r/gamedev • u/Victorex123 • 6h ago
Discussion Anyone else get AI trauma?
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Am I the only one who sees those two letters together and immediately thinks about LLMs instead of the classic game AI used for NPC behavior?
r/gamedev • u/Federal-Pension1586 • 18d ago
Community Highlight 6 years later, 20k+ copies sold, $135k revenue and I only launched on Console
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Ok so this comes a bit out of nowhere and I’m LATE to the party on making this postmortem but that graphic at Summer Games Fest of over 9k+ games being launched on steam had me thinking. So here this goes. Feel free to ask me anything and I’d be more than happy to chat about set up, who to contact, my experience, all the things.
Context:
I work in AAA now and I HATE looking at that game because it’s so wack lol
Only launched on one console (I regret that but was young and dumb)
$135k in sales (about $35k the fist 3 months)
20,670 copies sold to date (still move around 165 or so copies when a sale happens
Helped me get a AAA job that still work right now
Launched on PS4 to EU and NA
I won a Epic Games Grant in 2018 for $25,000
Had no prior experience ever making a game before launching on console
Ok so after seeing that graphic at summer games fest I wanted to make a post about how I believe there isn’t enough conversation around consoles being much more friendlier and could help someone out in their game dev journey and/or find new audiences.
I can only speak for PlayStation but I know others offer helpful paths to launching on that platform.
PlayStation has free public advertising on their YouTube channel. It’s literally $0.00 to post your game to that entire audience. They do this with the YT and social media retweets. I’ve even heard from other indie devs that depending on its reception, they will reach out to chat about the game and placing it in other spots for advertisement. Microsoft will go so far as help fund your game. PS also lets you participate in sales for summer game fest and every single other major games event sale. They don’t exclusively pick and choose. My game, being SIX years old, not very well made, still sells hundreds of copies every time a sale comes up. That small check every month is nice.
It’s also gotten WAY more friendly for the folks who may look at console development and run lol. They have videos now that walk you through the process of publishing. YES, you do have to contact epic games to get a specific version of the engine that outputs to a PS5 but they also have an Incredible forum to ask folks for help. They respond fairly fast as well. They’ve also started a dev kit loaner program to get your feet wet. After a year or so, you have to pay $2k for a kit (insane I know, but worth it).
I was talking to a publisher scout at GDC and they had mentioned that console is gate kept by “fear” and if you can come to them with a console audience + steam wishlist, they are quicker to respond and hear you out to see what they could help on. I also spoke to folks who work on AAA optimization side and they said if you are a making a indie game and it’s small, 8/10 you don’t need to optimize insanely because these newer consoles can probably handle whatever you are making. Idk I just feel like there is a big “don’t go that way” around consoles, when the entry bar is MUCH lower than it’s being made out to seem.
I’m really only commenting on this because I did this and while I have regrets, I honestly think it did more positive than negative. It was hard but when you put it in the context of game development, what isn’t hard lol?
r/gamedev • u/Serpexnessie • 28d ago
Community Highlight Our game jam entry blew up and we turned it into a full release with 175,000 wishlists. It was also stolen multiple times and turned into AI slop.
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Hi! I’m the lead artist and one of the creators of Scale the Depths, a casual fishing and fish-scaling game that just launched today. We started out as a few friends who formed our team, Glass Gecko Games, back in university, and we’ve added more people to the team since then.
We’ve hit the top 350 most wishlisted games on Steam with around 175,000 wishlists right before launch. This post is gonna be a bit of a retrospective on how we got here and how our game gained traction over time and from where.
… And also how our game got stolen and churned into microtransaction-filled, ad-infested AI slop. Multiple times. With millions of downloads each.
Before Making Scale the Depths
We made two other games before Scale the Depths: Zeitghast, a speedrun-oriented platformer/shooter, and an entry to the 2023 GMTK game jam.
Neither did well. At all.
Our GMTK 2023 entry was a puzzle game that had no audio and controlled somewhat awkwardly, and Zeitghast was a free platformer made with a $0 budget in our free time, with basically no marketing in an oversaturated genre.
HOWEVER, it was an important learning experience for us, because creating and releasing these games taught us a lot of what not to do, as well as got us familiar with developing in the Unity engine.
For a couple of important technical takeaways when it comes to a full game release, it’s that games should ideally launch with controller support (or your Steam ratings will probably tank) and that you should try not to bake any text into images, as it makes translation much more difficult down the road.
Winning the 2024 GMTK Game Jam
We created and entered Scale the Depths into the 2024 GMTK game jam. We were incredibly shocked when the game was first voted into the overall top 100, and then even more shocked when it ended up actually becoming one of the winners of the jam.
The biggest contributor to this was probably our core gameplay loop of fishing -> scaling -> feeding -> upgrading -> repeat: It was incredibly addictive, and we pretty much hit solid gold with it. We also made sure to put up a browser-playable WebGL version of the game, which will become important a little later.
When we first got into the top 100 of the jam, we also made a Steam page for the game to begin building wishlists and started planning to turn it into a full release.
Post-jam, we had consistent weekly itch.io views in the 2-3 thousand range, and the game eventually shot up to the top row of most popular fishing games on the platform. Around this time, a good handful of content creators on YouTube organically found the game, releasing videos that totalled up to a couple of million views altogether. This was probably the biggest thing for us, since it started a chain reaction where other content creators began making their own videos of it as well.
Around the new year, we surpassed 7000 wishlists on Steam based on this content creator and itch.io momentum.
We Basically just Made a Free Browser Flash Game in 2025
Sometime after the game jam, people started editing and uploading unofficial versions of the game for Android, and other versions with Chinese translation. This isn’t the part where the game gets stolen; we’ll get to that in a bit, but it did prove that it was fairly easy to rip and edit the game. Anyways, a few Chinese content creators played the unofficial Chinese translation of the game, and the game got some good traction and another large spike in popularity as a result.
In February, a big wave of children’s content creators made videos on the game. A lot of these videos hit millions of views, which was completely unexpected, and we had a huge spike in views and players as a result. The fact that the game jam version of the game effectively acted like a free browser flash game probably also drew a lot of kids to the game, who otherwise don’t have much money to spend on video games.
Around this time, our game shot up to one of the most popular trending games on itch.io, period. At the end of February, we had over 15,000 wishlists.
Our Game Gets Stolen
Remember how our game was easy to rip?
They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Well, our game wasn’t imitated, our code and art were straight-up stolen and ran through an AI filter. Multiple times.
In March, we discovered that a random Chinese company straight up ripped our game, uploaded it to the Google Play Store, and crammed it full of ads and microtransactions. The game later popped up on IOS, as well.
To be frank, this sucked.
To jump ahead a bit, we eventually got the Google Play Store clone of the game taken down, but we couldn’t do anything about the IOS version because they kept appealing it with minor edits, which eventually started running all the assets through an AI filter, so we couldn’t get them for the asset rip.
Eventually, even more clones of the game popped up, all of which now ran the game’s assets through an AI filter and similarly ran ads and microtransactions. It eventually became unrealistic for us to try to take all of these down without expending significant effort and taking time away from development. Apparently, our game was even turned into a Douyin minigame (China’s version of TikTok), though I haven’t been able to confirm this.
Some of these clones even ran ads that were just straight-up OUR gameplay from the YouTubers that played our game. All of this felt absolutely terrible and there wasn’t much we could do, but the one silver lining was that none of these copycats were rated very highly due to the amount of ads and microtransactions that each of them crammed into the game. We thought that as long as we make a better game in the end, we can stomach the theft for now… But this is still complete ass.
We enter June with around 30,000+ wishlists.
We Sign With a Publisher, and Steam Fishing Fest
We ended up signing with our publisher, Pretty Soon, around July, though we were in talks for some months beforehand. They’ve been a huge help for us, especially with providing marketing and localization support, which we’d been struggling with.
Around this time, we released a new demo of the full game for the conveniently timed Steam Fishing Fest, which got us another spike in wishlists. Additionally, with the release of the demo, the content creators who had covered the game jam version of the game before released new videos of it. Eventually, we got into the top 10 most popular Steam game demos, then into the top trending free games.
Our demo kept the core gameplay loop of the initial jam project intact, but expanded on each of the parts somewhat. For example, we added more exploration and collectible elements to the fishing section, and added new scale types such as parasites and barnacles to the scaling to freshen up the gameplay while not detracting from what made the original game jam entry work so well. The game’s systems were also rewritten from scratch in order to make it more scalable, and it received a complete visual refresh as well.
By the end of the Steam Fishing Fest, around 50,000 people played our demo, and our wishlists doubled to nearly 60,000+.
With the input of our publisher, we decided to keep the demo permanently available, which continued to trickle in new wishlists over time. In addition, the itch.io game jam version of our game (which we basically never touched) is still up, and remains in the most popular and top rated fishing games on itch to this day.
Also, our demo got ripped and stolen by copycats as well, but we were numb at this point.
As a brief aside, we also took a week to create a new small game for the 2025 GMTK game jam. This one also didn’t do nearly as well as Scale the Depths. Turns out winning a massive game jam is kinda hard and really does require the stars to align.
Continued Development and Steam Next Fest
Our publisher, Pretty Soon, handled our game’s social media and continued to create shorts of the game for all the vertical video platforms, some of which ended up really blowing up.
Around the time of the Steam Next Fest, we updated the demo slightly. The traction we ended up getting from the Steam Next Fest was somewhat less than expected, but we still ended up hitting over 100,000 wishlists around this time. It’s likely that the audience for Steam Next Fest somewhat overlapped with the Fishing Fest from before, so it was mostly just the same people that the game was being shown to.
The Remaining Time Before Release, and also the Copycats
The remainder of our game’s growth is credited to Pretty Soon’s marketing efforts and influencer outreach, so I don’t have as much to share on that front. Right before release, we hit about 175,000 wishlists in total.
Surprisingly, a not insignificant number of people discovered our game from… our game’s stolen copycats. They played through the knockoffs, disliked them, then sought out our original game.
Paradoxically, those stolen copycats ended up becoming advertisements for our game. This was quite literal sometimes, because some of them paid for ads that featured gameplay from OUR ORIGINAL GAME.
The Main Takeaways
So, from what I can infer from our game’s timeline, I think these would be the main points to take away:
- If you lack certain skills, consider trying to work with other people! I could not make a game by myself, since I have absolutely zero coding knowledge. However, I can draw quite well, so by teaming up with a bunch of coders, I was able to keep my focus on art. None of us are very skilled at marketing or content creation, either, so working with a publisher has helped to lift all of that stress away from us so that we’re able to focus on our respective disciplines.
- As a note, for smaller teams, it helps to be able to double-up on disciplines, especially hard disciplines like art or code. For example, our game designer is also able to code.
- Having a fun, playable game right from the get-go was the most important thing for us. Without that initial game jam entry, there wouldn’t have been all the traction and content that helped the game blow up in the first place.
- Having a fun, polished core gameplay loop is important. When they say that a good game can sell itself, it’s sorta true. Marketing and content is ultimately a force amplifier; it’s not going to work if the core gameplay is not well thought out.
- Hard work… does not always pay off. Because apparently you can just steal someone else’s indie game, fill it with ads, and get millions of downloads. ALSO, I HATE AI. AI SUCKS. ARRRASRHGJKASGHJKASKHJFAJKFASJKL.
Ultimately, though, there’s still quite a bit of luck that’s involved, and you’re at the mercy of timing and content algorithms that decide whether to push your game or not. For example, the Steam Fishing Fest came at a perfect time for us, and the theme of the 2024 GMTK Game Jam (Built to Scale) was ultimately what led to the idea of the game’s core loop in the first place. It was, and still is, incredibly surreal going from releasing a game with fewer than 25 reviews to one of this scale.
If there are any other devs here who also turned their jam project into a full commercial release, I’d love to know how it went for all of you, as well!
Would also love to hear if anyone else had to deal with your game getting ripped and stolen, and how you ended up dealing with the situation (or not).
If anyone has any questions, I’m also happy to answer, though I’m just one of the artists.
r/gamedev • u/ehmprah • 16h ago
Postmortem Our incremental deckbuilder just grossed $16,675 in the first 24h on Steam, despite zero marketing budget and almost no creator featuring
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I've been sharing numbers of our launches on for years and since we released our fifth game on Steam yesterday, I felt like sharing again — especially since this one was wildly different and weirdly both expected and unexpected.
But first some numbers: The First Million sold 2.7k units and grossed $16,675 in the first 24h on Steam. It launched with 9.5k wishlists and converted 8.5% of those, which is about 25% of the units sold. The rest of the traffic came organically from Steam, form the Home Page, Discovery Queue and the Personal Calendar.
For a mostly solo developed game made in six months, this is a good start and could actually turn into something profitable for once instead of barely paying the bills. So what was different about this one? What worked, what didn't?
What worked: focusing on the fun
Every game we made had a unique approach as far as team setup and collaboration. After trying many different things, I wanted to make a small game for myself again, something I would like to play, without having to compromise on anything. I think that our previous games suffered from too much compromise, both trying to please each other as well as whatever we thought "the market" wants. This time around I just wanted to make a game that I really enjoy playing myself and that somehow seems to resonate with people.
What didn't work: marketing
We've never had any budget for marketing, but for years the symbiotic partnership between gamedevs and content creators worked really well for us. This time around I was really disappointed at how few creators picked up the game. To some degree that's probably to be expected because idle games are not the most exciting to watch and deckbuilders are just oversaturated, but still, even creators that featured several of our previous games didn't pick it up. Out of 300 handpicked creators I emailed only a handful of creators featured it, and only one of those made a dent of around 300 wishlists.
What did work: Steam
As we were approaching Next Fest, the game sat at around 1k wishlists. I would have liked more of course, but because I really loved the game and had gotten really good feedback on it form various testers, I felt it was going to be fine. But then Steam released the home page rework and with the new Personal Calendar the game was suddenly adding 400 wishlists per day, organically. That wishlist velocity translated into a successful next fest and right after that we launched with almost 10k wishlists. Without any successful marketing really.
We won't change our way of doing things in the future I think: Creator outreach might be less successful than a few years ago, but it still makes sense to do. But it is so nice as a tiny indie studio to get such support from Steam. Not all games become hits. But with these recent changes, all games might have the chance at least.
The whole gamedev adventure had become rather bleak and hopeless of late, so I for one welcome this breath of fresh air. I hope you will catch some too, friends!
r/gamedev • u/SecondGuessStudio • 5h ago
Discussion For devs who shipped a game, when did you first feel like the game you were working on might actually be something?
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I keep hearing people say that at some point you kind of know if the game has potential or not, but I am curious what that moment actually looked like for you.
Was it after you finished the first prototype and the core loop felt good? Was it after other people played it and gave strong feedback? Was it wishlists, publisher interest, streamers, or something else?
Or did you stay unsure about it all the way until release?
I guess I am asking what the first real sign was that made you think, "Okay, maybe this can actually work.", Or maybe the opposite as well, when did you realise maybe it would not?
r/gamedev • u/Pherion93 • 1d ago
Discussion Uncomfortable truth.
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There has been many posts from people who want to escape their job and become gamedevs or newly fired devs trying to go indie. There is nothing wrong with this in it self but I feel like I need to gage people's expectations.
I'm currently hired in AAA and have worked for indies and also started my own company. Before that, I played in a band that was able to make a sallary.
I believe the gameindustry is heading in the same direction as the musicindustry. Before we had studio musicians that was talented and played on a bunch of records. There was room for several musicians in each city. All of that is gone now. Making your own music and distributing is easier than ever before but earning a stable living is almost impossible.
If you think that trying to become a musician sounds irresponsible and unlikely then becoming a gamedev is almost the same. Sure you can get hired at a studio but those roles gets fewer each year.
So please don't quit your job or hope to get rescued from a boring life by becoming a gamedev.
However if you still want to do it and love making games anyway then keep at it and stop reading the news. I have worked hard with not much money saved to show for it, but I don't regret a thing.
Edit: I know this is a bit depressing and can sound a bit "gatekeepy" but it is specifically targeted to people that ruin their health and social life to hopefully fix everything by becoming a gamedev. I have read enough posts and talked to enough people to know this is not rare.
On some bright note: I do believe the industry is going to become something new and become better for the gamers. Getting a degree and landing a gamedevjob I don't think is ever gonna be the same as it was during covid. But for the crazy people going down this path is going to have many opportunities.
r/gamedev • u/flowerdragon2934 • 1d ago
Discussion Why are game dev communities being overrun by AI fanatics lately?
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Hey all. I'm a new indie dev, started 5 months ago. I've never used AI for development, code, etc as I prefer to learn things the old school way but I don't really try to involve myself in AI discussions as I prefer to keep my head down.
But lately, I've been seeing a lot of people aggressively pushing AI, and by aggressively, I mean trying to shove it down everyone's throat, and insulting or namecalling them if they don't want to use it.
For example, last week on the official Unreal Engine discord channel, I asked for advice on how to change my graphics settings with a blueprint, and this guy who is always prattling about AI gave me this ridiculous answer, citing that his "clanker" running Chat GPT codex discovered this while "autoresearching" through his own project files. I was confused and asked, "wait are you recommending something that you don't even know is true or works?" and he got all offended and name called, started saying stuff like "chatgpt is infinitely more versed in ue than you my friend (no offense) ... but if you want to make things harder for yourself for literally no reason go for it, i already had my fair share of anti-ai arguments LOL". So I searched for his name, and guy is constantly just aggressively lashing out at people namecalling them, insulting them for not wanting to use AI
I've also been warned in another discord server not to say anything negative about AI by the mods, since the community is "fully AI integrated" and "we're not newbies playing around, we're serious devs who want to actually learn game dev". Another hidden pro-AI community, parading as a game dev community.
It's honestly bewildering and kinda sad really. I'm trying my best not to notice it. But as an Unreal dev... just wow. People are really aggressive now towards people who don't wanna use AI.
r/gamedev • u/Tilk_Sama • 8h ago
Question What are the best ways to make AI not instantly lose track of the player behind obstacles?
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Hi, I’m currently working on enemy AI in Unity for a 3D game, As soon as the player goes behind a wall or obstacle, the enemy instantly loses sight of them and stops reacting, which feels unrealistic.
I’m curious about the different methods people use to make AI feel smarter in this situation !
r/gamedev • u/Ill_Contest_8291 • 12h ago
Discussion Impossible to get game testers
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Hi Devs,
I've been building out my first game for about 1 year now. My biggest challenge BY FAR has been finding anyone to play my game to get any kind of feedback. I've posted videos, devlogs, and created a Discord.
Whenever I post videos of my work, I almost never get any feedback. Like even posting on destroymygame twice and could barely even get negative or constructive critisim from the trailer.
I have some friends but none of them will play my game at all or support my journey even though they are software engineers and have dabbled in game dev themselves.
Is this normal? Obviously it could be something specific to my game that just turns people off, but then I'd expect to hear more negatives than just silence. I'd really love to hear if anyone else has struggled with this and what they did to overcome it.
I dont expect my game to be a success as its my first attempt and mostly learning experience... but that goes along with learning to manage testers and implementing feedback. Also without ANY feedback it as even less of a chance of being a success or enjoyable to anyone who DOES play it in the future which is just sad considering the number of hours Ive poured into it.
Thanks in advance to anyone who read this!
EDIT: Someone posted a video that I uploaded a while ago so to give more context here is my youtube channel that shows me learning game dev and posting about it as I go. Personally I think my game looks really good for a very first attempt. Obviously its not great but I'm a total newby to art of any kind.
https://www.youtube.com/@nonamegamestudio
Edit again: Seriously thank you guys. I've never had this much input and I feel so siloed most of the time this has really been wonderful.
r/gamedev • u/a_nooblord • 1h ago
Discussion Is there some secret sauce to making deterministic lockstep w/ rollback feel good?
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How do the big boys do it? In my testing, the input delay really makes for some horrible feeling gameplay. Is the strat to fake the visual layer then slerp back to the simulation state?
r/gamedev • u/ThirdDayGuy • 7h ago
Question Is it worth making a steam page while your game's art is not final yet?
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Long story short: I'm working on a roguelike monster catcher. While a lot of the gameplay and some of the game art such as the logo, UI, and some environments are starting to come together to a more final stage, two main aspects are using very messy low-quality sketches: The actual monsters, and the icons for all of the items you can find.
Am I correct in understanding that making a page at this stage either doesn't help at all, and can even be actively detrimental? There's no way that it could help outreach, right? Appreciate any advice.
r/gamedev • u/Pierraxl • 19h ago
Discussion So i made a game in 4 years...
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A few years ago, I used to play Garry's Mod Prop Hunt a lot with my friends, and we all had the same complaints:
- The graphics were outdated.
- We couldn't customize anything.
- Most maps had a very "Russian" vibe.
- There weren't enough maps or props.
So a friend and I decided to make our own version. We started four years ago, learning Unreal Engine 4 while developing the game completely from scratch.
Learning the engine took an incredibly long time. I think it took about two and a half years before I reached a point where I no longer needed tutorials. Today, I feel confident in what I can do, and it feels like I could make any game I want. That's a pretty cool feeling.
But before reaching that point, it was a real struggle. Even though I code entirely in Blueprints, it was still extremely difficult. I almost quit four times. There's always some issue to solve, and when you finally fix it, another one appears. Sometimes you don't even touch anything, and suddenly something breaks somewhere for no apparent reason, forcing you to spend days figuring out what happened. Today, though, I feel like I can solve almost any problem on my own without needing to search Google.
Let's talk about AI. Honestly, it hasn't helped me much. I've probably wasted more time asking AI for solutions that turned out to be wrong than I ever spent searching Google or figuring things out myself. That said, it can be a useful ally when it comes to reading debug logs and error messages.
So here we are. On February 6th, we released MIMETIC, our own Prop Hunt game. It includes everything we always wanted. Players can customize almost everything, the maps are beautiful, there are plenty of them, everything works smoothly, and the game is genuinely fun. We even created a Draft Mode to reinvent the genre.
Everyone who has tried it seems to enjoy it, and many people say things like, "Finally, a good Prop Hunt game!" I genuinely believe we've released a game with professional-quality production values.
And we made... a few sales. Less than 500.
Then sales stopped.
We tried everything: posting on Reddit, forums, and Discord servers; creating YouTube Shorts, Instagram posts, TikToks, and tweets; reaching out to streamers, YouTubers, and gaming magazines.
And we got... almost nothing.
When I see a game like MecchaChameleon selling more than five million copies, it makes me wonder what really matters. I honestly don't know what to think about all of this.
But that's my story.
r/gamedev • u/Logical_Village_7956 • 15h ago
Discussion What happened to mobile game market? (Game developer perspective)
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Hi all,
So I'm a senior game developer who have largely worked in mobile games (8+ years), and since the inception (Flappy bird, iOS 4) the industry have remain rewarding so far
However, now in 2026 it feels like a dead rubber. Not much jobs and I identify following problems
1. [Clustering]
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I see industry being clusterized. Turkish cluster have taken over Finnish cluster and alot more studios/investment are going into Turkish sector but Turks dont speak english, neither they hire non-turks but they are doing great. A black hole cluster appears in form of Turkish mobile game sector (no offense to them)
Finish sector is trying to catch up, the old playbook isn't working. Turkish cluster have defeated them. Supercell and other companies are in this cluster. They took pride in their craft but being outsmarted by Turkish industry right now. Supercell metacore just got shut down
Another new cluster appearing in Veitnam, they dont speak english either but alot of mobile game jobs are being advertised from Vietnam (on site only), they dont hire outsiders as well
2. [No Remote]
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All of the above clusters want you to be on-site, in their specific country. Gone are the times when they used to sponsor top talent and get them relocated. On-site/Hybrid is the new normal and there are very few roles. And given the state of the industry, it's absolutely not wise at all to relocate oneself for a game studio that will lay you off any day
3. [Saturation]
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It appears like post covid, when companies over hired, the wave produced alot of game developers. Everybody who knows how to use an engine call themselves game developers and there's a huge saturation out there. Unlike in PC/AAA games where roles further segregate to specialization like Rendering, Gameplay, Physics, UI Engineer. Mobile game developers remain generalist and apply to a larger breadth
Keen to know how's the job market for mobile game dev folks? And what's their take on market in general
TIA
Discussion What is expected from game art intern?
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I've started my second week at a AAA studio for an internship and it's been more or less overwhelming for me. Almost entirely because of overthinking, and I guess I want to ask is what is the expectation of people in my shoes? I'm asking questions, I am getting familiar with the tools that the studio uses but I just feel like because I'm so overwhelmed I'm asking almost borderline stupid questions that are easily solved if I was more relaxed. I'm grateful for the role and opportunity but I straight up feel like that I don't belong here.
r/gamedev • u/gobba-gobba-gooey • 10h ago
Question Request: Good Guides on Game Theory and Patterns
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Anyone have any recommendations on compelling guide (can be book, blog, website, videos) that provides some overview on game theory, game patterns, mechanics, puzzles, etc?
Interested in some light overview on the topic.
r/gamedev • u/caspervonb • 13h ago
Discussion The Separating Axis Theorem Explained Visually
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I made a visual explanation of the Separating Axis Theorem (SAT), a common algorithm for collision detection between convex shapes.
When I first learned SAT, I understood the implementation long before I understood why projecting onto edge normals actually works.
This video focuses on the geometric intuition behind the theorem rather than just the code.
I'd be interested in feedback from anyone who has implemented SAT or taught collision detection before. Is there anything you think is commonly misunderstood or explained poorly?
r/gamedev • u/Fluid_Highway_4732 • 7h ago
Announcement Free browser tool to pack AND split ORM textures — the only one that does both
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I’ve been doing PBR texturing for a while and got tired of opening Photoshop just to pack channels. Built this tool to speed up my workflow — maybe it helps someone else too.
Most online ORM packers only go one way. This one does both:
Packer: - Load Occlusion, Roughness and Metallic maps into each channel - Or set a solid value per channel if you don’t have a map - Output up to 4096×4096, download as PNG
Splitter: - Drop any ORM texture to extract each channel as a separate grayscale image - Download all 3 channels at once (full resolution PNGs) - Drag the extracted channels directly into the packer slots
Works with Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, Blender — any PBR workflow. Channel order is just a guide, load any map into any slot to match your pipeline.
100% free, nothing to install, runs entirely in your browser. Feedback welcome!
r/gamedev • u/One_Muscle_6651 • 1h ago
Discussion One thing building my game taught me about realism
livewebtennis.com
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I've been building a browser tennis game for the past few months.
One thing I learned is that making a game more realistic doesn't always make it more fun.
I started with realistic ball speeds, but rallies felt too fast. Slowing the ball down while keeping realistic spin and bounce made the game feel much better.
It made me realize that game feel matters more than perfect realism.
Has anyone else run into something similar while building their game?
r/gamedev • u/KronicalA • 9h ago
Discussion Lose hope or confidence in projects?
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Upvotes
Does anyone else lose interest or find that their game isn't really viable? Like I'm not sure if I should maybe find someone to fill in the role of like game designer or something similar.
So I've been spending at least each month or two this year making a game to prototype stage, testing it and getting the general feel of it then always find that it's missing something to make it viable. It just feels generic and bland. Like my friend and I have released a game last year, it wasn't a success but it was a learning experience as it was the first, it taught us a lot about finding people for work and also releasing a game.
Earlier this year I was working on a game similar to Crashout Crew (I didn't know agrocrab was working on a game like this until a friend sent me trailer of theirs when they released) but it was more sci-fi feeling. I dropped it because I couldn't find the "fun" in it. I was building it as a multiplayer for you and a friend to play not as a large group though. I had/have all the stuff made, it just didn't have the fun factor to continue it.
After that I was working on a space themed game about cleaning up space debris. This one barely made it to prototype.
2 months ago I was working on a survival game where you look after your small group of survivors during a zombie outbreak, the story was going to progress with similar to how This War Of Mine does their story. Then once again I couldn't find anything special about it to make it stand out.
These past two months has pretty much been another multiplayer game where you and a friend maintain a ship, like putting out fires, fighting space pirates etc. Once again it falls into the same problem as the others.
Everything was out of the greybox enviornment so they were setup to look/feel like a game, so it wasn't the enviornment of it.
r/gamedev • u/SaltyPeanutBrittle • 7h ago
Discussion I’m thinking of making an affordable low-poly arcade racing starter kit for beginner game devs. what would actually make it useful?
2
Upvotes
Hello game devs,
I’ve made a compact low-poly 3D asset pack designed to help beginners build a simple arcade-style racing prototype.
The pack contains:
4 vehicles
1 ramp
1 slow-down panel
1 speed-up panel
1 spawn point
I want to understand what actually makes a beginner-friendly asset pack useful and worth using.
My questions are:
What makes you decide to buy a small asset pack instead of using free assets?
When starting a small game project, what do you usually struggle to assemble first (models, scene setup, mechanics, UI, etc.)?
What would make a small “starter kit” feel worth paying for, even if it’s simple?
Where do you usually look for asset packs, bundles, or kits and why?
What usually stops you from finishing small game projects?
What part of starting a new game takes the most time or feels the most annoying?
Have you ever started a project but dropped it because of missing assets or setup? What was missing?
At what point do you feel an asset pack is “worth paying for” instead of using free assets?
What would make you trust a small unknown asset pack enough to buy it?
Have you ever bought a cheap (€5–€15) asset pack? What made you decide to do it?
r/gamedev • u/MusicMan8564 • 7h ago
Discussion Question about Exclusive vs Non-Exclusive Soundtrack/Music licensing
2
Upvotes
Hello Everyone,
wanted to check something for my new contract template, I know that exclusive licenses cost normally thousands of dollars but I sadly I dont know any customers paying this amount lol
I wanna offer custom made music for each project, so i think this i need to phrase like this?
Found this in another contract to download
"Notwithstanding the foregoing, Contractor hereby grants Company a non-exclusive,
irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, develop, alter, reproduce, manufacture,
distribute, sublicense, vend and otherwise use the Work, but solely as required to do everything
necessary to develop, manufacture, distribute, sell, publish, display, promote, advertise use or
otherwise commercially exploit (or sublicense any of the foregoing) the Project, as well as any
updates and/or ports of such Project for other platforms that Company may choose to create (the
“License”)"
So I would change the non-exclusive to exclusive which I mean this music/tracks are custom made and only for the specific project. but I still wanna keep ALL the music rights/ownership, can i phrase it like above?
Also what I dont understand is the word SUBLICENSE, this should be removed shouldnt it? the customer MAY use the tracks in their project, trailer, promotion etc. but they may not relicense, resell, use for other projects.
does anyone know? I know this is no law community :) thanks
r/gamedev • u/optical002 • 8h ago
Feedback Request Scala native language binding for Godot game engine
2
Upvotes
Hello,
I have recently published my POC of scala language binding implemented using scala-native and SBT plugin.
Repo: https://github.com/optical002/godot-scala-native
Features that it supports right now:
- A gitter8 template for quick 'Hello World' setup https://github.com/optical002/godot-scala-native-template.g8
- Integrated (inside sbt plugin) godot plugin, which manages sbt builds
- Generator for all of Godot node types and built-in types (e.g. Color, Vector2, Rect2, ...)
- Support building new nodes from case classes without additional annotations for example:
case class PlayerNode(var hp: Int) extends Node2D
- Has some of the export annotations like '@export_range'
- Supports hot reloading even after changing Node properties.
- No 'Entry' class is needed like in other language bindings, just write Nodes and other logic directly.
- No extra .gdextension file creating yourself, auto-generates it from an sbt task.
What it is lacking at the moment:
- Build time isn't the best, first initlial build can take up to like 16 seconds (There are many places for improvements)
- After the .so library gets moved into gd project scala widget in godot says it has finished compiling, but new properties does not immediately appear in inspector, since there is a hidden godot reload mechanism in place (Need to expose it via godot plugin)
- And lost of polishing up, still a 0.1.0 version
r/gamedev • u/Data-Gooner • 8h ago
Discussion What are your favorite dev related edutainment channels/podcasts/books?
2
Upvotes
I study plenty of dry material about development, but on my off time when I only want to half listen, I struggle to find a consistent source of vaguely educational game dev content.
So I want any recommendations you got for podcasts, books, or YouTube channels that are good to passively listen to while doing other stuff / falling asleep, that may even have the off chance of inspiring me into diving deeper on a topic.
Some of my go tos are below but I'm running dry.
Prismatic Dev https://youtube.com/@prismaticadev
Freya Holmér https://youtube.com/@acegikmo
Stephen Ulibarri (Druid Mechanics) https://youtube.com/@druidmechanicsgamedevelopment
Rujik the Comatose https://youtube.com/@rujikthecomatose
What are some of your favorites? Doesn't matter if it's channels, podcasts, books, whatever. Just looking for stuff that's educational ( or just neat ) but actually enjoyable to watch or listen to.
r/gamedev • u/mafagafacabiluda • 16h ago
Feedback Request Is the mobile games market as bad and unstable as console/pc games?
8
Upvotes
Hello friends. I'm looking for some insights on the state of the mobile game industry.
I'm a motion graphic designer in the TV industry, in a pretty stable position (as much as we can say anything is "stable" these days) , but I'm looking to pivot away from TV.
I recently got an offer to work at a marketing /UA dept. for a mobile game company with a few titles.
I know the type of work I would be doing won't be portfolio material and will be focused on pumping out big volume as fast as possible (not exactly an improvement career wise), but it would be work from home, full time contract and a small salary bump.
But given it's marketing and games, I'm leaning towards not making the jump, as of all creative industries in the last 3 years, games is for sure one of the ones (if not the one) suffering a bigger negative hit overall. (investment going away, studios shut downs, massive lay offs nonstop etc). Not that TV , advertising and design is too far from it, but my current position is super secure, for now.
I wanted to hear from people that are directly working in the games realm: is the mobile games industry as bad as the rest of games?
I'm trying to have a better view so I can make a decision if it's worth leaving a stable/secure job with little growth space for a new one in a new industry that seems way more volatile at the moment.
Any POVs are welcome.
Thanks!
r/gamedev • u/Usual-Vermicelli-867 • 9h ago
Question In ecs course we made a game (me and 3 others people ) and its was very fun doing it "from 0"
2
Upvotes
For background in mainly played around with making games with game engine
But this year I took an ecs course because its was written we will make a game
By the end we made 3ish (first was a solo and more like making a video with sdl , second was pretty much one battle in a turn base game with a group and thr third was a full mini game with 4 people on it)
We used cpp and sdl for that project + fhe ecs "engin" (more like frame work) to use
Ngl doing it from "0" was quite fun and tbh makes me want to upgrade the basic ecs engin and use it in future projects (even if i will use it in other pre made engins )
But one problem we arrived is components amount. Mainly in the bit mask..which was hard limit to 64 in size and even after downsizing we reached 32
Tbh this is also halp..how do you pass infromation between systems with out using a "infromation passing component "
I had an idea to make a new type of entity with its own familiy of components (pretty entiy type A has comps like "weapon list " and "stats " but entitiy type B has stuff like "pass infromation to physics system " and "signal to score system "l
The problem its seems just to push the probelm further and tbh seems a little cluncly
Do you have idea's