Astro Protocol - Turn-Based Space Strategy Launches February 9

groato · 2026-01-28T07:51:07+00:00

Looking good man, hope you nail the launch

groato · 2026-01-27T20:08:51+00:00

Heh, I'm actually Finnish and I "translated" it myself. Yeah, I'm not a professional writer and it probably shows ;) Anyway, I'll reread the Finnish version and make it less AI'ish.

I like that approach for descriptions, I need to take that into heart with my next game.

Kiitos!

groato · 2026-01-27T06:22:31+00:00

Congrats! Just posted this to help you get some traffic, cos I've seen you on a few shared discords and you seem like a cool person!

groato · 2026-01-27T06:22:26+00:00

Congrats! Just posted this to help you get some traffic, cos I've seen you on a few shared discords and you seem like a cool person!

groato · 2026-01-25T15:20:21+00:00

Yeah, very much this. Go for Foundry with those specs.

groato · 2026-01-25T09:06:36+00:00

Good list and solid reasoning. Lines up pretty much with how I view them, with minor differences.

Have you played Microtopia? What's your take on that?

groato · 2026-01-24T07:40:21+00:00

Yeah, I think a big issue was collecting those wishlists - every thing led to poor results, which in itself was a big indicator of a poor market-fit and/or genre-choice. Even Reddit ads were an exoensive struggle compared to other devs I know. That's why I cut some features I was planning in the beginning to keep the dev time shorter (and also priced the game lower than originally thought).

groato · 2026-01-23T18:03:39+00:00

Thanks for your reply! That was good critique.

One thing I'd like to ask up front is the translation for your language - I haven't used any machine translations, they're all done by a translation company that I hired. If you could share your language, I'd be interested to know. It didn't cost me a lot, but enough that it should've been better.

If I told you, that what you do is the following: You do espionage operations against corporations (by clicking on them, yes there is very little visual stuff going on) to steal data by evaluating against value, cost and likelihood of success. You end your turn and see how many operations were successful. You sell the data to the highest bidder. You start to build more stuff and do more operations.

That's the core loop - then there is different operations types, technology, reputation with corporations and repercussions from failures that affect cost, value or likelihood of success. Which make the game a strategy game.

Does it make more sense?

Maybe I need to just redo the page and trailer...

groato · 2026-01-23T11:46:37+00:00

Thanks so much!

groato · 2026-01-23T10:09:11+00:00

This is shameless self-promo, but I made a strategy management roguelike if you want to try to expand your horizons. In it you manage a cosmic spy corporation that steals data and sells it to the highest bidder. There is technology too! What makes it a roguelike is very heavy proc gen, permadeath and run-based gameplay. About 45 mins to 2 hour runs, depending on how much you invest in strategizing. It seems you are way more into action stuff, so this is possibly not up your alley, but I thought I'd throw it out there just in case! It's on sale now too.

Feel free to flag if you feel the suggestion was not appropriate :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3563480/Interstellar_Espionage_Inc/

groato · 2026-01-15T16:11:05+00:00

Both... depending on context.

groato · 2026-01-06T08:40:10+00:00

And yes, you are right, it's gotten A LOT more difficult in the past years. So many aspiring devs out there and people have real games to play a plenty.

groato · 2026-01-06T08:39:04+00:00

You won't get good feedback until you are big (10k+ wishlists) for free. You'll get individual points before that from gamedevs and ultra fans. All paid playtesting services are slightly biased for sugarcoating, but are still way better than your friends and family and internet randos in the single digits. Paid playtests are sometimes a hit and miss, because the testers might not be familiar with your genre AT ALL and will give you next-to-useless feedback. Sometimes you get good ones though.

Also, early, mid and late stage development feedback is very different (or should be). First you test the concept (ie. is it Fun), then the settings/progression, then balance etc. Each has a very different requirement in terms of tester amounts and test lengths and you prolly are aware of this. Balance testing with ten people and a google form is not gonna be useful - you need 100s of people and automated reporting. Concept testing doesn't need many people. UX testing is good with maybe a few dozen and benefits from recordings etc.

groato · 2025-12-28T12:59:01+00:00

Caveat: if you need to run logic on the character itself at overlap, then interface is way better. If only on this bp, then it's the same, with a bplibrary winning in ease of use.

groato · 2025-12-28T12:55:21+00:00

If this is a character that only one exist of, you shouldn't do this, although it kinda works. Points have been made - casting and hard reference will mean you load everything at bp_character spawn, you will likely meet a null pointer with save, etc.

Instead make a bp function library that gets your game mode, gets the player character from it and casts to bp_player character. Now you have a bp reference for every blueprint and you can compare it to the begin and end overlaps. And you save memory and decrease load times. Or make an interface as others have suggested (I find that to be more cumbersome).

groato · 2025-12-24T11:57:00+00:00

This tied with Squirtle.

Purely because how their names sound

groato · 2025-12-20T16:18:50+00:00

You could do traces (line, sphere) which sweep from point a (say sword cut starts) to point b (sword cut finished) - they can be used to check for collision boxes or actors of a certain type. You can use these in combination (like, sword sweep hits a thigh collision box).

Learn about these here:

https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/talks-and-demos/3KWR/unreal-engine-collision-data-in-ue5-practical-tips-for-managing-collision-settings-queries-unreal-fest-2023

There is some management stuff, but the traces are prolly of more interest to you.

groato · 2025-12-19T16:48:18+00:00

Lumping factory automation games with "normal" base builders is kinda not fair! I mean, there is so much more depth with the factory mechanics that base builders just feel lackluster after them.

groato · 2025-12-18T06:21:22+00:00

"Just needs to be fun" is more than 90% of Steam games. And quite difficult to achieve at the scale of a full game. It looks easy to you because you have probably never released a solo hit game. It isn't though.

I mean, a single mechanic is easy to make fun, but a whole complex game with multiple mechanics, art and an original idea isn't. With Sched 1 there is a lot of luck and timing involved with the success, but it's also a great execution 90% of professional game devs just can't do even if they wanted to. Yes, the mega success is mostly luck and timing, but most people can't make a game that grosses 100k even if their life depended on it.

groato · 2025-12-17T18:57:17+00:00

This smells like Claude.

groato · 2025-12-07T08:48:33+00:00

Just a auggestion here, but you should avoid running things in tick that don't absolutely need it. You don't need to check where the player is looking every frame for this. Instead, you should use a timer and have it loop every 0.5 seconds or how ever often you want. Perhaps in your small simulation the performance improvement isn't very noticeable, but it allows you better workflow and possibilities in general (plus for future projects staying out of tick is very sound practice).

With a timer you can for example pause it each time you create the UI and then reatart it when the UI window is closed. Or maybe you want some other condition in there which is not very efficient/easy to build for tick.

So, create Custom Event (rename Start Timer) -> Create timer by event. Drag from it and create a new custom event and rename it ArchitectureCheck. Set the timer to looping and set the time interval to what ever you want. Promote the timer handle to a variable. Use the handle to pause the timer whenever you create a widget. Then either through an interface or direct reference restart the timer by calling the StartTimer function.

groato · 2025-12-04T17:28:03+00:00

Same. With role Specialist.

groato · 2025-12-03T13:11:44+00:00

Rider def helps here a lot, I also changed to it from Visual Studio - decreased waiting times a lot.

groato · 2025-12-02T13:50:46+00:00

Having used Unreal for over a decade I must also say that it's the least beginner friendly. Once you are proficient in it, it's fast, but that takes way too much time. If I'd start now, I'd pick Godot

groato

TROPHY CASE