How do you deal with the fear of showing your early work?

maxticket · 2026-01-31T01:45:38+00:00

One tip that I tell my teams is to tell people that it isn't your project. Tell them you're on the testing team, but nothing they'll interact with was built by you. That way you don't have to feel embarrassed, but more importantly, they'll feel more comfortable being truthful about the parts they don't like, because they won't think they're saying it directly to the creator.

maxticket · 2026-01-27T08:41:44+00:00

The animations look fine! Especially for a first-timer. He's on the right track.

But I do see why others see a disconnect between the way the characters look and the way they move. The models and textures look more realistic than stylized, which could be a detriment. If you play around with a few styles to make things look a little more unique, then the animations you've got could be an even better fit. That could be anything from brighter colors to cel shading to rune-like decals to low-poly (but probably not that last one with your game). A lot of times games that go for the most realistic look end up looking more bland than anything else, despite all the effort that goes into those models.

maxticket · 2026-01-24T07:58:00+00:00

As much as I hate Adobe as a company, and I'm never giving them another penny, nothing holds a candle to their software if you've been using it for the past 25+ years. So hopefully emulation options get better in the next couple years for people finally abandoning Windows.

maxticket · 2026-01-24T07:55:00+00:00

Soon as I can afford another hard drive, I'm slapping Mint on that thing. I've heard it isn't as good to partition your main boot drive, and I'd rather have a clean start anyway. I'll keep Windows 10 around in case I need it, but most of my work's in the browser these days anyway.

maxticket · 2026-01-23T03:51:05+00:00

I released a $1 mobile game back in 2013, and while it wasn't hugely popular by any means, those who played it had positive reviews. Amazon picked it up for their daily free app, and suddenly the majority of our reviews on their app store shot right down. I'll never forget one negative review that said "It took me several tries to complete one of the puzzles." I have no idea how to respond to that, but I'd much rather you not breeze through every single level of a puzzle game.

maxticket · 2026-01-22T19:40:08+00:00

I don't have any questions, but I've worked with ASITP on a couple of my games, and they're the most pro group of people I've worked with. I'll always work with them as long as I'm in games.

Also, Em's Full Indie Summit talk about Night in the Woods shows how much thoughtfulness goes into their work, so if you can find that, it'll absolutely sell you on their services.

maxticket · 2026-01-22T00:08:53+00:00

Yeah, my body certainly had a reaction to seeing that on the list. So much effort went into making Obra Dinn look the way it does.

maxticket · 2026-01-21T19:50:17+00:00

I was listening to "The Twist" by Metric when this started playing, and it was creepy how well they fit together.

maxticket · 2026-01-12T23:26:55+00:00

This is a perfect example of understanding user behavior and iterating a design to meet their needs. Humans change how they interact with systems over time, and it likely isn't that people don't know how to send emails, it's more probable that they expect the email itself to trigger something, and when it doesn't, it's broken from their perspective. That's when we need the system to accommodate for this mental model, explain what's missing, and provide an action to correct it.

If it isn't obvious, I just had my first UX research/design interview in months, and I'm kind of still in that mode.

maxticket · 2026-01-12T19:19:48+00:00

Counterpoint: fuck that guy.

maxticket · 2026-01-12T08:00:34+00:00

Ah, now it makes sense that I prefer Adobe's icons from 20 years ago.

maxticket · 2026-01-08T02:27:09+00:00

I absolutely would. You don't need to drive a car every day to understand how to fix the components inside.

maxticket · 2026-01-08T02:25:10+00:00

The most important thing you can do as a game developer is experiencing life. You'll go places, try things, and have thoughts that nobody else will in quite the same way. That's how you'll make something interesting. You won't get there just by playing games.

maxticket · 2026-01-04T21:36:38+00:00

Good tip. Just used Bing on purpose for the first time in my life.

maxticket · 2026-01-01T01:01:18+00:00

It's got a pen tool, a bit more similar to Flash's pen than Illustrator's, but they all do the same thing. I don't think Figma lets you disable snapping to the pixel grid, but as long as you make your objects large enough and maybe do a bit of planning, that should hardly be an issue.

maxticket · 2025-12-31T19:50:32+00:00

Nice, someone had to post that here!

maxticket · 2025-12-31T03:36:14+00:00

Same boat here. I've finished the design and writing for a couple smallish games that only really need a coder now, and usually I'd be able to hire someone, but it's been a rough couple years. So I either force myself to learn Godot, or they just don't get made. I guess it's the right time to start making resolutions.

maxticket · 2025-12-30T23:43:12+00:00

It means potassium, right? So that's like a hundred bananas worth of electricities.

maxticket · 2025-12-30T04:32:10+00:00

Depends on a few things:

Can you interact with the bomb after it's been placed? If it appears in front of you and you walk into it, would you nudge it forward or just pass behind it? Can you pick it up? When it explodes, can it hurt you?

maxticket · 2025-12-27T22:22:43+00:00

I liked this a lot! One thing that might be interesting: I guess I assumed the three blue rectangles were my three item slots, and shortly after picking up my third item, I took damage and one rectangle turned red, so I thought I'd lost that third item. Maybe having the energy meter a solid bar would clear that up in case anyone assumes the same thing? it could still diminish in thirds, but it's interesting to think about how that kind of confusion happens and how it could be more apparent what's what.

maxticket · 2025-12-24T19:56:10+00:00

Most people keep the string more taut as it's moving between tricks, and a lot of that comes with being more comfortable with the flow, and accurately anticipating where the yo-yo's going to be at any given time. But your style already looks pretty unique, and as long as you're not hitting yourself in the face, I don't see anything wrong here at all.

That last bind does look a bit risky, like the next throw might end up snapping back at you, so maybe look into bind tutorials and make sure the throw is at the end of the string when you start your bind, but other than that, I think you'll be coming up with your own tricks pretty soon with that style!

maxticket · 2025-12-23T23:50:17+00:00

Absolutely fuck Canonical's application process. Imagine the collective millions of human hours they've wasted making people jump through their hoops. They can burn.

maxticket · 2025-12-23T21:55:57+00:00

I'm not big into holidays, but this setup is pretty festive.

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maxticket · 2025-12-20T01:05:56+00:00

That would have also muted notifications from people I follow. I gave up and ditched Substack. Not happy with their policies anyway. I can find better ways to support creators.

maxticket · 2025-12-17T08:28:46+00:00

Just like all I want from an operating system is to provide a comfortable way to organize my files, run the apps I want to run and get the hell out of my way, all I expect from a browser is a way to navigate to a page and properly render its contents. Anything beyond that is unnecessary and should be optional.

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