Game Developers of Kiwi Farms

[Tiggie_Tiger]

it's pretty much a grift to leech money from suckers because MUH OPEN SOURCE and since last year a good heap of FUCK UNITY. don't get me wrong, this is not a diss against open source (I'm all for it, and just look at blender etc.) just a thing about godot and how it will never get anywhere for that reason.

The amount of turbocharged dick sucking from the Godot community during that time was insane. Even after all that, Godot's C# support still sucks rectum. A few devs I know recently ditched Godot due to the persistent poor C# support.

I don't normally recommend game engines, however Flax Engine seems like a decent Unity alternative. For those that need a change, they should take a look at it.

 

[Enig]

In terms of engines I have been looking at for a while now, the big one I have kept focus on is the Wicked Engine.

This engine's been worked on by one guy for well past a decade now and in the past half a year he's added all sorts of nice modern features like fast texture streaming, voxel based occlusion, impressive particle effects, realtime in-editor (maybe even in-game) texture painting tools and much more. If its culling systems are better than Godot's near nonexistent ones then this could be a great engine for devs to mess with even now.

 

[Tiggie_Tiger]

In terms of engines I have been looking at for a while now, the big one I have kept focus on is the Wicked Engine.

This engine's been worked on by one guy for well past a decade now and in the past half a year he's added all sorts of nice modern features like fast texture streaming, voxel based occlusion, impressive particle effects, realtime in-editor (maybe even in-game) texture painting tools and much more. If its culling systems are better than Godot's near nonexistent ones then this could be a great engine for devs to mess with even now.

Holy fucking shit, that's impressive. It's hilarious when a single dev puts larger teams to shame.

 

[ZMOT]

I don't normally recommend game engines, however Flax Engine seems like a decent Unity alternative. For those that need a change, they should take a look at it.

just checking and it's 4% royalties after 250k revenue per quarter (for most indies unity might be actually cheaper). source is open and you can contribute, however I don't know how open they really are (in theory you can contribute to godot too, but good luck), and you'd still work "for free" contributing to commercial software.

 

[Grub]

It's not more productive, just different. Some of the complexities of Godot development like dealing with node issues don't really exist. It goes to what others were talking about when it comes to learning coding fundamentals.

I get your point. But complexity is something you inevitably have to deal with when making a game. When I was pretty new to programming things, I tried a bunch of different simple game engines or things similar to the little toy environments and in the end, I ended up being more frustrated by the limitations, usually when whatever project I was working on hit a point where it either wasn't going to work with the engine or environment I was using or I'd have to fiddle fuck around or rewrite everything to make it work. Shit like that just immediately killed the fun out of whatever I was working on. For me, my goal was to make a game, not play around with a programming environment.

The reason why the majority of games aren't made like they were back in the day is because we don't fucking have to any more. It's the same reason why I use portable battery powered electric tools when I'm at work instead of using a handcrank drill and hand saws, even though that handcrank drill is probably way better quality and more well made than my Chinese drill. But that Chinese drill is easier to use and can put a 4 inch hole through siding and plywood in about 30 seconds and I haven't tired myself out spending 30 minutes fucking hand cranking a holesaw through the side of a house. Sure, it's how people used to do it, but why the fuck would you do it today other than autism?

 

[the grey cat]

Don't listen to imbecile faggots who whine online. Make a game that YOU want to play, and then likely someone else will appreciate it.

now that's the spirit.

 

[Tiggie_Tiger]

I get your point. But complexity is something you inevitably have to deal with when making a game. When I was pretty new to programming things, I tried a bunch of different simple game engines or things similar to the little toy environments and in the end, I ended up being more frustrated by the limitations, usually when whatever project I was working on hit a point where it either wasn't going to work with the engine or environment I was using or I'd have to fiddle fuck around or rewrite everything to make it work. Shit like that just immediately killed the fun out of whatever I was working on. For me, my goal was to make a game, not play around with a programming environment.

The reason why the majority of games aren't made like they were back in the day is because we don't fucking have to any more. It's the same reason why I use portable battery powered electric tools when I'm at work instead of using a handcrank drill and hand saws, even though that handcrank drill is probably way better quality and more well made than my Chinese drill. But that Chinese drill is easier to use and can put a 4 inch hole through siding and plywood in about 30 seconds and I haven't tired myself out spending 30 minutes fucking hand cranking a holesaw through the side of a house. Sure, it's how people used to do it, but why the fuck would you do it today other than autism?

For most people, a game engine is enough. However, there are plenty of reasons why someone would write a game without an engine. I've addressed this on earlier posts.

You should check out Casey Muratori and Jonathan Blow (who are legendary developers), they're notorious for writing everything from scratch, and it's insane how much they get done compared to other developers. Casey does a lot of educational videos on this sort of things and he's pretty entertaining to watch. Jonathan Blow streams a lot and he's pretty good also. Speaking of Jonathan, he's the developer of the game 'The Witness" and is currently developing a new game while simultaneously working on a new programming language (which those games are written in). If you care about that sort of thing, I highly, highly recommend checking them out.

 

[Grub]

For most people, a game engine is enough. However, there are plenty of reasons why someone would write a game without an engine. I've addressed this on earlier posts.

I'm not saying you have to use an engine. I don't know how you got that from my post. I've worked starting from SDL and building on top of that. I haven't tried working directly with opengl or vulkan though.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Jonathan Blow

He might be a legendary dev, but he's also a legendary pretentious twat.

That said, his talk of how we're in the middle of losing knowledge is fascinating.

But complexity is something you inevitably have to deal with when making a game

It's where that complexity comes from.

A great real world example. Was watching the devlog for Choo Choo Charles Nightmare mode, and part of it is the sky is darker. So he turned down the brightness. When lightning strikes, it would light up the sky, then make it dark again. This worked perfectly in normal mode, but when he made Nightmare Mode it stopped working. It had the same value as before, it was being passed in correctly, but it just didn't work. He soon figured out that if he halved the brightness value each time it would work. No idea why.

I personally had an issue with Godot where moving objects along the local z would cause them to fly around randomly. I changed the node type and it worked perfectly. Why? Don't know.

Another example. Blender is the 3D tool for free. It does 3D, video editing, sculpting, all this wild stuff. I just want to make a low poly set of shelves, but basic functions are buried amongst oceans of shit I don't use and will break everything if clicked by accident. Then there's Crocotile, which does everything I want without the bloat. Of course, Blender took those ideas and implemented it's own tile based 3D modelling option, as if it wasn't bloated enough.

These are all simple examples. Don't get me started on the messing around with 3D formats, and I've already mentioned the UI system.

But the real benefit is knowing how the sausage is made. Every node in Godot is a black box unless you dig into source code I guess. It also helps curb perfectionism and scope creep.

 

[Tiggie_Tiger]

I'm not saying you have to use an engine. I don't know how you got that from my post. I've worked starting from SDL and building on top of that. I haven't tried working directly with opengl or vulkan though.

Vulkan is a massive clusterfuck and I don't recommend it for most things.

 

[ireece1]

Random question: How many of you have made your own game engines, for what project, in what language (probably C/C++, but still curious) and how long did it take? I'm curious to see if there really is a use case for building your own game engines anymore.

The game I’m currently developing is built on my own engine; A 2D real-time strategy game set in a procedurally generated, virtually infinite chunk-based world (Think if Warcraft 2 and Minecraft made a baby.) It’s written in C++ and is being actively developed WITH the game in order to maximize performance and functionality, which are essential for a game of this scope and scale.

I’ve been working on it solo for the last year and so far my vision is being achieved, with interest! Though game dev is a journey, not a destination, and I still have quite a long ways to go and various major challenges to face, but the path ahead is looking quite sunny.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

I don't design video games but I designed TTRPG the only thing that matters in a good RPG is a decent setting and half decent mechanics art doesn't matter I do not care to pay artists and I will literally use AI schlock to fill pages at this point
but I stopped designing TTRPG's mainly because the dev team I was working with cast me out for two members who eventually got kicked out themselves and I've really lost all cared ever design another game due to the fact that no matter what you do you're going to take flak from a bunch of toxic people who don't know how hard it is to design TTRPG's who come in and just wanna start ****.

Good game play can make up for you pixelated graphics but good graphics cannot make up for a bad gameplay the people who on ironically ***** about woke stuff but aren't willing to give indie developers who agree with them a try literally don't wanna actually have to try and fix the problem that they have created by giving all this money to these AAA developers

that being said then you Kiwis have TTRPG stuff you're working on and you need help feel free to DM me

 

[Zero MK 2]

@Judge Dredd

Bruh. Blender is pretty fuckin easy to pick up and learn but you aren’t going to be making anything decent within a week like the scam artists and showoffs on youtube claim you can.

 

[Judge Dredd]

@Judge Dredd

Bruh. Blender is pretty fuckin easy to pick up and learn but you aren’t going to be making anything decent within a week like the scam artists and showoffs on youtube claim you can.

I left Blender a while ago, and I'm not coming back. Every time there was a major update, the atrocious user experience was fixed. I'd reinstall it only to find it to be as bad, or worse. I remember a feature was for it to save a texture that wasn't a material, you had to click a little F next to the texture name. This marked it as a "fake texture" and knew not to delete it from a save file. Complete random bullshit like that.

I have kept focus on is the Wicked Engine.

Ended up watching a bunch of that stuff today. The pathfinding and voxel based line of sight looked fantastic. Is it possible to actually make a game in it? There was a GamesFromScratch video that seemed to say it's a base to build an engine off of, not something you could use to make games on it's own.

 

[Zero MK 2]

I left Blender a while ago, and I'm not coming back. Every time there was a major update, the atrocious user experience was fixed. I'd reinstall it only to find it to be as bad, or worse. I remember a feature was for it to save a texture that wasn't a material, you had to click a little F next to the texture name. This marked it as a "fake texture" and knew not to delete it from a save file. Complete random bullshit like that.

Suit yourself. You can always just keep a standalone install of a version you like unlike most 3D modeling software these days that is locked behind auto updaters + a subscription. The auto update feature is not mandatory like it is on steam or anywhere else. Also said the exact same shit a year before I came back and got really into blender once I got the hang of the basic controls.

I prefer 3.6 because like you said, the UI overhauls are often shit and unnecessary like in 4.0. Geometry nodes are also a meme but it was a fun experiment to lego-ify 3D models I made.

 

[Zero MK 2]

In terms of engines I have been looking at for a while now, the big one I have kept focus on is the Wicked Engine.

This engine's been worked on by one guy for well past a decade now and in the past half a year he's added all sorts of nice modern features like fast texture streaming, voxel based occlusion, impressive particle effects, realtime in-editor (maybe even in-game) texture painting tools and much more. If its culling systems are better than Godot's near nonexistent ones then this could be a great engine for devs to mess with even now.

It looks neat and is pretty lightweight but there's no landscape tool and nothing about how to add assets to it. Just some vague ass tech demo with no commentary.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

I mean if anyone wants a mentor for developing/getting started, I could help someone a bit.

 

[Involuntary Celebrity]

Does anyone have any pushback on the Godot shit-talking?
I've been meaning to get off of Unity for a while (primarily because of criticisms of the software and corporation I've held for years before the licencing controversy) and while I think Unreal is a better choice, Godot seemed like it might be chill to do a single project in from the dabbling I've done.
But if it's just inviting more pain I'd be glad to drop it before it has a chance to piss me off and I end up with another piece of software I need to compulsively rant about.

@Judge Dredd

Bruh. Blender is pretty fuckin easy to pick up and learn but you aren’t going to be making anything decent within a week like the scam artists and showoffs on youtube claim you can.

I dunno, I think you easily could if you had something specific in mind and followed along with a video specific to that. I hate video tutorials personally but there's a lot of them and some of them seem pretty excellent, even if I'm only watching snippets because it's easier to find out where something lives in the UI and what it does than browsing the docs.
A week is a long time and just knowing the workflow is easily half the battle.

Blender fucking rules but yeah, it's also extremely poor at communicating what features relate to which tasks and the relationships between them. Which is common in this industry but Blender really feels like the one tool that should make a point of clarity since there's really no incentive for it to be typically arcane.

 

[Grub]

He might be a legendary dev, but he's also a legendary pretentious twat.

That said, his talk of how we're in the middle of losing knowledge is fascinating.


It's where that complexity comes from.

A great real world example. Was watching the devlog for Choo Choo Charles Nightmare mode, and part of it is the sky is darker. So he turned down the brightness. When lightning strikes, it would light up the sky, then make it dark again. This worked perfectly in normal mode, but when he made Nightmare Mode it stopped working. It had the same value as before, it was being passed in correctly, but it just didn't work. He soon figured out that if he halved the brightness value each time it would work. No idea why.

I personally had an issue with Godot where moving objects along the local z would cause them to fly around randomly. I changed the node type and it worked perfectly. Why? Don't know.

Another example. Blender is the 3D tool for free. It does 3D, video editing, sculpting, all this wild stuff. I just want to make a low poly set of shelves, but basic functions are buried amongst oceans of shit I don't use and will break everything if clicked by accident. Then there's Crocotile, which does everything I want without the bloat. Of course, Blender took those ideas and implemented it's own tile based 3D modelling option, as if it wasn't bloated enough.

These are all simple examples. Don't get me started on the messing around with 3D formats, and I've already mentioned the UI system.

Sounds like you need to read the docs better for the tools you use.

But the real benefit is knowing how the sausage is made. Every node in Godot is a black box unless you dig into source code I guess. It also helps curb perfectionism and scope creep

So you're perfectly happy to reinvent the wheel but looking over a bit of source code is too much?

 

[Zero MK 2]

I dunno, I think you easily could if you had something specific in mind and followed along with a video specific to that. I hate video tutorials personally but there's a lot of them and some of them seem pretty excellent, even if I'm only watching snippets because it's easier to find out where something lives in the UI and what it does than browsing the docs.
A week is a long time and just knowing the workflow is easily half the battle.

Blender fucking rules but yeah, it's also extremely poor at communicating what features relate to which tasks and the relationships between them. Which is common in this industry but Blender really feels like the one tool that should make a point of clarity since there's really no incentive for it to be typically arcane.

I was talking about from a complete beginner's perspective who has no idea about even the most basic controls. Not someone who has a simple and achievable goal in mind and some previous experience.

It was definitely a revelation to discover texture baking and the process of UV unwrapping by sheer chance. Texture baking was definitely a case of something that should be more accessible instead of buried somewhere under cycles rendering as a cycles only option that I only learned about via youtube tutorial. Eevee should have that built in but it still isn't.