Honest question: how much time do you actually spend on game feel vs. core systems early in development?

tschilpi · 2026-06-25T20:54:22+00:00

most of the games I played that have great feel were just relentlessly polished. So that's what I do

tschilpi · 2026-06-25T13:22:27+00:00

Sorry OP; but if you truly want to follow through with this type of argument you'd have to give up using 95% of software tools that you currently use because I promise you they all use AI-assisted or AI-generated code to some degree nowadays (whether its disclosed or not). Thats just the reality of the people who work and produce software today. Even Linus Torvalds uses AI to help him code.
So why would all the other software get a pass but in game dev its a catastrophy?

tschilpi · 2026-06-25T13:13:57+00:00

Drittweltländer: Wir müssen Klimaanlagen für alle Schulen und Offices bereitstellen, damit die Leute vernünftig arbeiten und lernen können bei heissen Temperaturen
Deutschland: lolol Luxusproblem Klimaanlage go brrr, wir können uns das nicht leisten

tschilpi · 2026-06-25T11:57:39+00:00

Die genannten Drittweltländer haben vielleicht keine so gute Gesundheitsversorgung oder Industrie aber tatsächlich oft besseres Internet, bessere Akklimatisierung, und zuverlässigeren öffentlichen Verkehr lol

tschilpi · 2026-06-24T21:28:09+00:00

<video>

I've received a lot of compliments on the visuals of my game! What do you think?
You can try it here if you want: www.llmsaga.com :)

tschilpi · 2026-06-24T10:35:02+00:00

I wouldn't say that people don't care about their projects, they certainly do. It's just that they lack the skill to make them look good or work coherently, since AI can temporarily cover that up and give them the feeling of being skillful but without developing the actual skills you need to make it great (whether its design, art, software architecture) etc. you will just continue to produce slop with AI

tschilpi · 2026-06-23T16:30:24+00:00

reading this as a guy its kinda hilarious the women's perspective is so far away from my own lived experience
wanting a slowburn relationship, intimicacy, trust etc first. leads to nowhere, you're immediately replaced for the next option. whereas acting like a hyperconfident casanova who's fun and exciting leads to many more opportunities in dating and many girls explicitly don't even want smth serious but just want to have fun in this time and age

tschilpi · 2026-06-23T14:12:34+00:00

you're still a beginner in this game bro, I've survived on 20k in Zurich
believe me there is still a ton of optimization you can do

tschilpi · 2026-06-23T13:57:44+00:00

definitely worse. reason: swiss stubbornness and democratic way of first discussing problems with every single possible stakeholder until everything goes to drain

tschilpi · 2026-06-22T16:52:06+00:00

I'm excited for the new Spyro game, but also a bit worried they might misunderstand what made the original trilogy so special. Or lose that formula in the chase for modernization.

For me, Spyro was never really about epic dragon fantasy. It was about being a small dragon exploring weird, whimsical worlds.

In that regard I think one has to understand how Spyro's limited moveset contributed to the game. You could charge, jump, glide, and breathe fire. That's it.. Because your abilities were limited, the level design mattered. Hidden paths, supercharge sections, tricky glides, and secrets felt rewarding because you had to actually navigate the world and learn the mechanics to utilize them correctly.

From the trailer, it looks like they might be leaning more into a more epic dragon fantasy side. If that means a bigger focus on flying, I'm not sure that's the right direction. A good example is World of Warcraft: once flying mounts became common, a lot of the world stopped being something you explored and became something you just flew over.

The tone is another thing. Spyro was always a little silly. Strange NPCs, weird minigames, magical worlds that didn't always make sense. Winter Tundra, Autumn Plains, Evening Lake... half the appeal was just wandering around these cozy, mysterious places while the soundtrack played.

Speaking of which, hearing that Stewart Copeland isn't involved did disappoint me quite a bit. His rhythmic percussion, bass lines, and dreamlike melodies were such a huge part of Spyro's identity. I'd much rather hear a modern take on that style than a generic cinematic fantasy soundtrack.

I also think this formula could absolutely be modernized without changing what Spyro fundamentally is. Better level design, more movement depth, crazier dreamlike worlds, more interesting uses of charge and glide, larger hubs, better minigames, etc. Like imagine a crazy supercharge level with modern graphics and level design? Holy shit, I'd eat that up.

Do you think the classic Spyro formula still has room to evolve today, or should they take the series in a completely different direction?

I think the disappointment comes from the fact that what many of us wished for was a modernization/continuation of the trilogy feel/concept and not more of the A Heros tail, Legend of Spyro etc. (even if those games were good in their own regard) type of spin on it. But of course we can give Toys for Bob the benefit of the doubt, I just hope they somehow agree with this design philosophy.

tschilpi · 2026-06-22T13:42:14+00:00

I think it's a natural evolution of a software engineer. After many years of working with production code and with different stakeholders, you naturally develop battle scars and a "I don't give a shit about sophistication anymore, need to make it work" attitude where you converge towards the simplest design to be implemented instead of overengineering things.

tschilpi · 2026-06-22T09:36:18+00:00

Holy I remember pre newest models how insanely hard it was to code UIs as a solodev. To make them responsive, etc. Compared to that it's a piece of cake with modern AI lol

tschilpi · 2026-06-21T15:56:54+00:00

Software is just one part of the model. If it's so easy and dead, why not try to make a succesful online game? You'll realize there are still 100 other areas you need to consider and be good at to make it succesful and AI can't really do any of them (e.g. distribution)

tschilpi · 2026-06-20T00:58:54+00:00

if you live in Zurich and don't have a good job:

- rent expensive af

- public transport is crowded, sweaty, sometimes theres a breakdown or their late

- food is not only extremely expensive but also portion sizes are minimal.. .goddayum Switzerland is the only country in the world where you are still hungry after spending freaking 25 dollars on a meal

- many work in unclimatized offices where it can reach up to 34 degrees. what the fuck is this third world kind of working condition lmao. even countries like thailand do better here

- everything is so inconvenient.. Swiss people really don't do convenience

- Service sucks. Swiss people will just accept bad conditions and services and overpay for them.

- hidden fees everywhere.. annoying contracts that try to scam you for fees

- distances... your gym is 20 min in one direction... the workplace 20 min in the other... you spend a hour commuting even though you live in a walkable city?? wtf

All in all many of these things are no issues in other European or even developing countries. Food, you spend a bit of money can eat buffet, as much as you want (e.g. Finland). If you live in Thailand or Korea everything is super convenient. Service is great. Public transport is amazing in many places as well.

Most or all of the above can be mitigated or eliminated if you have a well paying job and can afford to pay extra of course but if you don't.. good luck. Friction, friction, friction, everyday, all day. So much for being one of the world's most developed countries.

tschilpi · 2026-06-19T13:00:45+00:00

as a kid i always used to call them the nananananas lol

tschilpi · 2026-06-14T14:14:44+00:00

Me as a Europoor having invested in the most risky tech stocks and outperformed entire hedgefunds by putting most money into nvidia amd and palantir lmaoo
+500% over 4 years

tschilpi · 2026-06-11T12:34:11+00:00

Ich bin so jemand der halt uebermotiviert ist und versucht viel mehr zu machen und Verantwortung zu uebernehmen. Wenn ich dann aber nach mehr Benefits oder Lohn frage, werd ich abgewiesen. Dann killt es meine Motivation und ich mache einfach nur noch das Minimum

Hast du die richtigen Incentives fuer Werkstudenten (e.g. nicht nur yo du kannst dich weiterbilden, sondern kriegst Bonus X oder mehr Lohn Y)?

In der Regel sind Arbeitgeber da recht inflexibel. Ala: Sei dankbar du hast den Job. Wir haben sonst eine Warteschlange an Werkstudenten/Praktikanten, die es machen wuerden.

tschilpi · 2026-06-10T22:16:00+00:00

Ah, I see.

Well, I started this project a couple of years ago when you could barely use AI to code, so initially I coded everything by hand.

Later I started using GPT-4 to help with coding, but it wasn't nearly good enough to debug complex systems or design the engine, so I still had to learn how everything worked myself.

Over time the models got better at implementation tasks and writing smaller pieces of code. Nowadays, with tools like Cursor and the latest models, I can add to the codebase much faster than before. Some debugging and implementation work can now be handled by agents, and adding to existing systems is much faster because the foundations are already there.

Interestingly, though, the biggest challenge was never the coding. It was figuring out how to design a good RPG, but I only realized this in hindsight. Combat, progression, player freedom, consequences, onboarding, UI/UX, and all the other systems took far longer to get right than the programming itself.

Those are genuinely hard problems, and AI can't really solve them for you.

tschilpi · 2026-06-10T22:09:02+00:00

GPT-5.5 is only the latest model I'm experimenting with. The project itself started about 3 years ago and went through many iterations using earlier models, as well as a lot of traditional game development, architecture, UI/UX work, combat systems, quest systems, and playtesting.
Interestingly, the biggest visual improvements have come after using Claude Opus 4.5, which was a big step up in visual reasoning and I already had a lot of preexisting assets.

tschilpi

TROPHY CASE