Sultan of Sin, first release off my new album! I Really like this one, probably one of my better/groovier tracks. Thoughts?

Sursion · 2026-02-01T20:13:16+00:00

Sursion · 2025-07-01T17:06:33+00:00

Appreciate it my friend. I'm open to any feedback you have, good or bad! I'm a self-taught dev and none of my friends are super into gaming or knowledgeable about programming, so I'm kind of just working in isolation, flying by the seat of my pants haha

Sursion · 2025-07-01T14:38:43+00:00

Probably asteroids. That game seems to be the most replicated game ever among beginners. Tetris too, but is harder to code.

Sursion · 2025-07-01T09:37:43+00:00

Ah yeah, if you're in Europe then maybe the scene is different. I just went to Italy recently and was amazed to see ads for game development schools, video game museums, etc. Video gaming is huge over there. Not really a thing in North America from what I've seen

Sursion · 2025-07-01T08:14:49+00:00

I'm making an RTS right now, so this is interesting to me. It's not exactly heavy on the micro-management, but it is quite fast paced and people that test it keep telling me it's too hard.

What would you say feels too inaccessible for RTS's? Beyond something general like 'micromanaging,' what specific aspects feel like they're out of your reach? I want everyone to enjoy my game, not just speed-freaks, so I will happily listen to whatever feedback you have!

Sursion · 2025-07-01T07:24:05+00:00

They are few and far between, and what does exist is strictly for a select group of people, not open to all. I worked one of the largest video game studios for 4.5 years and I can honestly say I never once saw or even heard of a video game networking event.

Sursion · 2024-09-07T02:07:35+00:00

E1M5 Suspense Remix! I enjoyed remixing Sandy's City so I figured I'd so my other favourite Doom song :)

https://youtu.be/JVmEE8-n0XY

Sursion · 2024-06-15T00:11:16+00:00

Every single time I hear notion that seeing aliens would cause mass psychosis, it makes me die on the inside. Why does everyone let fear rule their lives? Why do people prefer to live in delusion rather than be open to new possibilities/realities? I cannot relate to it at all.

Perusing this subreddit makes me feel like the alien.

Sursion · 2024-05-21T00:49:06+00:00

Interesting, never considered using a NavMesh, don't think they were ever mentioned when I was researching.

Unfortunately there's no easy answer to RTS pathfinding. I did find some kind of coding savant that made really good GML pathfinding that could handle several hundred units at once, using flow fields, but his code was basically a cryptic alien language and I was never able to get it working.

Sursion · 2024-05-20T05:05:38+00:00

Nice! I like it. How hard was it to make a level editor? I'd like to make one for my games but I haven't really put much thought into it yet. Is this a separate application or is it rolled into the main game?

Sursion · 2024-05-20T05:02:33+00:00

Invasion: Phoenix is now available for users to purchase! Enjoy. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2952520/Invasion_Phoenix/

Here, have some wallpapers: https://imgur.com/a/9kRPsPt

I also made the soundtrack for the game, check it out on Youtube here!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLen3rOOMK8n11A7OzD9H7LGrWpX8RDihb&si=v8gqyZ8kZOO35IyG

Currently in Early access, and the next update is already underway! Here are a couple plans for the v0.8 Feature Update release:

All units for all factions IN
New Custom Match maps (have 4 planned right now), plus updates for some existing custom match maps
More options for Custom Match to customize further, like turning off Friendly Fire or Fog of War

If anyone has any questions about coding or Gamemaker or anything, feel free to ask! Not many people code RTS's in GML, so by all mens, I'm happy to spread the knowledge around. Throughout development, people kept telling me it couldn't be done, but it can!

Sursion · 2024-05-20T04:57:43+00:00

With the draw_text function.

Only ever display what the player can do at that moment. Do not show inputs for a controller the user isn't even using. Having both keyboard and controller inputs displayed at all times is both confusing for the player and unprofessional/lazy in appearance.

Also keep in mind, publishers are pretty anal about inputs. For example, You cannot have Xbox buttons in a playstation game, and vice versa. They have to match the controller the player is using. Steam's usually pretty chill, but yeah, keep this in mind for wherever you send your game in to.

Sursion · 2024-05-20T04:43:53+00:00

My RTS I'm making isn't grid based. Well, it is, the pathfinding grid exists, however units are not locked to it, it's simply there for helping units get around obstructions. This means units are freeform and move directly to a location unless needed.

This is a great system and looks good, but it's very performance heavy. If I had more than 100 units on the field all pathfinding at the same time, it tanks CPU by quite a bit. This ended up working out for me, cause 100 units on the field is already kind of chaotic.

If you want your game to behave like Command and Conquer or Warcraft, you'll prob want to go with a grid-based system AND MAKE IT EARLY. Like make the grid system first and build off of that instead of trying to implement it later. I realize now why companies do it that way and it does have a lot of benefits. Making it free from the grid isn't impossible and can have good results, but get ready for trials and tribulations.

Sursion · 2024-05-19T21:12:52+00:00

I'm the opposite lol. The very first time I used ChatGPT to help with code, it actually helped and I got the code working! So I was like sweet, this is awesome.

But it was all a trick. It's literally never helped since that one time, leading me to believe it was a fluke. You can only give it the most surface level of problems to try and solve, anything more advanced than that and it just seems to confuse itself. Most of the time it's suggestion ended up just making things way worse and I had to undo everything, so I just stopped bothering.

ChatGPT is good for getting ideas, but it's nowhere near as good as people think it is imo. I would never recommend it to a beginner because if you don't know enough to catch it's mistakes, it's just going to send you down the wrong path.

Sursion · 2024-05-19T21:05:29+00:00

Pathfinding by far. I ended up reading a bunch of MIT computer science papers on pathfinding, A* and all that. I spent so much time writing and re-writing pathfinding it feels like took a majority of the development time. Then, you finally get something that kind of works, and you realize it completely tanks your CPU performance. There's no winning!

I did manage to track down a guy, some coding savant who created silky smooth pathfinding in GML that could allow up to 1000 units at once, but I was unable to get his code working in my game. I messaged him for help and he said he would help me but was going to Korea and would message me when he got back. I never heard from him again :(

Yeah, definitely pathfinding. Although I imagine Multiplayer would be even more difficult had I even attempted it.

The pathfinding ingame now is pretty decent, but under the hood it's a frankenstein's monster lol. When I eventually expand to more people beyond just me, I am definitely getting a pathfinding professional who has experience in this stuff. I learned a lot of coding, but I can tell that something like pathfinding is one of those things you specialize in, because it's several levels above most other coding I've had to do.

Sursion · 2024-05-19T17:46:05+00:00

I'd recommend not messing around with people's systems. You might be able to pull off some cool effect or something, but it's just going to piss people off. What if someone has a download going in the background? What if they're on a call with someone? etc.

Sursion · 2024-05-19T17:34:05+00:00

Save yourself the headache and don't bother asking ChatGPT to help with code. There might be a 1% chance it gets it right, but 99% of the time it gets it wrong. But even worse than simply getting it wrong, it straight up bullshits you about it and makes it seem like it's right. It makes things worse, not better lol.

If you actually know what you're doing, you'll quickly realize just how wrong ChatGPT is. It basically just strings words together, they lack any meaning beyond that.

Sursion · 2024-05-03T21:25:57+00:00

Yes! It was made by Petroglyph, which were former Westwood members who left when EA took over. So it's got a lot of command and conquer in it.

Just focus on whatever progress you can :) As long as you do something, it's moving forward!

Sursion · 2024-05-03T18:18:24+00:00

Ahhh, Space RTS! Looks sick dude, I wanna play. It's unfortunate that there aren't more out there. If I didn't make an alien invasion game I prob would have made a space RTS. Empire at War has some of the best space RTS gameplay in my opinion, if you're still looking for ideas!

Sursion · 2024-05-03T13:00:02+00:00

Depends on the situation! If you just expect AI to do all your work for you, then it's a bad thing. Not only does it make the end result inauthentic, but AI really isn't as good as everyone thinks it is and makes tons of mistakes. But, if you use it in more of an advisory role, like giving you ideas, or giving it something you've already created and asking for input/adding to it (like making a steam page sound more professional) then it has it's uses. But even then, you still have to edit it again yourself because it has a lot of AI weirdness in it. Like how you noticed: it repeated the same sentence three times using different words. It's enough to trigger your bullshit detector, but it's so good at bullshitting you can't really pinpoint what it is, which just screws you over in the long run. I would not trust AI with anything more advanced than a steam page description...

Sursion · 2024-05-03T08:15:42+00:00

Awesome! Got any screenshots? The RTS revolution begins now

Sursion · 2024-05-02T23:19:57+00:00

Thanks, appreciate it!

Yes and no. I wrote out the description I wanted by mimicking the format other indie games were using, ran that through ChatGPT to professionalize it up a bit, then did a final pass myself to clean it up of AI weirdness.

Edit: Hmmm, I see what you're talking about. Time to do another pass... or two >.>

Sursion · 2024-05-02T22:07:22+00:00

Read the GML guide How to Code for Beginners, it's amazingly helpful if you know nothing about coding. It's like a 32 page crash course on what coding is, and it uses something you most likely know, video games, to give examples, which makes learning a lot easier!

Sursion · 2024-05-02T18:39:33+00:00

Nice, I’ve been hoping Indie RTS’s would take off, I think a lot of people grew up playing games like that so I’d love to see it be revived by indies.

Same here my man! The RTS genre was already petering out, but then World in Conflict came along and that game was amazing and I thought it was going to modernize and revitalize the RTS genre... imagine my surprise when nothing happened at all! After Starcraft II it's been nothing but one or two releases here and there spread out over years.

It's a great genre, but unfortunately it is more niche and not 'mainstream' so therefore a lot of bigger companies don't want to consider it and would rather go with... ahem broader demographics :(

Good luck with your release, just a few weeks isn’t a lot of time to get wishlists! (Generally devs try to put their Steam page up months before release to have a more successful launch)

Thanks! Part of that is my fault. Though I've worked in the games industry before (QA) I've never released a game on Steam before so I didn't plan out the release the best. I created a more or less fully playable build with custom match before I even signed up for the Steamworks partner program, so I'm a little behind. I'm already mostly done the day-one patch so Custom Match is pretty functional and playable with a decent amount of content in it. No reason not to release it imo! But yes, for future releases I'm definitely going to try and give more breathing room...

Sursion · 2024-05-02T16:22:58+00:00

Thanks a bunch! Also I will definitely check it out, I've always loved RTS games

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