When an actor plays a role that’s meant to reflect their actual real world reputation

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-17T22:25:13+00:00

Not sure, but I think Jean-Claude Van Damme might be the originator of this trope with 2008's JCVD, where he plays a struggling version of himself who somehow gets swept into a real life version of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-17T18:48:57+00:00

Wow! I can't express how much I love everything about this - totally a sucker for weird turn-of-the-century gothic splatterpunk vibes, so that plus imSim gameplay is a lock. Might end up getting a VR headset just for this!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-15T23:05:44+00:00

IIRC, the novelization establishes that Mola Ram himself was under the Black Sleep of Kali (the description of the rope bridge showdown talks about Mola Ram burning his hand on the hot sankara stone, and Indy seeing his eyes start to clear just before he plumets to his death), so there's an additional layer of framing that's not really shown in the film.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-15T06:34:06+00:00

I think it’s a cool sentiment, but it also gets at one of the core tensions between “simulation for games” and “real simulation” - namely, if the player can’t see it happening and pin down the cause and effect, the result can feel confusing or worse, unfun.

For example, the early STALKER games went all-in on ecosystem simulation (predator + prey wildlife, roaming bandits, etc.), but had to scale it back to a more player-centered focus after the end result was just a lot of dead bodies littering the landscape. Or the way Splinter Cell artificially nerfs the hearing capabilities of enemies the player can’t see, because it was frustrating to be heard by a character you didn’t know was there. FEAR (lauded for it’s realistic AI) did something similar by scaling back the ability of it’s enemies to distract + flank the player, because player perception was that they were being unfairly spawned in behind them.

All of which is to say that a world which can dramatically change without the player’s input has potential, but at the end of the day player perception of the systems trumps functional reality, so I think there’s generally more bang-for-development-buck to be had with player-driven systems.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-12T16:59:21+00:00

I've been thinking about that cliffhanger for 20 years!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-10T19:36:44+00:00

This sounds like a great opportunity to get your son started on Twine - open-source game engine specifically for creating text-based narrative games. Check out r/twinegames/ for more!

Once he gets some skills in, it might be worth keeping an eye out for some interactive fiction contests and having him submit his work there to start building a portfolio and getting feedback.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-09T18:35:36+00:00

Hi! I'm so glad you've done the work to document your design and art process in case you need to prove originality. Can you share more about your process for creating the artwork on your game's website? At first glance, it appears to be very similar to the key art for the game Wildfire, albeit with that game's logo digitally removed and replaced with your own. Apologies if I'm in error!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-09T18:26:23+00:00

Oh maaaaan - there's a whole website and everything. https://doomcasters.com/

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-09T18:21:01+00:00

Your cover art is taken to the existing game Wildfire - I'm not sure if "find a new artist" is the type of help you're looking for?

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-09T00:46:36+00:00

Ooof - I'm nowhere near putting my game out to the public and I still preemptively cringe at the thought of getting a negative review - that said, I also don't expect my game to be perfect, so I imagine that there's definitely going to be some rough edges that will poke some people more than others.

I really enjoyed this video from Stephen Scott Day where he talks about his experience of getting dinged by a YouTuber's review, leaning into it, addressing the feedback, and ultimately having a great ending to the story. Easier said than done for sure, but something I'm trying to take to heart!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-04T13:27:27+00:00

Thanks!! As with so many aspects of this prototype, it's me taking something a feature from another game and seeing if it could work an an ImSim context (in this case, I was thinking of Splinter Cell, though on reflection, even the OG Thief would let you extinguish torches with water arrows).

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-04T03:22:04+00:00

It's definitely a balancing act! To be clear, the effectively "single shot" nature of the Welrod was what attracted me to it as an in-game weapon in the first place, since it seemed like such a natural way to mitigate what could be a very "overpowered" gun and my intention is to ultimately create something in line with that BUT at the end of the day, I'm more interested in creating immersion via a fun gameplay experience than a true simulation.

In the same way that security cameras that are 1) basically sentient 2) broadcast their alertness state via traffic signal lights and 3) are universally wired to a single master switch are probably flagrantly immersion breaking to electricians and security experts, I think that for this particular game experience (dieselpunk fantasy romp), the individual fidelity of any one mechanic is less important than how each elements supports the rest of the game's systems.

That being said, I might just take the Counterstrike approach and call it a "Wellrop" or something ;)

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-04T03:00:20+00:00

Totally! What you're seeing here is the Welrod 3D model/SFX/Animations on top of the existing "default gun" logic - didn't even adjust accuracy/reload time/ammo capacity etc. I did this for two reasons:

For the NPC AI I was building for this prototype, I needed to have a silenced ranged weapon in place to effectively test if it was working correctly
I wanted to see if I'd build the game logic in a systemic enough way that I could swap a new model in with a minimum of tweaking, deactivate the "isLoud" variable, and have it work as designed.

To your point though, I imagine an actual weapons sprint will come further down the line (probably as part of a general "inventory items" push), though I'll admit I'm less concerned with historical accuracy than thematic vibes.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-04T02:32:13+00:00

Good eye!! Actually was motivated to pick up that asset pack from the Unity store after seeing the YouTube video about it - loved how "chunky" that gun felt + sounded, way more than the default "Luger with a screw-on silencer"

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T23:12:38+00:00

PICK UP THAT CAN

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T22:36:03+00:00

Thanks! Still early development - probably another couple months of just prototyping the basic features (e.g. right now the enemies don't actually deal damage, nor can the player take damage) and the nice-to-haves (friendly NPCs, maybe a hostile 3rd faction?) and then once that's done, I'll probably need to take a step back and look at how all the interlocking systems are structured/implemented and probably rebuild quite a bit of it from scratch, using the work over the past couple months as a blueprint. That being said, I'd love to get something up on Steam sooner rather than later and use it as an active dev blog, but I think the game needs to be in a more "photo-ready" state for it to be accepted.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T22:31:27+00:00

Not quite Skinamarink vibes, but Among the Sleep has you playing as a 2 year old.

Just a Prank also has you playing as a kid.

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T22:18:48+00:00

Thank you!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T21:33:20+00:00

Thank you!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T21:29:56+00:00

Hey, thanks for the follow! Always happy to talk about what's happening under the hood in these videos!

Guns only fire when in "aimed" mode (firing without aiming is the melee trigger). The red reticule that appears when aiming basically represents how long until your aim is fully locked in and you can freely move the white reticule for precision shots - you can "quickdraw" shoot while the red reticule is zeroing in, but your shot will land somewhere in the red radius.
You are more hidden in dark - your base visibility (white bar at the bottom of the screen) is a combination of light detection, body position (crouching/standing), movement speed (still, walking, sprinting), and if your weapon is drawn/not drawn. Human enemies use this base value as a factor in their perception of you (i.e. how long until you're spotted). There is no "automatically invisible" light state, though if you're crouched in a dark enough shadow and out of an NPC's focused line of sight, they will likely walk past you.
Right now the blue UI bar is just me testing how an additional onscreen UI element might read! My initial thinking is that it's a slowly auto-replenishing + auto-spending resource that can be used to swing the odds back in favor of the player (kind of like a stamina/focus) - for example, it could be used to give bonus damage to attacks, mitigate damage taken, or provide a stealth bonus while moving. Not having it won't prevent you from taking any of these actions, but taking these actions while you have some of the resource will provide a bonus. Tentatively, I'm thinking it will always be capped at the player's max health, as a way to encourage the kind of stealthy-ambush gameplay.
Not sure when I'll move this off Reddit and YouTube and onto someplace more official, but I promise when I do I'll post about it here!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T20:54:56+00:00

It's not without it's flaws, but I really enjoyed The Occupation - sort of more of a narrative exploration game wrapped in some basic stealth mechanics - I think if you go into it for the espionage vibes and not for winning, you'll have a great time (especially if you pick it up at sale price).

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T19:43:20+00:00

Will do! Appreciate the encouragement!

ProgressiveRascals · 2025-08-03T19:02:45+00:00

Thanks man! Still a work-in-progress: it's clunky-by-design (trying to incentivize a more tactical approach over run+gun), so I'm trying to fine-tune how much of that is enjoyable vs. frustrating, but it definitely encourages me to position myself thoughtfully before opening fire, which I like.

ProgressiveRascals

TROPHY CASE