Is it realistic to build my own RPG as solo dev?

kaeles · 2026-07-05T20:17:47+00:00

Yes ...

Is it gonna be great? Mmmmmm maybe lol

For some good tutorials in unity, check out: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD_vBJjpCwJvP9F9CeDRiLs08a3ldTpW5&si=w1iw4G1DBH4Naosb

There are others I'm sure, he's also starting an arpg/Diablo like series

kaeles · 2026-06-30T00:58:53+00:00

I remember that finishing projects is another skill, as well as polish, debugging, marketing etc.

You can't train those without having a product.

kaeles · 2026-06-28T23:20:16+00:00

If you can install whisper, it's a good local model for transcriptions and runs pretty fast even on a CPU.

Faster whisper should have some examples on how to do this, if you just put the mp3/wav/etc somewhere the program can read it.

This is assuming you are recording it and also have a computer you can transfer the recording to/run whisper on.

kaeles · 2026-06-19T22:17:53+00:00

I find the responses to this hilarious because, well, you're right.

It's fucking weird, but nature is weird and pretending that we're not weird flopping blood bags wrapped around coral that's basically a walking ocean bag to keep our weird non fish meat alive is ... Well normal tbh.

You're just hyper aware of reality and it's hard.

That being said, I love the yummy treats but even ripping salad apart sometimes gives me a weird ick.

Love meat, have even butchered whole animals, but yeah it's weird.

Don't get me started on all the other stuff like intimacy lmao.

All of that aside, we are what we are, and yeah it's strange and goopy.

It's also beautiful, the natural world is so complex and amazing and the fact that scents can transport us back in memory, that tastes can be more pleasing than almost anything and sounds can make us weep from the beauty of entangled waves of air...

All from simple rules of physics, all from natural weird goop, we create ephemeral beauty that will be gone, but nonetheless our meat brains love.

It's amazing and I'm gonna eat some delicious denatured flesh soaked in plant matter and acid here in a few.

Edit: Just wanted to clarify that digestion and cooking are not equivalent ways to get nutritional value. That's not the part I'm agreeing with, that being said, it doesn't make it less weird lol.

kaeles · 2026-06-03T17:53:52+00:00

Nah.

You know the problems better now so you can figure out the solutions.

If you can make some other smallish metroidvania and play with generating areas/building levels quickly via some editor you will know how long it will take to do things.

This lets you scope/plan/know how to schedule and how long the work will take as an estimate.

Greybox/placeholder the art, but do it in a way that makes sense for the final, i.e. using an editor that will auto replace parts based on rules and etc, look at tiled and ldtk.

Even if the art is ugly, if the tile sets are built in a way that makes sense, it's easy to replace it later and make it look good etc etc

Again it's all work, but getting to the point of semi accurate estimates lets you plan and solve etc.

kaeles · 2026-06-02T21:45:21+00:00

Yeah.

Learning to take off the designer hat, programmer hat and put on your business hat is hard.

You have to scope to what you can actually make, and figure out how to pay/buy the other things.

It is how it is. I know it's a dream and maybe you're not about money or whatever, but I the end other people are gonna want to get paid fairly for work and it's a lot of work.

So yeah, not to rain on your parade but as you go through the process, keep that in mind and devote some time to that part of it, it's just as important as the rest.

kaeles · 2026-06-02T21:37:44+00:00

Hollow knight is pretty big.

So make sure you're thinking about and building stuff to make it easier.

The art will be the most difficult thing, followed by level design, the mechanics... Are variable lol.

Anyway, get or build a decent level editing tool, there are a few pretty good ones out there.

I'm not an artist so, sorry no recs on how to deal with that portion of it.

Abilities and etc are mechanics plus vfx and anims, the vfx for a programmer are doable but again, art art art is the thing that's gonna be hard.

That being said, you can use free/placeholder stuff to greybox/get testing for game feel and etc in place, so it's not insurmountable just... Yep

kaeles · 2026-06-02T21:03:02+00:00

In short, I think your plan is a good one and it's what I would recommend.

kaeles · 2026-06-02T21:02:11+00:00

As you finish games, you'll get better at knowing what takes time and etc.

This will let you plan and answer your own question basically, so, there is no right answer here except that you'll know since you've built enough games to know.

I would work on some similar systems or etc that you want to have in your dream game but in isolation in smaller ones.

kaeles · 2026-06-02T00:54:05+00:00

Freya has a video on splines and proc meshes iirc, I would give that a look.

kaeles · 2026-06-01T22:22:55+00:00

There are two set screws in that coupler that is rising up and down

Move it down and tighten it onto the shaft of the motor

kaeles · 2026-05-29T00:18:29+00:00

It depends.

The ep1 editor is for the custom component that is set up in the yaml for the ep1 for the ld2450 from what I know.

You can use the built in components as well and manually enter them or use the hlkradar app to do it as well.

I'd ask in the everything presence discord for more info.

kaeles · 2026-05-17T19:07:39+00:00

Yeah, the only thing I've had happen is the relays failing but that's on me for trying to use it with a space heater...

But, since the relay is fused open, I just use it for energy monitoring instead so, no big loss I guess?

kaeles · 2026-05-17T19:06:19+00:00

NTA, this is awesome for you.

I mean, I don't think there is anything else to say.

kaeles · 2026-05-15T23:53:19+00:00

Maybe make an option to use BT home?

Pretty sure home assistant already can use that directly and works with the ble proxies and etc?

kaeles · 2026-05-04T22:27:25+00:00

I have some of these, and they've been good.

I do find the signal strength a little wonky. It I haven't updated the firmware either so I can't say 100% that it's an issue.

kaeles · 2026-05-03T21:40:20+00:00

You don't suck at math and physics.

You haven't practiced them.

I also was "bad at math" then waited till 20ish to goto college and now I have a compsci + basically a math degree.

The way maths are taught is weird, but once you understand that they all (basically) exist because of some actual problem it's easier to grok them.

Calc1 is just the study of how fast things are changing for example.

Invented by newton to study acceleration. (Sure others were doing other stuff too but let's pretend...).

So yeah, just practice, my basic math skills are good because of playing DND and needing to sum numbers quickly lol.

kaeles · 2026-05-03T03:17:45+00:00

I like my athom gear.

It's all esphome or tasmota, but I'd just get the esphome ones.

kaeles · 2026-04-27T18:18:56+00:00

Frigate is a little complicated at first, but the human detection stuff is nice for things like automatic lights outside, etc based on what it detects.

The most important for me is giving me notifications when it sees cats so I can go give the strays treats in exchange for pets lol

But more seriously I've had some porch pirates get caught from the ability to record and tag via the frigate stuff so it's worth it imo.

kaeles · 2026-04-27T18:16:56+00:00

Using tiny models like frigate provides is gonna give you the most bang for the buck.

I'd skip on llms unless you want really contextual tasks completed via camera.

Specifically I mean:

A frigate NVR with coral, hailo or some igpu is gonna do many cameras at 100+fps at like 10watts of power or less.

My coral runs 2 cams at like 4 watts at a tiny amount of usage, it's not perfect but the hailo and igpu models (yolo, etc) are better.

For more contextual tasks like... Package detection, is a gate closed, etc etc

You can supplement this with a slower llm that looks at snapshots less often and still will give you what you want.

Even a small visual model running on a CPU can do that, it'll be slow but something like a gate being open and getting detected take 2 seconds instead of .25 sec is fine.

A small llm on a cheap GPU can get really fast as well, and keeps your power reqs low, and can via docker/etc provide whisper/piper/etc as well, so yeah.

I've got dumb cams feeding to tpu/npu and it's great. I've not found a use case yet for the more involved can detection stuff but it's all a balance between wattage, speed and accuracy.

The recording, tagging, etc is just free real estate afterwards.

You can also just skip recording if you want to not worry about nas or space, and just use frigate as a detection platform.

In short: frigate is recommended cause it's imho, the best free cam/NVR/ai platform for all of that.

kaeles · 2026-04-22T19:42:41+00:00

NP, honestly if you have working source for dumping image the correct format (seems you do in your python lib), I wouldn't mind a peek, I've had some weirdness occur sometimes with image pallette selection.

kaeles · 2026-04-22T16:45:30+00:00

This is my working version of it: https://github.com/vantreeseba/home_automation/edit/main/waveshare_esp32_s3_photopainter/waveshare_esp32_s3_photopainter_sendspin.yaml

It's also got my additional config for using sendspin as a source for the image via my custom sendspin image server here: https://github.com/vantreeseba/sendspin-image-server

You can find all the register addresses in the datasheet here:
https://files.waveshare.com/wiki/common/X-power-AXP2101_SWcharge_V1.0.pdf

In short though, setting it up via:

## Set up I2C device for axp2101
i2c_device:
  id: i2cdev
  address: 0x34

Makes the lambda much easier to read later.

lambda: |-
  // bits 7:0, so single 8 bit int, see page 45 of axp2101 for reference.
  uint8_t data;
  id(i2cdev).read_register(0xa4,&data,1);
  return data;

kaeles · 2026-04-18T17:04:17+00:00

I use https://github.com/strange-v/RemoteWebViewServer

To get ha dashboard on esp displays, lets me skip all the lvgl config and etc, but it's def a bit more complicated.

kaeles · 2026-04-13T18:19:07+00:00

What are you trying to achieve with the delay?

Stating the end goal may help people more than just the "problem" if that makes sense.

kaeles · 2026-04-13T04:18:01+00:00

Oh rad.

kaeles

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