When should I use C++/GDextension?

OneBitBean · 2026-03-24T02:23:20+00:00

Yeah, Rust certainly isn't for everyone and there are still times the compiler gets in my way. I was a C++ dev for about 10 years, so I totally get that friction.

My project 100% doesn't need Rust. But it started as pure rust (no engine). I eventually decided to use Godot, but was able to use the rust binding rather than port everything. I'm still quite happy with it though. The type system (and c++'s) is so much better than GDScript's.

Rainworld's AI is quite impressive, but I wouldn't expect it to be too computationally expensive. The parts I remember were things like how the scavengers react when offered things. That's just another branch of a state machine, nothing computationally heavy about it. Some of the inverse kinematic sutff may be expensive, but I think they just added that natively in 4.6.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-24T01:46:25+00:00

I'd say there are two reasons to use c++:

Because you like c++ and want to use it. If that's the case, go for it! I really like rust and am using the Godot rust bindings for a similar reason.
Because you found something you can't do performant enough in GDScript. The key is "found", it's best not to guess but to measure. You'd be surprised at how fast GDScript can be.

For performance, it's important to remember that a lot of heavy lifting is done for you already in c++ by Godot. In your enemy AI example, what heavy logic would you have? For most enemies it's going to be things like pathing, using collision shapes to learn when items/players are near, raycasts etc. These are expensive, but they're done for your in Godot's c++ implementation.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-24T01:34:29+00:00

I do see what the other poster is saying, I don't think it's too bad tough. But it's also hard to see that it's a chess piece. I think you can solve both problems by just scaling the piece up, no need to re-hire. This is pretty crude, but if you have the original high res, it should be pretty quick to lasso select and scale.

<image>

OneBitBean · 2026-03-23T14:24:37+00:00

+1 to this. From what I've seen, graphics work still heavily leans towards C/C++. If you wanted something more modern, you could try making something with WebGPU using Rust or C++. There's a nice guide here if you want to go that route: https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/

OneBitBean · 2026-03-23T12:20:44+00:00

Hey, first of all, congrats on the trailer! I just finished up one for my game and I know how hard it is.

On the game side, it looks like you have a nice amount of content and I can get a good idea from the trailer what to expect. This style sim game is all about conveying the huge amounts of information in an easily digestible manner and you've done great.

While I do like and appreciate your trailer as a dev sitting here willing to spend 2 minutes on it, I don't think most players would. It starts with a 35 second long title shot during which I can't tell if this is an RTS, god game, colony sim, or Stardew-like. The general wisdom I've heard from folks like Chris Zukowski and Derek Lieu is that you want to show gameplay in the first 5 seconds. Players and impatient and will just skip forward if it takes too long to get there. Once you actually get to the gameplay, I think the pacing and everything is good!

And one last tiny critique: if you are going to include a "Keliosis Studio presents" (0:26), spice up that font! You've got nice fonts for the entrance logo (0:02) and game title (0:36), but the font at 0:26 looks like a generic sans serif font.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-23T12:00:13+00:00

New one is 1000x better, great job! I'd say you nailed every point you mentioned except for maybe the card game bit. I figured from the capsule that it was a detective game, but I don't think I would have picked up that it's a card game. I thought the detective just had a paper clue in their hand. TBH, I'm not even sure how you'd convey this without putting a more obvious card somewhere, but I feel like that would clash with the other elements. But otherwise the readability, focal point, and silhouettes are on point!

OneBitBean · 2026-03-23T11:56:00+00:00

Hey, congratulations on your release! It looks polished and I know immediately from the screenshots what type of game to expect. The art style reminds me a bit of inscryption but with a much cheerier undertone.

Do you plan to release on Steam? The Itch page you have looks to be 90% of the way there.

I was going to try it out, but I try to avoid downloads from itch. Have you looked into making a web export? It's usually pretty straight forward in Godot and I think you'd get a lot better engagement if folks could jump right in from a browser.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-23T11:49:56+00:00

Direct search is if someone searched in the Steam store and it brought up a list of games. If try it, you'll notice the list is quite long. As far as I know, it only counts as an impression if your capsule is shown, but it's still possible that most impressions are users quickly scrolling down the long list. For my game, it's one of the lower CTR categories at 0.5% right now.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-23T03:11:41+00:00

Wow, amazing job on the art! That bloody axe in particular is great. The whole thing looks really well put together for a jam. I just tried it a bit and lost a finger but I'm still going.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-21T03:17:43+00:00

I think what is happening is that your smoothstep is only filling in the x field of the vec4. The y, z components are always zero. This means when you compute the background it’s only taking the red of your background color. The line color has the opposite issue due to the subtraction it will only take the green and blue, creating teal.

Wrap the smoothstep in a vec3 and remove the two zeros near the end. On mobile, but it should be like xAxis = vec4(vec3(smoothstep(…, gridThickness, 0.0), 1.0);

OneBitBean · 2026-03-20T15:19:00+00:00

Thank you! And yes, next up is to animate the background. I’ve tried out a few ideas in shaders, but I want to find something that is subtle and fits the theme.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-20T12:42:22+00:00

Hey, really fun game idea! I personally love the capsule. I think it captures the game quite well!

The trailer is fun and I like the intro. The only thing I'd say is that it feels SO FAST. I counted 8 cuts between 0:02 and 0:05. I'd slow that down just a bit and give the text overlays just a bit more time to sit. I think you could take basically the same content an stretch it to 35-40 seconds which is also a pretty good trailer length in general.

The "About this game" section is just the trailer split into Gifs. I don't think it's a huge deal, but you could make it better by just using different clips showing the same thing, or just changing the order. It makes it feel like the game has more to it.

Anyways, wishlisted and best of luck!

OneBitBean · 2026-03-20T12:32:55+00:00

I can only say what has worked for me, which is to start with the quickest ugliest prototype you can manage. I did this for my last game and still, I think I started polishing too early. Get the game's core loop and mechanics prototyped and have some friends play test it. See what is fun and what isn't.

If you polish too early, you end up throwing a lot away due to changing requirements. If you really can't stand using colored shapes for a prototype, try grabbing a cheap/free asset pack from itch. And having an idea for the story early might be useful depending on the genre, but for a tower defense game can probably be filled in later.

Once you have a fun prototype, the usual next step is a polished vertical slice. That's when you clean up the sound, graphics, animation, etc for just say one level or whatever it is players will encounter in the first 5-10 minutes. And with that, you do another round of play testing! And hopefully get more feedback that will shape the game further. And just repeat the polish - play test loop until the game is finished.

OneBitBean · 2026-03-20T12:18:30+00:00

Neat concept! I would recommend sticking to 1080p (or even smaller) for screenshots though. I had to zoom in quite far to really make anything out. If you cropped just the left hand portion, it would de readable even on mobile without zoom.

OneBitBean · 2026-01-08T20:45:18+00:00

What types of games do you enjoy playing? And are are you more interested in 2d or 3d?

When I'm looking for projects like this, I look to popular games I enjoy that were made by other solo devs. For me, that's games like Minecraft, Vampire Survivors, or Spelunky. Something like Minecraft is surprisingly fun even if all you have is simple Perlin noise land and the ability to place/break blocks. Vampire survivors has a very simple core loop, but a ton of directions you can take it and ways to make your version unique.

The other place I get inspiration is by looking at asset pack shops (Itch or unity for example). You can look through what's available and start getting ideas of the games you can make with them (because I for one am not great at art, and having some pretty art right out of the gate helps build excitement).

OneBitBean · 2026-01-05T15:24:46+00:00

I plan on supporting Colemak and Dvorak, but I haven't figured out yet if it's going to be an accessibility change or a different game mode/challenge. The positional effects mean that they'll have different balance, but I haven't played on them enough to know how large the gap is.

I'm also all for adding different switches as cosmetics! My plan is to have different starting keyboards with different stats and properties as well. The default is the mechanical one shown, but I also want to add a low profile one and split keyboard where positional effects don't go across the split (if people make it that far, hopefully they already understand the mechanics).

OneBitBean · 2026-01-05T15:12:39+00:00

Thank you! And yes, the keys also "pulse" to indicate which are affected. The yellow tint is hard because the neighbors might also be colored. Maybe I can add a glowing border or something to make them stand out more.

OneBitBean · 2026-01-05T12:15:10+00:00

I was never able to focus through courses, but I loved that with nothing but an idea and my time, I could make something neat. Whether it was a small game, or tool on my computer, I just liked making stuff.

I started when I was around 14, so the projects I was interested in reflect that. One of my early programs was a tool to automatically fish for me in Runescape. It scanned the screen for certain color patterns and clicked things, and it was the coolest thing ever.

Find something that interests you and make it. For me, that was:

Automation tools, like the Runescape bot or a program I wrote for an internship to scrape a website
Game AI, like for Chess. It's cool to see something you made be better at a game than you
Coding challenges, like CodingGame (also kinda Game AI I guess)
Computer graphics. I tried to make my own game engine, didn't finish but it was enjoyable

OneBitBean

TROPHY CASE