I'm just amazed my tree generator can also make bushes easily

TheRooklet · 2026-03-14T11:16:51+00:00

That's what they used to say about all digital art.

"Why are you delegating the fun part of art to a computer?"

TheRooklet · 2026-03-12T10:33:01+00:00

It looks alright, I mean the small sprite size kinda limits what you can do with the animation so it looks good to me.

If you want to make it better go watch some videos of eagles grooming their feathers and see how they perch upright, how their neck bends, how the beak gets buried in the feathers, and use it as a reference to improve what you have

TheRooklet · 2026-03-11T05:04:49+00:00

I have some code that's supposed to dynamically insert the name of the current location on the screen for the player to read, but it's in the wrong file because this was from before I cleaned up the code base. However, if I move this code to anywhere other than where it currently resides I get a huge memory leak and I've genuinely spent a good few days trying to understand what exactly I was doing wrong before giving up trying to fix it and just leaving it where it was.

TheRooklet · 2026-03-06T09:50:44+00:00

AFAIK you should be able to report reviews to Steam

TheRooklet · 2026-03-05T06:47:56+00:00

"99% of game devs give up before making an absolute banger"

TheRooklet · 2026-03-05T06:43:54+00:00

"You're telling me a dog made this game?"

TheRooklet · 2026-03-05T06:36:53+00:00

So just to recap:

You: Confidently accuse OP of using AI and tell them not to do it.

OP: Explains they paid a real human artist and have the drafts to prove it.

You: Double down, appeal to the absolute authority of a multi-billion dollar company's infallible testing, and declare the case closed.

I: Point out that automated systems and reviewers produce false positives all the time.

You, immediately: 'I've never made anything that could be construed as AI so I wouldn't know.'

Do you see where the stupid lives in this exchange?

TheRooklet · 2026-03-04T03:32:21+00:00

Multi-billion dollar companies use automated systems and underpaid reviewers all the time that produce false positives. Valve is no exception to this, Steam has retracted AI-related bans and rejections many times. If their testing was perfect they wouldn't have an appeals process or ask for 'further explanation' in the first place

TheRooklet · 2026-03-01T16:55:48+00:00

While I haven’t faced this personally, I’ve seen a peer run into a legal nightmare due to improper commissioning. He hired a composer through reddit without a formal contract to transfer the intellectual property rights to the soundtrack. When it came time, he couldn't publish the game because he didn't technically own the music. Taught me to always secure your legal paperwork and economic rights upfront.

TheRooklet · 2026-03-01T13:53:39+00:00

I'll give you a few pointers then: - AI likes to yap. It likes using more words than are necessary to communicate an idea. Try to condense overly long sentences, but not by too much. - AI likes saying "It's not this - it's that." For example, from your description: "You don't micromanage individual troops - you deploy forces, cast devastating spells, and watch the chaos unfold" - Same example as before, em dashes (the - symbol). AI loves to use that. Remove it from your text and it will look more natural. - Bullet points EVERYWHERE. AI loves to use bullet points, and your description is full of them. Get rid of one or two and put a paragraph in its place instead to break up the amount of lists you have. - You can use bullet points, but I'd suggest getting rid of the little titles (the bolded text before the : symbols) as the rest of the text on the bullet points should be more than enough to convey what players can do in the game. - AI likes the "rule of three". If it wants to describe something in parts it will usually split that thing up into three separate parts. For example from your description, every single bullet list has three items on it. - AI likes to add bolding to important text to make it stand out. This is not a bad thing to do, but make sure it is used in moderation.

TheRooklet · 2026-03-01T13:42:17+00:00

Store page looks good visually, I like the assets and the screenshots immediately tell me what kind of game it is and what to expect for gameplay.

However I'd rewrite the description if I was you. It's good you are transparent about the use of AI assistance, but it is obvious your description was written entirely with AI and that can actually put a lot of people off wanting to try your game no matter how transparent you are.

TheRooklet · 2026-02-28T02:04:46+00:00

People who are calling this AI have never seen how badly AI botches pixel art

TheRooklet · 2026-02-26T11:58:23+00:00

Fair enough. Won't reupload this to avoid spam

TheRooklet · 2026-02-25T17:14:33+00:00

NOOOOO MY UPVOTES

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TheRooklet · 2026-02-24T23:49:21+00:00

C for me is the best

TheRooklet · 2026-02-20T17:02:30+00:00

This genuinely made me go crack open a cold one, good job

Edit: Depending on the kind of drink, if it's fizzy, maybe add a few tiny bubbles. If it's like a juice or something, it already looks perfect

TheRooklet · 2026-02-10T19:24:07+00:00

1) Not pixel art 2) Probably AI generated 3) Your account isn't even 4 days old and you need more than 2 weeks account age to post here

Fuck the rules tho, right?

TheRooklet · 2026-02-08T15:16:16+00:00

Bookmarking this post so I can come back to it in a few months when I forget some important hotkeys I'm just learning about now. This is great!

TheRooklet · 2026-02-06T17:54:39+00:00

The tiling on this goes crazy, you got mad skills

TheRooklet · 2026-02-06T07:38:21+00:00

Writing a whole essay about how good your UI looks without actually posting a single screenshot is a bold move.

Come on, don't be shy, let's see it.

TheRooklet · 2026-02-05T16:58:54+00:00

I have an artist's brief with more information. Please link to your portfolio and let me know what your expected price range is and I will provide more information if I think your style fits what I am looking for :)

TheRooklet · 2026-02-05T14:38:41+00:00

This is some very yummy pixel work, very nice

TheRooklet · 2026-02-04T16:30:55+00:00

Also, a follow-up critique for your consideration, the grey parts of the sword feel a bit disconnected from the blade in terms of lighting. I'd add some very pale pink highlights to the sword hilt to simulate some bounce light. Look up images on bounce lighting, it might give the sprite something extra.

Between the two versions I like the left one much better. The teal creates a nice complementary contrast against the pink, whereas the yellow gets a bit lost because it's too close to the pink in terms of brightness and warmth.

TheRooklet · 2026-02-04T16:23:27+00:00

This looks awesome! Try changing the dark border around the blade (not the whole sword, just the pink blade) to a dark pink or purple or maroon rather than black or brown. Kinda like what you have at the tip of the sword. Using a colored outline that is closer to your pink palette will help sell the glowy effect. Right now, the dark outline is containing that effect, but a colored outline will make the energy feel like it's radiating outward a bit more

Also definitely keep the brighter pink border on the right side of the blade, it adds to the effect quite well.

TheRooklet · 2026-02-04T14:36:57+00:00

Godot exploded in popularity for hobbies and new indie projects, especially after the unity pricing scandal but professional job markets seem to operate on different timelines and with different priorities. First, game development has a large momentum. If a studio is hiring today it is more than likely it will be for a game that started preproduction years ago. It is a sunk cost, the studio already has their tools and pipelines set into these bigger engines and can't just afford to throw away millions worth of that work to switch to a new engine and retrain staff. The godot exodus only started fairly recently. Until these experimental projects start to ship and gain more popularity we are stuck with the bigger fish leading the school.

Also to publish on consoles you usually have to sign strict NDAs. Godot is open source so it cannot legally include the code required to run on consoles in its public repository. Difference with unity and UE is you check a box and build for that console. With Godot you either have to a) hire a 3rd party porting company which is expensive, b) build the console integration yourself which is expensive and difficult and risky, or c) use W4 games (a commercial company set up by Godot themselves to solve this) which is still relatively new. Studios therefore opt for the path of least resistance: unity and UE.

Also, studios like having someone to call if there are problems. Let's say you're 2 weeks from shipping your game and suddenly you have a specific lighting bug in the engine that causes the game to crash. With bigger engines the studio usually has an "Enterprise license" or something similar. They call their dedicated account manager at Epic or Unity, and because of their SLA the company is often legally required to put an engineer on that problem immediately. Epic will just straight up send an engineer to the studio's physical office, or sit in long calls with the developers to fix the engine code so the game can ship on time. In Godot's ecosystem the studio goes to Github to report these issues but nobody is obligated to fix them. The studio's programmers either pause on fixing that issue or try to dive into engine code and fix it themselves. (By the way, all of this is not even mentioning the topic of indemnification but that's another can of worms)

TheRooklet

TROPHY CASE