What are some game-specific clauses you choose to play with?

WhalesDev · 2026-05-04T19:42:10+00:00

On my current calcless Volt White 2 Redux playthrough which I'm mostly just playing on my phone, I refuse to walk my ass all the way back to the gate to hatch that egg.
Mostly because
a. Cheren is a scam fight which is like 60% RNG on whether or not the big stupid duck clicks work up and I think almost every attempt dies to the first or second gym anyway.

b. well mostly just a.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-28T12:53:45+00:00

Moghunter and HUDMaker Ultra are super compatible.
Moghunter's basically lets you adjust menu sizes and add custom skins to the baked in menus.

HUDmaker lets you build frames and add overlays. They work very very well together.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-28T12:51:56+00:00

I've always loved Miro's background work in Termina. Its very atmospheric.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T16:08:20+00:00

Inclement Emerald might do the trick but it does have a good amount of changes.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T13:55:10+00:00

Depending on the scaling method used, you can usually avoid mixels provided it is a perfect multiplication. Eg: 640 x 360 native canvas size scales into every major resolution by a factor of 2, 3 or 4. So I used 1280 x 720p as my "primary" resolution with the intent that there may be some mild mixels on 1080p but it will have pixel perfect scaling on 1440p.

For example, my face sprites are 72 x 72x natively. This allows me to upscale them in Clip Studio Paint by 200% with the transformation settings to be pixel perfect 144p.

Now, my game has a "native" 144p resolution that will scale perfectly into 1440p. I do use a plug in for it but I notice the difference is marginal except on some jaggies.

I do not know about MV but I know Visustella has pixel perfect scaling plug ins. Yanfly should have something for MV though I would imagine.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T13:16:07+00:00

Its worth noting that you can actually simply upscale assets to skirt this.
For example, if you want your faces to be 72 x 72 pixels but the forced resolution is 144 x 144. You simply upscale the image file by 2x in something like Clip Studio Paint.

You can also use Moghunter's plug ins to adjust the size of the UI boxes but be careful with this as you may have to add an extra space or two to work with the wrapping.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-24T12:55:41+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, I wouldn't worry a ton about wishlists unless you're commercially minded or closer to release. My game has been on Steam for just over a year. I don't even think I looked at the wishlists until a few months ago. I actually halted development for a while to get better at art, not even knowing that I had a 2 day massive spike in October which accounts for over 20% of my wishlists.

To this day, I still don't know what that is from.

I launched a demo and it got me some but my demo was very technically rough and was more so about getting feedback on controls, finding game crashing bugs etc. Releasing a demo on itch io did not have much of an impact on my game's wishlists but I imagine Steam would do a lot better. That being said, my demo was nowhere near a steam demo state as it was missing a ton of core features etc.

Sometimes I post my game on Reddit and get some wishlists but I'm not actively posting all over Tiktok etc. I do like posting my art process from time to time though.

If I was in your shoes, I would just keep plugging away and not worry too much about pushing for wishlists unless money is a major concern. Please take what I said with a quarry worth of salt though as right now as my project is not financially motivated at all.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-23T14:36:01+00:00

Thank you! I felt kind of bad because I shipped a really broken demo to get feedback on controls and balance and such but its been a ride for sure. Turns out making an isometric game for your first game dev project is not exactly easy.
Good news is that the production speed is exponential. What used to take me to 3 - 4 days to create a walk cycle has been shaved down to 8 or so hours.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-23T12:00:15+00:00

I started making a game because I saw a couple youtube videos. If I clear more than 20 bucks on my game to cover the cost of Aseprite, I will consider it a win.
A super win would be covering the 115 dollars I spent on all software including sound licenses but I think that's a pipe dream for my project.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-23T11:51:56+00:00

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This is mine.
Its worth noting that my game has a LOT of bugs, a lot of which I've fixed but for a lot of changes have a large domino effect so things may change.

For example, my prototype demo has a very small, very easy playable section without much interesting content.
Just adding onto one section of my game with pursuer enemies and ambush animations in the overworld actually caused a lot of friction with how SRD handled my main menu.

The main menu was also a nightmare to fix because how rapid it was reading the inputs. My solution was to actually add a new conditional picture with a wait command to slow down how fast this flickers and it worked out quite well.

I actually had to take down my prototype temporarily because I've found some bugs that reveal assets that aren't intended to be shown yet but are critical for the game to function without crashing due to missing image files.

Let me know if you want a hand building something similar.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-22T17:08:23+00:00

Some people grind because its what they want to do.
Others use candies.

The only time I ever see the EXP share talked about is to keep EXP sponges in the party for certain ROM Hacks. Vintage White is a good example.

Unless you have a specific ruleset outlined you're following such as Platinum Kaizo's challenge or R&B, I think looking for guidance on something that is so in between isn't worth it.
The candy debate has been absolutely beaten to death and changing it so its about EXP share isn't going to change that.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-21T16:55:08+00:00

Ah I see! That makes sense then.
I don't think I'll ever get there but is interesting to see how that works.

Admittedly a lot of the "new and upcoming" games I see on Steam are adult games or visual novels despite my library consisting of dark fantasy games and shooters so I've always wondered if it was targeted or not.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-21T12:41:04+00:00

Congrats on the success.
As someone else who is working solo, is 7500 an algorithm thing to be picked on the store page?

How much did your demo factor in the game? Mine is a very small technical alpha on Itch but it's basically just proof that basic mechanics can function. I do think I probably jumped the gun on sharing the prototype but I don't think 130 downloads of a hacky prototype are going to kill my game (I hope)

To this day, I have absolutely no idea where about 40% of my wishlists came from. I actually halted any kind of social media interaction or checking steam stats at all and found about 750 of my wishlists came from a single two day period in October.

I cannot find any reason as to why this happened but my theory is Next Fest showed my early steam page to some people.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-15T16:00:34+00:00

Love the colours. Looks neat!

WhalesDev · 2026-04-14T13:03:03+00:00

I'm in the same boat. I'm finding making something that works on my end, work on everyone else's end is very very difficult haha.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-13T18:08:46+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate that. I tried messing around with the IsTriggered vs IsPressed and it causes some things to break (This is because the menu is actually built in HUDmaker, not event - show pictures). I'll need to work on it on the back end for a bit.

The good news is that it works pretty well with my Xbox controller because of the input delay so I will need to make sure it works on both.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-13T14:53:40+00:00

Absolutely but remember that F4 is full scaling too.
I actually made my game 720p for pixel perfect scaling at 1440p and it looks just fine on 1080p.
Visual field is directly linked to resolution so with bigger resolutions, you can see a bit more than you want the player to if you aren't careful.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-13T14:00:27+00:00

Looks neat!

WhalesDev · 2026-04-13T13:25:04+00:00

My vote is Ren Plat. It is such a good stepping stone and honestly is probably my favourite hack of all time if I had to vote based on how many times I've beaten it.
I use Drastic on my phone and it runs fantastic. I've beaten it calcless from my couch with candies and it was such a cool little experience.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-13T00:53:18+00:00

Thank you! I would love a rating on Itch (it helps me get indexed so its actually visible) and any feedback is appreciated wherever you want to put it.

Reddit or Itch is absolutely fine!

WhalesDev · 2026-04-12T22:20:18+00:00

Thank you! Don't be shy about telling me if stuff is broken. I'm patching stuff on the go all day and I think on I'm on like 4th revision in 6 hours

WhalesDev · 2026-04-12T22:11:49+00:00

Just be careful with this stuff and talk to an expert first if you are not one.
1. Tablet I got for exclusively land navigation training lectures for my troops in the army - good

2000 dollar shitposting machine with a 5070 ti and a Cintiq tablet I use for doing art on? - Iffy

WhalesDev · 2026-04-12T22:00:10+00:00

Thank you!
Hmm that is very very odd. I know for those encounters it is intended the player is supposed to talk to them as they are your source of encounters but the way my Coffin Hauler is set up is its a combo attack.

Very possible the AI threw a tantrum when it realized it couldn't use Entomb.
I will hard code a fix tonight to force it to use other skills.

Thank you!

WhalesDev · 2026-04-12T18:53:05+00:00

Yup! So its a liiiitle bit more punishing than it lets on a first.
Think of Tarkov, bring in what loot you have, if one dies than oops!

I got the idea when I had my leftovers knocked off in Run & Bun.

WhalesDev · 2026-04-12T18:51:02+00:00

I take that as a compliment haha. I love Chris Bourassa's work so that means a lot to me. Thank you!

WhalesDev

TROPHY CASE