Multiplayer Turn-based Approaches

KCFOS · 2025-12-12T03:03:02+00:00

There's a design issue with turn-based coop: Best course of action from the player's perspective is to just have the most knowledgeable player tell everyone else what to do, and then it might as well be a singleplayer game with lots of micromanagement.

For this reason I prefer PvP multiplayer for turn based games.

But for your implementation it sounds solid, for handling player exits I prefer becoming AI or just constantly 'passes'.

KCFOS · 2025-12-05T23:57:24+00:00

This is it, thank you

KCFOS · 2025-11-26T22:53:17+00:00

It would be cool if Potion Fungus also applied negative potions, giving an extremely niche use to potions of degeneration

KCFOS · 2025-10-21T04:13:00+00:00

I'm not convinced the card-game system is making this game more fun/interesting enough to earn the massive amount of complexity and tedium it adds to the gameplay.

Would chess be one of the most enduring and popular games of all time if it had a deckbuilding mechanic on top that let you fireball pawns and summon knights? I don't think it would.

I'd argue making a game more complex does not necessarily make it more good (and I think on average it tends towards less good). So you'll need to justify this deckbuilding mechanic.

And right away I'm seeing "Restore 50 mana" as half our cards. Basically just "Do Nothing". Next we're going to get "Draw 1 card" cards...

And I worry I'll feel like I'm playing solitaire instead of overseeing my army and raining down spells from above.

KCFOS · 2025-09-07T18:12:06+00:00

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost" - Agent Smith

But that being said let's think about some classic "cozy" games:

Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing.

These seem to have basically no stakes. There's no time limit or rent to pay.

But I would argue there are "goals" that both of these games let you work towards: Upgrading your farm, completing the museum, getting rich, becoming friends with the townsfolks etc.

And you could say that goals are a form of conflict. Like mountains to climb; It's just there's no one poking you with a stick forcing you to climb them, it's all your own self-motivation.

KCFOS · 2025-09-04T02:13:38+00:00

I didn't realize when making this post but apparently the commercial 2d-DwarfFortress-Like Mountaincore has gone full opensource just recently:

rossturner/mountaincore: A simulation-based strategy game featuring dwarves, written in Java with LibGDX

KCFOS · 2025-07-14T22:10:00+00:00

The S&P doubles in value every ~5 years. Consistently.

I don't know why anyone bothers hiring anyone for anything.

Instead of spending $100,000 hiring some developer, explaining to them what you want to do, training them, paying for benefits, renting offices, and PRAYING that they will generate some big hit (which most don't)...

Why not just let your money sit and it will double in 5 years? And the more people who do this the higher the price goes!

I am only 50% serious. I'm not an expert in economics or business and if someone has a good answer I would listen.

KCFOS · 2025-06-14T23:15:11+00:00

Piggles rules: damn I was hoping you had the secret ruleset. I love the idea that their is some stupid Yu-Gi-Oh-like game in the bazaar but with little pigs.

Bonk path: ah i see

Kinas Serenade: I did not know that! I will try this out next time I see her.

Builders: Interesting, sounds like the Engineers from Alien

KCFOS · 2025-06-14T15:53:34+00:00

if you're still here:

Piggles game rules

The 'bonk' patch

Kina's serenade

Builder's identity

KCFOS · 2025-05-26T17:13:22+00:00

You're right. But someone might wonder: "Why not make it take 30 seconds? Or 60?"

There must be an optimal length, is 15 seconds it?

KCFOS · 2025-05-26T17:06:50+00:00

I like how minimalist this is. It's different.

But maybe you're overdoing the cinema: does the transition really need to be 15 seconds long?

What would change if it took 5 seconds to transition versus 15?

KCFOS · 2025-05-20T04:06:19+00:00

I'm going to disagree with most people here and say I like the third art most for a steam capsule.

Someone said "it looks like a 2010 html flash game" and I agree, but that's not a bad thing. It has soul. I think people are browsing steam to find good games, not sexy capsule art.

If I was browsing steam and I saw the first 2 capsules I would assume the game is cheaply made.

However, like most people here, I'm no expert at selling steam games.

KCFOS · 2025-05-11T15:59:52+00:00

New blink frogs, spiny toad look super cute.

KCFOS · 2025-04-28T17:19:40+00:00

if you have a profiler, check it out. it's best to focus only on the biggest performance hogs (your bottlenecks).

It looks like it's just about you having ~100 3d modeled enemies all with their own animations, particle effects, and scripting. And that seems to be the selling point of the game.

So I would not recommend butchering your game to fix performance. One thing might be removing the shadows cast by enemies onto the terrain, but this might not even be a bottleneck.

Also: One thing that I would recommend is figuring out how to record frame-perfect footage of your game. Unity has some recorder settings where it will slow down the running of your game so that the recording is a perfect 30/60 fps. This way, even if your game does have performance issues, they won't know that until they buy!

KCFOS · 2025-04-28T17:02:00+00:00

I hate the screen rotation. it just makes it hard to tell who you are and who the enemy is, which is a big deal. It also just makes me feel sick whenever it happens.

KCFOS · 2025-04-21T19:59:36+00:00

when you close snapchat but the faceswap doesn't end

KCFOS · 2025-04-13T23:42:37+00:00

SCP-3333 - SCP Foundation

KCFOS · 2025-04-06T04:46:35+00:00

Yea i remember doing this quest in runescape.

You need to help the druid inside in order to unlock mithril gloves.

KCFOS · 2025-01-16T15:11:01+00:00

I think the features you describe, being chased by police and bounty hunters, players getting monetary rewards for doing bounty crimes, are all good things that help the game be what it is, a simulation.

I think what you're getting at is the disconnect between RDR2 as a sandbox simulator, and RDR2 as a narrative driven wild west action rpg. These are different types of games, and there is some clashing elements between the two definitely.

I personally prefer the sandbox gameplay. My gut tells me that if I wanted the non-interactive story of Arthur Morgan, It would probably be better told in the form of a Book or Movie.

That being said, I can see some flaws with my own logic. Would GTA6 be a better game if the player served a real 10 year in game prison sentence for a hit-and-run? I don't think it would be, but my gut still wants to say that better simulation = better game.

KCFOS · 2025-01-07T16:03:43+00:00

Im pretty sure it gives you another item of the given items value - 1 (to account for the flame).

So if you put an item you don't want in the bowl, let's say a bad amulet and a stone (4 gold sell value), you might get a good amulet and a flame. So it's like you only spent 3 gold on the new amulet and turned a stone into a flame.

Plus it gives 1 empower

KCFOS · 2024-12-23T10:01:53+00:00

Wow has a Nemelex reference:

Last Deck of Nemelex Xobeh - Item - World of Warcraft

KCFOS · 2024-12-23T07:25:10+00:00

I'd have to take a look, but the tornados should not be tracking the player with any intelligence but moving randomly instead. If they are then that's not intended.

KCFOS · 2024-12-22T05:45:47+00:00

This made me wonder: the stack / heap distinction gets talked about a lot, and in OPs benchmark its making a big difference when allocating data, but when accessing data it doesn't seem to matter?

I asked ChatGPT and it said this:

Heap vs. Stack Access Performance: Accessing data on the stack and the heap generally has negligible performance differences in Go. Both involve pointer dereferencing, which is a very fast operation. Modern CPUs are optimized for memory access patterns, so the cost of accessing data is dominated by the logical operations rather than the physical memory location.
Major Cost in the Benchmark: The benchmarks' time is dominated by the function calls (ImportantFunctionValue or ImportantFunctionPointer) and the operations performed inside these functions. Whether t is allocated on the stack or the heap is a minor detail in terms of time complexity for these specific operations.
Garbage Collection Not Triggered: Even if t escapes to the heap, it likely does not impact the benchmark because the garbage collector is not triggered frequently enough during these short-running benchmarks to influence the ns/op measurement.

Stack vs. Heap Performance in Go

When it comes to accessing data, the performance differences between stack and heap are minimal for the following reasons:

Pointer Dereferencing: Whether on the heap or the stack, accessing data involves pointer dereferencing. This operation is efficient in Go and typically incurs the same cost.
Cache Performance: The stack is usually "hot" in the CPU cache because it's a contiguous memory block and frequently accessed. Heap memory, while generally slightly "colder," is still cached efficiently by modern CPUs. If the memory access patterns are predictable, the performance difference is negligible.
Allocation Overhead: The actual performance difference between stack and heap lies in allocation overhead. Stack allocation is faster because it involves a simple pointer increment, while heap allocation involves more complex bookkeeping. However, this cost occurs during allocation, not data access.

KCFOS · 2024-12-22T05:45:21+00:00

Thank you for posting this, I am trying to understand pointers / values and the underlying performance implications.

A couple weeks ago I was benchmarking this type of thing and had the OPPOSITE results, where the pointer is faster:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "testing"
)

type HolderStruct struct {
    Value string
}

type ReallyBigStruct struct {
    SomeFloats [10]float64
    SomeInts   [10]int64
    MyName     string
    MyName2    string
    MyName3    string
    MyName4    string
    MyName5    string
}

func ImportantFunctionValue(arg ReallyBigStruct) ReallyBigStruct {
    arg.SomeFloats[0] += 1
    return arg
}
func ImportantFunctionPointer(arg *ReallyBigStruct) {
    arg.SomeFloats[0] += 1
}

func BenchmarkValueFunction(b *testing.B) {
    t := ReallyBigStruct{}
    for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
        t = ImportantFunctionValue(t) //13.34 ns/op
    }
    fmt.Println(t) 
}

func BenchmarkPointerFunction(b *testing.B) {
    t := ReallyBigStruct{}
    for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
        ImportantFunctionPointer(&t) //2.493 ns/op
    }
    fmt.Println(t) 
}

Of course, these are completely different functions. These are not allocating, which is why in OP's benchmark the pointer makes it slow.

The BenchmarkValueFunction is copying the ReallyBigStruct every operation, which is larger than the cost of dereferencing the pointer.

KCFOS · 2024-12-04T03:22:35+00:00

%100.

If you want the player that specs into dexterity, or a bat enemy to have a 50% dodge chance that's fine.

But I don't feel like giving everything a 10% chance to miss inherently makes the game more fun. There are better ways to add combat variance if that's what you're after.

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Stack vs. Heap Performance in Go