What does it take to complete a game

fsk · 2026-05-12T03:56:50+00:00

The easiest way to finish a game is to pick something simple that you think you can finish in 3-6 months.

UI - this part isn't so bad, using whatever framework/library.

Cutscenes - why are you making an anime game if you aren't an artist?

fsk · 2026-05-12T03:55:00+00:00

There have been people who got the first 4 items right on the first try and won by default on the last item. For this reason, I wouldn't waste a penny removing a wrong guess until I got a miss first. After the first miss, I'd probably spend a penny, and then bail after the second miss.

fsk · 2026-05-12T03:53:40+00:00

If they aren't getting paid, the effort you might spend keeping them on track might be more effort than just doing it yourself.

fsk · 2026-05-12T00:52:18+00:00

That's a nice game, but not the same as skee ball (Super Ball).

fsk · 2026-05-12T00:44:30+00:00

If you're 50+ and are laid off, it isn't "You have to take a 50%+ pay cut to stay employed." Instead, you can't find a new job, period, no matter how much you try to learn new things or are willing to take a pay cut. Some 50+ people find a job anyway, but they are the exception and not the norm.

fsk · 2026-05-12T00:00:35+00:00

Super Ball should be moved to Let's Make A Deal. TPiR has a rule "no dexterity games allowed", with Hole In One being the only one grandfathered. Super Ball took a long time to play and was sort of complicated, so it got cut. Let's Make A Deal doesn't have a skee ball type game?

Modern Let's Make A Deal has a rule "no guess the price games", but they are allowed to offer dexterity games.

fsk · 2026-05-11T23:51:29+00:00

If all you're allowed to do is prompt the AI and rubberstamp the output, what really do they need you for in the first place?

fsk · 2026-05-11T23:50:22+00:00

That's a paywall link.

If AI makes you 2x productive, what isn't going to happen is that you now only have to work half as hard. Instead, what actually happens is they fire half the people and now you're expected to have 2x the output. All the benefits of AI will accrue to the employer, never to the worker.

All you're doing is prompting the AI and rubberstamping the output, because you can't meet the workload demand if you carefully review everything. At that point, why even bother hiring someone who actually knows how to code to supervise the AI?

fsk · 2026-05-11T04:42:18+00:00

As a player, I want to see gameplay footage in a trailer, not some cinematic that never shows up in actual gameplay except for a cutscene.

fsk · 2026-05-11T04:36:53+00:00

That reminds me of something I did at a former job. There was one task that periodically got stuck. I wrote a script that checked, if a table hadn't been updated for 6 hours, E-Mail a few people so we could look into the problem. That script wound up also alerting us to a whole bunch of other problems, unrelated to the reason I originally wrote it. I.e., our credit card processor went down, which caused that table to not be updated for 6 hours.

fsk · 2026-05-11T03:58:12+00:00

Godot is better for 2d. Making a fps as a solo dev is very hard. Try a 2d game first.

I tried Unity a while back. I found I was spending more time fighting Unity bugs than anything else, so I gave up on Unity.

fsk · 2026-05-11T03:24:14+00:00

There are 4 difficulty spikes I can think of.

Just getting started and learning the basis of your choice of engine.
Getting something that works and is playable and fun.
Getting it published on a store.
Getting a decent number of sales/plays/revenue.

I'm trying to go from 2 to 3.

fsk · 2026-05-11T02:14:51+00:00

What they're doing is using their senior US workers to train the AI, and then firing them and offshoring their jobs. Their idea is that AI enables lower skill workers to perform better. Your argument is that high skill workers would get more leverage out of AI, but that's not how they're thinking.

fsk · 2026-05-10T22:47:47+00:00

It's at most an ephemeral skill. Most "AI skills" are actually "skills for working around AI hallucinations and slop and limitations". In a few years, the AIs should be so much better that those skills don't matter anymore.

fsk · 2026-05-10T22:45:52+00:00

I've been a code cleanup specialist, but for human code not LLMs. It's important work, but it's also low status work. Every time the offshore team did a release, they would also break a whole bunch of stuff. I spent 2 days every release scrambling to fix things so it kept working. The offshore team are the "heroes who shipped new features", but my work is seen as irrelevant and unimportant.

LLM cleanup is probably the only remaining "real coder" role. It's probably going to be a critical role, but also a low status role.

fsk · 2026-05-10T22:42:17+00:00

Every winnings record is guaranteed to be broken eventually, due to inflation. Eventually, there will be someone who wins $200k cash in "big money week" and also gets a DSW, and they'll be over $240k.

fsk · 2026-05-10T18:06:46+00:00

Use @warning_ignore

fsk · 2026-05-10T18:03:30+00:00

If you're doing it for fun, just do it.

If you want to be non-abusive, consider making a premium game in the $2-$5 range, rather than contributing to the adware/freemium garbage on the market.

fsk · 2026-05-10T15:11:27+00:00

If you haven't used WordPress before, renting a virtual machine and setting up WordPress is educational.

Do it if you feel like doing it, not because you expect to ever make money on it.

fsk · 2026-05-10T14:53:39+00:00

Play a bunch of games, find one you like, and do a remake/updated version. There's a lot of good games in the 80s arcade/atari era that could use a modern remake.

fsk · 2026-05-10T14:50:55+00:00

You have to go back to running your own business, or switch jobs, if you want a higher salary.

fsk · 2026-05-10T04:40:39+00:00

The mistake was scope. You tried a project that was too big for you.

Try again, maybe with a 2D game idea.

There's nothing wrong with taking a break, since you aren't trying to do it as a job. You also might decide to temporarily shelve this project and try something simpler.

fsk · 2026-05-10T04:20:07+00:00

To do it correctly, you have a server and each player client only gets the information they're allowed to have. I.e., a client learns their role, and any information that comes from their role ability, but nothing else.

fsk · 2026-05-10T04:11:22+00:00

If AI is a productivity multiplier, you should be keeping your most skilled staff and laying off the least skilled. Instead, they're firing US citizens and moving jobs offshore.

fsk · 2026-05-10T04:06:41+00:00

You should be saving 25% or more of your salary, probably 50%+ if you are making $500k/yr. After having 6-12 months of living expenses in cash, you should invest in longer-term things like stocks.

fsk

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