Tygrak's recent activity
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Comment on Switzerland's Nemo wins Eurovision as UK comes 18th in ~music
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Comment on What are some non-science-fiction books that are deep, insane, mind-bending, etc? in ~books
Tygrak Link ParentThanks for the recommendations! I am currently reading thru Machine of Death cause it sounded intriguing, already 100 pages in :D. If anyone else wants to give it a go it's under a creative...Thanks for the recommendations! I am currently reading thru Machine of Death cause it sounded intriguing, already 100 pages in :D. If anyone else wants to give it a go it's under a creative commons license so you can just read it right away here: https://archive.org/details/MachineofDeath/page/n115/mode/1up?view=theater
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Tygrak LinkI played One Shot for the first time. It was super good, would highly recommend if you like quirky games like Undertale, Omori, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc etc.I played One Shot for the first time. It was super good, would highly recommend if you like quirky games like Undertale, Omori, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc etc.
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Comment on Happy 6th Birthday, Tildes! in ~tildes
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Comment on Is Tildes failing to thrive? in ~tildes
Tygrak LinkIt seems quite busy to me. Much busier than before the big reddit exodus.It seems quite busy to me. Much busier than before the big reddit exodus.
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Comment on The internet used to be ✨fun✨ in ~tech
Tygrak Link ParentYou should try using tfidf, its quite simple — usually getting the data is the hard part and will filter out the nonrelevant wordsYou should try using tfidf, its quite simple — usually getting the data is the hard part and will filter out the nonrelevant words
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Comment on The man in room 117 – Andrey Shevelyov would rather live on the street than take antipsychotic medication. Should it be his decision to make? in ~health.mental
Tygrak (edited )Link ParentI feel like you are finding things there that they didnt write. They mainly wrote that they want public spaces to be safe for them and their children. They are talking about violent/destructive...I feel like you are finding things there that they didnt write. They mainly wrote that they want public spaces to be safe for them and their children. They are talking about violent/destructive people, which I am sure they dont think all mentally ill people are.
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (January 2024) in ~health.mental
Tygrak Link ParentHey friend, I finished my studies quite recently and also had (more minor) problems with this extreme self punishing procrastination. You know, you passed aĺl the other exams before so you...Hey friend, I finished my studies quite recently and also had (more minor) problems with this extreme self punishing procrastination. You know, you passed aĺl the other exams before so you definitely aren’t unable to do it right? I get that now it has built up into a huge thing it’s hard, but in the end you just spend some time dŕilling, learning and its done forever. But I understand that its hard to just consider it to not be a big thing now. I have some things that I should do that I’ve been putting off for years and its now extremely hard to do them, just because how long I spent anxiously thinking about them.
I believe in you, please at least give it a try!
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Comment on If you came into a lot of money, what would be the indulgent thing you would buy? in ~talk
Tygrak Link ParentOh harps are so cool. I would probably buy a harp too if I had a ton of money! I don't currently have a harp, cause I'd be scared of how bad I'd be at it if I bought it considering how expensive...Oh harps are so cool. I would probably buy a harp too if I had a ton of money! I don't currently have a harp, cause I'd be scared of how bad I'd be at it if I bought it considering how expensive it is (I also don't really have room for it), I instead have a bad very cheap Chinese made 16-string lyre, which is still a very fun instrument, but most likely not anywhere close to how cool a harp would be.
And of course I'd also hire a really good teacher that would actually force me to properly learn it. Actually I might hire a teacher for guitar too, I am fully self learned so I am sure that I could learn a lot if I had someone who'd teach me properly. For example, it would be nice to finally learn to read music notation (for harp it would probably be necessary).
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Comment on Do you ever "self filter" before making a post or comment and what is it based on? in ~talk
Tygrak LinkI definitely do. Especially on a website where I have an account which could be reasonably found by people I know in real life (like this one). I often start typing something out and then if I...I definitely do. Especially on a website where I have an account which could be reasonably found by people I know in real life (like this one). I often start typing something out and then if I realize it's too much in any way I rather not post it. I am not even really scared of someone using something I said 10 years ago as dirt on me (though that is also a part), I just don't want some of my coworkers or whoever knows which username I use online to find me posting some "cringe". It might just be me being dumb though.
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Comment on Steam Winter Sale 2023: Hidden gems in ~games
Tygrak LinkOmori -- I'd say this is my favorite (j)RPG game I ever played. It was released almost exactly 3 years ago and I still think it's a masterpiece. It's not really that niche nowadays, but still not...Omori -- I'd say this is my favorite (j)RPG game I ever played. It was released almost exactly 3 years ago and I still think it's a masterpiece. It's not really that niche nowadays, but still not as known as for example Undertale, which I'd say is also the most direct comparison. I won't say anything about it, it's best to know as little as possible about it, so if you like these kinds of RPGs definitely go play it!
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Comment on T minus Zero, or releasing a game on Steam in ~games
Tygrak Link ParentOooh! Thanks for the report! That is strange, I'll take a look if I can figure out a way to automatically disable the right joystick on steam deck. I have an idea what could be causing it, when I...Oooh! Thanks for the report! That is strange, I'll take a look if I can figure out a way to automatically disable the right joystick on steam deck. I have an idea what could be causing it, when I was implementing the controller support I made it work with both joysticks since they aren't used for anything else anyway... but they both seem to work at full power there. I am not really sure how that would make it average it out on Steam Deck, so maybe it's something else though.
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Comment on T minus Zero, or releasing a game on Steam in ~games
Tygrak Link ParentWhen reading all the paperwork somewhere in there I saw that the payments for the sales get sent with a minimum of some amount -- I think it was 100 dollars(?), so to actually get any money I'll...What is the minimum threshold by the way? How does that work?
When reading all the paperwork somewhere in there I saw that the payments for the sales get sent with a minimum of some amount -- I think it was 100 dollars(?), so to actually get any money I'll have to earn more than that. But I am now not fully sure where it is now, so I am not fully sure about the specifics.
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Comment on T minus Zero, or releasing a game on Steam in ~games
Tygrak Link ParentHi! It's great to see more indie game devs here :). My Steam store page has been public for a bit over a week before release. I didn't really promote it or even talk about it anywhere, so I didn't...Hi! It's great to see more indie game devs here :).
When did you create the steam page in relation to when you released the game? I’ve heard that it is important to create the steam page early in order to get as many wish lists as possible.
My Steam store page has been public for a bit over a week before release. I didn't really promote it or even talk about it anywhere, so I didn't even get any wishlists before release AFAIK.
How have you been marketing your game?
Before launch I did basically nothing, I guess you could count me posting about my game for Timasomo, talking about it with my friends and on some Discord servers as marketing, but it wasn't really meant to be marketing. Today, after release I started sending codes for the game to some Youtubers/streamers who play roguelites that I know, I am trying to mainly choose people that like similar games to mine. I also sent out the game to 26 Steam curators, through Steam Connect (a thingy on Steamworks that allows you to send keys directly to curators), again trying to find ones that enjoy roguelites and indie games -- currently 2 seem to have accepted the code. I also tried to post about the game on the Godot Discord and on the Ludum Dare site (as it's originally a LD game). I'll be trying to spend more of today finding more Youtubers and other "influencers" who might be a good fit.
Posting about the game on r/Godot is a good idea! I should do that too!
How did you determine your price point?
This is a pretty good, but hard question which I don't really have a good answer to. I felt like my game isn't that visually "impressive" compared to even other Indie games, it is also only ~3 months of work. I tried to look around at other indie games for inspiration. One of my overall inspirations for the game was "SNKRX", which the solo developer created in 1 month, and is sold for 3 dollars on Steam, and was a big success I'd say (has 4000 reviews on steam), so I somehow tried to make the pricing similar. I hope it's easier for people to decide to try out a small indie game by a no name developer if it costs just 5 dollars.
Another thing to consider is regional pricing. Steam has some automatic regional pricing built in (basically the price is changed for people who are in other countries/use different currencies than the USD), that I left turned on. So for example in Russia the price is the equivalent of 2 dollars instead of 5 dollars. I think this could have some problems, but in the end I mostly just want people to play the game and I am not really expecting to make any real money from it, so I think it's a good choice to leave it enabled. Otherwise I also would also have to keep checking the prices in other currencies every once in a while to make sure the prices don't get too strange due to currency exchange rates.
How did you determine required specs?
I tried playing the game on the worst machines I could find, and it ran on all of them. There's a field where you can put additional comments, so I wrote there that I found the game to work on every modern machine, including on a 5+ year old notebook with only a integrated graphics card. I found that the renderer that I am using in Godot (compatibility) requires OpenGL 3.3, so I wrote that the game requires a GPU that supports minimum OpenGL 3.3. I left the recommended specs empty and filled in only the minimum specs as I saw many other indie games to do it the same way.
How are sales going? So far I’ve made -$160 on my game so I’m curious how I compare to other indie devs.
Currently I sold 4 copies which is the equivalent of 20 dollars (not counting the Steam fees, also to actually get any money I will have to sell enough to get under the minimum threshold :D).
When your store page is up feel free to ping me with it, I'll definitely wishlist it!
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T minus Zero, or releasing a game on Steam
Well, a few minutes ago I finally pushed the button, the game is released. So I wanted to write a short write up of some things that I had to do to release the game. I won't really talk about...
Well, a few minutes ago I finally pushed the button, the game is released. So I wanted to write a short write up of some things that I had to do to release the game. I won't really talk about making the game itself too much, more about the part of actually releasing the game, if you are interested in more of that you can see my posts from Timasomo (1, 2, 3, 4, showcase).
Steam
I have already created many games in the past, I've been making games for more than 5 years, but always as a hobbyist. So I never experienced releasing a game on a platform like Steam. I have to say working with Steam and Steamworks is very pleasant and streamlined, but it is still much more complex than for example releasing a game on itch.io, which is what I did before for all my other games. I'll try to summarize how the process looks like.
First, before you can even get on Steam, you have to register, fill out a ton of paperwork, wait some time for it to be manually approved. Afterwards, you have to pay the 100 dollars for Steam Direct. At this point you finally get a Steam app id, which you can use to start integrating Steam features into your game. For example, having achievements, Steam cloud integration (so the saves get synced between devices), leaderboards and potentially more, especially if you are making a multiplayer game. To make my game I am using Godot, and I found a C# library called Facepunch.Steamworks which made this all quite easy, I'd definitely recommend it if you are using Unity or Godot with C# and want to release your game on Steam.
Before releasing a game on Steam you also have to finish everything on a gigantic checklist, including things like: uploading 10 various header, capsule and other images which are used on the store page and Steam library. An icon for the game. What are the minimum requirements required to run the game, whether the game has adult content, whether it supports controllers, how much the game will cost, screenshots, a trailer, there are just so many things to do! And when you complete parts of this checklist you have to have your game go through manual reviews. Each review could take about 3 days to get done. I failed one review first so I had to resubmit it too and wait again. Let me tell you, if you plan to release a game on Steam, reserve at least a month to do it, and start going through the reviews as soon as possible -- actually I think there even is a minimum of a month before you can release the game from the day you get an app id.
Trailer
Creating a good trailer is super hard. I am not a video creator/editor at all, but luckily I at least own a solid program for creating videos -- Vegas 14 pro, that I got for super cheap in some Humble bundle about 8 or something years ago, so I at least had a good start there. I ended up with not that complex of a project and Vegas still kept crashing when rendering, so I am not sure if I'd recommend it though.
The hardest thing for a trailer is deciding what to put in it for me. I know that a trailer should be super short, should showcase how the gameplay looks, what are the features and so on, but when I got to actually making it, it was still super hard to decide what to put there. How do I even start? I watched a ton of other indie game trailers to get some inspiration and that also didn't help that much. There are some trailers which are really just gameplay, some trailers which are actually just incredible with editing I could never do as a pleb... So I started with something that I know a bit more. I created a very short music track, and decided that I will just edit the trailer to fit the music.
The music track basically splits the trailer into 4/5 very short sections:
- Basic gameplay, how the game looks when you start playing it
- Explaining the roguelite part of the game, selecting spells and items
- More complex gameplay, how some combinations of spells and items can look later in a run
- List of features
- Special bonus ending section showing a "Legendary" spell, which should show how insane spells can get, followed by the logo of the game
I think the trailer ended up being not too bad, but I still had some feedback that it isn't flashy enough. And it's true, but I am not really sure how to improve it easily. When watching the Vampire Survivors trailer for example I can see that they did a much better job: it's so much more dynamic, the music really pumps you up, it's overall better edited, it has cool transitions, camera movement and so on.
End
Releasing a game on Steam was a great experience. I learned so much! I basically made this game over weekends and evenings, since I also have a job. To try maintain my productivity I tried to do at least some work on the game every single day. I have to say that towards the end I started losing some steam (haha), some days scrambling to do at least something late in the evening before I went to sleep. But, if at least someone plays the game I think I want to keep updating it more, I still do really like the game!
Thanks for reading! Feel free to ask me anything about the game, or the game dev process, or about anything basically haha.
Here's the Steam store page, the game costs 5 dollars, I'd love it if you checked it out. If you want to play the game but can't afford it PM me and I'll send you a key for the game (at least once I get the keys I requested -- did you know that Steam has to approve the creation of keys manually? Edit: the keys are now ready)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2682910/The_Spellswapper/45 votes -
Comment on Timasomo 2023: The Showcase in ~creative.timasomo
Tygrak Link ParentThank you for the nice words, kfwyre! It means a lot! And great to hear it works on Linux!Thank you for the nice words, kfwyre! It means a lot!
And great to hear it works on Linux!
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Comment on Timasomo 2023: The Showcase in ~creative.timasomo
Tygrak Link ParentNice job! I tried the game and it worked starting from the .bat file. I managed to win, but it actually wasn't that easy for me :D -- it took me a gargantuan 735 weeks to do it. It was pretty cool...Nice job! I tried the game and it worked starting from the .bat file. I managed to win, but it actually wasn't that easy for me :D -- it took me a gargantuan 735 weeks to do it. It was pretty cool having to balance everything at the same time!
The screen flickering between every redraw wasn't a big deal but it still would have been nice to not have it happen -- usually it is enough to just move the console cursor to the start of the screen so that doesn't happen, might be an easy fix, but I never worked in Haxe so I can't be sure! How is working with Haxe, by the way? The radical crossplatformness sounds really nice to me!
Great job making the game overall!
(tiny thing, the link to the video is not working currently. I also somehow had the amount of grain I had overflow into the negatives once, not sure how that happen but, after a few weeks I had -2 million grain or something like that :D)
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Comment on Timasomo 2023: The Showcase in ~creative.timasomo
Tygrak LinkThe Spellswapper A roguelite game -- it's a bit like a tower defense game, but you are the single tower. or like Vampire Survivors, but instead of only moving and not shooting, you only shoot and...- Exemplary
The Spellswapper
A roguelite game -- it's a bit like a tower defense game, but you are the single tower. or like Vampire Survivors, but instead of only moving and not shooting, you only shoot and don't move.
You can play the game on itch.io (use the password
timasomo), or you can watch a video of some gameplay I recorded today on Youtube.I first started making the game in the last Ludum Dare a bit over a month ago. Afterwards thanks to Timasomo I worked on the game for the whole duration, making at least some progress every single day! I am super happy with how productive I was on the game.
The itch.io version here is most likely the last version I'll put up for a while now, at least until I have a demo on Steam (if I'll do that). I'll probably also take down the itch.io page in about a week, just so I don't have to worry about mainlining that page.
I secretly hoped I'd fully finish the game by the end of the Timasomo and have it up on Steam. Sadly, it's not fully done, but I did manage to go through the process of becoming a Steam partner and I do have the game running on Steam now! So I am fully invested in releasing this thing for real! Working with Steam is pretty cool -- I spent a solid part of this last week integrating my game with it. I never did stuff with Steamworks by myself before and I learned a lot already, even if the game flops I think this is some very valuable experience that I can put on my CV. I even have some achievements setup for the game already! It feels cool to have achievements from my own game on my steam account haha.
All in all, I am just very happy with what I managed to do. And as always, I'd like to thank @kfwyre for running Timasomo -- participating really helped push me to do all of this!
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Comment on Timasomo 2023: Final Updates in ~creative.timasomo
Tygrak LinkFirst, before I begin, here's a link to the current version of the game: itch.io link -- to access the page you might need to use the password timasomo. (If you play the game please let me know...First, before I begin, here's a link to the current version of the game: itch.io link -- to access the page you might need to use the password
timasomo. (If you play the game please let me know what you think! anything that confused you, that you liked, or disliked -- all feedback is useful!) This time I did manage to record a video of gameplay, so if you'd just like to see how the game looks you can see a full run in this Youtube video.
The last full week of Timasomo! I had another nice week, at the start of the week I was still a bit sick, and also I was at work a bit longer than the usual week, but I still feel like I did a lot.
Most of the stuff I can think of now that I worked on this week, was a lot of quality of life features that were necessary to do at some point. I added some stuff based on the feedback from @TemulentTeatotaler (thank you!) -- optional damage numbers (togglable in the settings), spell indicators while auto casting (also togglable in the settings), new enemies that encourage the player to prioritize them -- one that shields enemies, and another that speeds up enemies. Also, I added saves, so you can now quit your run while playing it and continue it later -- I was putting it off, because I felt the runs are not that long (taking only ~20 minutes), but it's definitely a thing that should be in the game so I am happy I did it. Oh, and you can now access the settings during gameplay, also a pretty necessary feature that I didn't have before. And of course I added more content -- I added a new character, also added some uniqueness to the characters by making them have some small buffs, added some more items, and a spell (or spells, not sure). I really need to do more balancing too, for that I'll have to try recruit some of my friends to play the game, because my perception of the games difficulty is now extremely biased after playing the game so much.
I think my productivity did drop since the first week, but not catastrophically. Out of interest I took at the amounts of git commits I made: the first week was 34 commits, the second week 27 commits, the third week 24 commits, and this week so far 17 commits. Of course the number of commits isn't exactly proportional to the amount of work, but I think it's safe to say I am at least somewhat running out of steam.
Speaking of steam -- that's the main thing I really want to decide now. Do I push and release the game before the end of the next week? Or do I just keep working on the game. I think there hopefully aren't that many things that I'd need to do to release the game on Steam, I took a very short look and I would need to compile Godot from source, but I think I would be able to manage that quite quick, and afterward I would just need to setup the Steam store page and stuff like that. The main question is whether I want to get more content and polish in. As an example that's relevant to Steam -- I'd definitely like to have some achievements for the game, which I would have to setup. I am still deciding, but I think it's likely that I won't have the game released and done by next week.
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Comment on Timasomo 2023: Week 3 Updates in ~creative.timasomo
Tygrak Link ParentI actually already fixed the ascensions slider always having 10 notches even if you didn't unlock the ascensions yet -- yeah that was confusing haha.I actually already fixed the ascensions slider always having 10 notches even if you didn't unlock the ascensions yet -- yeah that was confusing haha.
Gay (and all other queer people) watch Eurovision in huge concentrations. I am sure you know that queer people were winning Eurovision for many many years now. So I think it's completely baseless to say that it's due to homophobia. It was just a song that people didn't enjoy. Speaking for me as a gay guy (again -- this is just me, n=1, and music is fully subjective), it was a bad song.