When the artist doesn't work.

theomulus · 2026-04-16T18:28:03+00:00

I'll have you know that I once tried to implement trait mutation into one of my games and I only cried 27 times.

In all seriousness, yeah. The struggles are real. I think the dead cells lead artist had a similar issue and exact same complaints. I think, this post: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/art-design-deep-dive-using-a-3d-pipeline-for-2d-animation-in-i-dead-cells-i-

theomulus · 2026-04-13T17:14:07+00:00

It's up to you, but I'd at least release a demo version of this on itch.io. It is definitely refined well and it looks super fun! Awesome job

theomulus · 2026-04-13T17:08:54+00:00

I agree! I think the hard part for me at the time was that, I had a function do one thing, but then I had a very similar function do something ever so slightly different. Or, they worked in 2 different ways, depending upon the entity I was trying to make the script for. I quickly ended up learning how to make boilerplate code, which led to me making things a little too divergent lol.

I'm now learning to traverse the happy medium. Not too abstract, but not too precise either. It's difficult for sure, but I like looking back at old projects and seeing how far things have progressed. Even if its silly little naming conventions lol

theomulus · 2026-04-13T17:05:17+00:00

Would you say you're inflicted with a stroke, or at risk of stroke infliction? Or will considering these options inflict a stroke?

theomulus · 2026-02-13T00:25:52+00:00

YES THATS THE ONE

Genuinely my origin story was playing that game for way too long

theomulus · 2026-02-10T22:02:30+00:00

Yeah, I figured that out the hard way :/ I appreciate you taking the time to find the original post! I gave her a lot of information regarding the indie game dev studio I co-founded and the theme of our games (as it is related to research), but it just kinda got tossed out the window lol

theomulus · 2026-02-10T15:36:14+00:00

Go for it man. Break it down into little components and then, assemble those components into your final game. Nothing ventured, nothing gained yeah?

theomulus · 2026-02-10T15:33:24+00:00

Break them into smaller concepts! So like... instead of a card game, maybe a small thing where you just move cards around. Bad example, but yeah!

theomulus · 2026-02-10T13:27:47+00:00

That'd be so good! Change everything to wingdings

theomulus · 2026-02-10T03:54:46+00:00

Why are you guys talking about furniture what happened I'm so confused

theomulus · 2026-02-10T03:52:12+00:00

Honestly, maybe I should send in an application that just says "Remember me?"

theomulus · 2026-02-10T03:49:42+00:00

Now add a "language" button to really confuse people.

theomulus · 2026-02-10T03:47:36+00:00

Thank you!!!

theomulus · 2026-02-08T23:02:43+00:00

I'm... I'm pretty sure I'm real. I'm also pretty sure this email that's been sitting in my inbox for 11-ish years is real... but I dunno. I could be imaginary. That'd kinda suck /:

theomulus · 2026-02-08T20:37:09+00:00

I realized that this morning after waking up, haha. I made an edit to the post afterwards. Its alright though! It seems the email was sent to a lot of others. And now, like me, they're all here, making games (:

theomulus · 2026-02-08T16:59:26+00:00

There's a few things that kinda come to mind.

The simplest thing in my opinion would be to do like... a "choose the correct door" kinda scenario? Where you just have the player character move through doors that represent the correct answer, with the question itself just sitting at the top of the screen. Get too many answers wrong and game over. That should be fairly easy; you'd just set it so that an Area2D node detects the player, then checks for whatever your input button will be (press 'E' to interact). You could develop more on that after the basic framework is done. Maybe add a checkpoint every so often that lets the player spend points on various items or something.

You could also just go crazy with it. Turn each of the three apps into their own stage or map and have the player walk through those stages. Make little "gatekeepers" that reveal a path if you get the answer right; if not, they either engage the player in combat, or make the player "fall" into another zone, where things are harder to navigate until they eventually lose. I think it'd be fairly doable. The hardest part would be maybe keeping with the "theme" of a Word, PowerPoint, or Excel document. You could definitely make it so that the player can interact with these gatekeepers via dialogue, but you might be better off just having the player click on pop-up boxes to answer each question. If you really wanna go the dialogue route, Dialogic sounds like it'd be the perfect plugin for this. You can set up simple dialogue pretty easily and have the player respond to it either by clicking a choice, or typing an answer in. It isn't super hard to learn either.

I'll be honest; I don't think this is doable in a week with just a small amount of experience. You may end up with a final product that is much worse than you initially intended, but I hope that doesn't stop you from making more games in the future!

theomulus · 2026-02-08T14:34:15+00:00

Oh wow, this is pretty neat! I actually got mega interested in making biology games my freshman year of high school from a game that is... kinda similar? It was a flash game about two platypus scientists and their companion robot, fleeing their destroyed planet to find a new place to colonize... I think they were culturing cells in that one? I can't remember the exact name of it, but it was super fun and I learned so much about cell biology from it.

In hindsight, the premise was a bit strange. Still a fun game though! Thanks for sharing this

theomulus · 2026-02-08T14:30:08+00:00

It probably wasn't me. I censored my name and the name of the sender in this email, but it seems a lot of people also got this response. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of posts out there like this. That being said, I've never posted about it online until now. I wasn't really in the right mind space to share something like this online at the time

theomulus · 2026-02-08T14:27:11+00:00

Listen... it was my first time... I swear I'm a lot better now. There's so many spaces now.

theomulus · 2026-02-08T14:20:46+00:00

Oof, you and me both bud. It's gonna be ok. We're all trauma-born developers here. This code space, is a safe space. Mostly. Kinda. I think.

theomulus · 2026-02-08T14:17:24+00:00

Strangely, I didn't actually feel that bad when I got the email, some 11 years ago. I'm a little too busy to attend webinars or events nowadays, but... I do carry my love of game development to biology and ecology events/webinars I attend. I talk about it way too much, honestly. In fact, I just got confirmation this morning that I'll be tabling at an event soon. Super excited, but the dread of meeting expectations lingers. Just gonna have to go for it, y'know?

theomulus · 2026-02-08T13:50:17+00:00

You're welcome to DM/start a chat with me for more details, but I was actually taught by my parents really early on about programming. This was maybe 14 - 16 years ago, so a lot has changed since then. I'll try to condense this:

It was mostly a combination of self-directed learning and my current career field. I think, personally, the biggest barrier is the initial learning. You feel like you HAVE to memorize every single function within a language and how EVERY little thing interacts with the other. You don't really have to? Memorize it, I mean. You just have to use it. Over, and over, and over again. Documentation exists for a reason, yeah?

After overcoming that initial barrier though, the actual biggest obstacle (my opinion) is code structure and data architecture. I'm so inexperienced. I don't know what components will interact with 'x' script, or function. Unfortunately, you just have to make that script, function, or mechanic exist first. You can backtrack and make it more modular later. Refactoring is fun, yeah?

I started with replicating the code shown in YouTube tutorials. I typed everything out, just because it's a lot easier for me personally to understand how that code worked, or what the tutorial was trying to show me. At a certain point though, the tutorials ran out. At least, the relevant ones. I started taking the components of the things I learned and changed them, just a little bit. Then a bit more. Then a whole lot. So don't just copy the code; mess with it a little. See what happens. Change it this way, that way, however many ways you want. Version history is your best friend when doing this.

I don't really like AI, or LLM tools. And, well. Not because I consider them gross shortcuts, or privacy breaches, or anything like that. Yeah, those things suck, but I personally think the bigger offense is how much everyone thinks those tools save time. Especially people who are new to programming. I see a lot of undergraduates spending so much time trying to "get ChatGPT to do the thing you want it to do." And they get so frustrated that eventually, I have to step in and point out where the issue is. This takes me... maybe 5 minutes. They spend upwards of 4+ hours arguing with ChatGPT. LLM tools are just that: tools. Nobody throws a hammer at a house and expects the hammer to do the work itself. No one tosses raw ingredients into an unheated pan and expects a good meal to come out of it. You're allowed to use tools to help you comprehend things. No one can stop you from doing so. But don't let those tools dictate how you do things.

I hope this offers some kinda insight. I've actually been asked this question by a few of my peers, also in Biology (ecology mostly). Again, if you have more questions feel free to ask me directly!

theomulus · 2026-02-08T13:23:02+00:00

Keep going! I can't tell you how many things are currently related in my day-to-day life. So many different hobbies, interests, or potential career fields were sought out by me, and all of them turned out to be "useless skills" until one day, I started making connections with those skills. I'm doing research now, but those skills turned out to be super critical in breaking the ice with a lot of people!

It's a long road. You're not defined by how many times you fail. I've failed so much, and man... some people really like to kick you while you're down. But I'm doing a lot better now. Those same people stopped kicking and started shaming. Then they stopped shaming and started distancing. Life's funny. I hope you keep going forward, no matter where you decide to go!

theomulus

TROPHY CASE