david.tsx

Glad to hear that others also need to heavily refine their assets. Between Pixel Engine, Grok, & ChatGPT, it took TONS of edits to get animations I liked, even for something a simple as Math Marsh (rotation is no joke). And each was necessary. Looking forward to trying 3D!

Kinda crazy seeing the game running in an X post. It's a little cramped but still workable. And the "fullscreen" option still works.

It's crazy. This fairly small game took me almost a year and a half to get to this point. I didn't touch a single line of code. Nor did code structure ever present any friction to any changes or additions I added. The bottleneck was always me trying to figure out what exactly I wanted. This speaks to how much product vision is a completely different skillset from coding. I have no doubt that one with more game dev experience could have done this in a week. It really just illustrates how nonsensical the whole AI derangement syndrome thing is.

Went through a ton of trial and error with more to come. The goal of the campaign is to make a "pick up and play" 4X-Lite. But every iteration introduced new complications that required rethinking. Before turning off my phone, I kicked off a couple of over-night changes that I'm hoping address the complications. I need to test when I get a chance later today. Looking forward to see how things feel. Once I nail the core design down, I'll be shifting from prototype to "real game". Which means nailing down the presentation.

Playing with the idea of adding a campaign layer over the core game. Of course, the one-off skirmishes would stay. But I'm hoping to leverage this for some emergent story opportunities. The trick is retaining the simplicity of the core loop and not reengineering Stellaris.

That's pretty cool. I was having a hard time with the background music for Math Marsh, so I had Sol create some samples for me and quick make an impromptu, throw-away mixing board here where I could mash it up into something semi not-terrible😅

Ok, that's pretty cool. From now on, I can just post the game directly here in the X post.... allornothing.app

Actually had the experience of getting caught up in my own game from beginning to end last night. Looking forward to developing the idea further. Just hoping I don't also _over_ develop it with too many bells and whistles that drown out the core. david0178418.github.io/galax…

I was stressing over the fact that I still need to carve out time at my desk to get a trailer together for Math Marsh and felt like I was losing time to get to some of my more original(-ish?) ideas. But then it dawned on me. Since AI is exceptionally good at the prototyping stage, I can still do this while I'm doing other brain-dead duties (store runs, yard work, whatever). I've had this idea that I've actually tried to bring together several times over the years. Back then, simply building the mouse interaction system took me many hours which translated into weeks of calendar time of night coding sessions. Touch interface interactions were just out of the question. Thanks to Sol 6.1, this was whipped up about 2 hours total of thinking, discussion, and coding. And while still very much a prototype, I think I'm actually at the point of tweaking to start to finding the fun in the idea I've been trying to get out of my head for quite some time. Before I start really thinking about taking that core and turning into a real game, the big decision here will be around themeing. Do I keep the abstract, simple presentation as Galcon did? Or do I want to try my hand at world building with a campaign mode along side skirmish? All that said, I think I've zeroed in on my next project. Looking forward to doing this one "right". Once I figure out the general presentation direction, my first order of business will be to get a Steam Early Access page going with a demo and start collecting real player feedback as I work toward the final product. And, of course, being the web and open source enthusiast that I am, I'm going to continue keeping the full game, other than Steam features, fully available via the web. Just like my previous projects.

The last bits of Math Marsh (primarily the trailer) require me carving out some time physically at my desk. That said, I'm still able to stew on other ideas, including a riff on the classic Galcon that I've been wanting to do for a while. david0178418.github.io/galax…

It's amazing how much work even a simple game takes, even with the lift from AI. I'm sure someone with a more clear vision of what they were making could do this by hand in weeks. But this has taken way longer than anticipated, even with the disruptions of life considered.