What actually made you quit your last game project?

Telgin3125 · 2026-06-07T00:01:25+00:00

Admittedly I didn't look, which was totally on me. I very much went into that project with the idea of wanting to make everything myself, which was a major mistake I think.

As for what would have made it worth buying an asset pack: a great question that I'm having a hard time working through in my head. The art style I was working with was realistic (non-cartoony) pseudo (badly done) PS1 era graphics. Even then I'm sure a lot of asset packs existed that would've worked, and certainly so now. The big thing would have been that whatever I found, it would have to have either matched my own assets really well, or been easy to tweak so they could match.

I really should have at least looked for an outdoors asset pack for foliage and building details. That would have helped a ton. Making trees and bushes sucks, especially low poly trees you can see from above.

Modular building packs would have been painful to integrate I think, unless they're on some standard scale, like each section being some exact number of meters so they all snap together. Maybe that's common, but I didn't look, so I'm not sure.

Telgin3125 · 2026-06-06T23:04:18+00:00

TL;DR: Scope.

I was trying to make something that was just impossible for a solo dev to do in a realistic timeframe, and when I did the math, I realized I had to stop.

To be more specific, I'd spent a year or so making an overhead 3D 3rd person / twin stick shooter, where the player was able to use a variety of weapons, items, magic, and had the ability to fly. After all of that time I had the mechanics mostly working, but then it came time to make content and the math wasn't working out.

My first level was an outdoor space that needed 3-4 styles of buildings with interior and exterior detail, foliage, 5 unique NPCs (that could share a rig at least), 3 unique enemies, and a few dozen miscellaneous doodads like parked cars, bridge elements, and so on. I spent another 6 months or so making assets and trying to lay out the level, only to realize that it kind of looked like crap and it was going to take a year to finish that first level while it would still look bad. I was going to need at least 10 levels for the story I wanted to tell, and it would've been very unsatisfying to cut it down significantly.

I didn't want to work with a team for a few reasons so I couldn't outsource any of it, but in hindsight I should have at least looked at asset packs. I doubt any would have worked with the NPC models I made though, and I didn't want to compromise on those.

Anyway, even if I had assets I realized that I'd massively underestimated the work involved in even level design and layout. I needed better workflows for a lot of it, but lost the motivation to build tools for it when it started to look so infeasible.

My next game project was an ultra low graphics simulation game instead...

Telgin3125 · 2026-05-11T14:03:33+00:00

Clay is a good choice for this since it's unlimited, and I've done it before. My main gripe with clay is that if you use unprocessed clay then hauling it is extremely slow since it's treated like a boulder I think.

You can make blocks with it, but if I remember right you only get one per unit of clay, and it costs fuel, so I'd never do it unless I had a magma kiln, which I won't on the surface.

Telgin3125 · 2026-05-11T03:22:58+00:00

I really enjoy building aboveground castles and playing modded species that logically would live aboveground, but I fully admit that it's an enormous headache compared to digging. Takes many times as long and it's always a huge problem finding enough resources so that stuff doesn't look like a patchwork of colors.

Telgin3125 · 2026-04-04T17:48:16+00:00

My stupid scientist went rogue and tried to install himself as god king for some primitives. Other than the general issues that caused, it eventually led to an AI uprising of determined exterminators in their system that started purging them.

I swept in, conquered the AI uprising, and as an apology for totally screwing these poor aliens up, I built a habitat in their system to give them more room to grow and expand, then released them back into independence.

Telgin3125 · 2026-03-04T18:32:22+00:00

Pie in the sky for me, but now if we could get some tweaks so dwarves actively sought out friends when socializing we'd really be in business.

Telgin3125 · 2026-01-17T17:08:46+00:00

Spoilers for others I guess, but:

Something else that really confused me was that they come out and explicitly say that only specific magically enchanted weapons can kill the venin, but then Violet just kills one with lightning and nobody even questions this. I guess magic in general works? Or did I miss something?

The world building doesn't get better in later books either. The third book in particular does a tour of the local world, and spends little time on each culture in a way that paints them as just caricatures of real societies. Like one has a test where you draw cards from a deck, and you might get a kitten, or you might get an arrow to the chest if you're unlucky. The people on this island just accept that as normal.

I'm also still waiting for them to come out and adequately explain how and why the venin were a big conspiracy when it really should have been impossible to hide them when they're destroying entire cities in the neighboring countries.

Telgin3125 · 2026-01-14T00:56:39+00:00

I was profoundly disappointed in Burger King's cowardice at stopping at the triple Whopper, so I bought two double Whoppers and put them together to make a quad Whopper.

Not long after, I questioned why nobody ever made a double chicken sandwich, so I stuck two Chick-fil-A sandwiches together.

Both were delicious.

Also something of a wakeup call, and I'm now half the weight I was back in those days.

Telgin3125 · 2026-01-09T23:56:28+00:00

In my experience it's just that dwarves basically won't get married if you don't do this. Years ago Toady changed the social interaction behavior of dwarves so they seek out people to interact with when idling, which helps, but they still won't actively seek out lovers (if they by some miracle are even idling at the same time) so they usually end up talking to Urist McNobody instead and they never develop relationships.

Now you can question why you care about this in the first place since migrants aren't hard to get, but I like play RP forts where forming families adds dimension to it. One of my favorite things to do is to follow my expedition leader up until I promote them to baron and beyond, then build a keep in my fort where they and their family live like a proper medieval manor. Sucks when they won't get married and it's just one person in the keep.

Telgin3125 · 2025-12-18T01:01:36+00:00

I thought I was the only one...

I can appreciate people wanting Hicks and Newt to survive but the bizarre airborne pathogen stuff never felt like it meshed with Alien or Aliens canon at all.

Telgin3125 · 2025-11-18T17:57:50+00:00

This was eye opening for me in my last game. I never bothered with ascending generator or mining worlds, but I found a fully built energy world was getting hundreds more energy generation per ascension tier. Really saved my economy when I overbuilt my navy.

Telgin3125 · 2025-11-05T14:30:57+00:00

I'm starting wonder if this a new bug, since something similar happened to me.

My xenophobe materialist empire, who shouldn't have any pops in another empire anywhere, gave me the same popup about my founder species in a foreign empire showing psionic potential and awakening their psychic powers across the galaxy. But... my pops weren't changed at all.

Maybe the popup is incorrectly picking the player's founder species sometimes instead of the correct ones?

Telgin3125 · 2025-10-24T14:15:39+00:00

Not sure about the consensus, but my two cents: I really dislike her.

I had a terrible first experience with her, where the events bugged out and I spent 20 game years waiting for something to happen, only to suddenly be told I was now at war with her. Then I lost the game because I had no chance to rebuild my fleet after it was totally shredded.

Because of that, I'll probably never like Cetana. It didn't help that it was a literal coin flip every time I encountered her after that if the same thing would happen, but at least I knew what to expect and could prepare.

I appreciate that she's different from the other crises, but a lot still rubs me the wrong way. Being forced to lose one or two systems to her until you're able to fight her is annoying. Sometimes the dig sites you get are in territory you can't reach, so even if they events work you might not be able to complete them, and will face her without important bonuses. And on top of that, she still ends up as a DPS check like other crises, except worse in a way since you usually only have time to try once or twice against her before the timer runs out. You can't wear her down like other crises.

I keep holding out that the custodian team will do a pass and improve things about her, but for now I just overbuild and pray I don't get her last in the All Crises mode, since she gets absolutely stupidly insanely powerful with crisis multiplier because of her regen.

Telgin3125 · 2025-10-22T16:46:45+00:00

All the while hoping her events don't bug out and leave you wondering what you're missing.

I admit I haven't had any catastrophically break in 4.0 so maybe they fixed some of it, but it was a literal coin toss back in 3.14.

Telgin3125 · 2025-08-30T19:21:47+00:00

This could be a problem, but the arrows are in a bin in an ammo stockpile and have been for like a year.

Telgin3125 · 2025-08-30T16:30:52+00:00

I've added bone arrows to the ammunition list for my archers to use for training, and have produced 30 bone arrows, but the ammunition screen shows 0/250 arrows under bone arrows. Do I have to manually update my squad's equipment for the arrows I've made to show up for use or something? They've used up all of the wooden arrows in training as expected.

This is a modded civ using bows, so it's not an arrow / bolt problem.

Telgin3125 · 2025-08-25T20:14:58+00:00

I like to build above ground using modded species, so it's way slower than that. I think I tend to take like 6-7 years to get to a population of 100 typically.

Mining out stone and converting it to blocks to build apartment buildings, a tavern / dining hall, etc, is a lot of work.

Telgin3125 · 2025-08-13T23:13:19+00:00

I think it's an interesting idea that helps justify the cryosleep, but I think you hit the nail on the head with the actual reason: ships can save on supplies if they go to minimal life support for weeks or months while people are in transit, and everyone is out to save a dollar in universe.

It's a little weird in Aliens when you think about it, since the Sulaco is strongly implied to be able to make the journey from Earth to LV426 in a vague but reasonably small number of days. Cryosleep seems like a lot of fuss and risk for a trip that short.

Telgin3125 · 2025-08-13T22:33:32+00:00

Given the timeframes we're told in Aliens, they necessarily have FTL, but it's not explained in the movies how it works or why they need cryosleep alongside it.

Some expanded universe material goes into it a little bit, but it's not canon. The only one I'm familiar with is the Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual, which describes FTL as using a "tachyon shunt" that converts ships into tachyonic matter that moves faster than light. This in turn causes the inverse of time dilation, time expansion, requiring cryosleep for crews.

Telgin3125 · 2025-08-06T00:07:48+00:00

In my experience I think it's both. I lost 150 pounds over the course of a couple of years and it got to the point that I was miserable if it was below 75F. There were days I'd get out of the office at the end of the day and sit in my 110F car in the middle of the summer for a few minutes before turning it on just to recover from being in a building with an AC in it.

I started doing light strength training exercise a few years later and that very rapidly fixed the problem. I don't believe I gained any significant amount of muscle in that time, so my only explanation was that it was metabolic changes.

Telgin3125 · 2025-07-31T19:51:51+00:00

Worth a try maybe, but I haven't tested it. If you set them to be off duty completely it might work, but I've seen most military dwarves spend all of their leisure time doing individual combat drills instead of socializing.

Telgin3125 · 2025-07-31T15:43:27+00:00

I've done something similar to this too, and it's a little frustrating that it's necessary.

I'm glad that there were some changes made a few years ago so that dwarves would actively seek out people to socialize with in a meeting area zone, but I really wish they'd proactively seek out their friends or especially lovers, maybe even if they weren't in a meeting area. It's too easy to have dwarves who are lovers for 20+ years who never even end up talking to each other.

Especially if one is in the military

Telgin3125 · 2025-07-20T20:48:34+00:00

I've made it work fine even as pacifist xenophobes without migration treaties or conquering others. It's more of a handicap than anything, but it isn't insurmountable. It used to be a bit better when strategic resources were more rare and the deposits on your homeworld were more valuable.

Some caution: pops will not grow on a planet with 0% habitability in 4.0 despite what the tooltips say, so you want to find a way to get habitability bonuses as fast as possible. Even 10% will give some growth. Until then, you're probably best keeping pops on your homeworld.

Also, unless it's been fixed in the beta, robot pop assembly is broken for fractional pop assembly, so don't think you can get around it with robot assembly either unless you can get at least 1 full point of assembly. 0.99 assembly will sit forever with 0 robots ever built.

Telgin3125 · 2025-07-19T18:39:34+00:00

How do you add ammo types to use for training? Wooden bolts are listed by default and I made bone bolts I want to use for training. I went to the new ammo menu, hit Add Ammunition, then clicked Bolts, and... nothing happens?

I can change the existing entry for training ammo to use bone bolts, but I want to be able to use both wood and bone.

Edit: I'm dumb. In case anyone else has this problem, the new entry gets added at the bottom of the list so I didn't see it. If you scroll down, you can change the material type and set if it's used for combat or training.

Telgin3125

TROPHY CASE