@tomgrochowiak@mastodon.gamedev.place
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tomgrochowiak

@tomgrochowiak@mastodon.gamedev.place

Associate Game Director at Vile Monarch. Indie dev at MoaCube: Cinders, Solstice, Bonfire, Magi.

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hanakogames, to random
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starting the day receiving a kickstarter update of "Well, we couldn't find a publisher, so we quit!" sigh

tomgrochowiak,
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@hanakogames Damn :(.

tomgrochowiak,
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@hanakogames I kinda appreciate the honesty of outright saying "this isn't enough, we quit" instead of dragging it on forever and hoping people forget about it. It's a difficult market out there.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Dragon's Dogma is one of my all time favorites and while the sequel is disappointing in many ways, man would I love to see more RPGs with this kind of open world design!

Explorable in its entirety from the get go, no activity icons, no adjusting for player's level, tons of secrets and treasures/collectibles that are actually valuable.

From recent games, only Elden Ring comes to mind. Unless I'm forgetting something obvious?

tomgrochowiak,
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@SmallisBeautiful Breath of the Wild adjusts enemies and loot to your "level".

tomgrochowiak,
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@guntha @SmallisBeautiful Not all encounters can feature more difficult enemies, but in general higher level mobs will spawn only after a certain number of kills. So you can't really do stuff like risk going into a higher level area to get better gear early -- everything is scaled to your progress.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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That might be the best Aliexpress product (phone charger) description I've seen in a while.

There's just so much going on here!

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Bonfire Witching Hour update is now live on Steam! Introducing Hexa the Witch -- master of shadow magic, debilitating curses...and snark.

Full patch notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1067580/view/7665759271868580037

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Recommendations for retro dating sims with an English translation?

Finished Tokimeki Memorial and I'd like to know more of the genre classics. Eroges are fine too.

tomgrochowiak,
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@hanakogames I've heard of Dokyusei, but yeah, I'd much prefer to play the original.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Having an opportunity to work on my indie games full-time again, I have to say that it might not make any money, but it's still the most enjoyable form of game development for me.

tomgrochowiak,
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I should have probably added "for a couple months" to this tweet as some people read it as me leaving Vile Monarch to focus on MoaCube again.

But nope -- I just got some free time between projects. Sorry for any confusion.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Godzilla's nose is strangely boopable in Minus One.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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I love that GameMaker gets updated so often these days but I also hate that GameMaker gets updated so often these days, because every time I update an old game I have to spend a day or two getting it to work at all.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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I dunno if there exists a more deadly compliment than "I played your game a lot as a kid!"

tomgrochowiak,
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@SirTapTap Ooof.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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If you're considering Game Maker, here's how it looks from professional perspective:

  • Less verbose script language similar to C++
  • Rapidly developed
  • REALLY good for multiplatform releases
  • "Thinks" in 2D - frames, pixels, degrees instead of vectors etc
  • Great newbie-friendly documentation
  • Cheap, no hooks
  • It's really just for 2D
  • Scene editor is still lacking (though it changes fast)
  • IDE feels a bit outdated
  • Less object oriented (could be plus)
tomgrochowiak, to random
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Imagine trying to prove your installs are from a charity bundle to a soulless corporate entity.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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People say that game design is all about subtraction, killing your darlings and all that. But the longer I do this, the more I realise it's about compression. Taking your darlings, cutting off two of their limbs, packing them into a very small box, and telling them it's gonna be all right.

tomgrochowiak,
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The skill is not in coming up with awesome unrealistic ideas and then dropping them, but in figuring out cool stuff that can actually be scaled to fit the given scope. The more experience I have, the less I find myself outright cutting features.

I guessing I'm not alone in this, right?

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Recently read a hot take saying that emulators with fast forward and save states give people the wrong impression of retro games.

I have a anti-hot take. They actually make the experience closer to playing them back in the day, when we were more tolerant of games' bullshit like lack of skippable cutscenes, huge load times, or crazy random encounter rates.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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There's this weird discourse surrounding BG3 as if it was some shocking revelation that's making devs nervous with its unexpected quality.

I don't get it. It's a very good game from a studio that's very good at this particular genre. How is it different from Nintendo nailing another Mario?

tomgrochowiak, to random
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I just learned Steven Seagal once recorded a dancehall song about how he wants the punani and now y'all are gonna suffer with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLe_BZ1mo3I

tomgrochowiak,
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@mike

video/mp4

tomgrochowiak, to random
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Dunno why Ikea assembly instructions omit the five stages of grief.

tomgrochowiak, to random
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I remember laughing at my US friends who thought my country has like wild animals walking on the streets, except now when I see a boar in my neighbourhood it's like "G'day, sir!" and I live in the goddamn capital city of Poland, so I guess the joke's on me.

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