I’m moving away from Unity
Posted: October 26, 2021 Filed under: Patreon Leave a comment »Because of reasons, I’m parting ways with Unity. It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while now as it’s not the “one person can make 3D games!” tool that I dedicated myself to over a decade ago (as it is “improved”, it asks more of me rather than less, which isn’t how tools are supposed to work). This latest news has just made it even easier to step away. Fuck military contracts.
So here’s me from now on:
- No new unity projects
- My unity systems won’t be updated (OK yeah, “lol how’s that different?” etc :P)
- I will only use unity for existing projects, and only when porting them elsewhere is unreasonable
- For those projects, I won’t spend any money that will go to Unity Technologies (eg, no asset store purchases)
What next then? Whilst I’d love to work with just pico-8 forever, it doesn’t quite have *all* the capabilities I need 😛
The first thing I’m looking at is Godot (you can see a stream of me learning of it and making a simple game here or here). It seems like the best option for the time-being, but I’ll be keeping an open mind and exploring other options as they come up. I’m feeling a little burned by comitting to one engine as if it is *the* one, and especially by my past evangelism for it. I’m now of the opinion that more options is better than one “definitive” option. Godot seems like it will be a relatively smooth transition from Unity but I don’t think I’m going to bind myself to it.
I’d recommend that kind of approach to others too tbh: don’t become dependent on your tools, especially when they are controlled by people who don’t represent you!
So, that is it for the forseeable, I’ll be trying new things! To close I’d like to thank all my patrons for their support. Patronage makes it much less scary to take time for learning and experimentation <3
How Dice Expressions work in Sophie’s Dice
Posted: October 26, 2021 Filed under: Patreon Leave a comment »
Unlock with PatreonMonthly Build 2018/09 – Normal Bowling VR
Posted: October 26, 2021 Filed under: Patreon Leave a comment »One Year of Patreon!
Posted: October 26, 2021 Filed under: Patreon Leave a comment »Hey, so I’ve been on Patreon for one whole year now, and it has been the most productive year for me since… well, for a LONG time. And that is all thanks to your support meaning I can hugely cut back on the stress and bad thoughts that come with trying to make games and not starve, so thanks so much!
The tl;dr? I made 10 new games, 12 monthly builds (of 10 different games!), and (at least) new 6 tools/systems.
I was coming in to Patreon at a point when I was releasing 3-4 games a year, so I think it’s apparent how much of a help this is for me <3
SO, here’s the list!
Games:
A platformer with 4 (literal) levels, and a multi-stage boss. Also it’s CUTE AF and has awesome music by patron Tim Monks.
Another platformer, perhaps my most advanced pico-8 game? Also really punishing <3
A festive reskin of CoG:U. Should a reskin count as a seperate game? You think I’m cheating the number of games I’ve made? Psh you’re lucky I don’t count the original Curse of Greed too. I practically made THREE CoG games this year. THREEEEEE.
I ported Dusk Child to unity, made high resolution graphics, and updated some stuff that had been requested. It’s so pretty now!
My first bitsy game! It’s miserable but also I’m really proud of it!
Nobody had made a frogger clone for pico-8, someone had to! Also it doubled as a chance to show my complete pico-8 process, that link above includes a full video playlist of me making it and talking through the whats and whys.
I started experimenting with twitch/streaming game stuff and a new game came from it! One person streams the game, others play by typing commands into stream chat 🙂
This game SUCKS but I made it when I had been in a huge funk for weeks and that’s not nothing. After this I got back to work on a bunch of things!
Two-player Tic Tac Toe Tactics, Totally Terrific To Try!
Very ordinary bowling game! Not at all interesting or unusual! (but seriously tho I just put this up today, check it out!)
Monthly Builds:
These are the monthly builds that I have made available to $5+ patrons over the past year, some are games that I was working on at the time, others are older unfinished games that I have uncovered just for you<3
This is what I was working on when I started this patreon, I’m keen to get back to it but I totally promised you a Halloween adventure game. The builds I have are up for this tho 🙂
This game is actually 5 years old, it’s “complete” but you know, unfinished because who has time to animate a proper ending (or get better voice acting (or model proper props (or etc etc etc))) 😛
So glad I actually got to share a build of this, and it includes a level I made just for patrons! <3
Haha, I thought I was gonna finish this game in one month… Anyway it’s still turning out to be something I’m real proud of, there’s a couple of builds of it and there should be another one before too long also. I’m making HECKA progress on it 🙂
This is another old one I’ve had lying unfinished in my projects folder, I’m really glad I got to share what I made for it!
This one is sooooooo close to done but you know how it is when you have a nearly finished game and even if you love it you’d rather be working on anything else and so you leave a game in your projects folder for years and learn pico-8 instead? no? just me?
A VR game! Funny story; a couple of years ago I blew what little money I had on a VR set-up and a computer good enough to support it because I figured it would 100% be a fast-growing market before too long and being able to make cool games for it would finally mean I had reliable income. Well… in the end all I was right about was that I could make cool VR games. Actually now I think about it, that story isn’t funny at all. But I think this prototype is cool af 🙂
Anti-gravity racing game! This is another one that’s been a WIP on my shelf for quite a long time, mostly because programming AI is like, really difficult, you know?
I think this is a really sweet prototype, this version is the first thing I got Sinput to work with so that’s cool. Interesting fact; when I started this game, my plan was to release it on OUYA, do you remember OUYA? Sometimes even I don’t and it was half my income for like two years.
This one is a really popular request and I’m SO glad I took the time to make it happen. First standalone version of Sarah’s Run, updated to run with modern versions of unity, now with Sinput so the controls are 100% customisable.
Tools/Systems/Tutorials:
I also put out a bunch of gamedev (and other) stuff that might be useful to other creators, but if not then they are at least useful to me. I know for sure I’m gonna get a lot of use out of Sinput and Palutte, and I’ve already gotten a lot of use from Ducksnaker PRO 😉
- Froggi making-of
- Slope collision tutorial pico-8
- Prince Snow model talkthrough
- Ducksnaker PRO
- Sinput
- Palutte
- Even more I never posted about
Some other links from throughout the year:
Overall, I’d say I’ve done pretty well, and that I’ve been able to do so well is entirely thanks to your support. I love you all so much and I just wanna say that even if you have to reduce/delete pledges or whatever (I know times are tight) that you have still truly helped me this year. It really has been my best year for a very long time!
If you can tho, do bump up your pledge! I’m not exactly suffering from an abundance of time spent with positive credit you know ;P <3
