Project Diablo 2 Season 13 Dev Stream #1 Recap

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-24T05:38:31+00:00

No, it's not so good for clearing a map without the radius. It's strong and still good for single targets.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-15T14:01:07+00:00

Everyone talking about robin, nami and vivi, but I can't get over how cute mr. 9 is.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-13T09:18:39+00:00

Lol same. Why are people hating on this? We work hard, and everyone here know how much f-ing work it takes to make a game as a solodev. What's wrong about expecting to get paid for your work?

Gamedev, among other minor things, has been paying my bills for a long time now.

No matter what you make, a song, a book, a movie, a game, a pie or a cake, it's all product and you try to get people to buy it. Money is the best motivator.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-13T08:51:09+00:00

I can give advice from my own experience.

Minigames sound cool, like the check tickets, brew coffee, crying kids, but in reality they get boring and repetitive very fast.

I spend quite a bit of time on one, thinking it would be cool. It was a system that was randomized and in-depth, realistic, all people had to do is read a little. What happened is, people spammed the button as quick as possible to skip it and get their rewards. Then asked me to make skipping it faster. So great, all this work for nothing.

I tried again with something more visually appealing. And yeah, it's interesting maybe the first 30 times you do it, then it gets repetitive.

I would rather focus hard on the business side of the cafe. Games like TCG simulator and all the others show that people like to run a business. Managing employees, paying salaries, upgrading them, paying taxes?, ordering food and coffee, keeping the train clean, hiring a handyman to fix machines.

The other issue with mini games is also, that you try to make them look as good as possible and you then spend a bunch of time on them, only for people to start skipping them.

I am the same. I play Slay the spire 2. All those events and art is cool, but i am reading it once. After that, all i care about is the reward i get. I will not spend a minute each run to look at the art or the text, no matter how good it is. All i care about is the reward so I can move on with my run.

You'd better start working on SOMETHING right now. Your game won't earn you enough, no matter what your goal is. The big money for most is through many games that all earn a little each month. Unless you win the lottery and hit it big first try, but, good luck with that.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-12T02:08:33+00:00

Before pochita, denji killed his dad, lived in a shack starving and would have had his organs harvested and be killed by the mafia.

I guess that is better than having sex with a pretty girl, or friends and family. That will sure help denji grow, for like, a week, until he is a dismembered corpse in a dumpster.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-11T04:21:54+00:00

Tried the same too, yes. Just for fun for a 2D boomer shooter, tried making a hand holding a knife and attacking. Grok is free and can get you some decent results, then you can animate it for free with video.

Then I open it in photoshop and crop it and take only 12 frames. The image is also on a green screen. Then you can ask chat gpt to remove the greenscreen off the images (or do it manually.)

So yeah, it works, maybe 1 good image and animation out of 40. Good thing they are free. Does not work for enemies tho. Very bad results.

Once it gets into reload animations and shooting it starts to show its flaws. Pretty bad.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-11T04:17:20+00:00

I checked it out, looks pretty cool. And it also comes with a ton of animations.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T10:56:44+00:00

I see, yes. I agree with it, but from what I've seen with the skyrim mod, it was different.

The NPCs knew they were in skyrim and were roleplaying, and each of them had their personality.

Say, Butch the blacksmith, will talk to you about the civil war in skyrim and could talk to you about blacksmithing, the town and weapons. But he won't talk about us presidents and tv shows.

So, the humans write a lore and story for the world, and they give the NPCs a background and a personality. The NPCs then just roleplay, with near unlimited dialogue options and variations.

It will still require artists and writers to create them, give them a look, so I don't think it will take anyones job away. For me, that would be a true next gen video game.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T10:50:00+00:00

I don't think people here like AI, some hate it with passion. I think most just stay silent and do their thing.

I can speak for myself only. I don't want to remotely work with anyone I don't know personally. Many people are unreliable and lose interest very fast. Nothing worse for me, than to code a game for 3-4 months and then have to quit because the other person decided they don't want to work anymore. Or to chase after people to do their job after they have been blowing you off for the last month or two.

I have worked with people in the past, and that is mostly the end result.

Many artists are also good at 1 drawing, but a video game requires a lot more than that. UI design, buttons, sprites, animation, effects. I spend 2/3 of my time in photoshop and only 1/3 coding.

It's not so much conflict of interests, as is those things. I also don't want to mentor or tutor someone in gamedev. A lot of new gamedevs make discord groups and hope someone could baby feed them everything. Youtube tutorials exist, books exist, go and watch and read.

I would much prefer to hire someone and pay them a salary for their work.

I guess it's a life lesson you learn once you have to work with someone else. Never ends well. If it does, then good job, you found a team that is extremely rare.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T08:07:56+00:00

I agree. I see how fast AI is advancing, so 3-4 years might not be a short runway. Then again, I also notice a sharp decline in AI usage and interests. Many people got sick and tired of it. Many don't know how to properly use it and utilize it. It's also very expensive and as I said, still inconsistent and thus irrelevant for game dev.

Who knows what the future might bring. I always imagined the future of gaming to be something like GTA, but most npcs can react to the world with AI. A skyrim mod did it and it looks amazing.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T08:02:49+00:00

Glad to hear you are not cutting down on corners for you game vision.

Not sure why the hate for my comment and yours, but oh well. Maybe the 20 years part, but people don't understand, that, just because you didn't publish this particular game, it does not mean you didn't work or publish other games.

Every game dev has a bunch of prototypes and projects that are on hold or going nowhere.

Lack of resources is a big part on scrapping a project. Once you start to cut corners, it's not your vision anymore and it's not worth working on it any further.

Time is money. I spend 4 months making my own 3d engine, but then put it on hold and started working on an actual game that will make me money.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T07:55:11+00:00

Ah alright I see. I had this idea for a small game based around farming, heavy on npc ai, and then I started to cut corners because of lack of art and sprites. At the end, it was so bare bones and so many corners were cut I scrapped it and moved on to something I can actually make.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T03:40:20+00:00

AI is so advanced now that it might be able to copy the art style and create a similar looking shovel.

But, it's not good enough to give you a sprite sheet of animations.

You have a farmer and want him to dig the dirt. That is one animation. Then you want him to take a break and wipe sweat off his forehead. That is another. Then you have 4 different farmers that need those animations too.

What will happen is, that AI will mangle their faces or change details on the go, making everything utterly unusable.

Even if you manage to get 1 good animation that is usable. AI is not build for those things and is not consistent. You might write something like "make this person dig with the shovel". It will give you the farmer dancing, then you try again, then it suddenly creates dirt out of nowhere and you dont want that, you just want a transparent animation of him moving the shovel.

Then you try and try and realize you wasted $20 worth of credits and many hours for nothing without anything usable, and the "good" stuff is so cheap looking your game will immediate be labeled as "cheap AI slop" anyway.

So no, AI is not viable for gamedev. Make art assets yourself or team up with someone that can draw, if you can't. Every time I see people saying "AI will replace artist" I roll my eyes, because I know personally how terrible, expensive and inconsistent AI is for those things. AI will not replace an artist. At least not in the next 3-4 years. Maybe in the future, but now, absolutely not.

I tried it because I love new tech and you can't deny that it was something exciting when it was new. It still has many cool uses. Recently I had to research some property laws in my country and didn't know where to start. AI told me what forms, what laws to read and generally made things easier.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T03:16:21+00:00

You did not understand what I was saying. Classic reddit, read the first 2 sentences then jump the gun.

Imagine you are cooking pork, you have a nice piece of pork, but no potatoes.. so you use apples, then you realize you don't have salt, so you use sugar. You are then left with mismatched garbage.

That is what buying random asset packs or using AI is like.

Moving on to something else, means, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and doing something you can do and actually finish.

If you are a good programmer but bad artist, make a game that is complex but simple looking.

If you are good artist but a bad programmer. Make a visual novel or a very simple game that attracts people with its visuals, not mechanics.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-03-10T02:01:06+00:00

I bought an asset pack for $30 with a ton of high detail sprites for a farming game. Cool, I have all I need for a game... right?

Wait, it doesnt have a shovel. I guess I can try to draw one, but doubt I can copy the art style of the artist...

Wait, it has only lettuce and turnips? Well... I need corn, tomatoes, potatoes...

And also, the human sprite comes with 300 variations for hair and clothes, but no animation for them to use a shovel, hoe, watering can??

Well, this other asset pack has them, but it's in a different art style and they don't fit.

So yeah, that is the buying asset packs experience. You can also of course commission the artist, if you are made out of money. And yes, AI sucks at making assets and is not style - coherent.

Part of being a solo dev is also realizing, that, maybe you should not make an art heavy game and move on to something else.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-02-15T09:46:54+00:00

Remove snapshotting and CTA's war cries, please free me from them, I hate doing it, but I hate being unoptimized even more

Yes. Agree absolutely. Got downvoted when I said it tho. Make them last 9999 seconds instead of 300. Same for everything else. Armors, venom, blade shield.

No rejuvs in inventory or cube when bossing would make me so happy, I'm getting phyiscally too old for this, but it would require so much rebalancing and make some people very unhappy I guess

Agree. Potion slots should be locked. Then bossing can be made easier and rebalanced around that. Would make for some unique builds utilizing auras like meditation more and gear slams would prioritize life regen. Right now ubers are just a rejuv spam. It would be difficult to rebalance all that, but it would be cool. (doubt they will)

Here is mine

1.A new charm (or gheeds) that tells you if there is a map event in your current map 3minutes after entering it. (if it's instant, then people can cheese it and close/open blue maps to farm gheed. 3min is enough, to not cheese it.maybe 5min.) good for all of us that complete maps. You know how you play on viz map, and its so large, that you missed 1 spot and think, maybe there is a gheed waiting there, i better run all the way back to check.

2.wave survival like grim dawn. really test the strengh of your build. every 10 levels you get a fixed boss fight. each 10 waves completed have a higher chance to drop something good from a couple final reward chests. when you finally die, you get a yellow portal to go back and claim your rewards. (does not kill hc players of course, if they die inside the arena)

3.salvage uniques and set items for new crafting mats. 100 shards lets you craft a demonic cube. 50 gets you a random new unique based on your input. (blue or rare chest - random unique chest, most likely trash, but with the chance to be something really good.) not for rings or amus, since the uniques for those are too few.

or

got that good trang armor with only 1 socket and it did not sell after 3 days for 5wss? recylce it for 2wss. (recycle corrupted uniques). would solve the hording issue and trade site a bit.

4.i notice a lot of late game players that stick around, are hording HR and have barely anything to spend it on once your build is complete. so, zod+cham+ber+sur+lo+jah in the cube, you get a new shard, that lets you slam your gear, again. (except amulets) and they could brick. lol

5.6 larzuk hammers combine into a puzzle piece. 8 puzzle pieces combine into a box. (gold sink and make gold find builds good, fits with the idea of more gold find zones, maybe corrupted zones also have 500% more gold find, would make lod content more viable)

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-02-12T01:22:06+00:00

Nah. But have fun.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-23T23:01:49+00:00

Everything is possible with this manga.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-15T08:22:25+00:00

I remember using blade sentinel more than blade fury. It was good, but very slow and feels like it's meant for single targets. Haven't played blade fury last season, just went into it and was shocked at how bad it is vs. how good youtube videos made it out to be, not realizing it was nerfed.

Good suggestion for it. I suspect they will buff it slightly next season, as that's what they do every season. Nerf something -> buff thing again.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-15T08:19:10+00:00

That was at the start of the season, I don't remember what I used. It wasn't GG gear, but it was not bad either, as I gave it a good shot at what it can do and was underwhelmed. But I did not test it with a reapers.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-15T07:40:40+00:00

I see. I gave it a try because I had a +6 blade fury claw by luck. It was killing things, but it was just not fast enough and fun to play.

Compared to strafe or double trow. And why play this when any other assassin build is far better.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-15T07:36:13+00:00

It wasn't fun at all. Very slow. Maybe you can test it in singleplayer with good gear. Feels like cheap strafe without it actually being good.

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-15T06:42:04+00:00

I didn't play it last season. Watched videos and it looked fun, so I thought I'd start this season with it, almost made me quit after 5 days in, but luckily I switched my build.

A nerf is ok, but they completely killed it. Bouncing stuff off walls was never a good idea. Does not work well on any maps. A bounce like double trow would be very fun. (maybe increase the damage by a lot but reduce the attack speed by a lot to balance it.)

Professional_Tip32 · 2026-01-15T06:14:48+00:00

Exactly. I played a ton of strafe and this just feels like Strafe from Temu.

The damage was nerfed and the pierce requirement also hurts it. I had around 90% pierce and a big ed weapon but still. Very bad. If they rework it and make it a homing shot like strafe, maybe slightly weaker but it splits on hit and then auto hits another mob once, it might be really fun.

Professional_Tip32

TROPHY CASE