Game Developers of Kiwi Farms

[Doggy Dog World]

There's nothing sexy about reworking world generation to eak out an extra 32 chunks per second that you can put in a devlog short.

Tell that to Chad Thundercock

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[GhastlyGhost]

Tell that to Chad Thundercock

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=5wYFcaAJQRM

Not everyone can channel their inner Garry Newman and just do shit. People that can are spite-wizards, and I salute them.

 

[Private Tag Reporter]

Megabonk comes to mind. Vedinad made a massive amount of shorts that were framed as community engagement showing off new features, tech, gamedev knowledge, or under the hood tech. The fact they were shorts helped massively since you can't accidentally bloat the dev blog with rambling. The framing likely kept the momentum going since "this chuckle fuck told me this would be cool so I did it" causes actual chuckle fucks to comment and subscribe to see if their ideas get put in.

https://youtube.com/shorts/r7TbYqVieso

https://youtube.com/shorts/FsP9H_e5efE

isn't danidev a youtuber with like 7 games before this (including apparently crab game)? all the engagement and shorts on megabonk felt super astroturfed and fake, at least when it was first coming out.

 

[Judge Dredd]

If you can't code, you're not a game dev.

I wouldn't be that harsh. There are lots of skills you can levarage into game dev. Just ask anyone stuck in programmer art hell. If anything being an artist has the benefit of the audience never sees your spaghetti code.

I remember hearing some porn game with a generic name (Tactics Elemental?) and the metroid platformer Dust: An Elysian Tale were made by artists with no prior coding knowledge. Though they did learn to code.

Though for @funwithshemales69 he has a full time job and is struggling. There are options, but I try to steer people away from plug in or copy-pasting code as that is ultimately limited. And while I don't really consider myself a programmer, I am self taught (though that depends on your definition).

But it really depends on what you want to achieve. Making maps and mods is a great starting point, and used to be the standard back in my day. Making Doom and Half-Life maps is fun. Depending on what you want to achieve, you can do some wild things with those. Not a line of code required. Plus it stealth teaches code when you start adding logic like press button to open door.

She would say that expecting developers to learn to code or use an engine is gatekeeping, and that something made in GB Studio, Btisy, or Twine is just as valid as something that requires coding and dev skills to use.

I can't speak for the others, but GBStudio counts as a "real" engine imo. I'm sure I've mentioned it, but I've seen many engines get dismissed as "babies first game engine for babies", right until some smash hit is made with it and suddenly it's "industry standard". Harthstone and Cities Skylines for Unity, Hotline Miami for Game Maker, whatever the fuck Vampire Survivors was originally made in (Phaser 3 Google says). Even Godot was not considered a serious engine, though moderate successes like Dome Keeper are changing that.

And in GBStudio you can get into coding if you like, but basic logic can be done with drop down boxes. It's a lot to take in at first, but just as with code, there's a few "Events" that you use over and over and over. If X is pressed, do Y. If x < y, do z. It can be time consuming to do it that way, but it works.

Even the templates cover a lot of the basic things you want. You want a run and gun, a platformer, or a puzzle game? The side scroller template works great if you change a few numbers in the settings to make it less floaty/slippery.

Anyone remember that awful channel Extra Credits? The one that would supposedly be about "game design" but just cry about video games they found "problematic"?

Yeah. I was calling them out long before it was cool (and was mocked because of it). They had many shit takes, from arguing that the price of games should go up, to claiming we were going to run out of wireless internet.

its been like 10 years since that happened. i thought people wouldve moved on by then

Because it was funny, and some (though not many) still treat them as an authority.

The modern version is (or was) PirateSoftware who never mentions he worked at blizzard. That changed after he opposed Stop Killing Games.

An interesting point of contrast: I remember being pissed off at how clam-tight Toby Fox was when he was developing UNDERTALE.

There is a logic to that.

The idea that, by keeping it under wraps, it builds passion and motivation. You want to finish the thing so you can finally show people how cool it is. Another problem with frequent public updates is the demand to add "glamourous" stuff. ie. Content and large mechanical changes. Meanwhile refactoring code, or spending weeks on QoL and UI work doesn't drive views or interest, but people sure get salty when it's not present.

This is why I'm sympathetic when people post "Look at my options menu!" type posts. I understand why they do it, even if they shouldn't.

Also, Godots UI system is supposed to make things easy, but all it seems to do is break for me.

 

[Canine Stereo]

I wouldn't be that harsh. There are lots of skills you can levarage into game dev.

I can agree that developers can encompass skills other than programming—mapping tools are a great introduction to level design and basic optimization*. The harshness of my statement is derived from a growing aversion by amateur devs to learn programming, and AI vibecoding has only exasperated this. As I work on my own project, I continue to discover new challenges that I'll eventually need to overcome; likewise, these devs should develop a bit of humility towards the requirements of making a game, I have no qualms with "plug-and-play" engines or asset flips, but more pride should be taken in learning and implementing good programming.

* Source 1 Hammer is out of date in terms of modern standards and is limited in terms of gameplay extensibility, but it is relatively easy to setup and run.

 

[Judge Dredd]

* Source 1 Hammer is out of date in terms of modern standards and is limited in terms of gameplay extensibility, but it is relatively easy to setup and run.

JACK is basically the modern version of Hammer. Though these days people use Trench Broom. I've not used it properly myself, but it being the level editor of choice for modern engines like Godot and Unity (at least for making boomer shooters) means it's something I want to try.

The harshness of my statement is derived from a growing aversion by amateur devs to learn programming, and AI vibecoding has only exasperated this

Agreed. Though I get a lot of people don't want that.

I saw a series of videos recently (basically the same ted talk at a few different places) debunking the 10,000 hour myth. The short version is this. It takes 10,000 hours of focused practice to master something, but only 40 hours of focused practice to gain competency. And while node graphs/visual coding/blueprints/whatever are limited, I think it'll do the job enough depending on what they want to make.

While people shit on it for being a troons engine of choice, as well as complain about ROM sizes. I enjoy GB Studio because of it's limited genres and quick turn around time. I've used a mix of stock assets and custom stuff to get a lesser idea out of my head in a weekend.

 

[ChudJack009]

he harshness of my statement is derived from a growing aversion by amateur devs to learn programming, and AI vibecoding has only exasperated this. As I work on my own project, I continue to discover new challenges that I'll eventually need to overcome; likewise, these devs should develop a bit of humility towards the requirements of making a game

while i cant speak to the arrogance you mention, IMO some people just dont have the patience for it (i dont either but im too stubborn to quit after sinking so much time). With the advent of AI all the idea guys now have a coding buddy who cant say no and they're letting there grandest ideas run wild. They can finally actually make their mmo action rpg with realsitic market responses to player driven economy that theyve always wanted to meake but never had the patience to get started on and quite frankly im happy for them. Whenever i see them on reddit the various secret deepweb forums i frequent they seem to be a passionate group of guys who finally have a tool that can bring all their ideas to life. Im cetrainly not advocating for it but im not going to knock rajesh for his little vibe platformer. Its not even as though they dont still face challenges either they share prompt techniques, general best practices etc. The way I see it is that its just another skill, like an evolution of those minimal code graph state machince people in U5 use (idr what they're called).

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I will write someone into Heaven if they make a dating sim based on The Last Stand and his lust for old women

 

[sodaboard]

i've been thinking a lot lately on what a good anticheat would look like, one that doesn't need secure boot/tpm/firmware-level drivers that monitor everything going on in your pc at all times. in the future i'd like to make a PvE game with four players max which hopefully won't attract as many cheaters as a PvP game would, but it'd still be a concern. obviously there'd be a votekick system in place which is probably the best way around it but i've also had a few other ideas in my head that may or may not exist already in existing anticheats. does anyone have experience with this?

 

[big pauper]

JACK is basically the modern version of Hammer. Though these days people use Trench Broom. I've not used it properly myself, but it being the level editor of choice for modern engines like Godot and Unity (at least for making boomer shooters) means it's something I want to try.

I loooove trenchbroom. It's just hammer but with more focus on sculpting geometry and less focus on environment scripting. the modern quake community is basically just an offshoot of how easy it is to make maps in trenchbroom. The map compiling tools are also actively developed so you get all of the benefits of fancy deferred raytracing algorithms backported to the original engine's light maps, plus func_illusory and all sorts of vis hacks from modern engines that still work on the original

 

[Newton Pud]

i've been thinking a lot lately on what a good anticheat would look like, one that doesn't need secure boot/tpm/firmware-level drivers that monitor everything going on in your pc at all times. in the future i'd like to make a PvE game with four players max which hopefully won't attract as many cheaters as a PvP game would, but it'd still be a concern. obviously there'd be a votekick system in place which is probably the best way around it but i've also had a few other ideas in my head that may or may not exist already in existing anticheats. does anyone have experience with this?

No, but I can tell you one thing: never trust the client. Because a player could be cheating, it’s useful to minimize what kind of information a player can send. For example, instead of allowing the player to tell the server where they are, only allow them to tell it that they want to move to the left, to the right, etc.

 

[sodaboard]

No, but I can tell you one thing: never trust the client. Because a player could be cheating, it’s useful to minimize what kind of information a player can send. For example, instead of allowing the player to tell the server where they are, only allow them to tell it that they want to move to the left, to the right, etc.

i know about this, operate under the assumption everything the client tells you is a lie. this is all very long-term and i'm nowhere close to experimenting with any of this yet but i understand most of the core concepts.
also i don't really understand why most games deal with cheaters so harshly. they permaban you from all servers, including community/self-hosted ones, lock/confiscate your inventory which could be worth thousands of dollars and ban any other accounts that are even related to yours. this just screams incompetence and reminds me of that idiom "everything is a nail if you only have a hammer". what's wrong with just kicking a player from a game when you know they're cheating and saying "hey turn off your cheats and come back later"? the main goal of anticheat is to stop one fag from ruining everyone else's game. vac's gimmick is its delayed bans in an effort to delay cheat development but vac itself is so shit that means nothing. meanwhile cheaters are still going from game to game aimbotting everything and ruining countless games. i think the goal should be to identify cheaters and remove them as quickly as possible. everything else is secondary.

 

[big pauper]

i know about this, operate under the assumption everything the client tells you is a lie. this is all very long-term and i'm nowhere close to experimenting with any of this yet but i understand most of the core concepts.
also i don't really understand why most games deal with cheaters so harshly. they permaban you from all servers, including community/self-hosted ones, lock/confiscate your inventory which could be worth thousands of dollars and ban any other accounts that are even related to yours. this just screams incompetence and reminds me of that idiom "everything is a nail if you only have a hammer". what's wrong with just kicking a player from a game when you know they're cheating and saying "hey turn off your cheats and come back later"? the main goal of anticheat is to stop one fag from ruining everyone else's game. vac's gimmick is its delayed bans in an effort to delay cheat development but vac itself is so shit that means nothing. meanwhile cheaters are still going from game to game aimbotting everything and ruining countless games. i think the goal should be to identify cheaters and remove them as quickly as possible. everything else is secondary.

I think this is a technique from MMOs and other games with player ran economies that just got translated to modern games that have weird pseudo-economies

You ban the people cheating in an mmo because there's second and third order consequences from the disruption those people cause, which isn't present in a game like Battlefield. But developers are incentivized to include those systems to protect their micrtransaction cash store, so they just copy the system from World of Warcraft

But WoWs system isn't designed to improve individual player experience it was designed to keep each server from progressing too fast and people from breaking the content with exploits in a shared server, things that literally do not exist in modern live service games

 

[DickMain]

I've got pretty rudimentary experience writing in C with Gamemaker's old derivative of it (I think GML is based on it?), and I've played around with Python casually, but I'm really not a programmer. I have been sitting on a card game I've been wanting to make for a long time (think yugioh, not a roguelike deckbuilder), and I was wondering if any kiwis could recommend somewhere they'd go to learn about doing this. Again I've got very little experience, but I'd like to try my hand at it.

 

[ADHD Mate]

I've got pretty rudimentary experience writing in C with Gamemaker's old derivative of it (I think GML is based on it?), and I've played around with Python casually, but I'm really not a programmer. I have been sitting on a card game I've been wanting to make for a long time (think yugioh, not a roguelike deckbuilder), and I was wondering if any kiwis could recommend somewhere they'd go to learn about doing this. Again I've got very little experience, but I'd like to try my hand at it.

If you have programming experience, and want some walkthrough of common patterns used in gaming I recommend: Game Programming Patterns.

 

[DickMain]

If you have programming experience, and want some walkthrough of common patterns used in gaming I recommend: Game Programming Patterns.

Only some very basic stuff. I suspect I'll be out of my depth before long, but I'll give this a read thanks.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Gary of GMod fame is releasing Valves Source 2 engine. Free to use. No royalties. Release date is April 28th, with a roll out for selected users (whatever that means) before going public.

One part that stood out. Supposedly he's doing this because Valve made him rich and famous with Gmod, and now he's passing that on to others. Noble if true.

while i cant speak to the arrogance you mention, IMO some people just dont have the patience for it (i dont either but im too stubborn to quit after sinking so much time). With the advent of AI all the idea guys now have a coding buddy who cant say no and they're letting there grandest ideas run wild. They can finally actually make their mmo action rpg with realsitic market responses to player driven economy that theyve always wanted to meake but never had the patience to get started on and quite frankly im happy for them. Whenever i see them on reddit the various secret deepweb forums i frequent they seem to be a passionate group of guys who finally have a tool that can bring all their ideas to life. Im cetrainly not advocating for it but im not going to knock rajesh for his little vibe platformer. Its not even as though they dont still face challenges either they share prompt techniques, general best practices etc. The way I see it is that its just another skill, like an evolution of those minimal code graph state machince people in U5 use (idr what they're called).

I agree. I will add that same deference isn't given to those that are programmers first, and artists second.

 

[Frightened Rabbit]

Gary of GMod fame is releasing Valves Source 2 engine.

If I need to enter Roblox's version of Source 2 I don't even want to use the engine quite frankly.

 

[Judge Dredd]

If I need to enter Roblox's version of Source 2 I don't even want to use the engine quite frankly.

The video says you can release games stand alone.

Valve didn't release Source 2 because they don't want to bother with consumer facing things like support or UI. Supposedly the engine was jank to work with as it was made for Valve to make Valve games. S&box is fixing a lot of that jank.

My assumption, as you said, is a g-mod or roblox like game, with the option to use it stand alone. But that's just a guess.

 

[Overdrive]

I'll probably give it a try when it releases, it's been a while since I've touched anything Source related when doing dev work so will be cool to see what it's like now.