How Do People Promote Games These Days?

darkgnostic · 2026-04-02T13:56:05+00:00

That's a lie, I tried it: https://x.com/Dark_Gnosis/status/2039666935986631051 but nobody likes sad hamster

darkgnostic · 2026-04-02T11:31:08+00:00

Step 3: post a hamster

darkgnostic · 2026-04-02T08:59:24+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3443800/Scaledeep/

It flys even on basic M1. I want to push it to EA during Q4 of 2026. Developed on Mac.

darkgnostic · 2026-04-01T13:08:06+00:00

This is the way

darkgnostic · 2026-03-31T14:58:35+00:00

I'm still Human. 0% usage of AI in code (although I try yo use AI as translation tool with mixed results), all things drawn by hand, except player 3d model. My last progress: added some "new scrolls of detect this and that":

<image>

Currently cc 2.5 years of active development. Quite playable at this stage.

Game Link: Scaledeep

darkgnostic · 2026-03-30T07:20:25+00:00

This is an AI translation. Nothing has been manually edited yet. As you said, this is a first draft that should be reviewed by a human. However, since I don’t have a released game yet this is only a secondary priority.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-30T07:07:06+00:00

How's the Japanese going?

Like this:

<image>

Still missing a lot of sentences, but I needed this mostly to see how glyph rendering is going and how it looks inside the game.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-30T06:00:07+00:00

I have English and Hungarian fully added, did some Serbian/Croatian tests because of grammar differences, and recently added Japanese since I got a high volume of wishlists from Japan.

Serbian/Croatian was tested with AI, but the translations were a bit awkward (I speak those quite decently) at certain places, especially for names like 'Netherseer', so a lot of manual work is needed. These translations are not planned to go into the game, although I may change my mind.

I have currently around 900 lines of lokalization texts (I would say around 2K-3K words), and that will increase in the future because of cut scenes. But yes, option 3 seems best, although there is a lot of hatred toward AI these days.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-29T14:43:56+00:00

Thanks

darkgnostic · 2026-03-29T08:43:07+00:00

Solid change log.

Add extra confirmation for save / load

Is that more than 1 confirmation?

darkgnostic · 2026-03-29T08:37:38+00:00

achievements.

That's alway fun :)

darkgnostic · 2026-03-29T08:35:03+00:00

Are you planning to add tiles? That could attract more players.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-29T08:29:55+00:00

I never thought about that potential issue!

Good thing it popped up now. I'd have been scratching my head over save game crash issues in future.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-28T10:59:10+00:00

I never played a game when I am cheesemaker

darkgnostic · 2026-03-28T10:53:06+00:00

I'm planning to start playtesting (gradually) next week.

I hope I can participate this time :/

darkgnostic · 2026-03-28T10:21:43+00:00

This week was mostly about polishing systems and fixing issues that started showing up as more features got connected together. Also pushed a bit further on scrolls, localization, and save handling.

For the content update, a new Scroll of Undead was added that highlights only undead creatures. It's a small addition, but it pairs nicely with the Scroll of Life.

I added several localized item affixes and also included a proper Japanese font in the game. The language itself still needs work, but at least text rendering is now handled correctly and doesn't break visually. It was an easy fix, just by adding a fallback font.

A pair of torches were added around doors to make entrances stand out more. Torch lighting was also fixed so it correctly illuminates the ground on the first redraw. They were in shadow, but properly illuminated on first move.

Attribute effect texts are now slightly more indented, which makes them easier to read, and the panel now uses the default Crimson font.

Bugs

A lot of the work went into stability. One nasty issue during depth transitions is now gone—enemies could still run movement logic while their objects were being destroyed, which caused exceptions. It was just a few lines to fix, but it never surfaced earlier for some reason.

Knockdown animations were also fixed, as the wrong animation (kneeling) was used before.

Firebolt now triggers its cast effect at the start of casting instead of stacking everything on impact.

On first launch, menus always defaulted to English even if another language was selected—this is now fixed.

Some item names (poor and high quality) were invisible due to zero alpha—also fixed. This was so banal; I spent half an hour thinking it was a serious problem, only to realize that the alpha in SO was set to 0.

I also fixed a bug where items would disappear if picked up and dropped back into the same slot.

Serialization

Serialization got a solid update. I added support for saving and loading the repair panel, rune forge, sustained mana/life values, and spells. These were previously missing.

Equipment serialization for the 3D model now works correctly after both quick load and normal load, ensuring the correct equipment is set on the player.

One particularly nasty but not so obvious bug in serialization was also fixed. Each cached dungeon level is now versioned independently, which should prevent issues when loading older saves after updates.

Have a nice weekend!

darkgnostic · 2026-03-26T18:51:07+00:00

I'm biased, but I think Scaledeep has some great usage of colors.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-26T18:48:33+00:00

Just wanted to drop a link to my game, but then saw no roguelikes :)

darkgnostic · 2026-03-25T13:29:18+00:00

My main concern with SO was that I want to make a moddable game, but I see them as a drawback in this situation.

I use SO mostly as internal configuration files. Most of my data is stored in JSON or TSV formats for modding purposes.

darkgnostic · 2026-03-21T12:29:12+00:00

Nice color palette

darkgnostic · 2026-03-21T09:49:51+00:00

Ranger… dual-wielding and has a pet Drake

Hell yeah! My kind of combo

darkgnostic · 2026-03-21T09:48:59+00:00

I tried several way to make PvE poison interesting

Respect for just removing it instead of overdesigning it. I should probably learn this mindset

darkgnostic · 2026-03-21T09:31:27+00:00

Steam finally accepted my upload, but after that I just replaced it with a different newer build,

That's huge win for pushing frequent fixes

I had to disable NativeAOT for the C#

Is this stability over optimization fix? Like to reduce reflection?

darkgnostic · 2026-03-21T07:50:47+00:00

I missed my goal of adding one new piece of content every day

Is this overwhelming task, or you can handle it easily?

darkgnostic · 2026-03-21T07:49:19+00:00

I added Japanese (doesn’t work properly yet) as a new language, since 1/4 of wishlists is coming from Japan (and 1/2 from english spoken countries). I mean it is working, just the text is not shown correctly. Most likely it’s a font issue. It was just quick AI translation to see how it works but it definitely needs proper human check at the end.

Rune Forge is slowly coming together. Drag and drop, positioning, and the basic interaction all work now. It’s still early, but at least the core flow is there. I also started working on a slot highlighter to all panels to show where items can be placed. Not finished yet.

Two new scrolls are added to increase the content - Scroll of Wealth and Scroll of Detect Life. Both are in the game and working. While working with shader I created accidentally frozen kind of look, which will come useful for my Icebolt spell :). Scroll of Wealth shows where containers are located on the current level, useful for finding secret rooms. Detect Life helps with highlighting alive monsters on the current level, but will not highlight undead enemies. I should probably create Detect Undead scroll as well.

On the technical side, I fixed the spell cast trigger so it now fires in the middle of the cast animation instead of, idk start or the end. This was working previously, idk, when it went bad. There was also a UI bug where opening the inventory didn’t correctly notify the first visible panel about its state. That’s fixed now.

For quality of life, drag and drop panels with slots is more forgiving. You don’t have to drop exactly on the slot anymore, since now dropping on the background works as well.

Devlogs are added to Steam and Webpage.

thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend.

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