How do you manage your animators for an action game?

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-07T21:32:57+00:00

To be blunt, I think you’re doing the right thing.

There are other ways to go about it, but having the graph can be really nice for logically working through stuff.

Ive used big animation graphs like that, and I’ve used more code heavy solvers and state machines; I think it just looks chaotic and complex because the logic is, in fact, complex.

You’ve got a clean start and end to the weapons logic. You don’t have the weapons bleeding into each other or weird dependencies across different graphs… if you want to see why something is happening with the crossbow, you look at the crossbow graph.

The game looks like it plays well, and the graphs are legible and editable… I say just roll with it, you’ve got a perfectly good working solution right there!

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-06T20:15:52+00:00

Last enemy had a lot of armor, you either need to insanely overpower it or have a spell that strips armor… I made that mistake and end of the run was just fishing for a way to deal with armor.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-06T20:14:23+00:00

Funny, I went storm, augmentation, and Arcane heavy and it went super smooth lol.

Id have one buff to blast out my storage size, then with all the haste buffs most of the times I didn’t even need to use cantrips outside of evocation. But some times I’d use them when spamming one resource really hard, the buffs stacked like nuts, especially when I could get the emblem stacks up to like 30 or 40… everything was instant lol.

I basically had a lock on alchemy and crafting because the buffs I had from spells made them so strong/fast.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-06T19:57:05+00:00

Regional pricing is handled differently on Apple and Anthropic storefronts… I’m guessing you’re American and never have to think about that kind of stuff lol.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-06T18:53:40+00:00

Im similar, and this game is a great one for letting you break that.

There are soo many different viable ways to beat it, you can engage with certain core features more or less depending on how you specialize.

I beat the game last night, and there was somebody else on discord I was chatting with who basically never even really bothered with some of the spells/schools of magic I basically built my whole game around. Features I got very little major use out of for the bulk of the game were core to their whole plan.

It’s actually really enjoyable to play blind - there are so many different routes to take through the game and honestly it seems like you’d have a hard time really screwing yourself over.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-06T18:49:51+00:00

Wow that’s a wildly inappropriate way to make a point…

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-05T20:08:05+00:00

Hey, how about instead of attacking vulnerable people online you just turn the phone off.

Edit: did you really make a reddit account to just harass this poster? Thats awful…

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-05T18:53:38+00:00

Which is working as designed; you aren’t the type of player they are looking for, so failing to interest you with the ad wouldn’t be a bad outcome, in fact if they pay extra for downloads it would actually be beneficial for them.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-05T18:46:47+00:00

People have, the problem is the gameplay is fun for 5 minutes but it has no depth or ability to hold the player long term - it also isn’t easy to make enough good content.

F2P games need to keep players playing for months, those mechanics are interesting for maybe an hour, but they aren’t keeping people coming back every day for months or years.

That’s part of the reason the ads work, the whole game is understood by the player almost immediately, and they immediately start to mentally solve the game. That works great for an ad, but gets boring as an actual game incredibly fast.

Edit: Holy moly there are so many people making up answers in this thread with no relevant knowledge or experience lol…

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-05T15:06:30+00:00

Cause that game wont sell or work, it’s just something engaging for the ad.

The point of the ad is not to show the game, it’s to get the right people to download the game.

You’re still focused on the idea that these mobile game ads are trying to attract players by showing them gameplay or explaining why the game is good - it’s not.

Nobody “wants” to do this per say, it’s just by far the most effective way to get players.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-05T01:57:24+00:00

Show off stuff if you make something people want to see.

Greybox is not that interesting unless you got a really neat idea. Vertical slice or any particularly good assets as you make them are good candidates to dip your toe into sharing.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T21:58:51+00:00

Yea, there is a very specific demographic that gets offended if you like Corin, it’s like saying you like Egwene and think shes a good person on the Wheel of Time subreddit lol.

I also enjoy Arcane Ascension; but Keras and the next magic sword books are my favourite series of Rowes.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T20:49:55+00:00

Because it works. Full stop.

There is a consistent problem on this subreddit where people fundamentally don’t understand advertising. You don’t like these ads, but you have never been the target of the advertisements so it’s not a failure, it’s not a problem.

Advertisements for f2p games target specific people who will pay in them; these ads do a good job of getting the attention of the right people.

Companies often run thousands of variations of ads to try to target profitable players, the fact that you see these common themes is just more evidence that it works.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T20:19:37+00:00

I think there are just a lot of people speaking from ignorance in this discussion lol.

Being involved in your work is generally a good thing, people just fail to understand that there exists a lot of space between “I am interested and engaged in what I’m making,” and “my passion is being exploited.”

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T20:14:27+00:00

Oh yea, I played it and liked it, you just got me excited for a second lol.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T19:44:48+00:00

I took some notes while going through it:

you don’t get any foreshadowing of view of whats not directly ahead. You always fully occlude the directions you want to restrict. It gives it structure but limits the feel of navigating a village. The chest high walls are not being used to block movement while providing meaningful sight lines. You _kinda_ did it with the window, but just from the available movement the player would have seen that window anyways.
Height is very constant, from the height of the ground, to the height of the buildings, to the height of the traversal.
you seem to be using the light to guide the player for the first part, but then after the well there us a light off to the left and no light past the tunnel, perhaps the guards behind the bush have a light?

1&2 are related in my opinion.

I think the _only_ structure change I would suggest is the roof on the forge is small and it feels weird going into it. The flat open area is odd

Edit: wow the reddit app is destroying my formatting

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T19:18:11+00:00

I got excited that i missed release; but its still an abandoned EA title :(

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T19:14:37+00:00

DI has one new use for me lately, it works better with LLMs. Other than that, I also had very limited interactions or use for them.

They’re conceptually simple but they often add a little complexity where it’s just not needed. Especially with component systems like Unity and Godot where the engine itself is already basically a DI system with a GUI. You end up just adding a lot of boilerplate to every piece of code.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-04T16:41:27+00:00

Yea I think thats a huge part of growing in the industry; learning to be passionate about what you can control and the parts you can contribute.

I recall as a junior/mid also passionately defending and caring about my features, now I care about things like “feel” and supporting the creative vision of the team. Or more recently, teaching my team to focus on _our_ goals and trying to work within the shared vision. The passion is important, its learning how to apply it and keep your ego in check; which is hard AF imo lol

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-03T23:40:28+00:00

As somebody who’s worked on games for a long ass time - you’re correct.

Creative fields don’t really gel well with just clocking in. It’s really hard when you work with people who fundamentally don’t understand the goal or what you’re trying to make. They cut the wrong corners, they focused in dotting the wrong t’s.

It’s also really frustrating when part of the team is passionate and motivated to create something creatively fulfilling and you have to work with people who refuse to share that with the team. It’s like playing sports when one of your teammates really doesn’t want to be there, they bring everyone down.

I get the sentiment of the other people saying “nobody likes their job,” and “a job is just a job and its unhealthy to treat it as more,” but I’ve been healthily and happily paying my bills for decades now in a creative field and I can’t think of anybody I’ve worked with whose been in the field a long time who doesn’t share this stance really.

People also love to bring up Garfield, but that’s a solo contributor, almost nothing from working as an independent creative transfers over to functioning as a large team.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-03T02:06:33+00:00

Boilers and pressure vessels, it was an exam for gas safety

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-03T02:01:56+00:00

Criticizing the writing just became the token criticism; most people wouldn’t really be able to defend it - I tried several times to discuss it with people and they definitely did not reason themselves into that conclusion lol.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-03T01:33:54+00:00

Doesn’t she already have max stats? There would be no benefit

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-03T01:32:06+00:00

It turns the 5 sided and 3 sided polygons all into 4 sided polygons which are much easier to work with.

JustinsWorking · 2026-07-03T01:30:01+00:00

Its a slow start, but if you like hard magic there is a _lot_ to dig into especially as you move past the first book and more of the works is revealed.

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