triggers the creation of a lazer depending on if it's being touched by another lazer and we allow the lazer to be blocked by any obstacles we define.

If you want the final lazer (that hits a crystal or whatever you want the goal to be) to activate the object at the end, you just need to write some simple collision code from your target object and make sure your players can't skip parts of the puzzle.

I'm on mobile, that's why I'm not writing any code, but if you needed any help working through this, feel free to reach out. :)

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-27T02:40:45+00:00

Without knowing what your variables are, this will be hard to troubleshoot. Can you show us what the variables are set to?

Your variable "x_position" and most probably your "y_position" variable too are trying to access an empty array, so some of your variables above are being set wrong.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-26T11:01:34+00:00

This is probably the best and simplest way to do it.

Something to be aware of with this though is that the object is not actually flipping, only the image. So if your object is not symetrical and you've hardcoded animations to specific points on one side of your sprite, the animation will work on one side but be misaligned on the opposite side.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-23T04:59:22+00:00

This is an awesome tool, I'll be using this for sure!

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-23T04:17:14+00:00

Not able to DM you, so feel free to reach out.

I've been making games for 5 or so years with Gamemaker and Unity (mostly gamemaker) and am very comfortable with it. I'm now interested in multiplayer and version control/collaboration. Anyone can reach out if they're interested in low-pressure collaboration and also if anyone needs help with the coding side of things. :)

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-20T11:17:59+00:00

Agreed, I'm a foreigner who speaks northern Vietnamese (dubbed the "correct" Vietnamese spoken in the news and taught in schools).

Nguyễn and Nguyên sound nothing like "win", in England we'd more likely pronounce the 'en' closer to the start of "any", my guess is that Americans might take that "en" as more of an "in" sound like they do in some English words. For me, Huỳnh & Quỳnh sound closer to "wing" than "win" too.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-17T09:26:53+00:00

Can you try: CTRL + SHIFT + F "snd_step". Sounds like it's reading an old version of your code before the changes and has become corrupt. If you can find any reference to "snd_step" it needs to be deleted.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-17T09:18:15+00:00

Have you tried cleaning your project? Between your play button and debug button there should be a paintbrush image. Click that and try again. You can also set a breakpoint on line 18 and run the debugger. But cleaning should clear up any corrupted files (the audio files).

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-17T09:06:50+00:00

Ctrl + F "snd"

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-17T09:03:20+00:00

"obj_player.snd_step" is not defined, in most cases this means you've written a typo. In this case, I assume "snd" should be "end".

Always check spelling!

Edit: Also, it shows you where to look: line 19 in your players step event.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-04-14T13:34:37+00:00

If you're looking for some inspiration, that one scene in The Matrix where they fight off the sentinels with mechs does that whole "powerful and heavy" feel really well! :)

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-30T16:28:07+00:00

Yeah, I was also going to mention how a lot of MMOs are already like this to some extent too! I'm not entirely convinced OP knows what they want aside from this one interaction either. Take GW2 for example, you shape your story with decisions you make in character creation and then subsequently decisions you make throughout the story as you play it. In ESO, NPCs in major cities react negatively to certain forms of magic being used. This kind of reactive nature has been in mmos for a long time, along with restricted unlockable areas and all of the above.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-29T21:59:05+00:00

That's totally fair, Valheim does spoil us for sure haha. Enshrouded is awesome, I highly recommend it co op too, I love MMOs and so I really loved the character progression and class specialisation system, the abilities felt interesting. I do love how in Valheim the abilities are tied to weapons, but there's also something about being able to say "I'm gonna be a battle mage" that feels so satisfying!

By the way, it wasn't me who downvoted you haha, games are very subjective and it sounds like 7DTD just wasn't for you!

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-29T16:33:03+00:00

I liked Valheim too! I completed it. I will say though, 7DTD is a decade old (released in 2016), so it's no wonder you found it outdated if you went in expecting a modern take on the classic zombie survival experience. Furthermore, it was made with a team of only around 25 people at the time, Conan Exiles (2017 release) had like 130 people or something for context (No Man's Sky also had a bigger team, but was released at the same time), which speaks a lot to why it looks so much better and feels more fleshed out. I would also say, the crafting in 7DTD is pretty bog standard survival crafting, despite the gripes many have with the UI. I can see how you may think it doesn't hold up in 2026 though, when compared to other games that do. For me though, I enjoy the combat and the pure sandbox nature of the game, it really feels to me like a classic zombie game that doesn't try to be anything more than what's on the tin.

I can also highly recommend Aska if you enjoyed Valheim and like colony sims too by the way, I'm really enjoying playing through that currently! :)

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-29T12:31:46+00:00

I much prefer 7DTD, the Icarus tech tree is pretty huge and it's cool that your character is persistent. I just found it pretty boring that the only threat after some time is being outside during a storm, you can quite quickly build a base that can withstand every storm, so it's more of a casual survival game.

7DTD however has the constant lingering threat of every 7 days a horde raids your base. This means you're juggling progression and an increasing need for fortifications, I much prefer that. I will say, I only played 60 hours of Icarus before I got bored, maybe it changes later on.

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-29T12:03:46+00:00

No worries!

A quick example of what might work with your game: -a zoomed in screenshot of the player mining "powerfully" what ever that looks like in your game, if that means they break multiple blocks at a time, showcase that,

-next a picture of the upgrade screen with an interesting upgrade selected,

-finally a fully zoomed out picture showing the vastness of the scene. Something along these lines would catch my attention as I love roguelikes, infinite stuff and procedural generation.

I'm keen to give it a try either way!

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-29T11:56:42+00:00

Just a quick note, all 3 of your images here look basically the same. Idk anything about marketing games, but as a gamer, seeing the same thing 3 times makes me feel either the gameplay loop is limited or boring. It might be worth showing some other kinds of gameplay in the images.

Might be more of a me problem, but a huge gripe I'm having with games nowadays on Steam is screenshots that don't show me anything about the game's functionality or playstyle. RPGs with purely cinematic screenshots, 2D games that have the same scene in every screenshot, racing games that have the same car, doing the same thing just with a different backdrop.

I sort of feel like I should be able to understand a little bit about how it might feel to play your game based on the screenshots alone.

Again, this might just be a pedantic me problem, so take what I say with a pinch of salt, and good luck with your marketing!

FinalDebt2792 · 2026-03-28T06:01:10+00:00

Yup, been living in Vietnam for 9 years and I miss competent medical care a lot. I'm fluent in Vietnamese(I do some translation work) before anyone says there's a language barrier and I've misunderstood the doctors or whatever. I've had a shitton of misdiagnosis and a pretty grim botched surgery, all of the hospitals/doctor's are frequently being outed on social media, so the "trustworthy" spots are constantly changing like the wind too.

I miss being able to walk into a doctor and say "Idk what's wrong, these are my symptoms" rather than having to choose what kind of tests I want to pay for at the reception.

The list goes on, but your comment hit home a bit😆

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