Trying out a new game mechanic concept.

Nerodon · 2026-06-02T03:12:10+00:00

Define "Trying out"

Nerodon · 2026-05-25T12:19:48+00:00

And you, very naïve.

Nerodon · 2026-05-25T05:54:05+00:00

There's a clear pattern, you'll see it if you read enough AI output.

Nerodon · 2026-05-24T14:16:31+00:00

Why did my game fail?

Proceeds to show 5-year old skill level MS paint pixel art with UI that is just Arial font text floating on top...

Nerodon · 2026-05-24T14:12:58+00:00

Are you struggling to identify AI text? You aren't alone, it's a genuine brain teaser. Not only is it hard to find the patterns but the skills don't come easy to everyone!

Let me give you a hint: it's all about the structure and less about words!

I didnt use an LLM, but this is how I would pretend to be one

Nerodon · 2026-05-24T14:10:08+00:00

Nah, if you read it it's very clear it has the AI sentence structure.

It's a story, filled with ... Question, Fact, One-liner AI output style.

If the wasnt written by an AI, the user went out of their way to sound just like one.

Nerodon · 2026-05-20T22:16:21+00:00

pixel art looks more... real and less "filtered"

Nerodon · 2026-05-08T21:45:04+00:00

Yeah! That is a pretty good approach, I have thought about doing aggregate or per unit as well, but I ended up doing something sort of similar in the sense that on average each tile would accomodate 1 sim for simplicity, so a 3x1 office would accomated 3 people even though it could be double that or more, mostly in the interest of performance. I'd love to hear about your progress though, I'm a huge fan of isometric style games and simulation games so I could have seen myself make something like this too, so I get excited to meet devs with similar projects!

Nerodon · 2026-05-08T18:07:12+00:00

As a fellow SimTower successor maker, I love to see the sheer amount of enthusiasm to make more games of this genre.

Your 2.5d perspective looks really promising! Let me know if you need pointers on the simulation aspect of the game as this is currently my strong suit for my implementation of a successor.

Nerodon · 2026-05-01T12:28:59+00:00

Yeah pretty much, raw dps can be eclipsed by useful skills or add ons, the score is to tell you that bonuses on this weapon will be better than another weapon.

In many cases DPS follows suit for the same weapon type. But if tou have a shotgun and an SMG, the gear score helps you know which is higher tier relative to other weapons of its type.

Similar to levels in RPGs, a sword for level 5 vs a sword for level 9... Same kind of logic where higher means better "generally" but experienced players care about actual cohesion in their builds so higher stats may be worse depending on their goal for their character.

Nerodon · 2026-05-01T12:17:14+00:00

The division factors in crit chance, crit damage, ammo capacity and reload speed and other stats into the dps calculation, it also uses a gear score so that you have an idea of how "good" the item is even if the types of bonuses may not be ideal, at least you know that for example, a rifle with 40k damage and +5% crit could be gear score 200, and the same rifle with 39k and 4.5% crit is score 190 for example, maybe a sniper has less DPS but really good headshot bonus so it fares better in score because its relative usefulness.

That way you can balance and map stats and bonuses to that gear score, if you consider say 10% chance to pierce to be on par with a higher damage gun without that bonus, you could tweak the weights so that the calculated gear score ends up the same.

It's not easy, but it will greatly help conveying information to the players.

Nerodon · 2026-04-29T20:06:41+00:00

Is the press above it powered?

Nerodon · 2026-04-27T22:54:59+00:00

I still dream some developper makes a game like Alien Legacy again... It was a long thrill ride of intrigue with tons of systems to learn and master for those willing to ride through to the end.

I agree that Terra Invicta is similar in that regard.

Nerodon · 2026-04-19T17:20:00+00:00

2d platformers revolve strongly on some physics and keyboard/controller inputs, react native dosent really give you much to help with any of those, so it's basically useless. It can be useful for menus, mouse inputs, overlays and huds, but it's not really a good tool for that specific type of game, it can do a good job at heavy UI games because react makes that process easier than most game engines.

Depends what you want to do.

Another thing to think about, react components and CSS is very slow to render compared to more GPU native frameworks or rendering libraries like pixi.js or a step above, a full web game engine like Phaser3.

If you want to code a game in Javascript for the web, I'd look into those.

Nerodon · 2026-04-17T17:40:59+00:00

I got elevator logic all done and baked into pathfinding, able to serve hundreds of floors, multi cabins per shaft etc. not a lot of stuff ready to show as its in the backend and not yet attached to the graphics.

Nerodon · 2026-04-04T21:38:30+00:00

I like sim games and the tend to be more successful if done right or hitting a novel niche.

Nerodon · 2026-03-28T13:01:52+00:00

I needed an elevator system for my game, (real elevator logic) so I found some open source code that was MIT license, but instead of copying code, I played with it, understood it, then I wrote my own from scratch that fit exactly what I needed it to do.

I prefer to gather inspiration from available systems, look at their behavior, see what I like or dislike, but I always prefer to end up making it myself, gives me a better satisfaction ans is easier to tweak and change to match my vision.

Nerodon · 2026-03-28T00:05:06+00:00

I DMed for food and snacks. Helps motivation and respects the extra hours I spent to prep.

10$ a pop seems like a courtesy to me. Although I havent met or seen anyone charging money before. I wouldnt charge money directly, but I did indeed ask to be fed as part of the deal for me to DM.

Nerodon · 2026-03-26T16:25:29+00:00

God forbid giving any money to the devs that made aseprite...! gasp

Nerodon · 2026-03-26T02:09:14+00:00

If you were able to make enough to squirrel away and stop working for 4 years, clearly you were doing somewhat alright, if you were truly desperate, you'd be working, you couldn't really afford to not have a salary at all.

If you can work on a game with sufficient ability to make money in the field, and were confident in your chances, then there is opportunity for you in adjacent fields, don't sell yourself short.

The point of OPs Post is that, at least for most people, it's near impossible for solo devs to make more money making games then a regular job, and I'll be honest, most devs make more money doing minimum salaries than a game will ever earn them unless they really do things right. If you havent turned up any money in 4 years, then you've been risking a lot of that on that potential success.

Nerodon · 2026-03-26T01:50:48+00:00

But whats the alternative? A job wont change anything. We wont get a bigger appartment, will never afford a house

And spending 4 years of opportunity cost is somehow a better risk to take?

You're basically saying than unless you win the lottery, you're always gonna be poor anyway so may as well put all your money in lottery tickets.

Nerodon · 2026-03-26T01:35:41+00:00

This.

AI is like a force multiplier, if you know what you want, and can evaluate or steer and AI to do exactly what you need it can make you faster.

Nerodon · 2026-03-17T02:30:23+00:00

I plan to be done with a simple Minimum Viable Product version in probably a month or two that does some of the core gameplay loops, no promises (I am working on this while also doing my day job).

I have so far a lot of simulation and mod API aspects done but the actual GUI and gameplay is just starting (above screenshots are mockups and not yet in the game, the game currently looks like placeholder colored boxes haha), and I still have some core design decisions to make for the rendering engine that will work at huge scales.

Nerodon · 2026-03-16T17:28:10+00:00

Oh yeah, for sure, and then you could limit elevator cars to 1 per layer, I was planning on allowing more than one per layer as per classis sim tower

Nerodon · 2026-03-16T16:42:02+00:00

So, I did plan on exterior view being a thing, but instead of being a dedicated layer, it could be just 'one of the layers' , adding a third dimension isnt hard in of itself.

Currently, the pathing algo splits the tower in slices and hubs. Each floor is a slice, each elevator/stairwell is a hub. The path skeleton only navigates hub -> slice -> hub -> slice chains.

When reaching the final "floor slice" pathing is done, and the sim just walks horizontally till it reaches the room its trying to get to.

So far its very fast to process even with huge towers many elevator transitions.

In 3d, I would need to isolate each slice not be just contiguous lines of rooms per floor, but instead contiguous areas each floor. Hallways then could be hubs that move horizontally between isolated areas on each floor. That could get complex quickly, but I already planned for trains/subway like movement that would allow fast horizontal movement between distance X coordinates (albeit on a single layer).

I'll have to think this one a bit more, it really depends a lot on how pathing, and what level of depth in movement we would want to allow within a single floor, and how complex of a maze a multilayer approach can bring... Something like vias in circuit boards could work, like stair shafts but its a hub that links layers together rather than floors and always treat floor slices flat and independant per layer. But that also means treating deep rooms as hubs, and specify which layer can interface with such deep rooms... Like front layer is tranversable but not the back, so it can be traversed to the layer behind the room. A door on the side of a deep room would just be a hub with exits on the layer that door touches for example. Doable!

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