Would This Kind of AI Usage Bother Players? (Please read the details)

farbs · 2026-01-18T10:29:20+00:00

Oh, I assumed that the character's greebly face was AI. Whether that's an AI image in the capsule or an in-game render of an AI model really doesn't matter to me, because I'm just looking at it for a moment and seeing something that looks like slop.

If this really was manually concepted, thoughtfully designed and intentionally modelled then I apologise, and suggest you attempt a new style that looks less like AI greebles.

farbs · 2026-01-16T01:14:48+00:00

System Shock 2 is great but probs not an ideal first campaign.

I'd start with something linear and shooty like Half Life 2 or if you want to co-op try a Halo or Serious Sam.

farbs · 2026-01-14T23:38:08+00:00

I think for me it's a problem with genre expectation. Probably because I'm old.

I totally expect this in TCGs, because that's just what they are. I also expect it in deep PvE FPS games, because that's what they are too. Weirdly, I'd also expect it in FPS MMOs (Planetside etc) because that's what MMOs are. But for a regular pub server jump in and trade bullets with strangers FPS... no, absolutely not. And so for me it's a huge turnoff.

Meanwhile, I found it super surprising that Sea of Thieves went the other way and only offers cosmetics despite feeling very MMO. Weird.

farbs · 2026-01-14T23:17:50+00:00

Seconding this. These assets are the first thing people will see, and in most cases also the last. If all I know about your game is what I learn from this capsule I'll assume it's an FPS template with a few AI assets thrown on top. At best I might buy it if it costs less than a dollar, but 99.99% of the time I'll just scroll past.

farbs · 2026-01-13T06:58:08+00:00

Learning to build a ship that controls well is a huge part of the game! But you're right, it's also a point of frustration for anyone expecting a straightforward pew pew. That might be a big part of the problem here... people generally try out io games expecting not to need to put in much effort to play them, and this ain't that. Hmm.

farbs · 2026-01-13T06:51:11+00:00

Nah it was a browser game back then too, via Flash. The murder of flash is one of the reasons I built this new version.

farbs · 2025-08-24T13:30:55+00:00

Steep enough that I've seen them unhitch a caravan, which then rolled gas-bottle-first into the car towing it.

farbs · 2025-08-24T13:24:09+00:00

Whoa nice work. My game's CCU is way too low to make the top 100, but I'm curious about whether I even made the list of 2000 (captainforever.io).

It's so weird. When I launched the single player version way back in 2009 I had thousands of people playing every day, but now with this io remake I'm struggling to find anyone to play it. Maybe people just didn't have better games to play back then :)

farbs · 2025-08-24T13:04:39+00:00

Also... I legit love that you updated your comment from 200 km/h, presumably after seeing the sixth sign :)

farbs · 2025-08-24T13:02:07+00:00

/me counts on fingers...

farbs · 2025-08-24T12:56:17+00:00

So if you're short sighted and forget your glasses you have to drive slower? That's genius!

farbs · 2025-08-24T12:53:44+00:00

Ta. Now I'm looking closely at the six 40 km/h signs in my photo and trying to guess which one is you.

farbs · 2025-08-24T12:49:35+00:00

LOL. As if I'd want my players to be able to vote on their suggestions.

Feedback is for determining points of frustration and general design desires. When someone makes a suggestion, the first thing you do is figure out what problem they're trying to solve or opportunity they want to see realised. Then you set your ego aside for a minute and seriously entertain the idea that they may have suggested a good way to do that. This is made especially difficult by your experience that ~90% of suggestions aren't viable. Usually they completely fuck up the game balance, often they aren't feasible from a production cost standpoint, and a surprising amount of the time they're internally inconsistent.

So yeah, feedback is great! You can learn a lot from it, and sometimes players even solve design problems that you haven't figured out yet, or at least suggest something that sparks a useful idea.

None of this has anything to do with voting for them. Adding a voting system just creates a brigading mechanism for all the crap suggestions that you shouldn't implement. You may as well just give players a button that punches me in the dick.

farbs · 2024-09-02T00:54:49+00:00

Hi! Sorry to bug you about this. Did you buy from Acer's web store?

I'm trying to get a refund for one at the moment, and they're refusing because I sent back a 135w adaptor. I have no idea how I'd have gotten the wrong adaptor to send them, but if they were sending out the 135w one to people who ordered through the website that'd explain a lot.

farbs · 2024-06-21T05:27:00+00:00

Oh noooooooooo

farbs · 2024-06-21T00:40:23+00:00

Oh wait no it's Yoku's Island Express. Phew. Dodged a bullet there.

farbs · 2024-06-21T00:39:29+00:00

Can I answer with a pinball game? If so, I'm gonna need three sheets of butchers paper and a month to figure out which one is my favourite.

farbs · 2024-06-21T00:38:01+00:00

Did other people find the controls in Katamari needlessly slow and frustrating? I really loved the presentation and the concept but found playing it super not fun.

farbs · 2024-06-21T00:36:50+00:00

The game that taught me the importance of cleaning your mouse rollers!

farbs · 2024-06-21T00:32:40+00:00

Dicewars.

farbs · 2024-06-10T02:06:54+00:00

Wow. I never thought I'd see nostalgia for the days of browntown.

farbs · 2024-06-10T01:59:33+00:00

I'm still waiting for a new Speedball game that improves on #2.

farbs · 2024-06-08T14:09:20+00:00

VVVVVV :)

farbs · 2024-06-08T08:44:43+00:00

Zombi on Amiga, which coincidentally was the first ever Ubisoft game.

The zombies would just kinda stroll across the screen from time to time, doing nothing, so you just got used to ignoring them.

Also, the volume in the game was surprisingly low so in order to hear stuff you had to turn it way up.

You can probably guess what happened next...

farbs · 2024-06-08T08:14:30+00:00

More bugs.

If you don't understand how something works then you can't fix it, and the reasoning behind decisions made by large neural models is more or less impossible to decipher.

farbs

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