My boss slams the ground and sends out a wave you have to parry. Getting it to look right took me 3 tries. A flat gold ring, then a line of stones riding on the ring (looked like a rug sliding across the floor). Now the floor itself breaks.

How it works:

1. When the wave starts, I cut the floor into rings of rock pieces, once. Each ring starts at a random angle so the cuts don't line up like bricks, and every piece is pulled 0.6 px toward its middle. That gap is the crack.
2. The pieces never move with the wave. Each one waits for the front to reach it, pops up (0.08 s), drops back (0.12 s) and bounces 1 px. My first fall was 0.22 s and it looked like a raised platform.
3. Each piece draws a dark pit, a shadow, a side and a top, and the near side lifts more than the far side. Gold is only on the front, because gold means "parry this" in my game.
4. The hit is the ring you see, no timer: every frame I check your distance against the same radius I draw. The floor is drawn at half height, so the ring is an ellipse and I divide your y by 0.5 first. Its edge turns white 0.18 s before it reaches you, that's the flash at the end of the video.

Still not happy with: each piece is 4 `draw_colored_polygon` calls, and on the web build (Compatibility renderer) every one is its own draw call. I capped it at 72 pieces per ring, so far out the pieces just get wider and at the edge of the room it looks chunky. If anyone knows a better way to batch this, I'd love to hear it.

The game is THE INK TOWER. Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5295020/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=godot

(demo playable now on itch: https://nathannhu.itch.io/the-ink-tower )

I experimented a bit with waterfall effects recently and like how the effect turned out and felt like sharing. It's made using stretched/moved/blended noise textures. If anyone is curious how this was made I posted both the code and a tutorial for it:
code: https://godotshaders.com/shader/waterfall-shader/
tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPopajDxNHk

i am exposing the things you can use to spot ai slop, which is kinda bad as now they will try to hide better

I’m making a noir detective game and here are my first scenes. I hope you like them!

Hey Everyone,

Ive been lurking on this subreddit for years, mostly reading advice, finding resources, and watching other peoples post mortems. For the past two years, Ive been working solo on Guiltwood: a turn based 2D survival RPG with Slavic folklore and psychological horror elements.

Im planning to write a couple of technical posts over the next few days to share what I learned building the systems, but first I wanted to introduce the project and how I ended up here.

My journey with games started a long time ago. I still remember making an ASCII rocket on a Commodore 64 at the beginning of elementary school. The rows moved up faster and faster on the screen, to me back then, it was pure magic ; )

Later I played around with the Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit on the C64. I was maybe 11 and barely understood English, so I never figured out how to save to tape. That meant I had to start over and build a new game from scratch every single day. Honestly, maybe it was even more fun that way back then.

Eventually life took over. I went into hardware and software, made a few simple games at university, and then spent 20 years making a living in corporate IT. But I never stopped playing games, especially ones with deep systemic mechanics and mod support. Because of modding, I was always tweaking games to fit my vision anyway.

After two decades in IT, I had that classic reality check: I spent most of my life doing what was expected of me, rather than what actually gave me meaning. I had accumulated all these software skills, I still loved games, and I realized this was probably my last real chance to build something that mattered to me.

So I installed Godot and started from scratch: learning tilemaps, scenes, turn based logic, and movement. But my engineering brain immediately took over, and I asked myself: why is almost nobody doing true 3D style directional shadows in a top-down 2D game?

Now I know why ; ) It took me 3 months down a massive rabbit hole of viewports, raw data maps, and custom shaders. But I learned a ton, and I actually got it running.

At first I thought: maybe I will get bored in two weeks. But two weeks became two months, then six months, and now Im two years in and still going steady.

The biggest surprise was how much hidden work a simple game mechanic hides. For example, you decide: "I want the player to chop down a tree."

So simple...

Except: you need the tree to block movement. You need the player to walk near the tree. You need a chopping animation. Okay, the tree needs HP, and the axe needs a damage type and durability. Then you need persistence so the felled tree stays down when a chunk unloads. Then you need the tree to physically fall, which means a falling animation, an entity despawn, spawning wood logs, figuring out scatter placement based on fall direction...

Suddenly a 'simple tree' is 2 weeks of architecture.

But for me, that problem solving is the best part. Thats exactly what keeps me motivated.

I recently brought a playable prototype to the Swiss Game Conference. Seeing strangers actually sit down and play something that didnt exist two years ago was incredibly rewarding, but it was also a massive reality check. I realized quickly that while I can handle programming, shaders, and systems, I cannot do capsule art, music, and sound design alone unless I want to release the game in 2050 ; )

That realization led me to connect with the Midlife Crisis Indie Game Dev Community, a group of devs in similar life situations. Solo dev is isolating, and talking to people dealing with the exact same doubts, energy dips, and scope issues completely changed my perspective.

This looks like a beginning of a new chapter, or the next level where I already know the basics and the rules, but I am no longer traveling that path alone.

Sorry for the long post ; ) Just wanted to finally step out of the shadows, say hi, and hopefully give some encouragement to anyone sitting in an office job wondering if its too late to start.

TLDR:

Spent 20 years in corporate IT, had a reality check, and started learning Godot to build my own game. Two years in, realized I cant do everything completely solo and found a community so Im not traveling the path alone anymore. Just stepping out of the shadows to say hi.

It was going to be one crate. Then I remembered I'd promised a rubber duck under my first water post, and it escalated from there.

Anvils and pianos sink right away. Cars float for a few seconds, then slowly go under (just a timer for this test). Everything else bobs on the swell. Then the plane happened.

Each prop samples the real wave height at four probes on the bottom of its bounding box. Heavy stuff just gets less buoyancy than its weight. No splash yet.

Does it need one, or is the chaos enough? And what should I throw in next?

(Test scene from Windup Wonderland, the co-op physics game I'm making solo in Godot 4.7.)

100 BODIES IN THE GRASS

I'm making a co-op Hero defense set in Vietnam during the time of the Third Mongol Invasion Dai Viet in 1287. The full game will take you through different locations roughly following the course of the war, but Act I, which is shown in the trailer, is a wave-based defense of a northern Vietnamese village.

Apart from a DLC expansion civ in AOE2, the Vietnamese in video games have traditionally only been represented by farmers with AKs that you get to blow up while listening to CCR (shoutout BF Vietnam). I'm hoping to change that (even though blasting CCR in a Huey is admittedly very fun)!

Until now I've mostly been doing this in isolation, so I thought now would be a good time to ask the broader community for some feedback:

- Is there a reason games set in Vietnam outside of the Vietnam War don't exist? would you be interested in a medieval Vietnamese period game?

- I've purposely tried to stay away from the more overly stylized/high fantasy elements of the Wuxia style that most medieval Asian games typically have, but I worry that this may have made some of the combat too bland visually (i.e. purposely have no swing streaks or tried to keep the skills more grounded in reality). Thoughts?

- I'm new to Godot, so if there is anything off or something very obvious that I'm not taking advantage of, please let me know!

Thank you!

--

If this sounds interesting to you, please feel free to wishlist us and follow our progress!

AI Disclaimer: For full transparency, Claude was heavily used in coding this game, and most of the 3d models/textures and music had generative AI involved in the workflows. The animations and other sfx are from free asset libraries. I fully respect if that fact alone makes some/many people here want nothing to do with this game, and I believe you should easily be able to know, through transparent disclosures, which games used generative AI and which did not. I also think the best way to achieve a world where that is possible is if games that did use AI felt free to disclose its use without getting sabotaged.

I'm likely commercially shooting myself in the foot before I even get off the ground with this disclosure, but in an effort to increase transparency for everyone, I am putting this out there. In any case, thank you for your time in checking us out!

Art is slowly getting there, but some stuff still feels a bit placed on the terrain instead of really part of it. trying to figure that out now, so if anyone has tips let me know!

So I’m in the early stages of getting the stages set for my game. I’m limiting myself to only the first early part of the game so that I might demo it out and see what others think.

I am not an artist on the level that some people are unfortunately but I’ve spent the last 4 years learning to get somewhere in the ballpark of what I am wanting. There’s still a few things left for this scene including windows on the biggest building.

And to be clear I am not using nor do I want to involve AI.

Anyway my question really is that if anyone is willing to provide some feedback or pointers for me. I don’t need you to destroy my soul just some corrections or encouragement would greatly benefit me.

Edit:

This is for a 3d/2d rpg in the style of tactics games but with the ability to actively explore your surroundings. I will also note that the battle mechanics will not be tactical but instead will be slightly different and the characters will of course be sprites.

I was coding UI into my game, and I was looking through all the different aspect ratios. My UI started to look weird to me whenat different aspect ratios, and that got me thinking... what if this impossibly stretched monitor aspect ratio will be the norm in the future?

I know that the current metric of the most popular monitor aspect ratio by Steam users is 16:9.

(source: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam )
16:9 at 80.32%
16:10 at 9.46%
21:9 at 3.52%.
3:2 at 0.68%
32:9 at 0.37%
5:8 at 0.30%

But even knowing those numbers, I still want my game to be accessible and enjoyable to everyone. I really want to "future-proof" it.

I'm currently looking at the differences between "uniform scaling" and "centric scaling" (haven't found the official names so I made them up). With uniform scaling, it seems to fill the screen but I don't think people enjoy turning their heads 90 degrees on extreme aspect ratios just to check their HP. With centric scaling, it maintains the intended positions, but it creates large empty spaces on 32:9 or 4:3 displays.

How do y'all handle UI scaling in your games or which one from my options do y'all prefer? Any tips would be much appreciated!

Everything you see here is procedurally generated. The tech demo still has a few bugs and needs some performance optimization, but it already gives a good idea of what I'm aiming to achieve.

Since I was a pretty shitty artist 5 years ago, I made a pixelation tool called Ditherdragon to help me create weird mashup/photobashed pixelart sprites. And a lot of other people liked it enough to give me money haha
Over the years, a lot of stuff has changed, the best techniques have gotten more effective and most importantly I got a lot better at writing software :P

Now over the past few weeks I remade Ditherdragon entirely to be more performant and to have tons more SOTA features. The most important thing for me, is its muuuch improved detail retention when pixelating. Fine elements now carry over into the final image instead of disappearing.
Ditherdragon does NOT use GenAI, its all good ol' algorithms.

And its free for whoever owns the original Ditherdragon!

I am a solo dev (and a beginer) but i have a huge project but before starting to work on it i want to do small project that will help me in futur or give confirmation so this my experience number 1

Can i use skylander portal and a skylander figurine and redo the systeme of the game (you know when you put the figurine on the portal,the caracter of the figurine load in the game)

SOOOOO this is my result

(Ps i am noob so if this is not amazing is normal)

And i am bad in english

And i dont know if i use the right flair so if it is not that tell me but i use it because i find this fun

Added some nice improvements and got an infinite ocean running on mobile devices at 120fps! The scene otherwise runs at 1800 fps on a 3080 at 1080p. Hoping to add buoyancy next and tackle the obvious tiling. If you wanna follow along you can check the latest breakdown here:

https://youtu.be/aEq1zQuqZmw?is=-W6T-YQNwApIIb8f

I'm pretty sure atleast 90% of the subreddit has atleast one scenario where they got bored of a project, In my 4 years of godot I've made atleast 20+ projects that I gave up on , it's getting pretty frustrating and the last time i even launched godot and actually did something was like 3 months ago , anyone that has this problem and actually got rid of it? Would be really really helpful

I have always been attracted by beautiful water in games (physics, effects,...). After a very long development time focusing solely on the simulation side (1.5 yrs), I am now happy with how it looks. Here is a small demo view I made to showcase these effects (yes I was inspired by FluidFlux from Unreal Engine). I am hoping I can somehow make a full game with this (where water would be the focus).

NB : Sorry it didn't capture the sound, but there is also waves, splashes, grenade, and other sound...

Some useful additions :

* This is a C++ (most of it is C++, small parts are still scripts) add-on running in Godot 4.6 at the FPS you see with a resolution scale of 50%. FPS is anywhere between 50-100 depending on the effects and buoyant bodies. The recorded video is on my Mac mini M4 pro (20C GPU). My Windows build runs at +-220 FPS with a 7800X3D and an RTX 4070 Ti at full resolution with Vulkan and around 210 FPS or so with D3D12 (resolution is still 1500x1080).

* Everything is dynamic and procedural : Foam, spray, rain (I didn't showcase it but it's there too), water, rolling waves, caustics, wetness, ...

* Physically accurate water simulation. Physically accurate water flow, above water and underwater effects (light attenuation, color absorption, planar reflection, refraction, caustics,...). Voxel based buoyancy system supporting hundreds or thousands of bodies without killing the frame time. I went up to 800 ish on my PC and it was still running at around 60 ish fps.

Tons of things I cant fully show here.

Yes, Godot is a very capable and a good Game Engine. It takes me seconds to load, experiment and run.

I'm following a tutorial on how to make a 3d card battler, and yet I get this error, even if i paste the tutorials exact code, and i havent found a good way to fix it that doesnt break something else. it gets mad at line nine, saying that Card is null no matter how i try to define it. maybe this is a really beginner issue but i'm totally stuck

Sometimes I just like to sit back and watch what happens.

Hey, I've been working solo on Beyond the Cradle, an incremental game where you start on one planet and spread across the whole solar system. The demo is out on Steam this Monday, a wishlist would help a lot: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4464270/Beyond_the_Cradle/

I'd love some feedback before launch. Is the build menu clear? Can you tell what each building does from the card art? Anything you'd change?

Also, the planet uses a hex board right now, but a few people told me a square grid might be better. Which one would you rather play on?

Any other thoughts are welcome too. Made in Godot 4 <3