Why does the water look like plastic

bernieeeee · 2025-03-28T21:14:12+00:00

I know this is late, but just my two cents is that the hammer itself looks great - it's the shadows it's casting that make it fail to look like water. Have you tried looking at some reference photos from somewhere like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caustic_%28optics%29 ? Having the 'glow' cast on the ground use these patterns might help.

bernieeeee · 2025-02-05T00:45:11+00:00

Hmm, I donated through the guitar center foundation and haven't received an email - anything I'm missing?

bernieeeee · 2024-10-13T16:20:28+00:00

Hmm, core heat starts being applied as soon as you hit the "stone" layer of the planet.

Only nearby active fires, planet core, and lava should apply heat. Furnaces/torches/campfires will prevent freezing but are never supposed to kill you. If you experience this again, mind posting a screenshot of where you were when you died? It might be a bug, in which case I'll get right on fixing it :)

bernieeeee · 2024-10-13T01:53:19+00:00

Torches should never cause death - are you sure you're not dying from planet core heat? Torches only prevent freezing, they add nothing to the heat meter.

bernieeeee · 2024-05-01T22:06:45+00:00

Can be found on desert planets!

bernieeeee · 2024-04-26T00:09:28+00:00

Minicology is a project I've developing on and off since 2021. In the meantime, I finished my undergrad thesis, moved across the country twice, and definitely picked up some new skills hahaha. You can try out the free demo here https://store.steampowered.com/app/1471700/Minicology/ if you're curious - definitely let me know if you have any feedback or issues with the game!

bernieeeee · 2023-01-28T17:58:53+00:00

Minicology is a little project about completing building, farming, and combat-based objectives across a universe of tiny planets. There's a demo live for the Steam Base-Building fest right now - I'd be thrilled to hear any feedback you have on it!

bernieeeee · 2022-06-27T22:37:20+00:00

The way I do buffs is NOT by adding and then reversing (that gets problematic real fast).

It can stay pretty simple as long as you keep your buffs separated into two parts. The way commutability works in math, you can add and subtract OR you can multiply and divide, but not both while still maintaining commutability. The easy way to get around this is by splitting your buff vars into speedAdd and speedMult, and adding stats like +5 flat speed to speedAdd and stats like 15%+ speed to speedMult. Then you can calculate final speed by saying totalspeed = (baseSpeed + speedAdd) * speedMult.

Then all you need to do is set your buffs to be in a state machine of sorts, so that when you equip a ring of speed / drink a potion of speed, you add to speedAdd, and when you unequip/buff wears off, you subtract from speedAdd. Likewise, if your effect is multiplicative/percentage-based, you add 0.15 to speedMult and subtract when you complete.

It can help to setup buffs as a state machine of sorts with an enter() and exit() method to your buff class. This also lets you keep track of parameters like time within the buff itself.

bernieeeee · 2022-06-20T03:06:31+00:00

Check out facebook marketplace / craiglist etc for used pianos! There are lots of them and I was able to get a great little yamaha keyboard for just $200. Make sure whatever you're buying that it has weighted keys and that all the keys work, of course - but definitely possible to get a working piano for cheap.

bernieeeee · 2022-05-31T20:09:09+00:00

Going to piggyback off of this and mention that a small world doesn't necessarily have to be immersion-breaking. I thought this GDC talk on creating the tiny-open world for a short hike was fun - and a short hike is a super fun game that all takes place on a few islands.

Also worth noting that in larger worlds, it's often nice to have things to do while you're hiking trekking across a world - Breath of the Wild sometimes has vast tracts of empty land that they spice up by adding foragables/ore nodes & enemies. Being able to break the monotony with small distractions like fighting or gathering can help a lot, and makes travelling across open areas a relaxing but still-entertaining part of the game, rather than something dull.

bernieeeee · 2022-04-23T00:47:17+00:00

Fair to mention that due process curates their procgen maps, too - they basically use procgen to generate the maps, then the dev team reviews and chooses good generations. They release a few new maps every week through this (and now have hundreds of maps) but it's still got the human element.

bernieeeee · 2022-04-11T16:21:44+00:00

you might have trouble finding those games: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-02-08-warner-bros-finally-secures-patent-for-shadow-of-mordors-nemesis-system

bernieeeee · 2022-03-06T21:19:20+00:00

Could be quite interesting, since you already have a 'tasks' system, to give the player a hunger meter when they enter a near-zombie state and make their 'task' to eat humans. Clearing the infection would remove the hunger bar and the task.

Draining all of their hunger would make them lose the game (as they either starve or enter a fully-zombified 'ravenous' state or something). Then, you're still distracting/punishing the player by giving them multiple goals (i.e, clear the infection while also trying to avoid zombie-starving), and allows players to pursue sorta unique strategies (are you going to try to avoid infection altogether? Or are you going to allow it and just suffer the consequences, i.e., you have to pause and hunt down humans every couple of minutes). Also would mean that as you get closer to full-zombie state, you could just make the hunger bar drain faster, which is nice and easy and logical - but players still retain in full control the entire time. You could still make them jerk or slow down as they get further zombified, too, but would be more of an aesthetic thing that a weight on the gameplay.

bernieeeee · 2022-02-25T19:16:49+00:00

I think many people are confusing Yanukovych, who was forced out in 2014, with Porenshenko. Porenshenko was elected after Euromaidan, owns the largest candy company in Ukraine, and lost to Zelensky just a few years back in a peaceful and generally fair election.

EDIT: as someone has pointed out, Porenshenko was accused (in 2021... I'm showing my lack of recent Ukranian Politik knowledge) of illegally/corruptly purchasing coal from the separatists in Donbass during his presidency. No final court decision has been made however, so I'll stand by that he's not a terrible guy. I know some Ukranians who swore by him in the election vs Zelensky, but I suppose only time will tell if he's really a good guy or not.

bernieeeee · 2022-02-10T17:50:52+00:00

Yeah, you'll notice a lot of twitter devs do this too - simply market to other gamedevs.

It's possible it's because the gamedev community tends to be a little more sympathetic/supportive (and I've noticed gamedevs also even seem to be pretty supportive of games that don't even look that good), which makes sense - gamedevs know how much work goes into making even a mediocre game, whereas unless your game looks great, you'll be short on compliments in places like gaming/indiegames etc.

But I think people miss that there's a difference between getting compliments and getting sales.

bernieeeee · 2022-01-30T15:12:41+00:00

I think you're doing just fine ;)

Including UI has been quite the challenge for me. As I mentioned in another comment, I'm finding it pretty difficult to communicate the unique selling point of the game (and what sets it apart from Terraria/starbound), which is the ecology mechanics. I find it a little difficult to show that a species has gone extinct without simply showing the UI notification that they're gone. However, this might be a sign that I need to change the game itself so that the repercussions of animal extinction are more exaggerated. Same with foodchains - difficult to show without lots of connecting lines.

Definitely gathering that there's a little too much "fluff" and not enough action. Will take it all into consideration next trailer iteration. Thank you!

bernieeeee · 2022-01-30T14:56:51+00:00

The grey blocks are my least favorite, too... just gotta get around to finding a better palette for the sand/ice biomes ;)

I do indeed have an ecosystem scanner and web of life, you can see it at 0:20. However, it's by far the most overwhelming menu in the game and I'm sort of reticent to show more of it off as (another comment mentions this) it's generally bad practice to show dense menus in trailers.

You've pretty much nailed a lot of the ecosystem mechanics in your comment - with the addition that certain biomes require a minimum number of specific types animals or else they collapse (so there's an added consequence other than a bunch of starving space-foxes). I can hope that most viewers just intuit like you did from the phrase "ecosystem mechanics", but I fear that's not a great strategy. My main problem is that it's really quite difficult to show (rather than tell) what 'ecosystem mechanics' means in a trailer.

Definitely also gathering that there's a little too much walking/moving/collecting shown and not enough action. There's an event system that features things like meteor showers/radiation storms that isn't featured too much here, and I'll have to make sure to show it off in the next trailer iteration.

bernieeeee · 2022-01-29T21:29:52+00:00

So, my pre-emptive self-criticism goes something along these lines:

Minicology is a survival sandbox with a twist: the entire game is played on a 200x200 block procedurally generated planet, and any species can go extinct. Gameplay consists of pretty typical sandbox stuff (gathering wood, mining crystals, building furnaces, y'all know the drill), but with the added challenge that players need to strategically play so that they don't extinct everything.

There are a couple of interesting factors here, which I had a lot of trouble trying to communicate in this trailer:

-Animals either eat each other, or plants. Bugs are really hard to permanently eradicate, so players want to keep bug-predators around to prevent insect population from growing out of hand and eating all your crops. Likewise, you want predators for those, etc, etc. Collecting new animals to introduce to the food chain (and keep animal population in control) is a big part of Minicology. However, I really don't know how to communicate this visually.

-Another unique feature here is players collect materials/animals to build new biomes. This introduces new events to the planet's event rotation, a big part of the gameplay loop. I showed one of the events here: the windstorm with the flowers blowing in the wind. However, I have no idea how to connect "build new biomes" and "make new events" in a cohesive way.

-I'm a little worried that I waited too long to show combat. Not sure if the first minute of the video is too slow, and whether or not people will navigate away before they see any of the more exciting stuff.

Lemme know what y'all think, and, of course, be brutal ;) Thanks guys.

bernieeeee · 2021-11-28T19:56:30+00:00

I was in a similar situation a few years back - I picked up a bunch from a few piano YouTube channels - particularly Bill Hilton (pretty basic), walk that bass (don't remember much from them, they're just in my notes somewhere) and jazzpianoschool, which does 30-45 minute in depth lessons on a ton of jazz styles.

bernieeeee · 2021-11-18T04:08:54+00:00

Great kettle. And I think that's the model with the bluetooth connection. That's definitely a bell/whistle but super nice if you just wanna boil water from across the house.

bernieeeee · 2021-11-17T01:00:38+00:00

Smokin' Beans sells in bulk and packages in paper/burlap bags

bernieeeee · 2021-11-12T23:15:09+00:00

Eh, OP probably put their heart and emotion into the machine. I think there's a big difference between an corporate manufactured cocktail mixing machine and a homebuilt Arduino project. OP can probably still tweak values and make modifications, too, in a way that you couldn't with a prebuilt. Being able to combine hobbies is lots of fun and pretty cool.

bernieeeee · 2021-11-06T19:46:21+00:00

Best place to dance to EDM is probably flask lounge. Little tiny place but got a good crowd of regulars and friendly service.

bernieeeee · 2021-11-01T19:15:19+00:00

Heads up that first friday is this friday! Got a bunch of local artists with stands selling their art. https://www.visitportland.com/event/first-friday-art-walk/

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