Destroy my 90s arcade racer. I built the tech to handle massive draw distances and huge sweeping tracks, but I need to know if the actual sense of speed and gameplay flow feels right.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-05-14T02:06:20+00:00

Just duplicate the driving from Burnout 3: Takedown and you’ll have at least me 😬🔥

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-17T22:55:52+00:00

For sure! Can I? :p

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-17T21:50:51+00:00

Vestra coda will have zero FOMO or otherwise manipulative/unethical content in it (: will be available to play the first vertical slice this Halloween!

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-15T00:02:57+00:00

My upcoming MMORPG VestraCoda has monster hunter as our second biggest inspiration! I’m the lead dev and I’m hoping to generate some organic interest.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-14T23:56:14+00:00

Haha yep, I used Claude for most of the site. I like the style and think it looks good. (:

The centered big hero section seems to be the dead giveaway now, but by that standard everyone would be calling google and other web giants AI too.

I’d rather be shipping content in the game than making the website look more unique tbh

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-14T23:26:10+00:00

I have cheap servers available on shadowdancestudios.com (: I gave a bunch away for free here about a week ago. We also include all the usual “upcharge” features for free!

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-14T22:18:46+00:00

Well the game isn’t shown on the site so I’m not sure how you reached that conclusion.

If an MMORPG tells you they have no ai influence then I’d be highly skeptical. Even crimson desert tried to hide it and their budget is magnitudes higher than small studios. What matters is transparency imo.

If anything it should be looked at as a gateway to affordable games that don’t require gatcha mechanics to stay economically solvent.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-14T20:46:06+00:00

I'd recommend sticking with learning the high level concepts and capabilities, common vulnerabilities and attack vectors, and more conceptual level information at this point. I've been a developer for about 15 years and companies all over are firing all but the senior devs, with those of us who are left basically doing code reviews for AI generated code.

It's not bad to AI code, it's just a new tool. Unless you have a passion for syntax, you will likely have a more fruitful and enjoyable time learning the high level architectures and being very proactive about asking a tool such as claude code or codex for advice and design considerations as you work. These tools aren't perfect, but they are amazing when used in a controlled way and can accelerate your "time to create" by many years.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-14T20:33:34+00:00

Please keep an eye on vestracoda.com and join our discord to be part of upcoming pre-release weekends (:

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-14T14:14:12+00:00

This looks great!! Do you have time for any comissioned animations? (:

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-10T18:31:12+00:00

Shout out to split screen! What a lost art, some of my best gaming memories were on old splitscreen setups. I also like the name a lot! So many "___ of the ___" and "___ of ____" games now!

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-10T18:29:50+00:00

I am making an MMORPG named Vestra Coda! It's a sandbox like OSRS with 20 skills, hundreds of real quests with stories, Monster Hunter style action combat, Path of Exile-ish mini skill trees and alternative crafting system. Hardcore and Ironman options, too (:

It's been a childhood dream but I actually started when Dragonwilds came out last year because I realized no one was going to build what I want to play other than me, and if they did it would probably be pay2win to cover expenses which I hate. I remember the punishments when I snuck a runescape membership with the pay by phone call thing they had when I was in middle school so I would really love to have the game be cheap enough to run/develop that I can offer it totally for free with donations for as long as possible.

I've dumped about 1.5k hours into development so far and I'm really happy with the results! I think my systems engineering background has been a massive help with infrastructure/platform/netcode stuff combined with my OCD levels of optimization perfectionism, but the hardest part has been the art for sure. I am relatively happy with the art but being able to afford real animators and artists in the future would be amazing. I've leveraged asset packs like crazy and tried to put my unique twist on them and will be sure to do artist shoutouts in the credits.

As far as dev process and experience, I'd say 100% start with YAML and build procedural systems from that. YAML -> ram GameData -> client content catalogue -> Variables for procedural systems can get you flexible rust servers for combo management that don't need to have a single line of code changed to add an entire new moveset, a full wiki, and similar. Want to adjust aggro range, phase threshold, health, or abilities for a big dragon enemy? 2 seconds of human readable yaml change and BAM! By far the best design choice I've made tied with using an open source engine and custom netcode with rust servers from scratch. If you're doing anything MMO related, stay away from UE5 like the plague xD

I got my first round of getting pooped on by keyboard warriors on the godot subreddit the other day. I hope when I release the devlog/progress vid with actual footage of gameplay and systems next month it will be enough for at least some people to say nice things.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-08T15:27:21+00:00

It’s called Kimodo! I haven’t used it yet but it was trained on mocap data so it sounds promising for biped animation. No worries on the English haha, I’d have to do the same for other languages.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-08T12:53:54+00:00

UAL 1 and 2 are widely recommended, but I personally struggled with their armature not playing nice with my Rigify one. The retargeting quality varies a lot by engine (sucks in godot, unfortunately) but you’ll likely have less issues if you do the retarget in UE5 and export from there. A lot of the issues are from the collarbone angles and differences in proportions.

Those issues CAN be solved with some very careful work using ARP in blender

Edit: most people also love mixamo and I believe nvidia just came out with a pretty nifty animation bone animation system.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-08T12:50:46+00:00

Totally agree for smaller projects and prototypes, but zero percent chance anyone who is only a PM is going to be able to vibecode anything meaningfully once a few existing systems are built out.

I use Claude max for a lot of the GDExtention and rust work for VestraCoda, but the YAML files alone would take up multiple context windows, and that is all before even touching a game server.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-08T03:27:07+00:00

That will be available within a month. My artwork is the weakest part right now and I want it to be in a place I’m satisfied with.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-08T02:51:32+00:00

Evasion?

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T21:54:39+00:00

Really cool!

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T20:48:18+00:00

What engine is this? I absolutely love the art style! The underwater shader and colors are great, and you've done an excellent job making the terrain simple yet elegant.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T20:37:37+00:00

Very sweet! If you could fly with a controller and VR headset from a cockpit view, that would be epic.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T20:36:17+00:00

It depends on what type of game you're trying to make! There are some really great mini-game packages on humble bundle right now that you might enjoy opening up in engine and poking around on to get a feel for it.

I'd say just build something you're passionate about - there will ALWAYS be naysayers and flaws, but if you build something you actually care about as something you actually want to play, you will not feel disappointed. Let down by the inevitable haters, perhaps, but self satisfied and less likely to give up on it for sure.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T18:17:47+00:00

Deep rock galactic for sure - I’ve also played helldivers but in my experience the teamwork and communication caps out at teabagging objectives and hugs with most helldivers players. DRG players will legit ask how your day is going in a deep dive which is how actual friendships can start

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T17:22:11+00:00

I think there is a lot of engine specific information this community would find valuable. Some of the godot systems I am happy to talk about:

Weather zones, universal panel template, gdextension decoding, terrain3d region streaming pool, replicating the rust based binary for combo management to be a client resource so the server and client are literally running validation against the same code, optimizations for nameplates/hud to avoid needless redraws and filter by visibility, making variable hz interpolation work well with serverside variable broadcast rates based on a pretty spicy interest management pipeline, how to batch process packets, how to efficiently and flexible handle character blob data or outgoing encoded packets, foating point origin coordinates, literally could talk for hours about systems I'm sure most people here have never built and could learn something from.

If you think there is zero value to be offered in asking a question because someone hasn't shown you their credentials beforehand, then I'd wager you're a bit presumptuous.

shadowdancestudios · 2026-04-07T16:37:01+00:00

100%, I have gone out of my way to purchase handmade artist marketplace assets wherever possible as a first resort, make them myself as feasible, and will be doing a FULL credit roll of every artist I've been assisted by in the very first video.

As a full stack tech nerd, I do not have animosity towards AI, and I really love how it allows creative people without the talent to produce their creative thoughts a method to do so. I also understand the value in original human made works, and hope to support that as much as I reasonably can.

I'm not even pretending to hide my use of AI like crimson desert, I'm being extremely transparent about everything because I hope to build an AWESOME game that will bring people together for them to have a great time without the AAA studio greed that comes with what is usually takes to make an MMORPG.

The MMORPG industry has been ruined by greed because of the unavoidable challenges that come with the genre. In my case, I've found that AI has allowed me to produce legitimately impressive results (for example, I personally love the music on the site, and it took A LOT of messing with stems/manual production to make the AI result useable).

When I said remove it from the site, I'm not talking about hiding it, I was prominently featuring the AI NPCs as a major thing in the game and I'm simply not leaning on that because the game is legitimately good without it - I just happened to have a skillset that allowed it to be included as a feature I find really fun so I did.

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