Christian Simmers

@Xuelder

Indie Game/Narrative Designer

he/him
xuelder.neocities.org/

Tech Warlock

Weird dude who makes weird things.

Part of the Swamp, Part of the Krewe

KO-FI ☕

ko-fi.com/xuelder

Itch 🕹️

xuelder.itch.io/

Christian Simmers @Xuelder9/1/2023, 12:06 PM

Eniko | Kitsune Tails out now!@eniko

d🔶@geometric9/1/2023, 12:19 AM

i honestly think an indie dev's programming ability should be just good enough to get the project out the door and no better

you should not be a 10x engineer or whatever, you should be focusing on the vision and ideas and emotions that make your project interesting and beautiful and touching. some of the greatest indie games of all time have absolutely nightmarish codebases because the creator was rightly focused on the player experience

#it can be helpful to learn to code smarter #but don't let it slow you down #keep rolling and use what you learned for the next game

Joe Wintergreen @joewintergreen9/1/2023, 1:30 AM

sometimes i feel like it's a controversial game dev opinion that these things are not at odds

you're so much more able to focus on the player experience if you plan and build your tech properly. i see just as much "we can't do what we want creatively because of tech corners we cut earlier" as "we sabotaged our creativity by getting bogged down in tech perfectionism"

of course until they mess it up a few times nobody can plan and build their tech properly so this is still great advice for most folks i guess

Joe Wintergreen @joewintergreen9/1/2023, 1:42 AM

also,

the most hazardous part of someone's technical journey from "i don't know what the fuck i'm doing but here's a game" to "i know exactly what i'm doing and am unambiguously good to have on a team" is the middle part where you're like "ah! i will make this system once, and share it between all my projects, saving me time and turning me into a game production machine!" but only think you have the remotest idea how to do that while also being dead set certain it's the right move every time

that bit lasts years, sometimes forever

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in reply to @geometric's post:

Jess🌺@CyanSorcery9/1/2023, 12:32 AM

makes me think about how sometimes I'll write a shader or do some code or sprite that's really good

TOO good

so I have to make it shittier because I'm like, is this what I want the standard of the rest of what I do on this game like? and the answer is, haha nooooo

d🔶@geometric9/1/2023, 12:33 AM

lol this is so real

Coda @Codarobo9/2/2023, 4:13 PM

This is why i never release albums. By the time I’m “done” I’ve managed to make a song good enough that it makes the older parts of the album feel not good enough. And then the cycle begins anew lol

Jess🌺@CyanSorcery9/2/2023, 6:57 PM

I've gotten over this with video games because I'm like, every game has those couple of songs that you just go "yea that's not that great" but it's like whatever

Kel @Keloti9/1/2023, 1:51 AM

Thank u for the grace

@bobthebob9/1/2023, 10:56 AM

you can say that about really any skill though, art, writing, audio, whatever, not just code

d🔶@geometric9/1/2023, 11:03 PM

code is different because the player experience can be identical whether your code is a mess or not. Everything else you listed is player facing and its improvement will be felt in the end product.

@bobthebob9/2/2023, 1:45 PM

sure, it can be identical, but i think it's wrong to say that it generally will be, personally my experience with code tends to inform the stuff i can do with gameplay, visuals, etc. it fundamentally changes my approach to development, and so influences pretty much every aspect of the game. without code experience i might not think to implement my player movement in a specific way, or to write a specific shader that influences the visuals of my game without the significant experience i have with code

@bobthebob9/2/2023, 2:32 PM

also like, even if those the disciplines you listed were inherently more important to player experience than code (which as i said, i really don't agree with), i still don't see why that'd mean being "good enough" at them to finish your game isn't still the way to go, as you said you should be focusing on your vision and ideas, which doesn't necessarily mean great art or writing or anything specific, it all depends on the game

torcado @torcado9/2/2023, 8:49 PM

god, 100% agree. i'm all for striving to make things faster and less computationally expensive, but in my eyes video games are almost completely at the "art" side of the spectrum, and for that reason i think any technical means justify the end of it existing at all. it's not a coincidence that some of the best games are this way. i dont care that your rendering pipeline takes 0.2ms to render, i just want to see the little dude move around funny.

Azure @AzureLazuline9/4/2023, 7:34 PM

there are some parts of the code you should take the time to do right. The more unrelated systems that need to interact with a thing, the more solid you'll need it to be. If it's a system that's at the core of the entire game, one extra day of planning today could prevent a month of frustrating bug whack-a-mole that gets in the way of you adding the stuff that matters. But if it's just one enemy type or one weapon that's self-contained? Churn that thing out in ten minutes by whatever means you can! The worst thing that can break is itself.

i broadly agree with you that gamedevs get way too stuck on trying to make everything bulletproof, but learning when to be careful is very important wisdom too. It mostly only becomes an issue in larger projects though... and everyones' games are too big, which i suppose is the real problem!

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