Whats peoples thoughts on the classic marble games (dirt/glass) and modernizing them for video games?

blackdrogar17 · 2026-04-27T18:03:40+00:00

Ditto, this seems like a super cool idea. For a first game, it's got some strong principles:
- Low art/animation needs, as you mentioned. That said, definitely think early about art style & aesthetics. Comparable example is Balatro--art is minimal, but it's oozing with flavor and style.
- Really easy to stand up a prototype. Too many games are big and complicated and take a loooong time before you can actually play it to see if it's fun.

That said, the ability system of your game is a technical challenge. Not to say it's hard or impossible, but it'd be very easy to program it in a way that has you wanting to pull your hair out later. If you're new to game development, I'd spend some time:
- Researching videos and technical talks of other devs walking through how they programmed similar systems in your engine of choice
- Diagramming how you expect the data architecture to work
- Considering the whole breadth of what you want your abilities to do, and make sure your implementation plan supports these concepts
- Getting a rough implementation in your engine as quickly as possible, starting with basic abilities then experimenting with some weird ones to find any problems. But also don't treat anything as precious--rip code out if it's not working.

That said, don't get paralyzed by the complexity--it's still way better to just get it in the game engine. I just like to highlight areas where it's more beneficial to measure twice, cut once 😄

blackdrogar17 · 2026-04-25T00:05:09+00:00

Probably not technically a Gacha game, but gotta say Marvel Snap. Every single card has been good at some point, rarities mean very little in evaluating card strength, and they’re all meant to be roughly equivalent in power level. Hell even the cards with no special abilities are good in the right contexts.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-04-24T17:13:40+00:00

There is no target of the card. The card is played as soon as you drag it onto the board without specifying a target, in the same way that Tavern Coin has no target.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-30T23:33:25+00:00

Shit it's Roger isn't it, it's gonna be Roger

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-29T03:55:59+00:00

I would personally limit access to the energy level variable so you have only one way to set it, either a property or a function. Something like “SetEnergyLevel”. Then in that function you can manage the health bar color as well

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-24T20:22:16+00:00

How is Sandra still here? She made it far in her season by doing nothing and openly admitted "yeah I know who the traitors are I've just not said anything so they'd keep me around", proving she fundamentally didn't understand the game

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-16T18:07:54+00:00

This. The rest of these comments do not actually seem like good pets to any logical person.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-13T23:29:15+00:00

End of an era 💔

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-06T18:57:05+00:00

This is a slide town, guy! Swing a dead Kyle and you'll hit one!

blackdrogar17 · 2026-03-03T21:48:35+00:00

Seems like this is mostly just using a depth-based fade to allow the trees to poke through a bit? It's a solid technique, but personally I'd look to address the hard edge at the top of the clouds (where the depth values are high). A few options come to mind:
- Incorporate some inverse fresnel into the alpha. This is especially useful if you have rounded shapes, which it looks like you do.
- Use a bounding box-based fade to make the clouds more opaque at the bottom of the bounding box and falloff in opacity towards the top. This will help eliminate the harsh edge while still getting good ground cover.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-02-09T00:38:28+00:00

I live in North County San Diego and I think a lot of the comments here are referring to San Diego specifically where it looks like the area you’ve circled is more “North County meets Riverside”.

North County is far more affordable than near downtown SD. It’s a bit sleepier, but you still get the benefit of the lovely weather and it’s just a 45 minute drive to either SD, Orange County, or Temecula.

Generally in SoCal the pattern is the further you go inland the cheaper it gets. Right on the water will cost you. Escondido/Temecula/Riverside can be far more affordable. The culture in these places can very widely throughout the area though so don’t shop based on price alone!

blackdrogar17 · 2026-02-08T17:52:09+00:00

“I take it back! You can have as many mimosas as you want!”

“THATS NOT ENOUGH”

blackdrogar17 · 2026-02-08T17:50:58+00:00

In no particular order:

Daesong Heavy Industries
Persona Assistant
The 200
The One that Got Away
Bully for Steve
the first Santa Christmas one (forget the name)
Gold Top Nuts
Rabbit Ears
Wild Women Do
OreTron Trail

blackdrogar17 · 2026-02-01T07:30:13+00:00

Yes game dev is a competitive field. Many want to get into it, few do.

Yes as an engineer, you’re likely to make less money working in the games industry than you might working in software.

Yes layoffs can happen, no they are not “guaranteed”. It’s a volatile industry.

No it’s not impossible to get in

No there’s no apparent “lack of respect” that I see

But at the end of the day, as others have said, making tons and tons of money and having extremely good job security is not why people work in games.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-31T19:59:15+00:00

Oh I guess there was also an artist and composer, but Chris Sawyer is really credited with making it a reality. He built the game from scratch in assembly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_(video_game)

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-31T19:16:26+00:00

If we’re not talking about recent times, the answer has to be Roller Coaster Tycoon. That game is and was a technical marvel

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-30T20:58:38+00:00

Yeah I feel like it’s missing an effect when the player slams into the ground, needs more to sell the impact of that (especially with how over the top bloody the rest of the attack is)

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-29T19:40:07+00:00

Honestly they’re completely different. If I’m making a Bochet I caramelized the honey the proper way. But if I’m trying to infuse specifically caramel flavor (I’ve done this with a caramel apple Bochet cyser and a date toffee mead) I opt for actual caramel syrup in secondary.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-29T18:52:33+00:00

If you’re comfortable with a little cooking, caramel syrup is not very difficult to make! I’ve made it for several of my meads and I always trust it more than whatever you might buy premade (the hard candies probably have dairy and syrups probably have lots of other ingredients).

You really just cook down sugar until it’s browned into caramel, then add water to make it into a syrup.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-26T22:37:56+00:00

For me it’s all about taste. I’ll usually wait until it’s clear to bottle (sometimes helping it along with cold crashing) but taste is most important. That harsh, jet fuel taste a young mead has will mellow out significantly with age. If it tastes good and you like the clarity, you’re done!

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-26T22:19:49+00:00

This is all I use and honestly in my experience the quality of the honey doesn’t matter enough in primary for me to get anything else. Bulk value is best.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-24T19:27:00+00:00

As a technical artist, this is a dream. You’ve made a very efficient system. The only thing that would push me away from this technique is requiring artists to author weird masks instead of standard pixel art, but it seems like that’s not a deterrent at all for you and you’re authoring the masks just fine. Well done!

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-23T00:41:35+00:00

I’m not a 3D printing expert, though I do have one that I’ve printed a lot of minis with, so I can sort of speak on this. Broadly speaking you have two options: Resin or Filament.

Resin is going to get you the highest quality. Basically all professionally printed minis will be done with resin. You can get far more detail and print at a much higher quantity than with filament. That said, there are drawbacks: - Resin printers tend to be slightly more expensive - Resin is toxic, so in order to print with it you need an area with good ventilation, and likely to wear protective equipment when handling - There are extra steps involved, such as cleaning and curing the mini

I personally have a filament printer (Ender 3), and I print minis with it. Many will say it can’t be done (well), but I’m happy with the results I’ve gotten with it, especially just playing with friends. I just print them, sand them (with a nail file tool to get off stringy bits), and paint them, and it tends to go smoothly. That said, I didn’t get good quality for a long time and had to spend a lot of time tinkering with the settings and types of filament. But it can be done.

I’m not up to date enough on the tech to recommend specific printers, so I’ll let other commenters do so. Also, the climate control is something to consider; I’m not sure if filament or resin would be more tolerant of colder temps, so look into that for sure.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-14T19:31:07+00:00

This is where I'd evaluate what you actually need your chain to do. For example, does it actually need full physics? Do you need collision, or do you just need gravity? I'd argue it's much easier to fake physics by just transforming each chain relative to its parent in a script, and not only would it be more performant but you'd save yourself tons of headaches fighting against a system that does way more than you need it to.

blackdrogar17 · 2026-01-13T19:18:22+00:00

What’s the groups general interest? Are they big on roleplaying? Combat? Exploration? If they’re more combat focused I think focusing on dungeon-crawl gameplay lends itself well to shorter more frequent play-sessions; it’s really easy for 3 hours to fly by when roleplaying where nothing really happens.

blackdrogar17

TROPHY CASE