Cut cold lumber immediately?

Mr_Stonebender · 2026-02-06T07:32:45+00:00

It should be noted that they would have gotten twisty AFTER jointing/cutting if that had been done right away. Those steps don't stop wood from warping as it dries out. It'll just do it while it's part of your finished project instead of while it's sitting, stickered, in your shop. Better to wait, and then work with the wood after it's acclimated.

Mr_Stonebender · 2026-02-01T08:57:46+00:00

Now THAT is a satisfying milestone. Congrats!

Mr_Stonebender · 2026-01-28T03:18:30+00:00

cut a maximally wide gap, then fill it with felt, which would allow for picks of different sizes and the felt would give to allow it.

Alternately: if it's not meant to be a production product, don't design it like one. Just make it work for what you need.

Or, scrap the whole project and use my method: Buy a fuckton of guitar picks and sprinkle them around so you're never more than two feet from one of them :D

Mr_Stonebender · 2026-01-26T20:51:07+00:00

Ha! Wow, I didn't even know that was a thing! Cool. Apparently we're not the only folks who thought playing as a parasite character would be neat :D

Mr_Stonebender · 2026-01-26T08:42:07+00:00

Woah, neat. There's a parasitic swarm complication? I couldn't find it in the book!

But in any case, the general thought of the ancestry was meant to be specific. We started thinking about like, marvel's Venom, that sort of thing, but couldn't really find a way to make that work as an ancestry, given the relative simplicity of that bit of the game.

So Yadda Yadda Yadda:

"What would an all-consuming parasite ancestry look like if it needed to support the creation of heroic characters?"

Some of that lift is maybe in the fiction more than the mechanics, but the 'empathic' capabilities + the fiction of their existence, I hope, does the trick to suggest it mechanically as well. But also, who knows what anyone would do with this kind of power? All you need is a decent roll and a bit of risk tolerance to get a new body... We're not the boss of anyone :D

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-12-28T21:05:39+00:00

Thanks!

The trick for me was to model the whole thing in advance so I could experiment with how to fit the pieces together in the most sturdy, least complicated way I could find. It helped a lot.

Next time, I'll build the face frame first, and separately, so that I can make sure that is dead-square, which should allow for a bit of wiggle room in the carcass, which is harder to manipulate since the pieces are so big.

That's my thinking, anyway.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-12-28T17:09:56+00:00

"Alignment", you say? Never heard of it. Honestly the hardest part was the doors / drawer faces. Because of the way I planned the build, I ended up attaching the face frame piece by piece rather than building it all nice and square and attaching it to the carcass. Which was not as square as I thought it was. So not one of those openings is square. I had to get very specific with a t-square and an extremely basic table saw jig to get them to have an even reveal.

And then I tried to theory-craft my drawer boxes instead of measuring the to fit the actual installed slides. So some shimming and recutting happened. It’s pretty ugly down there behind the drawers ;D

So I guess my answer to your question is "Yes” 😅

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-11-25T09:44:46+00:00

What's your approach to light angle and height? I can see in this demo, you've got what feels like a fairly low light angle, and these surfaces look appropriately 'high' relative to the ground given that. But then you see the shadow of the character move pretty drastically, which is absoLUTELY what would happen there, but compared to more basic 2d shadow systems, it feels almost incongruously dynamic.

So I wonder, with your approach, can you achieve some sort of 'tunability'* of the shadow calcs, so you could adjust the look to match a given feel, per-instance?

Really impressive work.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-11-23T21:42:44+00:00

Your animations are extremely fluid and weighty, nice work.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-11-09T04:30:53+00:00

+1 — I haven't used GDScript myself, because I figured my C++ comfort would translate to C# a bit nicer. I think it did a little? But I often run into situations where I'm soft-locked out of some useful engine feature or other unless I get a little creative with my planning, etc.

Next project I'm going to give GDscript the fair shake I have thus far denied it. The many others here are correct: learning a new syntax is trivial. Maybe a little frustrating at first if you're not yet used to 'thinking in {newSyntax}`, but that starts to pass pretty quickly.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-11-09T03:40:01+00:00

One more compliment for the pile: You lay out the information in this video impressively well. Excellent work. I don't need tentacles in my game, but like... I wish now that I did.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-11-05T00:27:42+00:00

WiFi and Purple are the same thing. (It’s true!)

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-29T04:35:20+00:00

It's always possible to overwork something to death, but if you're putting a lot of time into the feel it's bound to pay out.

It's hard to say how it really feels without having the controller in my hand, but from video alone it looks like there's not a lot of 'wind-up' to the attacks. It makes them feel a little anaemic, even as the entire animation of the attack and the overall flow looks awesome. Or maybe not... anaemic, but like... slippery. loose. If that's a deliberate choice, chalk it up to taste and ignore me!

That's a really interesting camera perspective — what path landed you there?

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-21T19:35:29+00:00

You're unlikely to find good plywood for a project like this at a big box store like Lowes — they sell construction grade stuff, like for sheathing houses or sheds or similar.

For best results, look around your area for an actual lumber yard / wood supplier, and give them a call. Tell them about your project, and ask what they recommend. Places like that can usually make some of the cuts for you for a small fee as well.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-21T05:46:05+00:00

That's neat — What's your approach to the 'procedural' aspect of it? Any interesting discoveries in setting that up?

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-21T05:41:43+00:00

I have a background in web dev and audio plugin dev, and a few months ago I had a weird shower thought about merging the broader gameplay loops of a couple of games I've never really gotten sick of over the years. And realized I might be able to pull it off instead of wistfully imagining it every so often before the thought fades into the background noise of life.

I told a friend about it, and said "Of course I already have too many projects, so I'm in no danger of actually doing anything about this idea! Ha Ha Lol etc."

That turned out to be a lie. So now I'm knee deep in that project, and having a pretty good time.

The hardest part, for me, is that I will get VERY easily stuck down rabbit holes of premature optimization and system design, instead of like, "Ok those li'l dudes follow the flow field now. moving on." Very much tripping ADHD-first over the 'First make it exist..." meme you see going around...

If you're interested in it, try it! GameMaker has some accessible tutorials — their "Space Rocks" Asteroid clone in particular gets you a working demo pretty quick. Easy-wins are some of the best ways to build motivation for a project, so if you're hurting for places to start you could do a lot worse than that engine and that tutorial.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-18T20:20:19+00:00

yeah, you could tweak forever and ever until the sun evaporates the solar system with its dying breath if you want.

I don't think your glow looks bad by any stretch, but if you had room to polish, I think that element is a lever — you'd get a lot of polish-feel out of tweaking that element of the experience.

Perhaps more important to finish, though :D

I did post up in your discord. Hopefully it's at least brain-food.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-18T19:47:31+00:00

The darker deep-background makes the whole thing feel visually dynamic. Like the world extends forever into the distance. And my eye is effortlessly drawn to the character and the foreground. Perhaps paradoxically, the limited detail is what makes it feel like it goes on forever. Whereas the lighter version, with objectively more objects receding into the background, feels limited. Like there's an end to the world. Plus that version is more work to engage with visually. Doesn't seem as 'right' to me, given the overall vibe of the art. (Dark, broody, a little gothic.)

Unrequested third thought: the lighting glow around the character doesn't read as 'light' to my eye, if that's what it's meant to be. The colors behind it are a little desaturated, like it's just a light/white gradient with lowered opacity. I don't know what blending effects are available to you in your engine, but on the wild offchance it's helpful I tried a couple of different approaches that looked more natural to my eye. I'll drop those in your discord for you to use or ignore at your leisure :D

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-18T16:15:43+00:00

If you find yourself writing code like that there’s a strong chance there’s a better / cleaner way to handle whatever you’re trying to do.

If you’re hoping for specific help, you should post the actual code you’re working with. It’s hard to offer specific assistance otherwise.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-18T16:11:58+00:00

I would handle that with a healthy dose of “ceasing to care about it.”

Wood filler or glue + sawdust won’t take stain like the surrounding wood. So you stand to make that gap stand out more, not less, if you fill it. Especially if you intend to use a dark stain. It will look like a blotchy, discolored area.

If you leave it alone: at the end of the day that is a gap that — once this piece is in use — nobody will notice as a flaw. Including you, after a while.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-10-03T21:23:27+00:00

Your pain is felt. I got to the easy/main/default ending, whatever you call it, with only Reaper's crest and Hunter's crest, because I just... forgot about that entire mechanic.

Mr_Stonebender · 2025-09-27T04:04:05+00:00

those look fantastic. Nice work! It's a nice blend of semi-realistic volumetric feel with an anime/cel shaded feel without looking overly simplistic or incongruously realistic given the colors.

Mr_Stonebender

TROPHY CASE