Admittedly the game probably has to have a devlog of some form, otherwise this question is synonymous with "what games are you waiting for?", which is far too generic a question.

The game I'm most interested in is Songs of the Eons (itch.io, most active), which wants to be like Dwarf Fortress but a grand strategy game (main post, for context). Obviously they've noted that such a project will have Dwarf Fortress esque development, so waiting is very much in order.

There's also Hyperbolica (trailer) which I've posted about here somewhat.

There's also KSP 2, Hytale and Creeper World 4 which I like but don't follow that regularly, for not much reason TBH.

I'd probably also follow Deltarune but Toby doesn't seem to really do dev updates too often.

So are there any games that you're following as they're developed?

A lot of things we live with have significant technical debt because they were designed and implemented without modern knowledge and understanding.

Knowing what we know now, in the present moment, what would you be interested in fundamentally redesigning if you could?

This does NOT have to be technology related, by the way, though it certainly can (anyone want to talk about redesigning usernames and passwords -- please?). It can pretty much be anything: NASCAR races, art criticism, specific social norms, sunglasses, etc.

In your explanation, don't just share what you're interested in tearing down, but how you would rebuild it for the better. What improvements would your methods bring to the table?

Hi Tilderinos! Do any of you regularly journal, keep a diary, or otherwise record your thoughts and history, on a computer or on paper?

I've been using the "bullet journal" algorithm (and yes, Ryder, it's a set of algorithms and data structures, no matter how much you say otherwise) for a while, slowly refining my personal practice over time - and sometimes making huge changes! Just this month, for my October journal prep, I switched from a list-style monthly log to a 7x5 grid of 3.5x3.5cm squares. It's very easy to make with my dotted notebook and a ruler, and it's easier to get an idea of my month at a glance!

I've also decided to switch from a monthly braindump and check-in to doing smaller, mini-check-ins weekly, which I hope will help me keep better tabs on my fitness and mental health!

So, what do you do? How do you feel about it? Share pictures if you're comfortable!

I'd like to preface my self by saying that I am in no way trying to spam ~music. My intention is to get this space rolling as much as I can based on the recent survey that Tildes is perceived to be STEM heavy/leaning.

Thus, I will be posting a lot of links to music that I believe is interesting to the general listener.

The possibilities of this space are endless IMO and I hope to positively contribute to it.

Who here does science at home, for fun?

I've been an electronics tinkerer for a while, but I've only recently gotten into reproducing some interesting physics phenomena, like accelerating small screws with electromagnets and varying the current, voltage, and substances involved to optimize the acceleration. It's fun stuff, but I'm looking to get a vacuum pump and some good vacuum equipment so that I can create a similar experiment on a higher level of energy: "cathode rays", or accelerating electrons produced by thermionic emission. This is like the mechanism powering old televisions and computer monitors, but I hope to set the system up so that it's easy enough to add additional electromagnets to focus or deflect the beam.

What interesting phenomena have y'all replicated? How did it go? Do you feel that you learned something? Have you published anything on the topic?

I've recently been getting into RSS reading and well, I usually just went with whatever was given in a forum (like Tildes for example). Although, I've recently been looking into news organizations I follow to see if I should actually trust them.

Factors that came to mind to be important was looking at past controversies regarding them to see where they might fail in the future and who owns them. It made me realize that most sources I had actually might not be who I want to follow for news but then well, not many are left and while I do want to cut down on the amount of news I get because it's overwhelming, I also don't want to miss important news.

So how do you pick what sources of news you listen and what are some news you trust and why?

Hey, all. I'm back four weeks to the day after you guys gave me a lot of great advice about potentially making a 2D RPG out of my tabletop RPG. I decided to try both Godot and Unity given what people told me and I completed two tutorials for each over the last few weeks. After completing these two tutorials, I have some questions that I hope maybe some of you can answer to help me choose between the two.

TL;DR at the bottom. This is a long post.

For context, here's the tutorials I did:

Godot - https://www.davidepesce.com/godot-tutorials/
Unity - https://learn.unity.com/project/ruby-s-2d-rpg

To be frank, the Unity tutorial wasn't really an RPG. There were no stats, no quests, XP. It was much more of an adventure game. That's fine, it still gave me a lot of time inside the engine to learn a lot of basics.

So, working with each one had it's own up and downs.

Unity's use of an external scripting program seemed to hurt me quite a bit, from simple things such as forgetting to save before going back to Unity (I did this way too much) to having to declare public variables in the script and then filling them in the Unity GUI rather than just doing it all by script. The editor itself also seems to be kind of heavy, I was get the spiral beach ball for a second or two every time I went between the script editor and Unity and I have a machine that can edit 8K video without proxies. These general load times and stuff like that seemed to come up regularly. Tilemapping in the tutorial didn't include autotiling, I assume Unity has this somewhere built in? Or do you need to purchase an asset to get this functionality?

On the plus side, Unity overall seemed easier to use for a non-programmer. A lot of things are done through the GUI. Animations seem easier to handle for sure. The Unity tutorial was also more written for someone that hasn't coded much as it explained what specifically the code was doing (so I assume more resources for Unity will be helpful in that way that perhaps Godot will not).

For Godot, GScript was easier to use than C#, but I do feel like it was easier to get my head around prefabs in Unity than the Node system in Godot. The Godot tutorial took almost twice as long as the Unity one, but I don't know if that's because Godot is more difficult or the combination of the Godot tutorial being more thorough (I feel like I mad an actual, if very uncomplicated game, plus I did Godot first, which probably helped me just learn more about scripting and thinking like a programmer that I took into Unity). The node/scene system seemed more difficult to get my head around than game objects and prefabs. That said, my Godot program felt very tight. There weren't things happening that I was having a tough time explaining or figuring out why they weren't working quite right, at least at the graphical level (this might have more to do with the Godot tutorial using 8-bit graphics and Unity using a more modern sprite look). Having the scripts in the editor meant I never ran into a case like in Unity where I couldn't attach code to a game object because it was failing to compile, but it was failing to compile because it wasn't attached to a game object (that headache took at least a half an hour to sort out).

Overall, I was able to finish both tutorials mostly understanding what the code I was given was doing and was able to edit it to get some different affects and kind of just play around. So, on that level, I'd say they're about equal.

One big thing I want for sure out of the engine we use is to be able to handle a lot of conversations and variables there from. We're hoping to make a "choices matter" (TM) game, and very story/dialog heavy. Ink seems like a good plug-in to do this in Unity, but implementation doesn't seem easy (though I did find a pretty good looking tutorial that may help de-mystify). Godot seems to have some assets available for handling dialog trees, but i haven't had a chance to really dig in to them yet. So, that could definitely be a decider for me: which engine has assets that make a dialog/choice heavy game easier to make.

While I had originally thought about making a tactics RPG for this project, looking around at both the Godot and Unity scenes, it seems like few people are making these types of projects that are giving out free advice on how to make them work in those engines. After talking with my team (I have a team!, see my post from a while back), it seemed like a good idea both to keep the game within the scope of a novice, but still tell the story we wanted, to do a skill role system instead. Since this came from a tabletop session anyway, seemed to make the most sense to do skill rolls rather than develop a whole combat system.

TL;DR - Looking for advice on which engine, between Godot and Unity, would be handle a 2D RPG that relies on a lot of dialog and choices along with skill rolls for the gameplay. Thanks in advance!