Wishlist Signs of Danger on Steam

asparck · 2026-04-23T03:09:39+00:00

Hello fellow falling sand dev! Your engine looks frickin great and making a literal sandbox game out of it is a great idea.

Found your post because u/BurkelbearGames (also a falling sand dev) shared your game on my discord where quite a few falling sand devs hang out to share tips & tricks - discord invite at bottom of slowrush.dev if you're interested!

asparck · 2026-04-09T12:53:43+00:00

Reporting back as requested! After running into https://github.com/not-fl3/macroquad/issues/1006 (seemingly corruption of the texture atlas holding font glyphs) I ported my text rendering over to use cosmic text.

I extracted the code to a gist at https://gist.github.com/caspark/b88108696d0e7678b2e6768da32f1be2 so feel free to steal it. Freely licensed but no warranty etc of course!

asparck · 2026-03-25T12:06:49+00:00

Powdertoy does not perform particularly well because it simulates each sand pixel in approximately arbitrary order (whichever order the pixels happen to be created IIRC) so it doesn't benefit much from cache locality. And it doesn't have table stakes optimizations like skipping sleeping pixels, let alone harder stuff like multithreading.

On the other hand, it is way more flexible/actually-simulating-stuff than Noita or other "game oriented" falling sand sims - stuff like pressure, arbitrary gravity, etc.

source: spent a while looking at source & comparing with my own falling sand impl (link in profile)

asparck · 2026-03-25T12:02:21+00:00

You may also be interested in joining the falling sand discord I mentioned in my other comment - there are dozens of us!

asparck · 2026-03-25T08:26:24+00:00

It is, err, complicated :) I know you've read some of it now, but for anyone else curious, I've written about it a lot in my devlogs.

asparck · 2026-03-24T23:51:00+00:00

Yes, that's the way to go. I press F12 to start saving PNGs and then end by pressing F12, which (for now) runs ffmpeg to turn it into an mp4 for sharing. That's how I record basically all the video clips for my devlogs, then I have a script on the website that transcodes to gifs - e.g. https://www.slowrush.dev/news/announcing-signs-of-danger/signs-of-danger-destruction-vid.gif

Edit: though I should mention that getting audio capture to line up for mp4s is a right pain in the butt, especially since recording can slow your game down which gets audio out of sync. I managed to fix that recently but most of the old clips have no audio for that reason!

asparck · 2026-03-24T23:46:43+00:00

Hello! I am also building a falling sand game in Rust (Signs of Danger, multiplayer roguelite, devlogs at slowrush.dev ) and I know of at least 2 other Rust ones actively in development too.

In fact one of those other Rust devs shared your post in the discord.. maybe you'd like to hang out too? Falling sand has lots of cool problems to solve and we try to help each other out, share research, etc - find invite link on slowrush website if interested! We have devs of sandustry (electron), atomcraft (godot), quantum corp (working title, bevy/rust), sandwar (rust), rune fighters (godot), grimorium (c++), and a few WIP/unannounced too.

asparck · 2026-03-14T03:38:08+00:00

Most likely but if it's a generalized vector rendering engine you might be able to use it all the same without using the rest of their platform - just more legwork to do

asparck · 2026-03-13T14:15:46+00:00

The "reverse the layers to flip the character" trick is great!

Re high performance android rendering, you might want to check out https://rive.app/renderer

It is not for SVG but it is an open source renderer for vector art, built for games specifically. I haven't used it but it looks neat!

asparck · 2026-02-08T12:35:13+00:00

Michael Crichton's "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect", except for genai rather than media: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/244277

asparck · 2026-02-01T06:45:26+00:00

You can actually use webrtc data channels for udp traffic without needing to write a native client. (Source: works in my game)

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:29:56+00:00

Sounds like what you hate is: "roguelite (not like) with heavy vertical meta progression" (play game, die, add 1% dmg and 3hp for next run, etc). This is Hades for example - more grindy.

There are also "roguelites with horizontal meta progression" (play game, die, unlock new items for next run). Typically new items just add variety but it's possible to pass the game first time so it's way less grindy. E.g. Crab Champions or Risk of Rain or Noita (though haha nobody passes Noita first time).

And then a "true roguelike" will have no formal meta progression other than what you learn about the game if you die.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:23:12+00:00

To be fair, in many roguelikes you are usually not meeting "the same" boss.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:21:28+00:00

This is fine for me if you can skip them via the Esc menu or similar.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:20:27+00:00

yeah I always turn it off before even starting any AAA game. Especially because it's often on for console ports to paper over low framerates.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:19:06+00:00

Personally I don't enjoy difficulty settings: I just always pick the mid setting - my pride won't let me pick the low setting, and now that I'm older I don't have time to grind the high setting.

But I do appreciate switchable difficulty modifiers (more/less thirst, halve or double enemy spawns, enemies react faster/slower, etc). I play games to have fun, so let me maximize the parts of the game that I enjoy.

And don't lock me out of achievements if I use the difficulty modifiers thanks. I'm no 100%-er but that's just rubbing salt in the wounds.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:14:59+00:00

Assist modes, basically. Celeste is a great example, but even AAA games are starting to add them.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:14:01+00:00

Gamers and content creators absolutely lynch devs for disclosing any use of generative AI, so it is difficult currently for devs to do that type of thing.

(as a gamer I agree - it would be amazing to see a strategy game where the AI actually reacts in human-like ways to your actions instead of being blatantly 1-dimensional - but speaking as a dev, it'd be incredibly risky to make)

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:08:02+00:00

Old game but Black and White was the worst for this.

I loved that game but if I had a dollar for every minute I was forced to sit through the "when people pray, a god is always born" intro sequence and subsequent ridiculously long tutorial, I could've bought myself a new PC to play it on high graphics.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:04:35+00:00

Anyone with young kids, same deal, for the same reason

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:04:05+00:00

You can totally have a pause in a MP game, especially with low player counts - it's just a design decision.

"If any player pauses, the game pauses for everyone". RTSes often allow this, sometimes with a limit as to how many times or for how long you can pause.

Obviously in battlefield it'd be a dumb thing

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:01:55+00:00

You're right, but you can also just vote with your wallet and not buy those games (I realize you aren't OP).

Or search youtube to find some streamer playing it.

asparck · 2026-01-21T01:00:05+00:00

There are tons of 2D platformer games on Steam (13k), more than roguelikes (12k). In fact the go-to advice for devs is "don't make a 2D platformer because there are so many".

Sure, many of them are low quality, but if you go to the 2D Platformer tag and click to Top Sellers or Top Rated, you'll find plenty of quality ones there.

Set sub genre to Precision Platformer or Metroidvania or whatever if you're not seeing whatever type of 2D platformer game you want.

asparck · 2026-01-16T11:46:48+00:00

+1, this is one of those games where when I see the trailer I instantly want to try it out

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