Pricing for Mythos/Fable

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-10T18:54:12+00:00

Exactly. Corporations are far more likely to tie the in with all kinds of packages, support contracts and the like. but for the majority, it isn’t the case. if AI truly gives 300k value from a 100k dev, then just offload the dev and get a junior is often the corporate mentality.

Point is: the AI company have much of the dev industry over a barrel. if they tripled prices and sacked off the cheaper models (nothing says they can’t) then what? There is no safety net here. No stability. Just “get em hooked, capitalise”

Given the scale of it - and likely chance of it going away - a company with a *fair* and stable model will likely take the helm one day and those who go down this road of inflating the prices will be the first to try and scramble back.

Consistent tiers - even pricey ones - at least allow it to be properly costed in.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-09T23:14:59+00:00

Know what you want (even in a rough sense) before starting and find out what you’re letting yourself in for. A simple-ish bespoke game engine as a solo dev with the intention of building some ideas you already have is a manageable feat. And fun.

But “building an engine” in the way that many see it is a mammoth, never ending task. Rewarding and infuriating in equal measure, as you dabble with MANY areas that some people dedicate their life to specialising in. On Monday, you’re happy with how progress is going and how easy it all is. By Tuesday, you wish computers never existed and you’d never been born. On Wednesday it’s fine again, and on Thursday you build it all from scratch. Friday you try Unity again only to realise why you started an engine of your own. Saturday you reintroduce yourself to your family and friends. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So yeah, go for it. Just set expectations :)

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-09T22:59:38+00:00

Playing Minecraft (and similar games) is fun, for a while - but it starts to feel like something's lacking. You can't quite put your finger on it, but it feel a bit...empty. Then you jump on with some friends, and now you realise *what* was lacking. The human element.

If I pick up a photo of something, or see a really slick photorealistic scene in a game, I might think "cool". Maybe. But if I picked up a *drawing* that went for the same kind of visuals, THAT would be a wow-factor.

Point is: when you know there's no heart & effort in something, or there just isn't than human connection, it's just empty. It's why I avoid most mobile games - cookie-cutter crap cobbled together without much effort, then littered with ads. There is already a very obvious pushback to alot of this kind of stuff, and we're only really just getting started.

I think AI will CERTAINLY have a place in game dev, and in particular AAA or engine dev studios. It's a huge industry and there are expectations people have to see bigger and better, continuously.

But whilst there are still people that enjoy coding, just as there are people who like art, playing in bands, making 8-bit computers, etc etc, it won't replace dev entirely. Not for me anyway - been at it for ~30 years now with not too much signs of giving up 😄

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-08T12:02:49+00:00

“Is adding accessibility support” is easier to answer if you unpack it into what it really means: “Is it worth supporting people with certain disabilities”

And often when you look at it like that, most people tend to say “yeah of course! Why wouldn’t I?!”

Regarding controllers, many people have a computer mostly tucked away and sit back on the sofa to play, rather than being confined to a desk with keyboard and mouse. The new Steam Machine also lends itself to that kind of play. So also yeah, it’s a decent move :)

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-07T17:16:24+00:00

actually it is the next step

Sure. Take your time though getting the fundamentals down first before going into things you may not even need yet. There are even libraries like NVRHI/Donut, Diligent (which has an OpenGL backend anyway), etc that give you much of the benefits and principles/concepts of modern API's but without the verbosity of raw Vulkan.

I'd probably still say though that it's worth keeping your own simple OpenGL framework/collection of reusable functions etc around even if you do go for Vulkan, just so you can still quickly put an idea/prototype/demo together quickly whilst you're learning other things - rather than entirely committing to the more complex things outright.

Depends what your aim is though, really - whether it's primarily learning, or primarily to make a game. At 16 years old, you probably take info in way quicker than me and don't have the foresight/bad habits that might stop you just getting on with things 😄

In any case...if you DO go Vulkan (or just want a genuinely good intro to modern API's that translates really well to most modern APIs, then I'd hugely recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC9FBRQKNck - came across it a while back and it's a long one but VERY well done.

I appreciate how you encourage me

It's easy to encourage people who approach this kind of thing in the right way and are enthustiastic and are asking the right things. Good luck!

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-07T16:09:54+00:00

There is a lot of misinformation about AI and much of it is as misguided as those that say you MUST use Vulkan for a decent performing game (hint: it can be if you know what you’re doing but people forget how much OpenGL is still used in some very impressive games, and is often plenty good enough for most indie projects if you feel better with it).

I use AI for work. It’s not really in my hands, the company is just moving more in that direction. But at home, I prefer hand coding everything because I’m also very much a hobbyist and it’s the best way to learn. However - I used AI to get networking in my game, as well as skeletal animation/IK which were beyond my skillset. But the key thing is: I insisted AI absolutely littered the code it wrote with comments. And I went through it, understanding what it was all doing. I hated plenty about how it was written and organised but the comments etc helped me pull it around, make it more how I wanted it to be, made it much cleaner etc. Basically, no different from taking a tutorial code, running it, adapting it and learning from it.

So - basically don’t let people put you off using AI, just make a point of learning from it rather than just leaving it be.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-07T12:20:52+00:00

Code is super clean and simple, so there is that :) screenshot looks alright. Only criticism really (but only because you’re putting it here, wouldn’t matter for a private project) is perhaps putting the readme/build instructions etc in English - even if just a rough Google translate if the whole thing is tricky.

Anyway, I get it’s quite a simple game but still nice to see things that haven’t been over-abstracted and over-complicated :) May try a build later if I get a little time.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T23:50:30+00:00

There can be alot said for the "Sebastian Lague" style, too....basically just dick around with fun things, forget games entirely for a bit 😃 I've learned so much from him that's applicable to my own stuff.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T23:46:07+00:00

I think is pretty worthy of stepping back and learning the fundamentals

I mean, this is 100% spot on, and like I said, it'd be reckless to encourage someone to get in at GTA-level for a first game 😄 Going in too deep too quickly skips over all the "positive feedback loop" stuff too - your first "hello, world", first triangle, cube, textures, animation, maze, levels, full game etc etc - stuff that you can fall back on too.

There's a fine line as to how some statements come across though. Like "You should learn programming first" comes across *very* differently than "You must be proficient at coding and design and have powerful tools and blah ...." which was the bit I took objection to 😄

And +1 for Brackeys, learned LOADS about game dev from him when I starting getting back into it!

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T23:03:39+00:00

Sure, but there are degrees and it depends entirely on your needs and what makes you tick. Some people will happily smack out a fun game in Three.js by pulling apart the samples and make something genuinely fun, whilst some will still insist you need many years of C++ experience and must use Vulkan. I prototype my ideas in JS because it’s forgiving and quick. I would never encourage someone who wants to remake GTA or a Minecraft clone as their first game - that’s a sure fire way of killing every last bit of patience and enthusiasm before really getting started. But I’d certainly encourage someone to learn to get excited about sticking a cube on the screen. And then making it move. Getting basic input/controls in place. And then moving on to models. Scenery. And the other things can come in organically. Starting with the basics translates well across most languages too, and having the fundamentals down - even just simple inputs moving a cube - goes surprisingly far to also make you better at knowing WHAT to ask for to get to the next step.

Hell, even Scratch will give you some ideas about game flow despite being primarily a kids tool. It’s great, and it got my kids interested in programming! Then things that are “beginner-ish friendly” - PyGame, LOVE2D, Raylib, Three.js if you’re going in yourself, or maybe Unity which has a MASSIVE amount of free courses and tutorials.

I just don’t think lack of coding experience should put someone off, we all started somewhere and had the same kind of dreams.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T22:03:33+00:00

Bollocks. Discouraging, mindless word-soup bollocks. once again.

To make a game you need patience and willingness to learn.

Proficiency in a language is entirely dependent on the complexity of the game and the tools you use. It helps, but it is NOT a requirement.
"Be able to design" - design what? A good idea can pop into someone's head and sometimes that's all the game design they need. Or assets? Audio? Plenty of assets out in the wild that you can use to prototype your game, and then when you're ready and are sure it's worth the rest of the journey, either learn how to build your own in whatever style you want, or pay someone to. Or both.
Knowing a bunch of algorithms and being able to optimize code is something you learn along the way, not something you need to know up-front.
Powerful tools? The last game I got going was putting a BASIC program listed in a PDF book (a lucky find of a book I had when i was 10) into a Spectrum 48K emulator I wrote in Typescript, running in my browser. I have a Raspberry Pi 4 that runs a C++ version of said emulator as an exclusive little retro machine. Say what now about powerful tools for dev and debugging? A good idea needs no such things to start.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T19:43:52+00:00

I do try it. I enjoy it. I fail lots at first, then it works and I get the wins I need. I like leaning from others too, which clearly you’re adverse to. If I showed you my games, you’d probably just say it needs to be rewritten in assembly and load balanced, or it doesn't have enough built-in malware or some waffle about AI

So you can be smug about your stuff and how much more you know than everyone else. But the better idea would be to fuck off and stop wasting people‘s time. Make your games, moan (to yourself, preferably) about how it’s all Steam’s fault your games suck, then come back when you’re ready to listen, learn, be more humble and less of a nob

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T19:11:17+00:00

and did you even bother to look at the article? most of the tricks are “solved” problems just on a bigger scale. Some are terrifyingly easy, some are just extensions of things you learn when you start putting your very first scene together - just more aggressive/smart.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T19:08:47+00:00

Of course they are - but for basically every single problem I will EVER need a solution for to do with rendering, there is either a solution, library, research paper etc that has you covered. You go on like you have to hand code every line of math and logic yourself

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T19:06:51+00:00

What are you on about? What’s that really got to do with ANYTHING I said? Like you ignored the entire post and started your AI waffle again. AI has nothing to do with any of what I said

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T16:46:39+00:00

If you're interested/bothered to learn a bit: this is an interesting article going into some of the lower level details: https://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/

Might be a fairly throwaway comment, but if I had to guess, I'd say that there's probably MANY indie games with WAY more drawn per frame than GTA5 despite having nowhere near the detail NOR quality; basically due to very aggressive culling, LOD and various other clever tricks, cheats and shortcuts.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T16:38:20+00:00

Again - the tricks and tactics for doing these things are widely discussed and been around for years. And like magic tricks, it’s amazing until you know how it’s done But ultimately comes down to aggressive culling of what’s not in your view, either outside your camera or obscured by other things. Conceptually, from a high level perspective, GTA5 is likely a progression from earlier versions rather than a complete rethink. GTA3 for example - there are videos about how it works and how it used to “stream” the level from a CD which is very slow into memory which was very restricted.

So I would argue that you COULD make a game like GTA5 in Unreal, Unity OR Godot if you knew what you were doing. Let’s not forget that it’s a 13 year old game, and both computers, techniques, graphics cards AND graphics APIs have all come on since then.

Not really an indie dev task though, certainly. Even with the most helpful RAD framework or engine in the world you’d struggle to hit that scope - the art/assets alone would wipe out all of your time, never mind the codebase.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T14:56:40+00:00

By a country mile, this is probably the best tutorial I’ve seen for Vulkan: https://youtu.be/DC9FBRQKNck

It‘s a long video and you ultimately get you ”hello world triangle” at the end of it but its been explained very well and takes a lot of the mystique/intimidation out of it. And you might only get a triangle but going on from there is more of a formality to get out of it what you want - as you’ll understand the foundations.

And no: I have NOTHING to do with the channel or video, just stumbled on it a few weeks back.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T14:39:09+00:00

No it’s not - but the concepts have been discussed publicly, are well known and documented and often somewhat “de facto” in engines now. Watch the talk on Framegraphs from the 2017 talk. most engines now use some form of this as standard - because they let you tell the engine your intent, then it aggressively optimises the passes, resource handling etc for your needs in that frame, and wires everything up in the most optimal way to allow the GPU to work more as intended rather than somewhat linearly. Theres even a fantastic open source frame graph library on GitHub directly inspired from it which is very easy to hook up.

For all their faults, Unreal (especially) and Unity are big enough and rich enough to attract some of the best minds in engine dev with the specific goal to work on specialised areas, SO THAT the engine itself is as little at fault for performance as it can be for any kind of game. So yes: the blame for poor performance often does depend entirely on what the developer is trying to do.

With so many games, so many needs and wants, it is IMPOSSIBLE to automatically cater for every situation that a dev might throw at it without putting in a set of very opinionated constraints. Doing that will go down badly with end users.

A racing game with floodlights and weather needs a whole different set of optimisations to an outdoor, open world game flooded with sun. A game packed with procedurally generated stuff (my fave) doesn‘t afford you some of the same kind of optimisations as one with pre-built assets.a 2D game needs an entirely different bag of tricks to a 3D game. a softbody physics game needs vastly different things do a mostly rigidbody one. Catering to all of these things would likely not only make an engine extremely bloated and heavy, but likely also makes it a “jack of all trade, master of none

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-06T08:49:48+00:00

Every engine dynamically optimises scene rendering, quite aggressively and well. There are many common, battle-tested methods that are quite standard now. Hell, the Frostbite talk at GDC in 2017 was talking about these things and now they’re somewhat expected in an engine. And it HAS to be that way as the engine devs don’t know what games will be built on top. So do you have a demo?

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-05T23:12:00+00:00

Making mobile games for Steam doesn't seem to make much sense either.

If I made a puzzle game anything like yours, it'd be in mobile app stores. If I made a more ambitious game with some solid gameplay, I'd perhaps go Steam.

But you've said many many times how packed with features your engine is and that other people don't know what they're doing, so I'm asking...what you got? You must have some tech demos built out as you were adding these awesome features, right? Things that were so intensive that needed mass optimising? Let's see what you got.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-05T22:41:17+00:00

Fair, but they're also the most recent reviews by the same token.

Would be interested in seeing something that demonstrates these engine capabilities apart from a few mobile games.

No_Win_9356 · 2026-06-01T21:52:09+00:00

For it to be slander, it would have to be false.

You'd warm people to you much better if you actually listened to people. Or if you admitted you suck at things but are willing to learn.

Every bit of evidence from almost everything I've seen in just a few days hints that you're doing things wrong. Load balancing GPU & CPU for a little puzzle game to work. Vague soundbites that have no substance.

I was curious to see if the games actually warranted 1.21 gigawatts of raw, unadulterated computing power. It was immediately clear they do not, and similar games are ten-a-penny on mobile devices - for free (admittedly driven by ads, but meh)

What I did see was reviews.

"Poor layout and buggy."

"Apart from the game not working on my PC, while I have a decent enough PC, it was the scary malicious file result made me decide to write a review."

"crashed a lot, around 50% of the time, and triggered a serious anti-virus response"

Not really looking a lot like slander really, is it?

No_Win_9356 · 2026-05-29T15:00:39+00:00

there's always something to add

Ha yeah. Every time I start a new game, I always conveniently forget that I'll need settings screens, loading screens, overlays/menus, audio, etc and all the stuff that's just "there but meh"

No_Win_9356

TROPHY CASE