It’s trash as an idea generator.

The only useful thing I’ve gotten out of a (text) AI is asking it to guess functions of keyword mechanics in games. Like I was designing personality traits for AI leaders in a strategy game, and had a dozen bad candidates for “over produces defenses.” So I told ChatGPT to try to guess the meanings of bunkerist, hoxhaist, prepper, turtle, protectionist, survivalist, isolationist, guardian. Which did narrow it down to bunkerist, turtle, and protectionist (note that this is literally wrong in the case of protectionist). Normally I’d try to poll a bunch of random people for this sort of thing, and try to avoid anyone who’s trying to be clever. So it did save some work there.

It won’t come up with anything useful going the other way around though (“list some possible names for traits of AI leaders in a strategy game”). Like I said, it doesn’t work as an idea generator.

I guess in general it’s probably useful if you’re in a situation where you need to make sure your writing is very very clear. If ChatGPT can correctly summarize what you wrote, it’s probably safe for people who are distracted or bad at reading or whatever.

This is great, love me some esolangs.

Weird the subtitles insist on calling brainfuck brainfog though.

Hey this is really cool.

I’m sure people will use it to make politicians say misleading things or whatever.

But I’m excited about people being able to have animated advisor portraits in indie games.

Nice ideas! Some already on my list, so we’re clearly on the same page.

Those last two combine in a cool way. If you have a machine that gives better outputs and requires faster inputs the longer it runs, then wiring all of its inputs to production boosters is good, but also hard because this sort of thing will encourage a very cramped design already.

Since this is happening inside a multiplayer game, where other players might not be doing automation gameplay, I want to be mindful of how much server horsepower an automation player uses. So giant Factorio-style megafactories aren’t a good fit (It’ll still be possible as a self-directed challenge, especially if you’re running a single player server, but it’ll need a hefty computer since I doubt I’ll optimize it as well as Factorio.)

Which means I can’t do Factorio’s thing where an X requires 10 Y requires 10 Z and the massive scale causes problems you need to work through, so I need to add complexity elsewhere to make factory play still challenging. Machines that require inputs from multiple different transport mechanisms are one way to do that. Another might be time-sensitive parts.

I’m up for suggestions on more ways to make particular machines a nuisance to work with.

I’m working on a 3D voxel game, where I plan to have automation mechanics eventually, so this has been on my mind.

In the current (very possibly changing) plan, the first automation tier will be conveyors that go straight into buildings, but later materials will be too delicate for conveyors and need to use pneumatic pipes, and the final tier will include materials that must be handled with Opus Magnum style swinging arms (which are also inserters).

I like changing the transport system is the best way to do progression in one of these games, because it’s directly tied to the map, and thus has the most options for subtlety and cascading changes. And having multiple separate systems feeding into the same process is of course good for adding complexity.

Oh, my PFP is just whatever came out of Dall-e when I told it to make me a screaming owl.

I meant whenever I actually release a game and need an actual studio logo, the barred owl was the most obnoxiously loud owl I could find, so that’s what I was planning to use

Oh no! I decided to use the barred owl as my mascot.

Wait you have a gaming discord?

Congrats on the launch!

Amazing

whoops late response lol

The wiimote’s accelerometer-based motion controls weren’t very good, but its IR camera pointer controls were fantastic. It’s a shame motion controls became synonymous with the former instead of the latter.

If you like cheesy live-acted cutscenes, I recommend Roundabout. Or at least watching its trailer. Or if you don’t have time to actually play games, there was an SGDQ run where they did a speedrun but left the cutscenes on, but I think they end up skipping some due to tricks.

Level builders/editors

They’re a lot harder to make with modern / 3D games.

But they also seem to boost a game’s long-term audience by a lot, so it’s weird they’re not more common.

…I should make something that needs a level editor instead of always doing procedural stuff.

You could still squeeze a Wario Ware microgame into one of them.

I think it would be hard to fit a minigame into a loading screen without making the loading screen longer due to loading the minigame, though. Like it’d be easy enough if you were coding your loading system from scratch, but modern games are mostly built using big pre-existing engines, which are full of their own assumptions about how loading works.

Have you seen Backpack Battles? It’s an autobattler that’s 90% inventory tetris.

I’ve played way too much of it.

One of my permanent backlog game ideas is a game titled Horse Horse Horse Horse Horse where you’re a horse and you press asdf asdf asdf asdf to run right, and fdsa fdsa fdsa fdsa to run left.

This is the level you unlock by 100%ing the game (all seeds, 10-coins, and flagpole tops)

I don’t know about the larger trends, but Mario games have always had a lot of them. You fall down a pit and you’re dead.

Also it’s pretty typical for modern Mario games to have a nice normal difficulty curve, and then if you 100% it you get a final challenge that’s just completely outside the bounds of the rest of the game’s difficulty. This one was just even nastier than the last several incarnations. I’m not sure what the thinking behind these is, unless it really is “yeah we know you’re playing Kaizo hacks.”

I forgot about the rotating fire bars because it wasn’t in the final checkpoint, and I did each checkpoint on a different session.