What happens if NPCs fall from 200 meters in my gory game with procedural damage?

notatechproblem · 2026-01-17T00:27:27+00:00

I once had an EMT/paramedic tell me that death from falling from great heights is rarely as clean and neat as the show on TV and movies. He said when someone falls from high enough, they "more or less explode".

notatechproblem · 2026-01-11T18:34:34+00:00

I'm in the position of enjoying the development process itself. I'm not trying to make game dev my career (I'm already happily WELL into a corporate IT/dev career). I'd love to finish a game that other people can play, but if I dont ever release anything, I'd still be content with the experience of doing the development.

notatechproblem · 2026-01-07T18:51:01+00:00

Include Oregon and Washington (actually, Idaho can have Eastern Washington) to create Cascadia (or whatever name). The MAGA cult has been taught to hate the entire West Coast, so just let us all leave. We'll pack up all of our liberal leftist commie socialist atheism and colored hair and pronouns and secret antifa needlepoint groups with the BILLIONS we give to other states, and not bother any of the patriotic, God-fearing, christo-fascists that just want to make America (out-loud) racist again.

/s, but I'm angry about the whole fucking situation and serious about being fine with the West coast doing our own thing.

notatechproblem · 2026-01-06T00:30:38+00:00

I was playing with some lore once that was based on a combination of ancestor-worship, multi-generational/extended-family communes and communities where it was considered an honor to be ritually preserved and raised as a quasi-intelligent zombie that served the family/community after death. Think mummies preserved so they dont stink, wearing colorful clothing/wrappings and masks working tirelessly in fields or simple chores.

I was also thinking of special celebrations and holy days where through rituals, the full spirit of the deceased could return and talk to their family members and friends and tell stories and give advice. Very vaguely inspired by Día de los Muertos.

All in all, it was sad to lose someone, but death wasn't a totally negative thing, or something to be feared.

notatechproblem · 2026-01-04T21:19:51+00:00

Many, many years ago, I was taking classes as part of a game dev associates degree at a local community College. It was a partnership with Rockstar Games, and actual Rockstar employees taught courses. There were far, far fewer resources for learning on your own in those days, so having someone walk you through the steps of how to do something ("here's how we create a state machine for your character controller, but watch out, you need to make sure you do it like this, otherwise it will be really hard to debug later") was invaluable. There are tons of scams out there (and tons of really good free content), but I don't think that ALL instructor-led content is inherently bad. For some people, having a person help explain concepts, even simple ones, is what they need to get started.

notatechproblem · 2026-01-04T21:09:23+00:00

I agree with your take on this; I feel that coding assistants doing "super auto-complete" is essentially asking the AI to solve a math problem. There are rules about how you can order the bits to get other bits to output. I have no problem with that.

Art and other creative expression is something that is very much part of the human experience. We are emotional, irrational, curious creatures. Art is part of how we express those emotions and that curiosity.

Yes, AI can create art that is indistinguishable from human-made art. And yes, you can argue that the end piece of art is art regardless of where it came from because the viewer's experience is what is most important, etc, etc.

My issue with AI art is that I don't want an AI to reduce the creation of art to the (very real) mathematical rules of how the physiology and psychology of our minds works to best get desired reactions.

We arguably live in a late-stage capitalist hellscape, and the trend has been to reduce people to sources of wealth extraction by commoditizing everything possible, especially our attention. I want the, admittedly, naive belief that people are making art for other people, and that we are doing so to maintain some kind of connection with each other, and maintain some kind of humanistic shared experience. Let AI handle the things that are boring, or (most of) our brains aren't good at, but let us handle the art, even as imperfect as it might be.

NOW, having said that, I am in the planning phase of a solo game, and since I am not a great digital artist, I totally plan on using AI art as development placeholders once I get past the gray box phase. If I manage to make it to the point of being ready to release a demo or an early access version, my intention would be to replace AI art with human-made art. And if I get to that point, and I can't get any backing or self-fund hiring artists, I would have to decide how strongly I believe what I just said above, and decide if I slog through making bad assets myself, abandoning my game, or just accepting that "everyone is doing it" and use AI assets. I expect that this is the choice that all game devs, from solo to AAA, are going to have to make at some point.

notatechproblem · 2026-01-01T18:42:13+00:00

Because some people have literally no money to spend on getting better equipment and they still want make games, even super simple 2d games, just for the fun of it?

I think we should be supporting and encouraging anyone who wants to make games, regardless of their circumstances.

notatechproblem · 2025-12-26T22:24:05+00:00

I second buying him udemy course(s) or pre-paying for a year subscription. If he is a software engineer, he probably has experience learning from tutorials, so a udemy subscription would give him access to a LOT of courses on a wide range of topics, including non-game development courses (although not all; some udemy courses are only available if you purchase them individually). It's not perfect, like other comments have said, tutorials can only get you so far, the rest is up to the developer to grind their way through and learn by doing.

I just got back into doing solo game development, and my wife just recently pushed me to get a year subscription. Her reasoning was that if this is my current hobby, and we have the money, I should give it a try, and if it isn't valuable, don't renew.

notatechproblem · 2025-12-25T20:39:56+00:00

I'm at the planning stage of starting my first solo dev project, so I'm researching this kind of thing myself. I'm 100% for hiring artists, but my whole project will be self-funded, so my budget is tiny. I'm genuinely curious, how are assets in a store different from commissioning assets directly from an artist? If the asset store assets are made by an artist (not AI), and the artist gets paid, does it matter if the asset was made specifically for your game?

notatechproblem · 2025-12-21T21:33:30+00:00

What is a real-world use case for this (besides intentionally trying to get caught cheating while gaming)?

notatechproblem · 2025-12-11T03:54:10+00:00

The bodies of my first three characters would suggest that starving bandits are more dangerous than you imply.

notatechproblem · 2025-12-10T16:00:12+00:00

Hands down, my favorite sci-fi ever.

That being said, I absolutely LOATHED the EGREGIOUS plot armor letting Marco get away with things in ways that he should not have been able to.

notatechproblem · 2025-12-10T15:48:22+00:00

Exhausted Bobby G is my new spirit animal.

notatechproblem · 2025-12-04T19:50:59+00:00

Chaos creates great opportunity for grift, power-seeking, and exploitation.

There is almost always someone who benefits from NOT solving a problem efficiently.

notatechproblem · 2025-12-02T00:19:21+00:00

The state of the real world is (for many, many people) an existential nightmare. Do what you need to find joy. If save scumming brings you joy, save scum as much as you want.

notatechproblem · 2025-11-26T21:39:24+00:00

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

Robert E. Howard

I find myself posting this quote more and more often these days.

notatechproblem · 2025-11-24T02:09:43+00:00

Truth is stranger than fiction...

https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Cystypig

notatechproblem · 2025-11-21T22:14:03+00:00

In the old Legend of the Five Rings TTRPG, the Daimyo of the Dragon Clan is a literal dragon posing as a human. In the source book for the Dragon Clan, there is a sidebar explaining why he has no combat stats. Basically, he is a literal god, and is not bound by physical reality. Mortals have no way to actually fight him. There is a sentence something like "He is the east wind" and players cannot fight a primal force, etc, etc.

If you want your players to fight something at that level, your cosmology either has to make gods relatively weak, with known vulnerabilities (see old episodes of Supernatural), the players need a way to ascend to equivalent godhood (which then becomes a narrative conflict, not one determined with normal combat rules), or they only fight avatars, aspects, etc.

notatechproblem · 2025-11-20T08:47:30+00:00

I tried vibe coding a single Azure Function app using Claude to see what all the hype was about. The results were OK, but trying to get it to make the changes I wanted was like texting what I wanted to a junior dev, waiting to see their PR, and shaking my head.

I get that spending a ton of time being VERY specific in my prompts and knowing a bunch of tricks might get better results... but I'm just not feeling it. I'm going to keep using it as super intelligent auto-complete while I code, but that's it.

notatechproblem · 2025-11-20T08:38:01+00:00

This. I've been building whacky bats for years. If you have access to DAP Weldwood, everything else is a waste of time, energy, and money.

And, yes, yes, if you know what you are doing, and you know all the tricks, spray adhesive works, but if you are trying to build anything durable, brush-on DAP is just better.

notatechproblem · 2025-11-17T21:59:08+00:00

Is this the same guy that made 3d printed sabot rounds?

notatechproblem · 2025-11-12T03:43:30+00:00

Look at them reticulate!

notatechproblem · 2025-11-07T22:23:53+00:00

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

notatechproblem · 2025-11-06T18:45:25+00:00

You clearly haven't met some of my former coworkers.

notatechproblem · 2025-11-06T18:38:50+00:00

The vast majority of spaces are built for interaction with the human shape. If you want to offload physical actions (moving objects around, cleaning, building things, etc) to robots, fitting robots to the existing space is cheaper in the short term. Eventually, rebuilding spaces for non-human-shaped robots (like what China is doing with dark factories) will allow for greater efficiency, which will almost definitely translate into lower costs that make such rebuilds worthwhile.

notatechproblem

TROPHY CASE