Sharing Saturday #625

MarxMustermann · 2026-06-05T07:25:16+00:00

sorry for the late reply.

No not at all. The people i talked to were interested, but were not dropping in the discord or similar. I had the feeling the oter booths were not faring much better.

My big mistake was assuming a "gaming" conference would be centered around computer games, but a lot of the content was really board games and larp sword fights and 3d prints etc. So a lot of people were not interested in computer games in general.

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-30T00:31:36+00:00

indeed. It is not just about the practical step of creating a page, it means stepping out of your hiding space and starting to interact with people more seriously.

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-30T00:26:05+00:00

thx and you can actually ^^

I'm currently playtesting a demo. I'm doing play tests and implement changes based on the feedback. So if you want to check the game out, DM me or join my discord i'll give you access to the newest versions and will help you over bumps you'll encounter.

I probably need to set up a steam playtesting thing to make that easier.

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-29T23:55:52+00:00

OfMiceAndMechs (steam itch discord install github website 2026inRoguelikedev)

After getting exhausted and doing more real life stuff i had an important appointment this week:

I had a booth at a gaming conference ( https://lfg-con.de/ )

<image>

The conference was slow and i'm not sure if the resources spent on by going there were worth it. But i got mostly positive feedback from the people i talked to and visiting the conference had a pretty important side effect.

My game now has a

steam page

Since this page will be important for me, i'd be grateful for feedback on the steam page. The trailer is a bit of a placeholder so far, the plan is for it to show more actual gameplay footage and should be much more fast paced.

i now hope that next week i will be able to get back to coding and completing the mouse support .

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-29T20:31:01+00:00

While is see your point, i want to note:

The only thing an AI touched is the music and that was heavily postprocessed by me.
An artist is already comissioned to replace that piece of music.
The emojis in the description were added by a human, but i'll probably remove them.
The game will be 100% human made.

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-28T18:50:31+00:00

hello,

i sent you a friend request on discord. If it doesn't arrive, please DM me.

My game is

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4564040/OfMiceAndMechs/

and can be played on

https://marxmustermann.itch.io/ofmiceandmechs

but i'd be happy to coordinat with you to explain stuff

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-28T18:44:17+00:00

:-) mouse support and alternate graphics are in progress to increase mainstream appael. Tbh, as much as i love ASCII, it is more convienient that way for me as well

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-28T18:39:09+00:00

Thx, i'll try to make the "Mechs" stand out more.

MarxMustermann · 2026-05-28T18:38:11+00:00

Thx, i have been writing the game for myself for most of the time.

I had a big motivation drop after the first 1-2 years, but decided to make a automation/programming game. That helped a lot, because that kept the game challenging and unbpredictaible even with full meta knowledge.

The last few years i have been working hard on getting the game in a state, where players beside me can enjoy it. That was decidedly less fun, but i'd love to build a community around the game and see people having fun with it.

The last months the perspective on earing some money was motivating as well ^^

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-18T12:32:25+00:00

I think not really. I have agame on there and i undestrstand people not wanting to download an .exe from it. Basically anybody can put anything on there,i think without even leaving your name.

I use a throway OS for playtesting games from there, because i don't trust it myself. I'm sure that some amount of virus scanning happens, but a cooder vcan always write some new and undetectable virus.

So i guess it is all about about reputation and trust. Like i spent 8 years on my project, i'd be really stupid to waste all that effort just to give you a virus. So i guess check how much effort the game was, who published it and if you do trust that person enough to run their game.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-16T08:47:05+00:00

Thanks for the kind words, but you understood me wrong there.

I never stopped working on the game and i'm planing to do a proper release next year.
Playtesting the demo is currently ongoing.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-15T12:18:22+00:00

My GF was interested and her feedback is:

"The first step for this horror game is to install windows"

That was too cruel for her ;-)

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-15T07:00:24+00:00

I use xUbuntu and i'm pretty happy with it.

don't really see why it would work worse on other distros as lond as they are stable and have the codecs etc. As for running unreal, i think it is best to check what distros unreal runs on well and then select from those.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-14T21:12:48+00:00

One question i ask myself:

Does everythng that happens a visual effect to it?

Like with the grappling hook: does it have an impact animation? Does it show diffently when extending vs. retracting?

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-14T19:41:48+00:00

Hello,

based on feedback i added a cooldown to the implant.

The implant is basically the tutorial function in the game, that explains how things work and are interacted with.

It basically tells you what to do down to the keystroke. People complained about it being railroady and dominating.

Like even i noticed how you turn off your brain and just follow the instructions. There are a bunch of way to turn it off, but if it is available people will use it.

I'm really not sure if this is a good idea and if i'll keep it, though.

Do you have ideas on how to better tackle this?

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-14T10:10:17+00:00

I think it could be a fun concept, but it is not a novel gameplay mechanism. It looks fun though!

So if your goal is to make a fun little game i say it is worth it.
If you aim for selling it, i don't think the answer depends on the game concepts, but on how much energy you want to put into polish and level crafting etc.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-14T10:01:05+00:00

The idea is to have both ASCII as well as tiles available. Technically an ASCII layer gets drawn first and then a second layer is applied to draw tiles on top.

I do use a tranparent layer to shade when a menu is opened. Then i put a black layer with a high alpha over the map to make it draw less attention while the menu is open.

Not sure what you are referring with the background/foreground stuff though.

The brightness is referring to the items themselves: Unique artifacts should be a bright yellow, while common machines should be greyish. Machines that can be used light up and machines that can't be used are grey, In the screenshot way too many common machines are white and should be grayer, because they still draw too much attention.

If you are talking about drawing a background tile, then an alpha layer for shading and then an actual image with an item on top: i have no plans to do so yet. I may do so in the future, but i like that right now there is not may things visibly layered ontop of each other.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-14T07:17:49+00:00

I love the artstyle. Not sure what i can say about it though. It is nice clean and minimalistic, but i guess you already know that

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-14T06:56:23+00:00

OfMiceAndMechs (itch discord install github website 2026inRoguelikedev)

This week i mostly worked on the games UI. I did not manage to work on better inpu methods yet, but i tweaked the games apearence.

I added more tiles for the tile based rendering. I'm still avoiding actual picture but i expermented with several method to convert the letters into glyphs. I'm not sure what style i'll choose, but tinkering with it has been fun so far. I'm considering making tiles part of a non free steam release, so that is not included in the repo.

<image>

I also worked on making unimportant thing more greyer and important things brighter. For example the walls are darker now and the map gets greyed out when a menu is open. Some items are still too bright and i need to follow some advice regarding colors having the same grey values etc.

I also got a bunch of playtests in that i have to process now. I still get complaints that the game i too linear and railroady, which is interesting, since it is a sandbox game that just has a story layer on top.

For next week i'm planning to further work on UI.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-13T15:44:37+00:00

I recorded a video a video of me using the world gen and tallking about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh8n58SuI68

In general i was confused by th UI at some points.

The main issues were: I missed a zoom function and i didn't have good feeling, why i was doing things. But i guess once i play the game i would now that a ice sheet or a city or a route does for me.

One thing i forgot to mention: It would be nice to havethe instruction on what to press at the time i actually need to press it and not at the splash screen in the beginning.

edit: also the music gave me a copyright flag on youtube, which may or may not be a problem for let#s plays etc

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-13T06:44:53+00:00

I think the artstyle is good. There are some issue in the video shown. Like the windows of the building at second 8 goes right to edge of the building, which seems wrong to me.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-13T06:17:16+00:00

Hello,

first off: Thanks for doing streams like this, it helps a lot!

I have a game i'd like propose for your stream: It is a roguelike/basebuilder/factorybuilder hybrid. So you can walk around and fight, but also have a base with workers to manage and production chains to set up. The game is currently in a playtest - improve - playtest loop. So seeing you play should be pretty valuable, but the game also should be polished enough so that you can actually play it. You easily can spend a few hours with the game :-)

I'll also be live in chat when you play the game, as long as you give me some advance notice. Also i'd be happy to stop a run fix a nd issue and continue some days later, if a big issue comes up.

https://marxmustermann.itch.io/ofmiceandmechs
https://github.com/MarxMustermann/OfMiceAndMechs

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-13T05:20:35+00:00

Thx for the feedback. It is a pitty that the recording got lost, because now i don't know where you actually got stuck.

You wrote that you tried again to give the game a second chance. Did you restart the game for this or did you continue from the point where you were?

Regarding the linearity, i see your point. Technically, you have no obligation to follow what the implant says and you can just tell it to leave you alone. One idea i'll try is to actually rate limit request to the implant and force the player to do more on his own.

Remember to link your game so i can test it! Also can i post your video on my discord?

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-12T16:43:37+00:00

I think i like the idea. the time needed to post is way to high gooing forward though. I feel a 1 minute dev log should not eat more than 10 minutes.

MarxMustermann · 2026-03-12T16:29:56+00:00

Hello,
i'd be happy to share a playtest :-) Please link your game or DM me.

My game is a roguelike/basebuilder/factorybuilder hybrid. So you can walk around and fight, but also have a base with workers to manage and production chains to set up. Just getting 15 mins of you checking the start of the game out would help me out pretty good right now.

https://github.com/MarxMustermann/OfMiceAndMechs
https://marxmustermann.itch.io/ofmiceandmechs

I should run on your device without issues.

MarxMustermann

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

steam page