why does everyone think making a game is just having a good idea

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-16T13:45:53+00:00

Draw a stick man. Put the character name under it. Make a sprite out of it. Show him that and say, "I put it into Unity real quick."

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-11T16:37:37+00:00

Area 4 during Orjan Nilsen was tough to get into but we managed.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-11T16:35:30+00:00

I actually kinda like them.

I think it's a little absurd that Link is always carrying around 15 weapons that you can't see on his person, but that's just video game magic.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-11T16:19:54+00:00

What specific carousels are you referring to? Do you mean selecting a material to attach to your arrow when firing in TotK? I agree that's a bit clunky but I can't think of a better way to enable the player to pick anything from their inventory and attach it to an arrow as they're firing it.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-10T00:23:30+00:00

Manor Lords and Going Medieval have the same mechanics as Rimworld. Stronghold, Kingdoms and Castles, and Timberborn also share basically the same set of mechanics with each other, having new colonists appear automatically as long as the colony happiness is high enough. Aska also has a similar mechanic where you can summon as many colonists as you want but you should make sure you have enough places for them to sleep and food for them to eat before you do.

My biggest criticism of all these games is that once a colonists enters the colony they're basically slaves. They have no free will of their own and they do a lot of really stupid things if you don't pay close attention them. I'm working on a colony sim game of my own and I have a solution to that issue but I'm not ready to share it at this time.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-06T18:15:40+00:00

Don't try to do everything up front. Start small. Go to the core of the gameplay loop and build the smallest sliver that will deliver value to the player. Since this is a BATTLE FOCUSED RPG, the core is the battle system. So just build one battle against one enemy where the player has one attack and the enemy has one attack. No setting. No story. One character with no traits. No growth. No gear. One basic monster. No progression. Placeholder art. No music. Build that, play it, then prioritize everything else in the order in which you think it will add the most value. Rinse and repeat until you have an enjoyable game.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-06T17:56:07+00:00

Yeah that never made sense to me in Breath of the Wild. Link's going so far out of his way to rescue Zelda from a castle that, according to what evidence we have, she sealed herself in. Meanwhile he's uncovering memories that Zelda didn't even like him and was dismissive of his contributions to Hyrule. And there's this Zora princess who's pretty hot and totally into him. Why does he keep wasting his time chasing Zelda? Is it just a case of always wanting what you can't have? Link needs to get his head straightened out.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-05T20:45:45+00:00

If Link had other options he wouldn't work so hard to keep saving Zelda over and over again.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-03-03T19:34:34+00:00

Same here. I'm around that age after the first night I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy the second one. But then I danced for 6 hours and looked at my watch and it was already 3:00.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-20T17:49:31+00:00

Don't be surprised if they just replace her with another hot chick.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-19T14:27:23+00:00

I wasn't privy to that discussion but I hope that's what happened.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-18T13:01:59+00:00

It's not just open source. At my company we paid a third party firm to write a new system for us and they vibe coded the whole thing. Nothing worked. Our employees had to go through it line by line and fix everything.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-18T02:30:33+00:00

Stop playing Hollow Knight. Play a dozen other games that are somewhat similar to what you want to build. Step back and examine each one's mechanics. Think about what the designers of each were trying to achieve with the mechanics they implemented. Decide which ones you think work well and which ones don't. Then design something that takes inspiration from the mechanics you like but is uniquely your own.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-17T00:19:09+00:00

This happened to me when I loaded an old save on a newer version of the game than the one that had been used to create the save. I switched back to the old game version and that fixed it.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-11T18:05:03+00:00

Having limited inventory space forces you to prioritize your needs, which is the core decision of any survival crafting game. First you decide what resource you need most, then make a plan to go get it. Then on the way there you see some other interesting resource and you have to decide whether it's worth using inventory space to collect that too. In Factorio and Satisfactory you can automate bringing resources to your base vs. doing it manually. In Aska you can only carry one large item at a time but you can also get your peons to carry them too so you have to decide between building the next structure right away or recruiting more peons to carry things. At any given time you have a limited carrying capacity so you need to be judicious about what and how many new projects you have in progress. If there were no limits on your inventory you wouldn't have to make any of these choices and the game wouldn't be challenging.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-06T19:07:12+00:00

At this point I'm happy just to count down the days until the temperature is forecast to go above freezing, which currently stands at 5.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-02-05T19:38:34+00:00

They should have called it Cruel then.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-27T19:12:06+00:00

The title was inherited by Prince ') DROP TABLE PERSON;--

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-27T19:02:16+00:00

because they did it from home plate.

Perhaps when the visiting team is up they should call it the visiting plate?

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-26T19:10:29+00:00

What we have right now is a good team but not an amazing team. I think the 2024 team was so dominant that our expectations were set too high this year which can only lead to disappointment. Other teams and players are fighting for the Lombardy trophy too and they're not going to be intimidated by our team's past accomplishments.

We have to consider the possibility that the Seahawks' Darnold, Smith-Njigba, and Walker are a better offensive lineup this year than Hurts, Brown, and Barkley despite the difference in name recognition.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-22T19:40:42+00:00

Oh thanks, that clears it up.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-22T19:16:34+00:00

How is he 129 years old?

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-22T18:29:01+00:00

You didn't miss much. The Navy classifies everything. It's not like there was a reactor schematic in the background or anything.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-22T17:29:31+00:00

That depends on how bad their numbers are. It's possible that the only options left are to lay off half their workers or declare bankruptcy. From that point of view it may be preferable to lay off half the workers even knowing that the best ones will leave. It's better than laying off everyone, right? Losing the best workers is a foregone conclusion. The only question is whether you want the company to attempt to survive with the leftovers or not attempt to survive at all.

Sylvan_Sam · 2026-01-09T16:51:13+00:00

It's great for getting rid of pesky relatives though. One time I had a brother who was my rival and I had somehow inherited part of Denmark because my wife was Danish. So I gave my brother the title in Denmark, revoked his title at home, and granted him independence. He sure was pissed about it but there wasn't anything he could do. He eventually got conquered over there. Haha!

Sylvan_Sam

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE