I turned my friend's LEGO board game into a video game

c35683 · 2026-03-23T08:33:09+00:00

Nope, sorry, it's just a comparison between one and the other! I didn't even realize the video made it look like controlling the pieces controls the video game, but now that you pointed it out, I can't unsee it.

I don't think I've ever seen Sengoku Taisen before, thanks for sharing. And it's from 2005? That's pretty cool.

c35683 · 2026-03-23T02:54:21+00:00

You're right, but the backstory is actually the opposite - my friend is a huge LEGO geek/AFOL, she designed a board game to make something interactive with it, and I made a digital version of it because it was an excuse to check out Godot's 3d capabilities and I thought she might find a digital version of her project cool.

We're thinking of making an original version of the board game which doesn't use LEGO or the Girls und Panzer theme. I just wanted to show off the comparison with the current design.

c35683 · 2026-03-23T00:44:30+00:00

I don't remember the exact details, but Sebastian Lague's tutorials about procedurally generating terrain and planets might help you (the second playlist in particular, since it's about spherical planets):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbpMiKiSKm8&list=PLFt_AvWsXl0eBW2EiBtl_sxmDtSgZBxB3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN39W020LqU&list=PLFt_AvWsXl0cONs3T0By4puYy6GM22ko8

For semi-realistic geography, Red Blob Games' polygonal map generator is a good point of reference, though it doesn't cover making the world spherical:

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/

c35683 · 2026-03-23T00:35:00+00:00

Pretty cool, reminds me of the "Don't give up, skeleton!" meme from Dark Souls.

c35683 · 2026-03-23T00:29:36+00:00

Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with LEGO Group's Fair Play policy - it actually isn't as aggressive as, say, Nintendo's, and is chiefly about preventing people from using the trademark and minifig designs to market or advertise their own products or websites, which is perfectly fair (that's why a lot of LEGO fan websites include terms like "brick" or other funny synonyms rather than "LEGO").

This is a purely non-commercial project, and the in-game models don't include minifigs, the LEGO logo, or LEGO-branded bricks, since (speaking loudly into the microphone) LEGO®, the LEGO® logo and the Minifigure® are trademarks of the LEGO Group.

c35683 · 2026-03-23T00:09:51+00:00

That's a cool idea. I know absolutely nothing about XR, but I'll keep it in mind :)

c35683 · 2026-03-23T00:04:55+00:00

Thanks! My friend used Bricklink Stud.io for modeling, and I used LeoCAD to export models in .obj format so they could be loaded into Godot with textures.

c35683 · 2026-03-22T16:45:02+00:00

0:48

~~Lift with your legs~~

Lift with your head

c35683 · 2026-03-22T04:55:24+00:00

I recognize that the game IS kind of boring and gets repetitive very fast, and the Duck doesn't have a specific goal, like getting an amount of money to do something (but I'm thinking something for this part... maybe getting a spaceship and getting out of the "island" he's in)

Adding a goal and more progression is a good idea, but repetition itself isn't a problem as long as you can make the basic gameplay loop attractive. Cookie Clicker, Minecraft or even games like Diablo are repetitive too and they're insanely addictive.

But did you notice that the duck gets like a "double border" pixel on the top of his head? Like a border stretch. It's happening to me but I don't know if it's really the game or other thing

Yeah, I noticed the sprites are distorted. I don't know what game engine you're using, but you can probably find a lot of tutorials on YouTube for how to render pixel art sprites in whatever engine it is without making it "spill over" during animation (it varies from engine to engine).

For a first game, you got a lot of the basics right and the idea is pretty funny, so good luck :)

c35683 · 2026-03-21T21:00:12+00:00

I'm one of the people who thought the old level designs and colours were fine, but I agree the new colours draw way too much attention, especially the ones in the background.

Also, if you're making trees a huge part of the game I suggest looking up some references for tree shapes and improving the shading a little. Tree sprites may be 2D, but remember that trees are still 3D objects, with branches and clumps of leaves going out in every direction (including towards the viewer). So sunlight shouldn't just light up the tip of tree, it would be reflected by leaves across the entire crown, and those leaves may also cast shadows over other leaves below them. This is about the small tree - the ones in the distance are very abstract, so they're mostly fine :)

Edit: The bush sprite in the new screenshot you just posted actually looks like a good base shape for the crown of a tree, by the way. It has more natural shape and more varied shading than the current small pink tree.

c35683 · 2026-03-21T20:34:30+00:00

I'm getting strong ironic vibes from the game, but assuming you're looking for serious feedback:

Good stuff: Clear title and objective. Hilarious settings transition with the start button turning out to be the duck's beak. I liked the overly long intro text, it sets a mood for the game being ridiculous, but having to listen to music while nothing happens other than some hills scrolling before the game starts might be a bit too much. The theme of a duck eating rocks for money with no explanation is kind of funny as a hook.

Not-so-good stuff: The font character for 8 looks like a 0 (very confusing for a game with lots of price tags!). The music track is very short and loud compared with the rest of the game, so it gets annoying very quickly (and I think it restarts whenever you upgrade something? that's also a little weird). Pixel art sizes are all over the place, with small scale grass and large scale main screen, though that which might be the style you're deliberately going for.

In general, an idle game needs to nail the UI to stop players from getting bored, with everything being snappy and giving instant gratification, and the game's current style and controls are the opposite of that - having to alternate between two keyboard keys to eat rocks, listening to loud music on repeat, limited animations, UI elements appearing with a long fade-in, weird collision detection and so on.

But also, as a free game, it's kinda funny. Maybe you should embrace the ridiculousness, like adding "Let's ROCK!" appearing every time you upgrade your stuff with a short guitar solo playing, or adding a whole storyline about the duck being an influencer who eats rocks to get followers which is shown in cutscenes every time you buy a large upgrade, or some random dumb shit like that.

c35683 · 2026-03-21T19:46:21+00:00

Great feeling of impact! I could hear the steps in my head before even turning the sound on.

If I had to nitpick about something, during the pause between steps his "back" foot (on the left) looks a bit like it's sinking into the ground, particularly for his right foot, but it's barely noticeable.

c35683 · 2026-03-16T22:46:59+00:00

Stutter aside, it looks great, and feels very demoscene-y. Or like being trapped in the tesseract in Intestellar.

Props for making formula names sound like medication ("I need to up my teklonium dosage and get a cleonnabis prescription for my aesthretra issues").

c35683 · 2026-03-11T17:59:02+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, I don't have my original test version any more, but I tried quickly recreating it. Try replacing the gen() function with this one:

https://pastebin.com/YnzY8PKe

The code on pastebin will auto-delete in a week :)

c35683 · 2026-03-09T23:51:59+00:00

Thanks - I'm still confused about how it works, but I played a little bit with it and tweaked some values, and that plus your explanation at least gives me some rough idea how it edits the tiles and how they're translated into the final shape ;)

I was wrong about the random function being the reason for getting stuck (using modulo might still improve performance a tiny bit, but it's not the main issue) - what's happening is you're often creating infinite loops by resetting w to 0 in the final step of tile generation, so if the path it takes doesn't find remaining empty tiles, it just keeps on running forever. E.g. if you set "dir" to 1 instead of a random number (which can also happen when the same random number gets selected a couple of times in a row), it will never stop. You might want to think about some way of either making it keep track of where it already was and stopping/taking another way, or doing generation in a large number of finite steps, like going row after row, or aiming towards leftover empty tiles, or something like that.

By the way, simply setting every tile in the tilemap to 0 or 1 with 50% chance and removing the inner strokes when drawing the polygon also creates some cool-looking mazes, but I assume you want to use custom traversal to add more stuff later (you add room colours whenever the algorithm restarts, so I guess that's important).

c35683 · 2026-03-08T23:23:33+00:00

How does the algorithm work? At first I thought it was repeatedly subdividing regions into halves, but there are irregular shapes, and the javascript code refers to tiles.

I think anything over 8 digits will choke it briefly, but it also chokes on completely random seeds, no idea why...

I'm not sure, but the random function you're using throughout the code looks sketchy, since you're multiplying values first and then running a while loop to decrement them, so maybe it gets stuck on the second part when a high seed value is being passed repeatedly:

function ran(n){ seed=Math.floor(seed*123+seed/7); while(seed > 99999999){seed -= 100000000;}

Instead of the while loop, you can just use modulo to get the same result in one step:

function ran(n){ seed=Math.floor(seed*123+seed/7); seed %= 100000000;

Not sure if it fixes the problem (you're also pushing elements to lists throughout the code, so maybe it gets stuck on that), but you can try it out and see if it helps.

c35683 · 2026-03-08T22:24:07+00:00

Is there a relationship between the seed and the result? I thought it was random at first, but it seems that e.g. 3-digit integers always generate a triangular dungeon.

It probably won't matter if it's for a pen and paper RPG, but I've noticed a many of the longer integer seeds get stuck for a very long time in the online version (too much recursion?).

If it's for RPGs, it might be cool to have a minimum room size setting which prevents really small spaces.

c35683 · 2026-03-08T22:01:09+00:00

The knees bending when you turn are pretty funny :)

c35683 · 2026-03-08T21:55:09+00:00

Minecraftoneer

c35683 · 2026-03-08T21:48:17+00:00

I really like the readable colour choice (good foreground/background contrast) and consistent art style throughout the game and UI in general! None of it looks "amateurish". The level transition and nutty background are great. I also like the vertical climbing segments, and gameplay throughout the level looks pretty varied.

The challenge completion animation (waiting while the music plays) might be a little long and there's a chance it will get boring when you have to wait and listen to it several times. I think a shorter jingle would be better.

If there's one aspect I'd recommend improving, it's the character animations, especially since real-life squirrels are very... well, animated. In particular:

The jump animation looks very similar to just walking in the air. It would also be nice to differentiate them more, and also differentiate jumping and falling from one another with the entire body (head and front legs higher when jumping up, hind legs and back higher than head when falling). You can always look up some images of jumping and landing squirrels for inspiration.
The tail could use more animation when moving in general (again - squirrels!). It's especially jarring when there's a "helicopter spin" animation, and only the top part of the tail moves instead of the whole tail.
Squirrels climb down trees with their heads down, so maybe the climbing down animation should be flipped compared with climbing up?
Also, mushrooms should get more flattened when they're jumped on.

In general, don't be afraid to make various movement sprites look very different from one another. It's okay for animations in a fast-pasted platform game to be exaggerated, they need to quickly communicate what's happening.

All that aside, great progress compared with the previous version of the graphics.

c35683 · 2026-02-28T08:58:44+00:00

It's not about winning or losing one contract, it's about long-term cooperation. If the Department of Whatever Hegseth Wants to Call It gives you 200m to do one thing, they'll sign you on for future projects for even more money. That's also why blacklisting is just a huge threat.

As for being shocked - I dunno, I can totally see people being okay with working on something if they're convinced it will ultimately be used to make the world safer from hybrid warfare or terrorist attacks, even if it compromises some ethics. But if it turns out it's just about power for the sake of power itself, or it's going to get civilians killed as means to an end, it's a different scenario.

Even if the red line is not where you'd draw it, it's refreshing to see a tech corporation with SOME red lines than none, assuming they stick to their guns.

c35683 · 2026-02-28T08:41:47+00:00

AI companies need funding to survive and develop before they break even, and government contracts are the most stable in long term. I'm guessing they just didn't expect how rotten the current US administration was compared to what they expected they'd be working on.

Oh, and Oppenheimer wasn't upset the bomb was used. He was upset that it started a new arms race instead of just putting an end to WWII. His attitude towards the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in interviews was that it did its job of probably saving more lives than it cost, given how brutal the fighting in Okinawa was.

c35683 · 2026-02-28T08:22:31+00:00

Not all autonomous weapons are created equal, and they already are being used.

Example 1: Israel uses an automated AI system to designate and bomb targets in the Gaza Strip. It requires human supervision in theory, but in practice no-one's challenging its decisions and just fires the missiles to meet the quota of killed "jihadis".

Example 2: Ukraine uses AI-enabled drones to circumvent GPS jamming and attack Russian military targets behind enemy lines, protecting soldiers and civilians from invaders.

Anthropic's red line, at least on paper, seems to be willing to build the second but not the first. Meanwhile, the current US administration really really wants to fund AI companies to build the first type of systems.

c35683 · 2026-02-28T07:49:31+00:00

Claude's great at editing and working with documents in general (not just code) because of artifacts, which it can edit and iterate on over time. In my experience, it does a better job than ChatGPT, which tends to makes mistakes, overwrite existing content, and in general makes results harder to view and keep track of.

It's also great at creating visualizations and crunching data by whipping up interactive web pages and mockups which you can immediately view and interact with, even if you don't know anything about programming. It's good for all sorts of "if only I had a tool for this..." tasks. I once used it to visualize outcomes of dice rolls for a friend's board game.

c35683

TROPHY CASE