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Why485

@why485.bsky.social

780 followers 150 following 1K posts

Former modder turned gamedev. This is not a very serious account. Do not follow me here for gamedev hot takes or progressposting.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · Dec 18

I've updated the social media chart. More people keep coming here and following me that I respect so it's been tough to figure out what to do with this account.

Posting habits per social media websites (in order of increasing irreverence). TL;DL: Twitter is dead for me, my Bluesky is becoming more serious than I want it to be. Still haven't figured out how to handle my social media.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1h

The level of detail in the API is really incredible. One example is Counter-Strike style buy menu. You can totally create custom classes and force weapons and abilities and everything and this is just the equipment API. I am genuinely shocked. This is so much more powerful than I could have hoped.

Screenshot of API examples for adding equipment.
Source: https://github.com/Synthetic-Virus/bf6-portal-sdk-docs/blob/main/docs/api/player-equipment.md

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 2h

This is looking like the most supported modding has been since the Refractor engine days. AFAIK there's still no way to add new assets to the game, so no Star Wars or Halo mods for example, but having an API and scripting language at all is in many ways more powerful than the Refractor tools.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 2h

Took a quick peak at the Battlefield SDK and aside from the absolutely sickening aspect of needing to defile my PC with NPM, the fact that you CAN program at all in Javascript for custom Battlefield game modes is already sounding insanely powerful. This is really, really promising.

Player System - Control, State, Spawning, Equipment (120+ functions)
UI System - Widgets, Notifications, Layouts (104+ functions)
AI System - Behaviors, Combat, Pathing (25+ functions)
Game Systems - Teams, Scoring, Vehicles, VFX & Audio (115+ functions)
Spatial Objects - Spawning, Transform, Gameplay Objects (80+ functions)
Utilities - Math, Vector operations, Helper library (modlib)

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 16h

I guess it wasn't really aimed at newbies, but I will say that asteroids is my "default game" when I'm learning a new engine/language/framework/etc.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 16h

I'm surprised there aren't more of those sorts of underwater 6DOF style games. There's only a tiny handful of them. You could make some pretty cool looking visuals with that kind of setting.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

Was watching some footage of the old arcade game Tokyo Wars. I still think if you want to practice making a small game, game jam style, one of the best things you can do is clone an old arcade game or like something from the home computer era. They inherently have extremely narrowly scopes.

Tokyo Wars Arcade

YouTube video by Insert Coin

www.youtube.com

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

It's all in the really good Ars Technica article from July. They created a new studio (Ridgeline) to make the singleplayer, but after a few years of problems, Ridgeline was shut down by EA, and their work tossed. Criterion, DICE, and Motive were then on the hook to slap together a campaign ASAP.

What’s wrong with AAA games? The development of the next Battlefield has answers.

EA insiders describe stress and setbacks in a project that’s too big to fail.

arstechnica.com

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

I found out after I posted that they do (and that I already followed them months ago), but they don't use it.
bsky.app/profile/skwe...

bsky.app

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

Actually, more than any other aesthetic, THIS is what I want. In my fictional dream team for a game that could never happen, Skwerl does the concept art and airplane designs.

Skwerl's header art from his Twitter page. Has a weird and awesome hybrid design of something that looks like a Jaguar and Phantom and XFV-12. Very Cold War looking aesthetics, using a lot of the design language of planes of that era, but still a fictional plane.
https://x.com/Skwerl_Art

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

I wish there was a jet game that looked like this.

War Thunder promo art of a Hornet launching an AIM-120 over a colorful desert that's on fire because of burning oilfields. I am also delusional enough to pretend that's actually a Sparrow being fired, and the bombs are Mk82s and Mk84s.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

It didn't really work though, and the quirks it had were counter-intuitive and felt bad. It's close enough to the typical "slippery space" approach (enough drag to add max speeds and arrest lateral vectors, but not so much you fly on rails) that I think fine-tuning that would give better results.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 1d

I was watching Battlestar Galactica and was thinking about how when flying slow the Vipers fly like spaceships, but if they're moving, they generally fly like planes. I wanted to try basically "zero G planes" with the idea of recreating that, which I took as the aero of wings, but no gravity.

Spaceship in third person flying in a very old fashioned looking asteroid field with a capital ship in the center of it all.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 2d

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 3d

Ever since playing this game, I've been saying, "As they say", at least once a day.

Tiger-chan from Endless Monday saying "All work and no play makes you stupid and boring. As they say." She says "as they say" a lot, frequently about things that people do not, in fact, say.
This game is so good please play it 😭

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 3d

Nobody ever says AAAA sincerely. Very fun word.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 5d

If there was a gun with those effects, the tradeoffs compared to a regular old "slug thrower" seem both worth it and very practical. On top of my made up effect, there's also many, many more positives that I could see a "switched to LCD monitors over CRT almost overnight" effect happening.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 5d

Problems this solves:
1. Works nicely with, "set for stun", as a tuned down bolt that still applies this same neurological effect, but to a much lower and safer degree.
2. Makes "blasters on full" MUCH more lethal than a bullet.
3. No over-penetration means they are "safer" in tight indoor spaces.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 5d

For a while I've had this headcanon that blaster bolts in Star Wars apply some kind of neurological shock when used on living things that (in most cases) is just instantly lethal. In my dumb fan brain, this squares away a lot of the hows and why they're seen as so practical as to be ubiquitous.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 5d

I love games based around vehicles.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 6d

Was digging through the closet and found out the hard drive that failed on me earlier this year was one of those hard drives that's so famous it has its own Wikipedia page.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST3000D...

ST3000DM001 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 6d

4 players with the names Yuuma, Nitori, Megumu, and Rumia standing in a line in front of a concrete(?) barrier, a scorch mark under them, and some stacked crates to the right.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 7d

Helps that it's one of my favorite guns of all time too, evocative of a very specific time, modeled with the same 3D modeling techniques and polygon counts that video game guns of that era would have had too.

Photo of a soldier in a forest holding the whole XM29 OICW (Objective Individual Combat Weapon) which was a 5.56 rifle with a giant semi-automatic 20mm airbursting bullpup grenade launcher mated to the top of it with an equally gigantic and complicated scope full of computers. Even though it's a hilariously obsolete and outdated design, it still screams THE FUTURE to me.

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 7d

I've been staring at this for like 10 minutes now. Amazing work.

FrogmanDev @frogmandev.bsky.social · 7d

big boned 🍕

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 7d

The two I'd personally recommend:
Overload: Spiritual successor to Descent by the original creators
store.steampowered.com/app/448850/O...
Desecrators: Roguelite format with fantastic Glidecore visual style
store.steampowered.com/app/1311570/...
There's more out there too!

Save 80% on Overload on Steam

A new six-degree-of-freedom shooter with intuitive controls, amazing lighting and graphics. From the creators of Descent, Overload is the best zero-gravity robot-blasting combat ever.

store.steampowered.com

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 7d

No, but I do think it would be fun to make a 6DOF shooter.