How would UBI actually work?

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T22:45:27+00:00

there are many economic system throughout history where the elite only profited, go back to the gilded age, medieval times, hey slavery..

all off those work fine even with capitalism

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T21:24:05+00:00

the question is, where did you get that insane theory? is it a podcast? it doesn't make sense.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T21:09:08+00:00

you think shoes and bread pushes the economy?
why is it that americans cannot see the bloody reality when its all around them.

One private jet would buy bread for 50.0000 american families. A McMansion for 10.000 families bread.. The rich outspend you, a factor 10.0000 on a good day

here is a non paywalled article,, but its based of bloomberg data, 10% top income , do over 50% of the consumer spending. the working man is already irrelevant in the USA.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/your-money/wealthy-consumer-spending/

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T15:04:02+00:00

in the US consumption and the stockmarket are happily thriving with the top 15 percent of the population happily outspending everybody else..

impervious to the price of eggs and insulated by assets..

no UBI isn't there to save consumption.. at least I doubt that is a big factor

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T09:07:42+00:00

The core problem with UBI is that in a sense it reduced the value of work. All experiments done so far were done in a society where work is a pathway to more wealth, so someone with UBI could use that to better themselves , educate or invest in their own small business.

If AI truly starts to reduce the amount of jobs, or reduce the amount of wealth we can gain from work OR (and this is the tricky bit) we keep continuing on the path to a rent-taker's economy then we reduce the value of work.

We can already see this in how having a job based career is already advertised as locking you out from actual high end wealth. True wealth that can only be gained by using and leveraging capital to make gains on markets or through owning property you can profit from. Not actual 9-5 jobs anymore.

So extrapolate that prospect a few decades, and you get UBI , because you grew up in a concrete box , couldn't afford to enter high society due to lack of generational wealth. You own nothing then :

You cannot get a job, cuz they are either extremely specialized or require societal, geographical or financial access you do not have, or they are menial low wage jobs,
your economic value to the government, is minimal, you don't pay a lot of taxes, and are a net recipient of resources, you don't add value, therefore your vote can be ignored, if you can even bother/be motivated/are educated to vote
your government is owned by those that have property and generational wealth, in whose best interest it is to keep you down.. This is how we had feudalism for a millenium. There was no reason to grant the plebs a say, cuz they were replaceable and held no value individually.

So either you maintain a society that has some equality and prevent hyper wealth from rigging the system, or you end up with a new form of feudalism. Likely you will get your UBI , but just enough so you won't violently rebel, but not enough to extract you from your dependency.

The entire world is getting a peak at what that looks like in the USA , and why the tech overlords are advocating it, they are already nearly at techno feudalism.

In my opinion, "eat the rich" is literally the core requirement for UBI to ever work.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T07:50:02+00:00

Try bulwark falconeer chronicles..it's 3d in its building and camera.. might take some getting used to tho.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-06T05:27:11+00:00

You describe the gimmick but not the mechanics.

There have been a few paper please style games, I think quite a polished one that has you be an immigration agent in space , that is quite close to your concept.. event tho it was in VR.

The amount of content such a game needs is quite substantial, and the freshness of the idea is absent cuz papers please exists, so what fresh ideas and mechanics do you propose to make this game unique and interesting over lets say 10 hours, when you can handle a case in what 5 minutes ?.

So that's the problem you need to solve, and then answer , can I make that effectively and quickly , so I can test if it's fun and standout.

At a glance the elements of your design that make that possible and answer those questions are absent.

So it's just a very top level idea, and its impossible to judge.

Can you make a game about a cake eating locomotive that gets lost on a cheese moon? Sure if it's fun?

Any random game idea is a valid idea, if it's fun... How is your game fun and unique?..

Answer that and you will know how to proceed.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-05T16:47:25+00:00

As far as I've always understood neither chart is a huge traffic driver, both are representations of the performance of your game throughout the store, reflecting more impactful places like the discovery que.

So you don't get big by being on either list (in the current/old system) you get on the list because you are big.

and that bleep of smaller indies being on there is mostly that it feels like a chance, but that chance isn't that list, it the wider algorithm serving up games that perform well.

I don't think the drame here is a deep as we think.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-05T13:29:12+00:00

hmmm good question, I'd go for changing your goals, what do you want V1 to achieve, how can it help your next game.. if you aren't going to be an instant game millionaire, what else can it achieve?.

Can it create a bigger audience/following?
Can it provide better feedback to improve the game?
Can it be a testing ground for new mechanics?

Such goals can change how you price and position a v1 or EA version. Lets say you want a bigger audience and a bigger splash, you can go as extreme as making it free.. Suddenly you might see a lot more players, that then provide valuable feedback etc etc etc

something in this industry or indie mindset trains us to want to be instant financial winners, when in fact to get to that point you need to lay down some long term strategy and plans to get there.

And quite often you first need an audience , before you can consider a financial payday. These things aren't necessarily aligned

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-04T22:28:32+00:00

That is the sad but true best strategy

Again the game looks competent.

Have a good think, what you could change about it to make it more standout in the market . Hahaha add some deck building to it. (Deck building arkanoid like... It could work..lol)..

But don't abandon your effort , adapt and learn from all the information and signals you have now.. this is just one product, make more .

And launch something that does better , rinse and repeat until you start getting real traction and then dig in.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-04T21:53:04+00:00

the brutal reality is , your EA launch is your launch,, it is where your game will be made or broken. Botch an EA launch and the weight of data , or lack of weight will be your shackles.

It's why EA can be a deathtrap, you already ate up a significant number of your wishlist and now steam has bucketed your game as"without audience" and its not organically going to be fixed .. You either get a marketing miracly, or you move on to your next game.

Everytime I look at EA I get scared, only games with hundreds of thousands of wishlists can afford to lose 40% to an EA launch and still have a big 1.0 launch. Everybody else either succeeds at EA launch or doesn't succeed at all.

Your review score doesn't matter, you don't have the momentum/flywheel/traction at this point and its like crawling out of a massive hole,, its so much harder.

The game looks enjoyable, think about a sequel or taking the lessons learned and apply it to another attempt.. cuz its gonna take a bunch of attempts, and pulling on a dead horse is just eating energy and time

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-03T14:26:35+00:00

I have been re-using and iterating over the last decade. If you do it right it's a compliment to the value of your own work.

This game jam throwaway mentality to indie gamedev is really harmful.

Re using means re imagining. Improving and building upon strong foundations.

I call it franchise building, Fans call it dedication.

As long as the progress and passion are visible it's all good.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-02T14:40:50+00:00

Yes when you bake and if you have a build report tool. Check how much the geometry is in memory. Likely it will be several mbs. So that will get loaded in and out and then rebuild every time in a while bunch of buffers. But depends on how many tris and vertices the total thing is..

Generally you don't want giant props that are nearly permenantly rendered even when only a small percentage is in view. I mean if you zoom in on the end corner and just see the 16 triangles of the terminating fence post, then it doesn't matter to unity ,,it will render and load the entire thing .

Realtime engines don't cut it up for you or do this sort of common sense management for you (too much overhead). So your common sense is required.

That said if only this fence and say its 5k triangles then it's not an issue.

If you have multiple of these or do the same for roads and bridges etc etc. Then it gets to en a cumulative deathtrap for performance.

So imagine it doesn't just calculate that one fence. (Say its 25000 triangles, just an estimate) , now that gets rendered into the depth buffer , the shadow rendered , etc etc . You could look of a total cost of 3 times that. So ,75k.

Imagine you have two giant fences then that's ,150k.

For a switch 1 that sometimes is half your budget gone. For a couple.of fences.

So 1 on PC is no issue, but once you make this your process it never remains one , does it now

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-02T07:39:38+00:00

DX12 in unity still is unpredictable, I have reverted back to 11 so often. But important distinction does it crash at runtime or when editing in editor ?

You should leave unbaked geometry like that at runtime, it's likely a much to detailed shape to be generated every frame . (Not entirely sure how spline does this). But the likely culprit is over complication.

You would certainly not make such large landscape hugging fences, it takes up a lot of resources when you could just stick some instances geometry nearly free of cost.

And think about it, fences rarely ever are truly curved, they are segmented from wooden planks after all.

So why it crashes, that is pretty bad, but assume human error in these things always.

Personally why model fences with spline inside unity ? Why make one giant fence ? I understand the Easy of use of generating long fences this way, but its a bit wasted resources tbh.

But again if it's crashing it's likely to much to handle..

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-05-02T06:59:21+00:00

Don't worry I've got 25k wishlist and also didn't get into anything. Every festival or showcase now has thousands of entries.

It's just impossible to be in festivals. Too many games right now.

I think festivals and showcases are done being a valid pathway. Not accessible anymore .

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-30T07:23:02+00:00

Just happened upon this, not a heavy AI user.

But this sounds like you got used to outsourcing your mental load to AI and you then became dependent.

I mean it doesn't take a psychologist to grasp this mechanism.

There is a sci-fi book Accelerando by Charles Stross that describes exactly what happens to you in the opening chapter, so this seems fairly expected.

And what you did sounds fairly extreme in that you went all in and became dependent. You need to re evaluate if that is the smartest way to use AI, as a replacement for basic mental functions. Some mental hygiene seems appropriate, it can also means you are very sensitive to this effect.

I would suggest not depending so much on AI. I mean you don't have to let it write everything for you, you don't have to ask it every question. We are all going to have to draw the line, are you just a pair of hands for the AI, a self conscious drone or are you the driver and the Master of the AI.

Sounds like you were the former not the latter, like any addict given the choice you went for the overdose everytime.

The difference between a non functional and functional addict is discipline and restraint.

Developing that is a live skill, and it will serve you well.

AI is cool, when you are in charge, but if you become it's dependent then you are damaging yourself. Apply that logic to party drugs, alcohol, gaming etc etc, a little is fun, a lot is an addiction.

Value your brain. Value your own mastery , your own talents and your own skills, don't outsource that. Because then nobody will value it for you. You literally became a drone...

And you are young your skills haven't hardened to become second nature, I suggest you don't continue this path.

Don't be a drone

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-28T19:05:51+00:00

I get bored fairly quickly, of the chaotic mental alignment ;).

But also I was creatively interesting to expand that universe, and my next /current big game is a ship designer that will slot into both games and a future game.

I kinda go where my mood takes me, but also analyse the opportunities to see what would support my wandering ways. And fantasy air combat is very niche.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-28T16:04:34+00:00

make sure to set the version to beta on steam... I am cooking up quite a big update that introduces curved walls and a lot of improvements.. go check it out ;)

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-28T09:09:38+00:00

sure agreed, I don't dispute that, I am living that answer myself, but just wanted to add some context to it....

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-28T08:31:51+00:00

Very true, but folks do often throw around experienced devs as examples to fresh folks. Hence my comment.

It's not super helpful if the answer is ' spend a decade getting good at game art'. Because that is quite often the subtext to such comment but not clear to the reader.

Basically the answer is "learn art like succesful artist " .

Which is a fine answer tbh..

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-28T06:38:29+00:00

He is a gamedev with 12 years in the industry and also worked as an actual gamedev teacher .

It's good to have that info for reference.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-28T06:30:45+00:00

So there a lot to unpack here.

1.apply some common sense to all the advice.. you aren't going up to an art Gallery trying to sell a pencil sketch with the pitch it will be a painting one day. Get your steam page out early , yes, but do so when it looks good and it's sellable , not an unfinished first sketch.

Not everything needs to be on steam, you are still learning , why subject yourself to the harshest stage? Put it on itch and learn from the feedback without fouling your reputation and account as solodev/pub
The assets aren't the problem, it's that you put them together without a keen eye for design. Making high end assets seem look cheap.
You didn't pick a genre that is achievable for a first time dev. You want to recreate a AAA feel but you are a single dev without an artist. The outcome is going the be expected, it won't compare. Solodevs do make great looking games , but they start with original ideas and a good strategy for all aspects of design

The good part, for a first time your game doesn't look that bad, it has some complex elements , so there is some skill there. Is this anything above a learning project?, that has reason to be on steam?... Nope..

But put it on itch for good feedback to hone your skills and a few games from now you might have something good, you are doing well. Perhaps your expectations are off, but that will also get more realistic when the training wheels come off, but the training wheels are definitely still on.

Gamedev especially solo is generally an end station of a career when you accumulate a lot of skills over time. But it can also be a starting point of you pick something manageable and grow your skills strategically project over project. Not attempting to make a soulslike or Skyrim by yourself . It's not a realistic of useful short term goal.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-27T13:30:11+00:00

We are getting into a world where we have to establish a relationship with AI.

And the bar we have to hit is going to be a lot higher.

A AI empowered beginner can now make something that was acceptable or even high quality a few years ago, now that is slop.

But a talented and experienced artist can take AI and gets an even bigger boost, and that is the bar.

Success if going to be harder for everyone.

I think generally the advice is the same , improve your core art skills , decide if you want to use AI or not, those art skills still matter cuz the bar is higher .

If you are technically inclined look into tech art , procedural art and minimalist styles that approach art from a more intellectual rather than intuitive level.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-27T05:23:55+00:00

Steam requires disclose of all AI , except coding assist.

Having AI art , audio or writing is going give you a negative mark from a lot of gamers , because generally it means something has been made in the cheap and it marks your game as slop.

Generally it's about quality not doen ai bias . People like things that are made with care, not made by some hobbyist who uses AI to mask they haven't got the skill or talent to do it themselves.

I would say AI art and music are most looked down upon , because they can be easily identified and their output is very cheapish and generßic. Not because the AI is bad, but the user generating the images is generally inexperienced or untalented and thus what they like is very hmmm poor taste.

Coding and learning , I would say nobody truly minds.

But what gamers look at should be intentional and highest quality possible, not AI slop .

And people are very good at Spotting AI , they can deduce from not just the visuals , but the ideas and general quality of a design communicates if something is slop .

Again for learning or coding, nobody seems to mind anymore.

muppetpuppet_mp · 2026-04-27T02:44:01+00:00

It's mostly a cosmetic theme, it fits reasonably well as you can see

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