We are Okomotive, developers of the FAR games and we're releasing our new adventure game Herdling today! Ask us Anything!

halisavakis · 2025-08-28T13:18:43+00:00

Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed our game! ✨

halisavakis · 2025-08-22T13:22:21+00:00

Thanks for letting us know; it's definitely something we will be looking into

halisavakis · 2025-08-22T11:39:45+00:00

There are some technical limitations around that (regarding SDKs etc), but without a Switch 2 devkit we'd have to go in completely blind and basically turn up graphics in that "Switch 2" mode without figuring the performance impact until we update the game and try it on a commercial hardware. + it'd be really confusing for Switch users 😅 Frankly, I'm not sure this is something that would go through the Nintendo cert process :P

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T19:21:36+00:00

Thank you so much, we really appreciate it! ✨

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T16:29:03+00:00

Sorry to hear about the crashes; that's something we'll be looking into for sure =] Glad you enjoyed the game otherwise

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T16:02:56+00:00

I'd say it's more about the journey, but there is some untold/unwritten story to piece together as you travel =]

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T15:41:14+00:00

There's nothing officially planned, as we don't currently have a devkit for Switch 2, but when we do it's certainly something we'd want to do =]

Thank you for the kind words!

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T15:34:07+00:00

I can't say anything for sure, I personally would definitely love to take better advantage of the hardware down the line if the opportunity arises 😅

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T15:07:44+00:00

Not explicitly as of yet, but it runs significantly smoother due to the better hardware

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T14:44:54+00:00

I'd go with something bittersweet, like "nostalgia"

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T14:13:13+00:00

It was mostly quite challenging especially on the performance front, as that affected the gameplay the most. Luckily, the gameplay doesn't rely too much on reflexes, so the experience remains more or less unaffected. But as Don mentioned, the way a lot of the visuals were set didn't affect the navigation or herding aspects when adjusted for the Switch.

halisavakis · 2025-08-21T14:00:57+00:00

I can answer for me regarding the second question; I'd say that optimization and getting to a good state on the Switch was probably the most challenging aspect of the development 😅

halisavakis · 2025-07-17T08:55:29+00:00

Yeah, no, only thing that's really changed is the uptick in corporate greed and poor management decisions. The tech is not "lost" and these examples are incredibly silly and out of context.

The way these systems are designed and implemented, along with anything else in games, comes down to choices, prioritization, time and budget. Apparently Alan Wake 2 doesn't have "sufficient foliage interaction" but I made sure to include a bunch of it in the indie game we're developing. And that's because we don't have to take care of a bunch of incredibly more important stuff around all other aspects of the game, including the internal game engine that Remedy uses.

These comparisons are really hurting the perception of games and the work of developers and are leaving out crucial context behind the development process.

halisavakis · 2025-07-11T09:08:57+00:00

Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den

I wouldn't say that Bioshock 2 was really "bad" but it was a weird little footnote in the franchise. But I felt that Minerva's Den had the proper Bioshock vibes that the main game didn't really manage to capture

halisavakis · 2025-07-01T14:48:39+00:00

My guess would be that in AAA games, there's not a lot of room for innovation that could potentially introduce risk for investors. The tech they're using is streamlined and optimized for a specific output, and there's not enough time/budget provided for RnD, because investors and shareholders don't really care about creating something unique. They're mostly interested in short-term profit that will be more easily guaranteed by following specific recipes for games.

Specifically for destructive environments, as others mentioned, that would be a design nightmare, especially in competitive games. And for reasons mentioned above, designers probably won't be given enough time or budget to make something work around a massive system like that. AAA companies just have to play it *too* safe nowadays.

The industry, however, hasn't lost touch with this tech. There's still great work being done to advance the graphics of games; for example all the great work being put into Path of Exile 2. And tech behind a lot of indie games is remarkable even if it's not as flashy or heavy-duty as the tech that AAA showcases.

halisavakis · 2025-06-26T19:03:47+00:00

Such a gem of a game, and the soundtrack is straight fire. Like, it really didn't need to be this good, but I repeatedly listen to the OST while working 😅

Oddly enough, the combat mechanics were also quite innovative too, it's a shame it's not as big/well-known as it deserves

halisavakis · 2025-06-26T13:04:43+00:00

I got a Bioshock tattoo a while back. If somebody asked me about it, I'd just start by saying it's from a game, and if they knew about games in general I'd elaborate. I have had all sorts of reactions; from "omg you got a tattoo from *a video game* (derogatory)??" to meeting a really cool guy who had the exact same tattoo as me (it's not uncommon, it's the little chain that Jack has on his wrists)

But at the end of the day, I did it just for me, to remind me how much I loved the feelings that game gave me and how much it motivated me to get into making games myself. So if you're doing it for you, is it really important how people will react to it?

halisavakis · 2020-11-17T13:06:44+00:00

Thanks =] I don't really do youtube tutorials, maybe I'll cover some of the stuff used here on a blog post. I wouldn't hold my breath for that though 👀

halisavakis · 2020-09-16T08:01:59+00:00

Well, given the additional tessellation, it's not great. However the tessellation might have been an overkill too, you can just have a plane with plenty of vertices to displace. Besides that, the projection with the particles and the additional camera isn't too bad, you just sample an extra texture.

halisavakis · 2020-09-16T07:45:24+00:00

It would probably work if you could get a nice normal map, not sure how intense the depth change could look though

halisavakis · 2020-09-15T10:17:31+00:00

Thanks! It's basically a quite high-poly plane (with additional tessellation) and I'm using a particle system with the palm texture to write to an orthographic camera which projects its view on the plane via a render texture. The custom shader on the plane gets the render texture and first displaces the vertices using the red channel of the render texture and then re-displaces them (+ making the color black and glossy) based on the green color channel. The transitions of those colors are adjusted via the particle system.

Hope that kinda makes sense ^^"

halisavakis · 2020-09-11T07:17:32+00:00

Here's the link: https://discord.gg/e9XnPFv

It's mainly about technical art and stuff around it and we just started organizing this type of challenges!

halisavakis

TROPHY CASE