I Vanished to Make My First Game

[@palimondo]

This move, to level up your game dev skills on a lower stakes side project was a very smart choice! Seeing your systematic approach to de-risking the work on the main passion project fills me with great confidence in the final result. Kudos to you and the team of collaborators!

[@rickishit]

Wait, how did you write this 3 days before? I shows me this video was made 5 hours ago. Or did you support aarthifical?

[@thatprogramer]

Probably membership bruh, i commented this once too!

[@palimondo]

@@rickishitThe video is published as Unlisted first, with link shared with patrons on Patreon. Later it’s opened to Public for everyone on KZbin.

[@lemonlordminecraft]

Just straight up releasing a free game as, essentially, game development practice is a move with such grand courage, I commend you for this.

[@Player_X_YT2]

> Recreates half of unity because it's not exactly what is needed > I am attached to astortion We've noticed, that's what makes it so much better than most games (especially AAA games). Either way nice side project!

[@qwfp]

Everyone knows that you should "start small", but everyone who tried that knows how hard that is. Even if you start "starting small", you get a good idea after a good idea and the scope grows, the features creep. So, congrats on (mostly) sticking to your original scope/deadline! Excited for you to get back to Astortion!

[@colethecollector6742]

my video took a second to load, but your circular logo was right in the center of the screen. most satisfying thing I've ever seen.

[@OliverBeebe]

the dialogue gizmo that moves around and changes icon is just so elegant in so many ways. love that kinda stuff!! SDFs are so cool, I'd love to see a breakdown of how you got those working for various things in your game, cause that crisp UI is mmmmmmm

[@Gwilo]

your code itself is actually so well-done and polished, it's like seeing new colours for the first time

[@MrNickPlaysminecraft]

As someone who's been intermittently learning Unity for a few years now, I always run into the problem it seems you did with Astortion. Once you find a cool idea it's hard to just let it be a small disappointing project. It was surprising to hear you say that considering how good you seem to be at most facets of game development, but I guess it's more of a creative and pragmatic issue than it is a technical one. Hope you manage to make Astortion into something you can be proud of

[@greggregoryst7126]

"So I had a problem to solve while making my first game that ends up being released. For that I wrote a simple blender plugin, a dialogue library. I wrote a simple shader for the terrain, UI, and a dozen more things" The fact that you are able to do that, and you choose these options as the easier ones, thats just incredible mate

[@taste9689]

Love the way you explain the technicalities and your work!! Just in time for Christmas keep it up! :D

[@taste9689]

Update : It was getting pretty interesting and the story just stops there 😖, the level of polish and options in the settings is remarkable and for a demo too

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen KZbin measure the time since a video was made public in _seconds_ before.

[@_chadrose]

And I appeared within seconds to say first! ...only to see another comment already posted 2 days ago hahahah. Anyways, glad to hear from you again! Edit after watching vid: Oh boy! Every time I watched your vid, I'm always inspired with new ideas because there's so much things I've learnt! The way you explain features makes it easy to understand too! I'm definitely going to check it out

[@JustDezz]

Huge thanks for the public release of your packages! I was wondering how exactly your save system works, but couldn't quite understand the details, and now I can find it out. Thank you

[@GoldenBeholden]

The icon morphing is my favourite technique of this entire video. That really does look incredibly smooth.

[@noonoox12]

I LOVE IT

[@Gerz970]

Glad your back! I really like your highly technical devlog style.

[@mateush.]

good to know you've been active! this new game looks pretty fun to play, i'll give it a try later. it was indeed a smart move to not build expectations from the public when working with a bit of insecurity in the air, i definitely should try this for myself lol great work tho, nice to see you again!

[@ninjakivi2]

This story reminds me of myself when I was aspiring to be a game dev; the perfectionism really gets to you if you're good at it. Your Icon system is absolutely incredible and up to highest standards. I was already impressed by the point you showed the icon interpolating between the colors and morphed, and then you were like "the colors also rotate depending on convict's positions" and that's just showing off. Absolutely gorgeous and unnecessary for a smaller game, but I understand this mentality of doing the best and finishing the programming puzzle/idea that you have, I did that myself. It boggles my mind how people are able to make very amazing games in 2 day game jams while people like us would barely finish programming a script to make menu button roundness adjustable haha. That's part of the reason I never got to make games, I just know I would need so much time to make something good; best of luck to you on your journey sir.

[@MathewSan_]

Great video 🔝👍

[@blackestbill7454]

amazing project, i love the title screen and menu

[@thiagohenrique8913]

YOOOOO i was wondering where your channel was literally 1 hour ago man!

[@baerrach]

Your dedication to building tooling is what brings me back to these videos. Thanks for your insights.

[@krembadger]

That was sooo smart ! Very good decision ! I'm not a game maker but I'm a story writer, and when I wanted to write my first novel (I was a young teenager at that time so don't blame too much) I wanted it to be a masterpiece ; later when I discovered the art of the scenario, I wanted my first long footage to be the same. In both situations, I fail to finish these projects because I didn't have enough experience, I was discovering too much while creating these to-be masterpieces. Then I started to go to writing clubs, we made some little group projects, had to write with random constraints. Each week we wrote a whole little text, and we could read it or make it be read it we felt the courage. At the end of the semester we released our group project, could it be a little play, an audio fiction, etc... Submitting and hearing writings from fellow writers is the most rewarding thing, as long as they are well-meaning of course. Because you are given rewiews of different people and you are yourself pushed to do the same (otherwise it would not be fair to let them do all this job for you without doing the same for them) that go deeper than just "fine", "cool" or "I don't like it". You learn to understand what precisely is good, bad, recognise when it is about taste. (Btw don't waste time with "that's shit" "ridiculous" or even "so cool" when there is no construction behind it) Sharing writings is very scary, being criticised even more. But the more you do it, the better you become. You learn to handle your ego, which is badly hurt when you hear your first critiques, to be able to understand. Of course you can disagree with the critique ! But listen to it, it is important and - who knows? - it could be useful later. And yeah, go little first, learn, then do your masterpiece, because now you master. Sooooo I went far but needless to say that was a brilliant decision!

[@drwhocoby]

The visual effects in the main menu are beautiful

[@right_jehoon]

Really thank you for making this project as open source. I'll definitely read and tries to understand the architecture. I was DEADLY finding "good" architecture game that implemented complete feature rather than just tutorial or small one thing.

[@Arcane0]

This is the best comeback we could have expected I think. Thank you for your work, this is so inspiring 🔥❤

[@SuperGamersgames]

Welcome back! This was really good! If you happen to also continue this project I'd be interested in seeing where it goes. :)

[@senka2927]

huuugee comeback, happy to see you and can't wait for astortion updates!

[@digis_monkey_king]

Your mechanic designs are brilliant, I love hearing your explanations; Although I am far from completely understanding them, but I’ll get there eventually 😅. I too am developing a game, if you didn’t notice by the way I’m speaking haha; it also consists of a two character playing style, so that made this video doubly interesting. Keep up the awesome work!

[@flower-fauna]

i was so confused when looking you up yesterday, finding this game, but no updates on your open social media ^^

[@AntoCharles]

glad you're ok and decided to rest your mind doing something else excited for the future dev logs!

[@JakeND]

Yeah this is dope, so many cool and interesting ways to spice up seemingly simple things

[@fancypants7990]

I've been waiting for your updates! Welcome back!

[@redpz]

js coming back to this just to glaze a little further, the icon morphing is amazing and i dont think many games have actually utilised this at all. Makes the animation look so kuch smoother, this added with the way the circle changes from red to blue is even better. And the pause and save menu are again so cool and fit the theme very well, I love you used a shader to do rounded corners instead of using a raster image like most people would, this is a really small and unnecesary thing but i love it so much.

[@artificialexecution]

lower stakes side project is a great move, toby fox pulled that shit off insane style so good luck!!!

[@Sickfishsticks]

Adding the game in my free games of the week! hope it helps get some eyes on the game and Great Job!

[@8bitbunnie936]

the visuals show that it was worth the wait!

[@Ondrej_Mottl_]

It is great to have you back! There is so much juicy technical stuff in your video. Each of them is worth is own video!

[@andrewstockton1137]

This is awesome. Makes me want to get back into game design, wish there was time for that 🤩 Someday!

[@amyshaw893]

I do love gamedev retrospectives like this, because I can often pick up some usefu lips, like I love SDFs, but I never considered using them in that way haha

[@josiahvarughese6432]

Thanks for sharing! Your videos are always so informative. I'm always impressed by how pragmatic your problem solving process is

[@linkoidPolirend]

Hopefully this game helps garner a community that is excited for your passion project as well!

[@thatprogramer]

Nice video man, I love your videos!

[@redpz]

the UI is honestly amazing and so creative. This shit is so good

[@siahsneaka]

Really neat concept, excited to try this out.

[@kartopod]

I love how much custom tooling you're able to create. I wish i had the ability of just thinking up an engine feature and bringing it to life! Awesome work as always!

[@Szystedt]

I’ve been thinking about you and Astortion lately, so I am happy we got an update! I’ll have to check the game out, the ability to skip dialogue without accidentily exiting it is SUCH A GOOD AND CONVENIENT FEATURE!! 😭

[@bilel114]

Great work as always and there is no need to apologize, you can dissapear for whatever reason and for as long as you want. Thank you for making your source code public, it will help many.

[@Anonysus-z9y]

I haven’t made a game in forever and this project motivates me to start small instead of procrastinating 😂 You guys did an amazing job, subscribed and looking forward to you next game(s)

[@shawon265]

I see you went for a side-quest...

[@NKCubed]

that's gotta be one of the most beautiful main menus I've seen

[@jomy10-games]

Excited to see you back, the demo looks so good!

[@loop3454]

cant wait to see your next video

[@nibor9183]

7:20 is a feature that every game needs

[@oleksandr.kryvonos]

really like design decisions!

[@rimonsade-jd3id]

In my opinion taking a step back from your dream project and fill the time gap with new learnings of the matter would prove itself the best decision. Cant wait for more asortion devlogs man keep the efforts

[@eboatwright_]

Love the style! The UI fits so well

[@danieschenkekraft7199]

This looks and sounds really cool and the idea to have a low stakes project for a little while AND not to continue much over the deadline seems like a smart choice. Your words seem to echo that experience and I'm really glad you could get something out of it :) Have fun and much success in the future!

[@chameleonedm]

Ah, so glad to see some more content from you. Always so clean and full of useful thoughts

[@boraozyenice6617]

well ive been trying to make an animated series for 2 years now, its my first project and i became attached to it too i wanted it to be something better than an amateur first project so i wanted to make a simpler series just to get some experience out of it and have fun and i named it foundations too its such a funny coincidence

[@hd-bild1513]

Pretty smart thing to do NGL. I'm glad astortion is still going tho. Good luck ❤

[@Bvngee]

Here's a boost for the algorithm. Amazing work!

[@Ironlionm4n]

Inspirational stuff and thankful for what you do.

[@meekjr2]

you should add a file cabinet where you can see concept art

[@PatrikBergsten]

Glad to see you back. Good job on the game!

[@MrLordbolten]

Welcome back! We are here to stay, too!

[@failscript]

I discovered and subscribed earlier today to your channel, and now this 😲 awesome!!!!

[@ravenanne1734]

Do you have any idea just how funny it is that today I went through my new releases queue on steam and saw this, and now the video releases? Now that's timing

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

so much wisdom in this video. Excellent work. It's an inspiration to me.

[@ceo_reuben]

Glad to see you developing your skills! Keep it up and Astortion will be better than you ever could have dreamed!

[@Mr_Pringle593]

bro that main menu goes SOOO hard!

[@goddepersonno3782]

neato hopefully this was a great experience in learning and understanding all aspects of Game Developing. Time management is hard, especially with team members operating in different timezones with different levels of commitment.

[@lachlanokeefe8020]

Very excited to see you back!

[@nadav13IOY]

Wow that’s very impressive

[@TheRavikin]

Main menu looks like old Medal of Honor menu. Good times! :D

[@JohnoScott]

Woo hoo. Love that you did this 🎉🎉🎉

[@lajawi.]

8:19 What is that YAML file? Why does it have a flowchart-like structure?

[@0-M72-0]

LET'S GO!!!!!! AARTHIFICIAL CONTENT IS BACK

[@s0fl813]

Welcome back!!! This looks awesome

[@RenCode]

Great to have you back 💖💖🔥🔥

[@AetherXIV]

incredible work man

[@skope2055]

Great job! Nice content.

[@constantinpopp1244]

Fantastic work with lots of future avenues to explore. For example, you could extract the systems you had implemented into packages you could publish in Unity's asset store. Or you could make tutorial videos to give more detailed information about the approaches, such as how specifically the Terrain or Palette shaders work? Or what are the advantages of addressables and how to use them. On the other hand, even though you can implement all these systems, should you? For example, why write your tweeting solution when you could also use DOTween? Similarly, there are save systems on the asset store, even free ones, which work well, too. (E.g. All Platforms Save) The time saved could be spent on implementing the specific interactivity of the game. Anyway, keep up the great work. And it is always inspiring to hear what you come up with.

[@hipno3477]

You are such an inspiration!

[@Jellylamps]

It seems like a very easy pitfall to end up spending a lot of effort on nice touches and quality of life improvements before the bulk of the structure and content of a project. Of course polish can streamline the rest of development quite a bit too, but it seems to be a very difficult balancing act.

[@raphaeljaggerd3585]

Please make a tutorial using Solomon's link to go further in depth in some of the techniques you used.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

as they say, you learn by completing things… well done folks!

[@i_love_python5862]

He's back!

[@javisartdesign]

it looks very nice

[@kabinet0]

The game looks wonderful! Great job across the board! I'm particularly interested in how you gave it such a smooth "feel". What's your architectural approach for tweening things? I often end up making a maze of timing variables and InverseLerp() whenever I need to tween something, and I feel like there just has to be a better way. ps. I've been meaning to look into SDFs at some point, this has given me both an excuse to do so and a bit of inspiration.

[@aarthificial]

Thanks! I'm using the good ol' spring for all tweening. For example, here's the relevant code that animates the door in the main menu: github.com/aarthificial-unity/foundations/blob/main/Assets/View/Office/ExitDoor.cs#L44-L52 And here's the source code for the spring itself: github.com/aarthificial-unity/foundations/blob/main/Assets/Utils/Tweening/SpringTween.cs

[@NateLevin]

Awesome!

[@pladselsker8340]

Hey, just wanna say I'm super happy to hear back from one of my favorite devlog channels! Taking a "break" from astortion while working on another smaller game is a brilliant move. I want to do the same now. Thank you for inspiring us to work on our own projects. I am still as hyped as ever to buy and play astortion when it gets out.

[@fruity4820]

I was scared that you lost intrest in astortion, so i am just glad to find out its not the case

[@TobiasSample]

The tools you write for the game are equally as interesting as the game

[@neozoid7009]

cool things mate😮😮❤

[@ZhilBear]

I don't know if you will have the chance to read this comment, but do a quick google for IES profiles. Adding such a texture to spot lights immediately gives a massive improvement to them and it's a cool trick to know, that doesn't see enough use. Really cool project and cool idea making a simple game to go through the release process at least once.

[@aarthificial]

Thanks! IES profiles would be nice to have but AFAIK Unity only supports them in the high-definition render pipeline and for this project we used the universal RP. I'm looking into supporting them (or something similar) in my pixel art render tho.

[@ZhilBear]

@@aarthificial Ah yeah, that makes sense :)

[@DaydreamStudios_Official]

I assumed he was just taking a break 😨 this man is productive!

[@zaidmermam2524]

This is awesome

[@ItzMeImAlive]

Oh nice

[@7vn]

Welcome back!

[@hudsonator7259]

Yay hes back