Hey everyone! Just uploaded a new video where I take a drive with a software developer, an experienced software developer, and dive deep into his journey in tech. We chat about his start in software development, career goals, and insights into the world of coding. shares valuable advice for aspiring developers and what he loves outside of coding! If you're into tech, software development, or just curious about the life of a developer, check it out and let me know what you think!

Topics Covered:

- Getting started in software development

- Career highlights and challenges in tech

-his goals and aspirations

- Tips for aspiring developers

- Work-life balance as a developer

Watch the video here: [A Drive with a Software Developer](https://youtu.be/H5vJx1vWnp8)

Feel free to leave questions or comments below, and I’ll make sure to answer them! Enjoy the video 😊

#SoftwareDevelopment #TechCareer #LifeAsADeveloper #CodingJourney #TechAdvice #DeveloperLifestyle

What's this?

Probably one of the last devlogs for my little project: An arcade inspired point and click shooter with pew pew sounds and pixel art.

What's Happened?

I am still somewhat in the woes of post corona: Getting tired easily, struggling a bit to focus and such... However I was able to deliver level 5 and 6 to my testers and implement some other features I'd planned for release 0.5: Bosses insulting the player (obviously one of the more important aspects), balancing things further (adjusting numbers, hit boxes, progression and the likes) and updating assets where necessary. Speaking of which: this "small" project has 125 visual assets alone. I admit I was not prepared for that. (This is entirely my fault tbf) All in all with every release this thing feels a little more playable and I am very happy about that.

Current Challenges and Future Tasks:

I might not be able to finish everything as originally planned and need an extra week. Release 0.6 (this week's release) was meant to include the final level, the endless/free mode, one last feature and all the polishing needed still, but due to my lack of energy I feel I will have to prolong the planning a little. This though fits the fact that I will have to ultimately ask a friend how to package the game correctly. While right now I am able to make an exe, that is the suboptimal solution and I'd much rather package the environment. However I will need help with that. In the meantime (until I can bribe him with Pizza) I will also need to start working on a trailer, the steam assets and a marketing concept. So there is that. The main task for this week though remains level 7, when it is finally time to aim the pew pew sounds at Hades himself.

Where to Find out More:

My Website
Talk to me on Discord

o((>ω< ))o Godspeed!

Hello everyone ! This is the first of a hopefully sizeable series of blogposts about the Mind-State game's journey. I thought it would be interesting to share what compelled me to make a game and how I selected the tools to build on. Hopefully this will give ressources or ideas to someone else !

What am I going to talk about here ?

In this blog, I will mainly discuss the genesis of Mind state. We will go over the context that lead to the birth of the project, As well as how it constrained the tools used. I will also provide a heap of articles and ressources that helped me lay the foundations of Mind-State.

Context : India, toaster and free time.

To understand this project, I feel like it is important to rewind time a little. I graduated from a game design cursus nearly 2 years ago. My graduation project was though, and I got a bit sick of game dev because of it. Following my graduation, I couldn't (and didn't want to) find a job. After a few months of nothing, I decided to look for volunteering opportunities abroad, which would hopefully give me a break and help me clear my head and think about the future. All of this got me to India, where I had found a position as an assistant french teacher in the northern part of the country (Ladakh, for those who are wondering). I had bought a very low spec laptop before going, just to be able to do basic bureautic work. It was not worth much more than a toaster, but was enough for what I had in mind. I was going to stay 1 year, from June 2024 to May 2025. It's now been roughly 4 months. The place is gorgeous, and my coworkers are very nice. The job as well is interesting and very relaxed. Like, too relaxed. We have very few students, and I have way too much free time on my hands, because office hours basically consist of me sitting on a chair and waiting for class hours, and then sitting back on my chair and waiting.

In that situation, I started slowly delving back into game dev, re-watching GDC conferences and documenting myself. Until, One Day, I stumbled across a GDC conference titled "Narrative Sorcery: Coherent Storytelling in an Open World". This was basically talking about how to build narration for an open-world using "Narrative states". Basically, you build your narration and stories around encounters with NPCs, whose reactions are determined by the narrative state of elements in the world that are linked to them. A way of making narration using flowcharts and conditional checks, if you prefer. This propped up an idea in my brain : what if the core game mechanic was precisely influencing the narrative state of NPCs, in game ? With some refinement, this evolved into : What if you could influence the routine or state of understanding of the NPCs, progressing by making them act in unusual ways ? This was the birth of Mind-State.

Tools & Scoping : What engine for my car ? And, by the way, what car ?

So here I was. I had an interesting concept, now I needed the tools to make it. Remember when I said my laptop was not much better than a toaster ? This is where it gets important. I now needed to find an engine that wouldn't make it explode when tried to do something. Unreal or unity clearly wouldn't cut it. I needed something purpose built for performances, low storage space and ease of use. 3D was also clearly out of the question (toaster issues) I also needed to think about the scope. I was on my own, and I didn't want to make the game of the century. So I decided on a 2 guiding principles :

• The gameplay would revolve almost exclusively around interactions with NPCs. I would reduce the amount of mechanics to the strict minimum, For both ease of coding and ease of design. Less is more, as they say

• The game would be pixel art. 3D models were out of the question (toaster). My work setup consisting of, well, a single laptop, it seemed that pixel art was the reasonable answer (at least the only one available).

For the rest, I didn't really care. This is more of a challenge to myself than anything else, so I would see as it was progressing.

Anyways, with those principles in mind, I set on a quest to search for an appropriate engine and tools. Thankfully, some days prior, I had stumbled across this very handy list of alternative game engines. I browsed and tried a few 2D specialized engines. Solarus ? Seemed too constrained, and you couldn't release your game stand-alone (is must be opened with a special launcher). Pass. Löve ? Heck no, I'm not programming by sticking files together in a folder. Pass. Solar2D ? Nope. And at that moment, I found Defold. It was really appealing to me on several levels. First, it is free, non-proprietary and open source, which is always quite cool. Second, it is purpose build for performances, and takes very little disk space, which is what I was searching for. And third, it was primarily made for 2D games, which is what I wanted to make. Sweet ! Defold it is then ! However, this choice came with challenges as well, namely that Defold, contrary to unity or unreal, leave most of the foundational work to you. It is the first time I had to worry about things like rendering methods or coding a camera (partly because unity or unreal does most of this work for you, and partly because I usually had a programmer that worried about technical stuff in my stead). But it was a good compromise. Then, I set on to find tools to work on pixel art. I quite quickly found Aseprite, which is litteraly tailored to handle pixel art drawing and animation, and JuiceFX for basic visual FX, again specifically made to work on pixel art. With all those things settled, I could start to tinker. These are paid, but I still was willing to buy them anyways.

And with that said, this is the end of this blogpost. If you want, here are a bunch of other references I came across while searching for my game. I did not necessarily use it, and there are some very basic ones as well as some very complex ones :

• Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games | These Heterogenous Tasks
• Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures – Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling
• Worldbuilding for game writers - Video Game Writing 101...
• A Dialogue Pipeline. Keeping your lines in line… | by Ian Thomas | Medium
• By the Numbers: How to Write a Long Interactive Novel That Doesn’t Suck - Choice of Games LLC
• Pixel Sharp Graphics at Multiple Screen Resolutions
• https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/131454/scaling-my-pixel-art-platformer-from-720p-to-1080p
• This guy's channel was also super-duper helpful to learn the basics of pixel arts

Here we go, have a nice day !

Hi all! I’m new to this, and would appreciate any feedback. I just posted my first devlog, and feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing. Thanks

https://youtu.be/IOSkuQjMMCI?si=ND58BOrf1KM7TIhm

2 years ago we came up with the idea of creating "a golf game with Hammer horror story elements mixed together". This was after spending time together watching Roger Corman and Hammer films and playing old golf games together.

We applied to the Sweden Game Arena incubator, they said,
“Have you eaten shrooms? I don’t get it, but you’re in!”

With that, we had an office. It felt like the right place to build this game. We brought in a programmer to help us create the prototype, and after many late nights, we had something, just a rough feel of how the final game might play.

First things first: we had to get the basics right, like simulating golf balls and setting up a score system.

We knew we wanted a swing bar like in the old golf games, and we added a way to control the curve of the ball.

Multiplayer was a core element from day one. The whole idea started from us playing golf games with friends, so we needed it even for the prototype. 

Fine-tuning the golf physics was a whole process. We wanted it to feel realistic but not frustrating. It took a lot of back and forth to find the right balance.

Even though this was just a prototype, we wanted to bring in some horror elements, so we threw in a bit of a spooky theme to the level design, just to set the mood.

We wrapped up the prototype and brought it to a small event for game devs and students. People played it a lot, even though it was hard, buggy, and nowhere near ready for real playtesting. But seeing people engage with it, even in that early, rough stage was a pretty cool moment and gave us energy to continue with the project. 

What's this?

My devlog for that campy little 80s inspired point and click shooter is continuing!

What's Happened?

Last week Corona got to me (again...) and I was out of order for a good three days and sick for pretty much a week- I am still dead tired throughout the day and focussing is a little hard. Additionally university has started again and my co-student put it beautifully: "We're 1.5 weeks in and already 3 week behind..." It do feel like that at times. Nonetheless I have continued working on my little baby! Bosses are constantly adjusted to make there attacks more intuitive to grasp, artworks are added and in general the features are slowly coming together. The latest additions include the 4th level, introduction blips for the bosses, hearts to help the player regain help and small adjustments to the sound design.

Current Challenges and Future Tasks:

I have gotten some feedback. The main ask was to add more explanations / tutorial blips. So I will use the intro screens to add that. I also want the bosses to possess some sass. So my next new feature will be them spawning speech bubbles and insulting the player :D I just think it'll be more fun that way. Other than that level 5 is slowly coming together and difficulty is a constant struggle. Put in numbers release 0.4 is with my testers and 0.7 is supposed to be the final one morphing into 1.0. So the schedule is still going strong :D

Where to Find out More:

My Website

Talk to me on Discord

o((>ω< ))o Godspeed!