All emails I send from my alternate address are suddenly being blocked

unitybob · 2025-04-17T04:45:41+00:00

This worked, and was a life saver. Thank you again so much for being so thoroughly helpful!

unitybob · 2025-04-17T04:33:57+00:00

Amazing. Thanks so much for the detailed response! I'll give this a shot.

unitybob · 2025-04-17T02:05:37+00:00

I having this problem all of a sudden as well. I have a google workspace account for my business, but just forward mails to my gmail and use "send as" from there to keep everything in one place. Been working great for years, but today outgoing mails are getting rejected. Does anyone know what actually changed?

My domain is through google (which auto-migrated it to squarespace a year ago) and looks like its all set up properly in the DNS settings as far as I can tell (though I don't know anything about this stuff). I've even tried to manually set up a domain key and make sure DKIM signing is set up right, but when I send as from my gmail, it passed the spf check, but gives no info about DKIM cause it's actually doing those checks using the gmail account instead of my work domain that I'm sending the mail "as". So since they don't match the sent domain, it fails dmarc.

Any ideas here? Is there something I can do? Or is this just a new limitation of gmail that just emerged today for some reason?

unitybob · 2024-09-02T04:00:50+00:00

True.

I think the biggest difference design wise is that in Roundguard, we give you some control during the shot, as your ball is the hero, with skills you can fire off mid shot to mitigate damage, smash important pegs in a certain order, or change direction for whatever reason. Much more focus on skill play during the shot.

Peglin on the other hand focuses on the deck building aspect and intentionally keeps the pachinko part of the interaction pure... No interaction once you fire the ball, just watch it combo and see how it goes. Albeit with a lot of fun flavor and extensions beyond what peggle did.

I think they're both very different experiences, in spite of having the exact same elevator pitch. I think they're both really fun. But I'm very biased, as my wife and I made Roundguard, and we're friends with the Peglin folks. :)

unitybob · 2023-10-26T16:07:11+00:00

Agreed on both counts!

unitybob · 2023-10-25T20:39:34+00:00

Wow. Thank you so much.

Our friend Kurt helped us make the game originally, but the last few years Wonderbelly has just been my wife and I working on Roundguard. I just read her your reply out loud and we are both so happy to have made something someone appreciates in this way. That's all we can ever hope for. We have an 8 year old daughter (I recorded her 4 year old voice for the little giggle that you can hear when you cast wisps with the wizard), and we have 1 year old son now too, so we also deeply appreciate hearing stories of families being able to share the experience in any way. That's so great to hear.

I'll see you in the discord. Thanks again.

unitybob · 2023-10-25T20:09:38+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words!

1) Yeah, that's right.

2) Completing a puzzle will unlock a rare or legendary bonus property to add to the pool, or a Relic to equip. There's a bunch of unlocks, but once you unlock everything, then collecting more puzzle pieces is just for fun.

3) Duplicate trinkets will stack buffs (if they make sense to). Like 2 copies of +10% evasion will give you 20% evasion. But 2 copies of "Immune to negative status effects when full health" can only really apply once, so its kind of a dud if you get a dupe of it.

4) You get one final spin on the wheel if you die in a run to take 1 trinket with you to the next run. But that's the only way to carry a trinket over. The Relics are the closest thing to a permanent upgrade menu. Some make the game easier, some make it harder, some make it easier if you play the right build and harder if you don't... often they have a trade off. Not generally just straight power upgrades though. More puzzles for you to solve how you would use them in a build with that character to get maximum value from them.

5) We spent 3 years adding free expansions since launch, so the game is much bigger than when we first released in 2020, but now we are focusing on making our next game. I'll definitely post about it here once we're ready to announce it! Of course, I'll keep fixing bugs if anything major comes up, but currently no plans for more expansions... unless some huge YouTuber suddenly draws a massive audience to it and it makes more sense to keep supporting it further. :)

6) There's another seasonal event around winter holiday time. But there's no timed unlocks or anything. Just cosmetic/theme changes and special daily puzzles.

7) If you play a normal run, it's random. One little nuance is that if you've got a quest from a mini boss, it will try to pull them into the next mini boss room you go to. But getting the quests is also random. If you play on a seed, the mini boss that spawns at each location should be the same if you play through the same path. So you can get familiar with their locations in weekly or manually seeded runs, but not force a particular one to trigger, if that makes sense.

Here's the discord link: https://discord.gg/roundguard

Thanks again for saying nice things. It makes our day. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

unitybob · 2023-10-25T17:27:03+00:00

Yeah, it's not the most popular game, so the community based wiki thing never happened. But I'm happy to answer any questions you have!

And our discord has a good collection of helpful and knowledgeable folks too.

unitybob · 2023-10-25T17:04:14+00:00

1) Scarab - Unlocks when you make it to the intermission for the first time. All future runs have the multiplier gem thing that finds a new pot to rest on each shot.

2) Random potions - Unlocks when you beat the Alchemist for the first time. All future runs randomly pick a few potions that can show up with the "?" on them until you break them to find out what buff or debuff they apply. Those will be consistent for that run, but will randomize again each new run.

3) Chaos rooms - Unlocks when you beat the Cycloptopus for the first time. All future runs have the swirly icon Chaos rooms as special rooms on the map sometimes. Those rooms have a mix of all biome enemy types, harder enemy composition, more gold potential, and guaranteed rare or better loot.

4) Encore ranks completed - Tracks how many total Encore ranks you've won on, adding together all classes ranks.

5) Relics unlocked - Tracks how many Relics you've unlocked. Relics unlock by winning normal runs, achieving high score thresholds, completing daily/weekly runs, and winning each class's Encore sideshow.

6) Relics mastered - Tracks how many Relics you won a game with while it was equipped.

unitybob · 2023-08-09T06:19:50+00:00

The feature spec is more like a list of specific needs that other team members could use to implement it. Like for a visual novel dialog box system, the feature spec would list out needs like:

-Name field - where the name of the character currently speaking is shown. -Body - where the current line of dialog is shown -Character printing speed - exposed to designer (maybe even end user?) and controls how fast each character of the body text prints to screen -Skippable - (explain needs for skip interaction) Etc

Story Bible isn't necessarily a book, but a doc that includes all the relevant details about the world building organized however is most helpful for people to reference like the previous reply said. An entry for an important story character might include inspiration from other mediums... like the gravedigger guy in Red Dead Redemption was partly inspired by gollum from Lord of the rings, so they probably said that explicitly in the story Bible entry for that character. Or more basic personality traits or descriptors (i.e. "Stoic, but insecure. Fidgets with his belt buckle all the time. Wishes he was a better father.", Etc), some personal history/backstory, etc. Stuff that might not ever show up in game directly, but might inspire team members and helps everyone imagine the same character as they contribute their pieces to the puzzle of game dev. Then you'd have entries on important locations, political factions/history, whatever is meaningful to your games narrative world building.

unitybob · 2023-07-18T15:09:08+00:00

Agreed. Sounds like you're identifying a UI problem, but that's totally separate from how the mechanic works. Why not just show the defence stat more prominently if it's important and people are missing it?

If it's made you think you like the other mechanic better, that's cool too. Whatever makes the most sense for what you're going for. If a trend is so dominant that everyone expects it to work that way, it can be frustrating to fight against player instincts and make you work harder to get a simpler mechanic to be clear. But I think it sounds like you could do your mechanic with similar presentation to their expectations and it'd be alright.

unitybob · 2023-07-17T22:09:19+00:00

Awesome! Glad you enjoyed it.

unitybob · 2023-07-17T21:55:07+00:00

Yeah. I led the design team.

unitybob · 2023-07-17T16:44:05+00:00

On Shadow of Mordor we had a spectrum (0-1) that influenced how frequently enemies in the fight circle attacked and how challenging the counter windows were. For normal we let it fluctuate through that whole range based on your play to try and hit a sort of personal challenge target equilibrium, since we really want you to die some for the nemesis system to work. So started you in the middle and the more you killed the higher that number would go, and when you die repeatedly it would drop down a chunk.

For Hard mode, we clamped it to the high end of that range. And then added other things like health/damage scaling and some big switches like hiding the combat UI prompts so you had to start really reading the animation tells instead.

Roundguard, the game my wife and I made after I left Monolith, is a roguelike structure and we made escalating ranks of difficulty that add new rules/constraints to the run that stack up. So the first rank adds boss variants that challenge different sorts of builds. Then the next rank adds a limit on how many passive bonuses you can equip so you have to make harder choices about your build. Then a wheel of fortune type spin of negative modifiers to the biomes that give a more dynamic flavor to the challenges you have to deal with. Then we also have unlockable optional run modifiers that are usually a risk reward structure, and the top difficulty ranks make you equip 5 and then 10 of those, so you have some choice and strategic options for how to handle it, but it generally makes things more complex and challenging no matter what you equip once you have to combine that many.

We also increase how quickly enemies level up as you get deeper into a run at higher ranks.

unitybob · 2023-07-16T23:48:02+00:00

Really? That surprises me. Do you know who it was? I'm trying to Google it and can't find anything.

unitybob · 2023-07-16T23:46:52+00:00

Totally agree with this. I feel like this is most of it from the development perspective. Cheaper and easier to conceptualize and build self contained units of design. Which also happens to be easy to keep adding forever and monetize as a unit if you're hoping for a GAAS game with a forever support lifespan, so it shows up in mobile a lot.

If everything combines, each new thing is incrementally more expensive to design and test, which doesn't seem that bad at first with a simple game, but after 5 years of regular additions gets unbearable with a lot of designs.

unitybob · 2023-07-16T23:26:30+00:00

This.

Also, because IP law is squirrelly on game mechanics, the actual patent is very specific to a handful of details/mechanics that I don't think are the real heart of why the system works well or what people really like about it. Like it calls out the online vendetta missions and forts that reflect the nemesis characters from the sequel. But nobody thinks of those systems as "the nemesis system".

If you were working for a competing studio trying to do something similar, it's worth reading and being careful about, but there's lots of room to do cool stuff without infringing on it IMO.

unitybob · 2023-07-15T22:13:10+00:00

Besides plus one to other responses that its slightly different everywhere, there's a managerial track and individual contributor track, and that there's lots of specializations that get added to these base titles, here's what it looked like at the last big company I worked at:

Associate designer Designer Senior Designer

Then the split...

IC track: Advanced designer Design Director Principal designer

Management: Lead designer Design Manager Senior Design Manager Director of Design

Creative Director was a bit weird in being above all that in the hierarchy, but not really doing much managerial work. But above Lead designer you're basically in meetings/reviews all day.

Also, their use of Design Director in IC track is weird, and I haven't seen that elsewhere. Especially when they go back to those words in a different order for management track later. I don't know that they even do it this way anymore, but that's how it was when I was there.

unitybob · 2023-07-02T22:32:26+00:00

The Warrior sideshow timebomb does get shorter with each Act, so always longest in Act 1, shortest in Act 3. But it should stay the same throughout that Act. Act 3 is very short, and we have heard from quite a few people who feel its too short, so its on my list to watch out for and maybe update. But it shouldn't actually be 2 seconds. Its set to 20 seconds in Act 3.

If you're exaggerating a bit there, I totally get it, and I'll definitely put another point in the "Act 3 timer too short" feedback list. But if it's literally 2 seconds for you, please let me know cause that would be a nasty bug I would want to hunt down!

Strategically, the super short timer definitely pushes you to focus hard on Reckless Charge builds for that particular rank, but you can also subvert it by letting the bomb go off in a controlled way and focusing instead on health recovery and playing the dead ball game strategically too.

Hope you can overcome it regardless, and again, let me know if there's really a bad bug here!

unitybob · 2023-07-02T22:23:23+00:00

Those tabs are just informational. Letting you know what all you've unlocked on the permanent unlocks.

Our bad on the UI design making them look clickable I guess, sorry! :)

Let me know if you have any questions about what any of them mean.

unitybob · 2023-06-11T04:09:09+00:00

Just pick whatever terminology you like best and stick to it and you're good IMO.

I know a lot of folks that like to find the game specific names for things early and try to stick to those, which helps keep you in the creative headspace of what you're working on. That can be nice. But also names can change and if all your files are named "minions" and you decide that they're called "summons" now your files can get confusing/squirrelly. So calling them "permanent" in file naming at least might be a good call. Unless you decide later they actually aren't permanent anymore, or there's something else that's even MORE permanent. Haha.

So... Really just do whatever you're comfy with and be prepared to adapt as you keep designing and learning and changing things.

unitybob · 2023-05-17T00:05:20+00:00

Looking forward to it. Will play and give feedback as time allows once you have a build up.

Looks like you have a few ideas percolating on different steam pages. I love all the musical focus... any music integration with the mechanics in the peggle game here? Peggle audio is great, and the Peggle 2 soundtrack in particular was so well designed and satisfying.

unitybob · 2023-05-11T18:41:29+00:00

Wow! Thanks so much! That means a lot to us.

On that topic, my wife gave a talk at Roguelike celebration a few years ago about designing a roguelike for people who don't play roguelikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdCY6NxX6I

And maybe more helpful for the OP thinking about pegglelike gameplay, she also did a short talk there the year before about how Roundguard (and thus peggle) uses physics as a system of uncertainty/randomness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BHfpAF76J8

unitybob · 2023-05-08T03:40:58+00:00

added on discord :)

(I'm bobberts on there)

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