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  • Showing only topics in ~comp with the tag "ask.advice". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Any beginners advice or resources on developing a 2D RPG/Puzzle video game?

      Hey guys, I hope this is the right place to post. So my adhd hyperfixation has recently shifted towards an idea for a game and I want to indulge my ADHD by learning all I can about game...

      Hey guys, I hope this is the right place to post.

      So my adhd hyperfixation has recently shifted towards an idea for a game and I want to indulge my ADHD by learning all I can about game development to see if I can achieve this idea to the point that maybe I can put it in "Early Access" to fund even more resources on it.

      But I'm not sure where to start. I'm looking into Godot because it's free and open source and has a lot of community resources, but also wanted to see if anyone had any ideas here.

      I have some coding experience, a lot of technical experience and pick things up extremely quickly.

      The basic idea is that it's a 2D Sidescrolling RPG, but with Match-3 "Candy Crush"-esque mechanics for battles and fighting.

      Extra details If you've played "You Must Build A Boat" or "10000000", it's a LOT kind of like that, in fact those games kind of inspired me, but more refined with a lot more in depth RPG elements and it's a bit more forgiving focusing on keeping a "flow" going, since one of my biggest pet peeves is YMBAB's RNG being very unforgiving and you'll randomly just sit there staring at the board with no moves until you die.

      So the systems/mechanics I'd need to combine to work together are the following:

      • A Match-3 type board where you match tiles, make special tiles by combining 4 or more tiles, all the features of a typical match-3 type game, just tied to outcomes outside of the board-interface.
      • An RPG element, with character attributes, leveling, items, spells, weapons, gear, potions, etc. These elements effect what tiles are on the board during gameplay, effect the chances of certain tiles, and effect health, speed, mana, or grants special in-game abilities like "Precognition"(gives a hint for a move), or "Scroll of Revival"(You can continue without starting over), etc. Attributes also effect things like tile chances, so a higher strength will get you more combat/physical tiles, or a high intelligence will get you more magic tiles.
      • Visual Elements include an auto-running sidescrolling viewport while Dungeon Running. Character auto-runs until encountering enemies, running is not controlled by player. Match-3 board will be beneath that. Time between enemy encounters can be used to clean up the board and match unneccesary tiles, make special moves to line up for next battle, or to replenish health.
        • During Battles, it'd be an over-the-shoulder battle view, similar to Pokemon style battles. Character will have health, enemy will attack character at regular intervals, player will have to balance matching combat/weapon tiles to attack enemy, and matching health/mana potion tiles to replenish health or mana(if they have potions equipped). Enemy can cause environmental effects like poison(some tiles will be poisoned so you lose health if matching them), or being frozen with ice(You need to break tiles next to the ice tiles to break them), or confusion(switches the colors of tiles). Will be block/parry mechanics, occassionally for a few seconds before the enemy strikes, you're required to match a designated tile to either block or parry that attack.
        • In a saferoom it'd be like an isometric kind of "inside a building" format like in Pokemon, just more detailed. I'd like to have saferoom customization and the ability to upgrade your character or gear too.

      Anyways, I'd love any advice or resources. Or if you'd like to help out or discuss the game idea more I'm up for that too.

      16 votes
    2. Is it worthwhile to run local LLMs for coding today?

      I've made the decision to purchase a new M5 Macbook Air because of the memorypocalypse. My current M1 model is already upgraded to the amount of memory and storage as the current base model and...

      I've made the decision to purchase a new M5 Macbook Air because of the memorypocalypse. My current M1 model is already upgraded to the amount of memory and storage as the current base model and I'm wondering if it's worth spending the extra 2-4 hundred dollars on memory upgrades today.

      My current computer is more than good enough for today but I figure I should probably future proof just in case. I was thinking the 16GB would be enough, but I also know that I'm kind of falling behind by not embracing AI coding agents. According to my research the maximum 32GB is recommended for most coding-relevant models - almost as a minimum.

      I work in education so coding is not actually much of a need, and obviously there are cloud providers I could use if I end up needing them in the future. I also have less than a teacher's salary because I work part time, which is the greatest reason why I'm sticking with the 16GB base for the moment, but other than that I also don't do many memory-intensive programs. But I thought I would get some recommendations before they start shipping.

      I'd also be interested on people's opinions on trading in my old one, since it'll only get me ~$275 back. I'm considering reneging on that part and keeping it around to act as a web server or give it to my husband who has a computer that still runs Windows 7 and barely uses it.

      35 votes
    3. Anyone here a LISP/schemer?

      LISP and schemes have always, from a distance appeared to be the best way to write code. I even started my own language that has languished for the past couple years, and it's taken on a...

      LISP and schemes have always, from a distance appeared to be the best way to write code. I even started my own language that has languished for the past couple years, and it's taken on a pseudo-likeness to (scheme)-like languages by accident.

      This brings me to my questions -

      1. How did you start?
      2. Does anyone here do systems-level scheme/lisp? what do you program in for that?
      My why on learning lisp/scheme-like languages, and if anyone knows Chez.

      I find the idea of CLI-inspired languages as one of the best possible ways of writing a language, and lisp is very nearly exactly that, it's just how my mind thinks about code, in a procedural/functional/modular way. This is one of the reasons I adore programming in Odin, as it's a modern systems-level procedural language, but it is not a scheme/lisp-like language. I should note, I abhor working with REPLs, but I can learn to live with it.

      Corollary, as I am sure the audience for this is even smaller, ignore if you haven't a clue - but I am incredibly interested in Chez, for the performance metrics, the systems design, and the whole lot - yet there aren't any real resources other than the manual to learn. As I am not a native schemer, it's almost alien, and a bit hard to get right into and make something useful. Does anyone know of any good resources for this?

      13 votes
    4. Windows 11 cleanup/configuration script(s)?

      I'm doing a long overdo computer update (new CPU, mobo, and RAM), and am going to be reinstalling windows for the first time in a while. My current system is still on Win10 due to incompatiblity...

      I'm doing a long overdo computer update (new CPU, mobo, and RAM), and am going to be reinstalling windows for the first time in a while. My current system is still on Win10 due to incompatiblity with Win11, however I wouldn't have updated to Win11 until now anyway. I have Win11 on a Surface Pro and with recent updates adding features that match my existing muscle memory better (such as allowing expanded window buttons and putting Start on the left), I'm not as resistant to installing Win11 on my new hardware. I have access to the Education version of Win11 which after some research looks like it's basically Windows Enterprise and that itself seems like a big feature since it shouldn't come with a lot of the bloat apps already.

      With that in mind I have few questions:

      1. Does anyone have a PowerShell script they've put together to run on a fresh Windows 11 install that configures a lot of the settings to make it behave more like Win10 (and it's predecessors), toggles privacy settings on, etc. I am not looking for something that tries to strip anything out, I just want something that will save me time chasing down all the settings I've slowly found and adjusted on my Surface. I have the default folders like Pictures and Documents pointed to a drive on a seperate drive from my Windows drive specifically to make migrating to a new installation easier. I'd love something that prompts me to update where those shortcuts should point as well.
      2. Does anyone have any protips for getting the bulk of programs I need installed? I looked at Winget and Chocolatey a couple years ago, but they didn't quite look as fuss free as I was looking for. I generally avoid installing things from the Microsoft app store (which I understand would make this easier if I was willing to lean more into the Microsoft ecosystem). I'd love something (script based or otherwise) that's going to grab and install the program (rather than app) for a list of things like Firefox, Spotify, Steam, Miniconda, etc. I plan to make a list of programs I have installed that I know I will want to reinstall before doing the fresh install, but I'm making a plan to make installing everything as easy as possible. If there's a reliable script based way to install like 80% of my main programs I'd be thrilled to only have to track down and install more specialized stuff.
      3. Any general advice for transfering my browser data? I use Firefox, am signed in to an account, and think I have everything set to sync. However I'd love to bring over all my browser tabs and windows I'm still working in. I did look up how to transfer the browser data and found a Mozilla article for it, just wasn't sure if anyone had a method they discovered and like better.

      Thanks in advance for tips and advice.

      25 votes
    5. Kiosking Ubuntu computers

      I recently set up some public computers with Ubuntu at a hackerspace. People kept logging into their Gmail etc. and forgetting to log out. For their own benefit I changed the computers to use...

      I recently set up some public computers with Ubuntu at a hackerspace. People kept logging into their Gmail etc. and forgetting to log out. For their own benefit I changed the computers to use overlayfs so on reboot all changes from the base filesystem (Ubuntu 24.04 + packages + updates) are lost. I'm looking for tips on configuration. Keep in mind that because our users tend to be fairly technical I am not attempting to outright prevent changes, just prevent them by default.

      Here are the current details:

      • The machines have a wallpaper warning users that all changes are wiped on reboot
      • The normal automatic update system is disabled (updates through it won't persist)
      • I install updates and reboot on a cronjob at 5am every day (this uses overlayroot-chroot)
      • The overlay is implemented as an encrypted filesystem on a separate partition, with the key generated on boot and held in memory
      • Documentation is taped to the desktop computer itself educating users on how to make persistent changes
      13 votes
    6. Cloud hosting in EU

      Hi! I've decided to move some of my selfhosted things from on-prem (at home ;)) to the cloud, and at the same time I'd like to try and run this in EU, or at least europe. I'd like to get started...

      Hi!

      I've decided to move some of my selfhosted things from on-prem (at home ;)) to the cloud, and at the same time I'd like to try and run this in EU, or at least europe. I'd like to get started fairly quickly as this was prompted by one of my home servers halfway dying on me.

      The features I'm most interested in are approximately:

      • Virtual machines.
      • Storage. Cheap long term for backups (similar to S3 Glacier).
      • Managed DB, most likely postgresql.
      • Serverless jobs (similar to AWS lambda).
      • IaaS (I've got a bit of experience with terraform, but it doesn't have to be that).
      • Builtin monitoring.
      • Git hosting, it's likely that I'll just go with github/gitlab here, but if there's a nice alternative I'm up for it.
      • Automated sending of email. I'm using AWS SES atm, and I'm very happy with it.

      Some other things:

      • I intend to run a combination of services written by others, e.g. nextcloud and software I've written myself.
      • I'll most likely be running linux only, but I prefer to select my own flavour where it makes sense.
      • I much prefer managing permissions and users in gcp than in aws as I find aws way too complicated for my needs while gcp mostly just makes sense.
      • I'd prefer a platform that's being developed and improving over time with big potential for the future.
      • This is a hobby project, and some of these requirements may seem a bit contradictory or non-optimal, but that's ok.
      • I have some experience running kubernetes (self-hosted), and I'm not a huge fan of the complexity and yaml files, at the same time OpenStack is getting kinda old, and I don't know if I think it's a platform for the future. But from what I see most of the options seems to be built on top of one of those.
      • Cheaper is of course better, I don't have a company-sized budget, this is all coming out of my "hobby pocket".
      • I live in Sweden, so datacenters geographically close is a plus.

      Right now I'm looking at European alternatives to Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Scaleway is looking the most promising, but I'm really skimming the top when it comes to info atm.

      Hope that makes sense =) I'm interested in all kinds of feedback.

      22 votes