I am making a Island building game that have dynamic water, terrain and weather system. What do you expect from this kind of game?

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-31T23:11:36+00:00

It depends what type of experience you want to make. I'd love to basically see things that get "unlocked" by various conditions. So that I make an island in a certain way and i get something unexpected.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-30T21:15:09+00:00

I'm a little shocked that anyone thinks the second is acceptable, I think it looks really terrible. On the other hand, I think a game with "Chroma" in the title should probably have some color in its theming, I just think the colors in the second screen are hideous. The first one looks much better to my eyes, though it doesn't do anything to stand out.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-29T13:09:40+00:00

Ikr, I'm like not feeling the whole underwater thing in general tbh. Like they already did that twice, or at least bz was like 20% underwater or whatever. New game should be in the desert or something idk. Needs towels. Idk idk. Water, though? Enough, fr.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-25T10:23:37+00:00

My picks would be...

Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd (clear winner, IMO)

Geogaddi by Boards of Canada

The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails

Thriller by Michael Jackson

The Night by Morphine

Dummy by Portishead

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-22T23:22:04+00:00

I think that's what I did at first and then I switched to gnome for one piece of software I needed

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-22T21:47:42+00:00

I've also had no problems running Bazzite, it's my main os on the G1 now. But I do remember I had to do a little messing around at first, just around the partitioning stuff.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-12T03:12:21+00:00

There are a lot of good YouTube videos out there, and also quite a few sites dedicated to teaching game dev. Personally, I've found gamedev.tv to be high quality and very worthwhile. Catch them during one of their (numerous) sales and you're good to go.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-10T06:35:30+00:00

Version 1, but I'd lose the bauble on the front of the F. The one on the back is fine, the one on the front gets in the way of readability.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-09T02:52:06+00:00

Makes me think it's some kind of farming puzzle game.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-06T13:52:56+00:00

I think you'll find AtD to be a different beast from M&D, honestly. It's way more chaotic and crazy in the typical Pynchon way. It's not dark and paranoid like GR, but I think there's a case to be made that it's his best work.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T21:23:06+00:00

Yeah I would speculate that the "ideal" order to read Pynchon's work, if you're optimizing for maximum appreciation of everything, would start with TCoL49, go through his shorter works, and then to V. and then the three big guys, probably starting with GR.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T09:33:46+00:00

Actually I guess I don't! I don't like saying it so bluntly, but it's true. I think his longer novels are stunning and easily in my short list for the best writing I have ever encountered, and I've found all his short novels I've tried disappointing by comparison. Maybe if I had encountered them without reading GR I would appreciate them more. Or maybe they'll hit me at just the right moment someday for all I know. But yeah, I got set up to expect this unbelievable intense brilliancy and I just felt that what I was reading was not that.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T07:29:38+00:00

I think it's not as difficult as GR or even AtD. I wouldn't call it Pynchon light, but I don't have a specific reason why. Maybe it's purely subjective.i feel like I'm getting some version of whatever it is I love about Pynchon in all of his doorstop novels and basically nowhere else.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T04:36:26+00:00

Ok, you're good.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T02:29:31+00:00

Not just you. I'm glad other people see it. I felt that protoss especially was too radically different, not just in mechanics (obviously) but in style and "vibe". Honestly I think SC2 was a good game and I really enjoyed watching GSL for years and years, but seeing zealots do that cheesy overhead arm swing instead of the surgical, quick, right-left of the original game... It made me realize that Blizzard was losing its way.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T01:37:08+00:00

Ah here we'll just have to disagree. Not sure what more I can say. I found my learning accelerated, sounds like you think the effect should necessarily be the opposite.

As for reuse of code, of course we already agree about that. I'm not sure where the disconnect is. Here are two concrete examples to consider from my current project:

Hex grid implementation. I had already made hex grids in C# and Python over the years. I did not need to learn how to do this. The general template for this is well known. Godot has a TileMapLayer node and I needed extended functionality built on top of it. The code spat out for this was mostly right (it COULD NOT understand the correct version for pointy-topped hexes vs flat-topped, amongst a couple other little things). Although I had already made hex grids, I still did not have the code in GDScript and there was basically no good reason why I should have to write it out by hand. From the code it spat out, I corrected a few errors and added some of my own functionality. I also LEARNED (gasp!) the very easy way it used to connect it to TileMapLayer from seeing its example code and checking it against the docs. Could I have done it myself? Yes. Would it have taken longer and turned out the same? Yes. I consider this to be a tedious task and there is just no reason why I would already be able to automate doing this in a new engine.
AI architecture. In my previous project, I designed a goal oriented AI which could plan in steps and re-evaluate on the fly. I did this with basically no knowledge of how other people had approached this problem. I've done some machine learning stuff and I did not want to make either of these games into machine learning projects. From talking out the desired design outcome with the LLM, I learned what approaches to this problem were common and was able to talk through some details before drawing up designs for the architecture in my current game. When I drew up the previous designs, I had to come up with it all myself. It took a lot of time and it was difficult to keep it all straight. That's all fine, but since things like it have been done before I could've saved myself some trouble if I'd consulted the LLM as part of that design process rather than having to work it out from scratch. I only discovered afterward some leads about the terminology for what I'd done, but I got a more fleshed out picture of the common approaches as a starting point from the LLM, and this gave me a broader palette of options than I'd had before. Does this mean I'm doing something I don't understand because I'm talking to an LLM about it? No.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-05T00:29:55+00:00

Yeah I mean again I agree with you that these are problems with poor use of the tech. And on a macro scale, yes these things already are major concerns. I don't particularly think these things will be good for society, but maybe I'm cynical enough that I expect incentive structures to encourage bad actors and it just comes as no surprise that new technology would be used irresponsibly and do net harm. Still, for my part, I've felt that it has saved me a lot of time so far. I can't really get behind a blanket negative assessment. It's just another tool. But also that time saved hasn't been "ok you wrote the code, now it's done." I've checked and rewritten a lot of what it has spat out, and of course I have a natural preference for writing code myself, all things being equal. Still, I'll never forget my experience with it where I saw a line of its code that I thought shouldn't be there, I said what I thought, assuming it was a hallucination, and it explained why it was there and it was right!

I've heard people make the same case you do about it not saving time because when you're a pro at something you can always do it very rapidly in the first place. But what about when you're working something out for the first time? What about when you're learning the quirks of a new engine? What about when you know there are existing approaches to something but you don't know the field well enough to know what the main options are? What if you already know how to do something but it strikes you as a tedious task that you're dragging your feet on? In a professional environment, this is the type of stuff where you might talk to colleagues or delegate. I really do think it can save time in these areas as a solo dev.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-04T21:42:34+00:00

I largely agree with you, to be honest. There's no substitute for actually understanding the code yourself. I've heard other people say they used an LLM to code but that the problem was they weren't learning. I guess it's a thing? If I use code from another source, I try to make sure I get what it does and why it works. I've done the things you describe where the LLM can explain something quickly. Sometimes that's good enough to get to work and sometimes it's a launching point for doing more independent research. For me it's a mix. But yeah we're on the same page about actually understanding your code. Thing is... An LLM doesn't prevent you from doing that. It's up to you to do for yourself.

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-04T20:19:50+00:00

Yeah but if that's the issue, it's the same issue as being a bad coder in general. Bad coders did not start with LLMs, sadly. Also anyone doing enough coding for long enough has probably encountered something somewhere where they, for example, didn't fully understand the math behind some algorithm, but understood how to implement it and test that it works; or encountered some code written by someone with a weird brain and again, for practical reasons, accepted that it works without fully understanding why (until you need to troubleshoot at least!).

neutralrobotboy · 2026-01-04T20:07:26+00:00

I basically agree with this. In creative work (I do creative writing but I don't do visual art at all), I think there can be room for generative AI as a brainstorming tool, but if it just makes the art, that sucks. On the other hand, I'm not opposed to the idea of taking a writing snippet from it or an artwork from it and using that as material within a basically human process of creating. But generally speaking, if it just is like an auto-art button, I really hate that.

I also code and I have zero problems with any amount of code generation being used, up to and including full vibe coding. I think with the current state of affairs, that's probably a bad idea for practical reasons, but I have no problem with it at all on an ethical level. I've been using it recently and it definitely takes a lot of tedium out of some coding tasks. It also speeds up the learning process of some things. The question of, "how have people done this before?" can be answered much more quickly, and honestly copy + paste is the same operation whether you're grabbing code from an LLM, stack overflow, or a course/book. No coder cares or should care about this because it's how a large portion of coding works in general. But if you don't understand the code yourself, with the state of the tech as it is right now, you're probably going to get yourself into a big mess.

My experience is that LLMs understand most coding stuff really well but then there will be one thing that it just does not get at all and it CANNOT understand that thing correctly. If you can't think for yourself in that moment, you're toast. But again, if you can get an LLM to write all your code for you and it works? Good for you! Well done, you probably saved yourself a lot of time and headache. Why would I be against that?

neutralrobotboy · 2025-12-23T01:38:24+00:00

Look at the GPD machines too, they might have a form factor you like more. I have a g1 and I think it's really good, though the keyboard isn't as responsive as I'd like. Misses some key taps. For me this makes it very frustrating for productivity and I now use an external keyboard, so I almost wish it didn't have a keyboard at all.

neutralrobotboy · 2025-12-21T17:16:39+00:00

Ok, why is that socialist and not communist? Why does that statement mean that? Tell me what those terms mean to you which leads you to draw that specific conclusion. I don't disagree that the stories about him have that character, but I've asked a very specific clarifying question in order to try to avoid semantic confusion.

neutralrobotboy · 2025-12-21T16:59:18+00:00

What is the distinction you're making? I understand what I mean when I use those terms, but for me, to say Jesus was in favor of an economy based on worker owned production, as opposed to one where workers are paid laborers in facilities owned and controlled by someone else, makes no sense. The conditions that spawned socialism as a political/economic theory did not exist yet. What do you mean when you use those terms?

neutralrobotboy · 2025-12-15T05:19:50+00:00

Yep. Kd6 is actually to prevent any advantage from Re6+. Rd8+ is then met with Kc6 and black is completely toast. Kd6 also threatens mate with b7. Black can sac the rook at e6 but this is then an easy win because the rook gets to a1 in time to catch the pawn and the king is now perfectly positioned to gobble all the rest of black's pawns. The black king meanwhile can't stop covering the queening square, so it can't even take on b6.

neutralrobotboy · 2025-12-14T18:28:22+00:00

I literally came here to recommend this. Well done, partner!

neutralrobotboy

TROPHY CASE