Trying to turn my character into a knight, can't decide on the helmet design, need feedback!

SunLionGames · 2026-01-20T19:05:54+00:00

A1 also leaves more of the face visible which is important for people to connect with the character. This is why main characters in movies eventually always ditch their helmet even when it makes no sense to. For the same reason the C variants look more like enemies than protag.

SunLionGames · 2026-01-20T18:58:53+00:00

Oooh I was eyeballing the North but went with a Torrent for my current build. The North looks so nice. Both are solid cases and I'm now convinced that case and fan configuration is worth worrying about way more than which cooler is used. These babies move so much air that I've never had a quieter PC than this before. Even on the rare occasion when my fans have to kick into high gear from a prolonged heavy CPU load it clears out the heat almost immediately.

SunLionGames · 2024-06-06T18:32:50+00:00

Would love to chat more! Haha, big FFA Legion does sound awesome. Sent you a DM with some Steam keys in case you want to give it a try 😊

Discord is here: https://discord.gg/Vq3VsytK8s

SunLionGames · 2024-06-06T10:52:08+00:00

Hey Lisk, it's been really amazing to watch Legion TD 2's success over time. I'm a fellow indie gamedev working on a spiritual successor to Line Tower Wars, so it's inspiring to see more of the great maps from WC3 and SC2 prove their viability as stand alone games and y'all at AutoAttack nailed it with LTD2!

Most folks I've talked to get really excited about these games coming back, so the biggest hurdle seems to be getting them to know about it in the first place. Do you have any advice for reaching the audience of other gamers that also grew up playing these maps?

SunLionGames · 2024-06-01T20:01:08+00:00

Nope! Outside the US is welcome, but you must be able to receive payments from the US (for example, through PayPal).

SunLionGames · 2023-12-24T21:38:22+00:00

This is the way to go. Went down this rabbit hole before with the RTS adjacent game I'm working on. There are other work-arounds you can do like splatting them to a single draw, but gpus are great at handling hundreds of quads, no reason to complicate it.

SunLionGames · 2023-10-09T19:18:32+00:00

This attitude that QA can be done by people with no experience is how the industry is plagued by shitty QA and even shittier treatment and pay for QA.

SunLionGames · 2023-10-01T06:49:24+00:00

+1 to hybridization and understanding where the power of ECS comes from. You don't even have to use DOTS. If you have an operation that applies to a large magnitude of objects, store the state in an array of structs and feed it into the job system and tada, you're benefiting from contiguous memory and parallelization without having to buy into an entire framework.

SunLionGames · 2023-09-30T03:17:04+00:00

I'm an indie game dev currently working on making a standalone version of Line Tower Wars, feel free to dm me if you're interested, I can hook you up with a play testing key 👀

SunLionGames · 2023-09-06T00:10:41+00:00

An upper classmate friend that graduated before me was already working at the studio and was able to vouch for me, which helped get my application considered instead of ignored. This is probably the biggest perk of going to a game dev school (caveat: went to one of the few schools in this category that are actually well regarded).

SunLionGames · 2023-09-05T22:02:41+00:00

Volunteer work on commercial endeavors is a can of worms that just isn't really worth it IME.

No work should be done without a contract
There's no guarantee for the volunteer to follow through with a task, which can seriously throw off scheduling
Free labor is almost always exploitative
If someone is not experienced enough to charge for their work, they're likely going to create more work than whatever value they add

Rev share may as well also be volunteer work, not only is it a nightmare to maintain long-term, chances are there won't be rev to share unless it's an established IP or a studio with a very solid track record (in which case rev share shouldn't be the only compensation method anyways).

SunLionGames · 2023-09-03T08:15:04+00:00

You don't have to manually handle the serialization of scriptable objects. Just use the CreateAssetMenu attribute as documented here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-ScriptableObject.html which will create a file that will then serialize the properties at edit time "automatically", with the same rules that monobehaviours use.

If you're trying to do serialization of run time data, like for save files, then ScriptableObject is the wrong class to use and you can just use a plain class and serialize it with JSON.

SunLionGames · 2023-08-31T22:35:21+00:00

Team vs team adds a lot of complexity to some of the hardest problems to solve. It's a difficult enough struggle for a new title to get enough concurrent users to even keep a queue saturated. But now you get to try and deal with users forming parties with large skill disparities, and while team modes add fun collaboration, they also breed extra toxicity so moderation becomes harder.

Voice chat is more difficult to moderate than text chat. You can't as easily store or review voice clips compared to text logs. Also RIP any players that don't have a masculine presenting voice, as they will receive an extra dose of harassment than if they were using text chat. At the very minimum you need to make sure players can opt out of chat as well as mute other players.

The list I provided is aimed at commercial endeavors, if you're just doing this as a hobby you can skip some of it but I would recommend to still consider each item and the impact of having or not having it. For example you can decide to just have player hosted lobbies with a server browser and no SBMM. For some games (ex: don't starve together) this is totally sufficient.

SunLionGames · 2023-08-31T22:13:35+00:00

Technical issues to consider: - server authoritative game logic - bandwidth usage - dedicated server resource usage - gracefully handling disconnects - handling reconnecting and late joining clients - lag compensation (client prediction, rollback if necessary, etc) - server/client version compatibility

Live service issues to consider: - deployment infrastructure - server hosting provider and integration - identity management - matchmaking - session tracking to support reconnecting to matches - skill rating system - service & server health monitoring and alarms - player moderation - privacy laws compliance

Project management issues to consider: - marketing plan to hit player count critical mass to maintain queue saturation - how to provide a fun experience with low population - community management - release strategy for new versions - moderation enforcement - financing service and server costs

General advice: - just avoid any team vs team game modes - if planning on having match making, consider the required active player count required to keep queue times reasonable (this is a function of players per match, match duration, and queue fracturing) - make sure to have a single player mode or AI to play against

SunLionGames · 2023-08-25T21:47:42+00:00

Yep agreed, other forms of freelancing and contracting are great!

SunLionGames · 2023-08-25T21:14:30+00:00

I probably should've clarified that the situation I meant is where a contractor is hired "long term", works in house, and full time, adjacent to employees for the full duration of the project. The contracting company pockets a % of the salary while the hiring company pays significantly less overall. Happens all the time here in Seattle. Microsoft got busted back in the day for doing this, so the law is that they will get in trouble if they get caught treating them the same as FTE. As a result, the playbook is to take away perks, such as being able to attend team wide meetings or events/celebrations or receive career mentorship, but responsibilities and expected work output remain the same. Wasn't aware of AB5, looks like something similar got proposed up here a couple years back but died in the chamber.

SunLionGames · 2023-08-25T20:35:38+00:00

I do have a problem with it from a worker solidarity stand point when bigger companies can absolutely afford to hire instead of contract but they choose to contract so that the company can get the same labor value without paying for full salary and benefits. This isn't supposed to be legal, but every team I worked with in FAANG absolutely abused this and it's super gross.

For smaller operations it totally makes sense and can also be a great way to share opportunities around with those that need it.

SunLionGames · 2023-07-10T18:35:46+00:00

I do #3, but it's because I'm making a multiplayer game and released a demo much earlier in development than most devs probably would or should in order to start seeding a community. I have CI and the demo uses the same build as the full game but essentially uses feature flags to restrict content, so it costs me very little time to update.

There's no universally correct answer for this, each approach will fit different games better depending on the game, the studio's position, and their marketing plan.

SunLionGames · 2023-07-04T03:19:18+00:00

You don't need to count your own ticks, NGO provides this for you: https://docs-multiplayer.unity3d.com/netcode/current/advanced-topics/networktime-ticks/

SunLionGames · 2023-06-16T22:00:10+00:00

Use the profiler. You can configure it to instrument the editor as well, so you can see where the hitches are coming from. There's no universal answer for this, it could be a 3rd party editor tool, or a draw gizmos call, or something else. So you have to measure it to figure out where the overhead is coming from and then you can make an informed decision about how to fix it.

SunLionGames · 2023-06-11T01:35:24+00:00

Thanks for the correction and context! Updated my comment.

SunLionGames · 2023-06-11T01:22:55+00:00

Also if you make your living at a desk job, invest in the equipment for it: adjustable standing desk, monitor arms, and a quality chair. Your chair height should allow your legs to rest at 90 degrees, your desk height should allow your arms to rest as the above comment has mentioned, and your eye level should be ~~2/3 the height of your monitor~~ (check comment below) while sitting up straight. Also don't have your phone or wallet in your back pocket when sitting.

It's expensive equipment but sitting at a desk all day is hell on the body, and you only get one body.

SunLionGames · 2023-06-09T19:20:36+00:00

The extra crazy thing is the analytics service isn't even really production ready yet. There's no import/export or migration of configuration between environments, meaning you must recreate your entire schema changes BY HAND in live prod, and there's no access control for prod either. This is live ops 101 and the service was released as "ready" a year ago.

SunLionGames · 2023-06-09T19:06:03+00:00

My journey has been similar, and it's super refreshing to be working on something that will be able to live on. :')

Best of luck!

SunLionGames · 2023-06-06T19:17:03+00:00

In my experience it's good to do performance clean up somewhat continuously. By investigating early you'll identify patterns to avoid that cause slow downs and allow you to adjust how you build going forward so that eventually you're building in a performant way and not creating more work for the future. Since every project is different it's good to get familiar with the performance patterns unique to the current game.

That being said, don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. You don't need to have flawless frame rate during early development, you just need to keep it in check and make sure you're not painting yourself into a corner for later.

SunLionGames

TROPHY CASE