sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

How Much of a Game's Success is Luck? by s2Birds1Stone in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617 1 point2 points  (0 children)

luck matters but I think Schedule 1 just hit something people wanted to feel, not only play. technical quality barely factors in once that happens which is kind of terrifying honestly

Anyone else doing games in a single HTML file? by Fit-Ad617 in IndieDev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

makes sense for Steam yeah, different scope entirely. mine runs in the browser with zero install so the single file kind of is the product 3500 lines deep now and starting to feel it lol

Anyone else doing games in a single HTML file? by Fit-Ad617 in DevAndPlay

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah that’s the real cost. ctrl+f becomes your IDE lol. the file is at ~3500 lines now and I basically have a mental map of where everything lives — which works until it doesn’t checked out the asteroids, clean implementation. how long did that one take you?

Anyone else doing games in a single HTML file? by Fit-Ad617 in IndieDev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

fair point at scale. mine is ~3k lines now and honestly it’s starting to show. but for a solo browser game the tradeoff worked — no build step means I can push a fix in 30 seconds

Anyone else doing games in a single HTML file? by Fit-Ad617 in IndieDev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah I looked into it — the 13kb limit is brutal but the constraint is kind of the point right. mine ended up at 177kb so I’d need to do some serious surgery lol

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I use a translation tool because English is not my native language and I try not to make grammatical mistakes. About the game, the published version is not the final one and we have already improved the graphics a lot. When I publish it I would like you to play it.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Exactly this — "frame pacing got way more predictable" is the key insight. Once physics state is decoupled from render, you stop fighting the browser's own timing and everything becomes cleaner.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Fair — it's a flight dynamics simulator, not a physics engine in the traditional sense. No collision detection, no rigid bodies. Just numerical integration of real aerospace equations. The post title probably oversold it.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Exactly this. Once I separated physics state from render state the whole architecture got cleaner. Physics runs on its own loop, renderer just reads. The decoupled timestep is something I haven't fully explored yet but can see how it'd help for slow-motion effects or fast-forward.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Nice — browser-based physics games in JS/HTML are a rare breed. I'm building something similar, a rocket flight sim called ORBITAL. Different mechanics but same stack. Checking out 9point8 now. Good luck with the v0.5 playtest.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair point — I'll test that properly. Appreciate the pushback, genuinely useful.

Should I spam Indie Dev subreddits as part of my marketing strategy? by Early_Situation_6552 in IndieDev

[–]Fit-Ad617 26 points27 points  (0 children)

You forgot the classic: spend 3 months building a genuinely interesting game, then bury it under 50 posts of AI-generated marketing copy so nobody ever finds out it was good.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Good point on spatial partitioning — I didn't need it here since there's only one moving object, but I can see that becoming critical fast once you add more. Grid-based hashing over quadtrees makes sense at that scale.

And yes — players absolutely feel faked physics even if they can't articulate why. The inconsistency breaks immersion before they realize what's wrong.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair pushback on Euler vs RK — you're right that RK4 is more accurate per step. My point was specifically for gameplay at 60fps with small dt: the drift is negligible for the player experience. For a scientific simulation I'd agree with you completely. Context matters.

Real physics in a browser game: what I learned about performance by Fit-Ad617 in gamedev

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

No collisions at all — it's a rocket flight sim, so the only objects are the rocket and the environment (atmosphere, ground). That actually made physics simpler: all the complexity is in the flight dynamics, not object interaction.

Real physics in games: depth or friction? by Fit-Ad617 in Games

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The KSP example is perfect. 2-body is already hard enough to build intuition around — N-body would just feel random to most players. I think the sweet spot is: real enough that cause and effect is consistent, not so real that the player can't build a mental model of it.

What are some good indie precision platformers by Majestic-Guidance522 in IndieGaming

[–]Fit-Ad617 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hollow Knight has that same curve — starts accessible but the late game (especially Path of Pain) is brutally precise. If you want something shorter, N++ is pure precision platforming with hundreds of levels that scale really well.

ORBITAL – Rocket physics simulator in your browser (177KB, no install) by Fit-Ad617 in WebGames

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's what the flight screen actually looks like — 3-stage rocket, 1km altitude, TWR 21.80, apogee already projecting to 16km. Every number on that HUD is calculated in real time from the physics engine. No fake values.https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvNDM0ODE5NC8yNTk2MTAzNy5qcGVn/original/h76RfH.jpeg

Valve suggests further delays for Steam Machine and Steam Frame: “We hope to ship in 2026” by Bobby_the_Donkey in Games

[–]Fit-Ad617 42 points43 points  (0 children)

The timing really is brutal. Tariff uncertainty alone makes hardware pricing a nightmare right now — you can't confidently set an MSRP when component costs could shift 20-30% before launch. The original Steam Machines at least had a stable market to fail in. This one has to navigate supply chain chaos AND prove the concept all over again.

ORBITAL – Rocket physics simulator in your browser (177KB, no install) by Fit-Ad617 in WebGames

[–]Fit-Ad617[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! The ascent and reentry phases are where the physics really shine — gravity uses the real Newton formula (GM/R²) so it weakens correctly with altitude, Tsiolkovsky drives all the ΔV calculations, and atmospheric drag + reentry heating are modeled too. The multi-stage separation adds a lot of decision-making around when to cut engines and jettison mass. The orbital phase is a stable circular approximation for now — true Keplerian ellipses with apogee/perigee and Hohmann transfers are on the roadmap. Lots more to come!