ZeroTag Devlog OMEGA

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Hopefully next video coming out more rapidly this time!
Thanks once again for everything guys!

[@RobertThomsonDev]

If you choose to back me on Patreon, bless you! Next video coming out more rapidly. patreon.com/RobertThomson And don't forget to hit subscribe if you haven't :) Thanks all, you're the best! Side note, for those confused: I was using an old version Blender because it was the only way to get the plugin to work :D

[@aidenchen2081]

Here here here here some advice on maybe um I know this sounds annoying the lake or maybe control X all your coding in control V or you could back in here

[@johnkimani5889]

Hi Robert, To make Global illumination stop buffering uncheck the "progressive updates" box on the lightmapping settings. Best of luck in your game.

[@kaktusknabe3851]

Heya, so sorry for all the hurdles you encountered, especially since I really love the ZeroTag project. I would like to fund you too so yu could keep working on it, but I'm not a big fan of patreon since they take such a big cut. Could you maybe open an additional page on steady? Would be greatly appretiated :)

[@Hiryu7809]

Lol i am not the only one having seemingly unfixable problems, but my problems are already on the internet and brainnumbingly simple

[@HexArt]

@RobertThomson Im watching your videos and saw you have great ideas! but I saw you made your life harder I can you help with achieve your goal if you want some consultations just write to me an email I can be you wiki with unity :D for example about cinemahine camera you can do that with simple raycast check from character pos to camera pos if something is between and adjust distance camera from player

[@djinni2005]

I'm so sorry for all the stress, man. If it's any consolation, what you have made is wonderful and fits very well with the story you've been building.

[@RobertThomsonDev]

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it

[@PSTNH_D_DNT]

So true, he needs more recognition, that would be the minimum that we could do for him.

[@anticstudios]

@@RobertThomsonDev it's really quite bad how much work you've made and then have it do this and ive also finally found your channel (I forget the name) ive been watching your channel with out an account for ages and now I have one I can add to the some cool guys section on my channel I hope you dont have such problems in future

[@chimklee]

@@RobertThomsonDev y’know, you should take a break. Dont worry too much about uploading, its better to get some rest than upload consistently

[@Mxrii_prod]

@@RobertThomsonDev don't give up u have people to disappointed now😃

[@JulianKingman]

The first 2 minutes had me in hysterics... As a mobile developer, I experience similar pain on a regular basis, and it's so well put.

[@grass5576]

Lol

[@conabe]

ikr

[@gatoninjahyaah]

From one dev to another, you made the best decision possible. If you make a bunch of small projects, you'll be able to get a familiarity with Unity's wierdness. Love your videos btw

[@edvinkarlsson9368]

@Luiz sí sí, por favor

[@edvinkarlsson9368]

@Luiz no se?

[@S_moonie]

​@@edvinkarlsson9368that is spanish bud, good try though

[@vampbat]

"It's fine. It's not realistic, but I'm stupid so it's the best I could come up with." Not having a programmer brain but knuckling down and working on it is AWESOME dude and this quote speaks volumes to me. Good luck, very happy to see this update, even if you see it as just...a collection of roadblocks :')

[@mayplemoon]

Hey, even if this means the end of zerotag I’m still really happy this channel will still keep going. You’re cool as hell, man.

[@encukie4924]

Talking about mistakes must be hard. But you did the absolute right choice making this video. It is actually quite interesting to see the hurdles of game development. Don't feel down, cool vid. I hope you came back to this game idea one day, it sounds amazing. : +1 view +1 like +1 subscriber

[@theeldritchhorrorknownonly7273]

0:08 fun fact: the brain cant actually support it own weight and would crush itself if you just like left it out. lucky, our skulls are filled with brain juice to counteract gravity so your brain is just going for a little swim

[@Skjoldmc]

I always knew I was a blobfish at heart.. err brain

[@AschKris]

new fear unlocked

[@maxwell_edison]

You know, it's so weird - at 19:40, you say, "Apparently as a developer I'm at the bleeding edge of finding Game-Destroying problems in Unity" ..It's weird to think that I've felt the same way. I'm guessing most developers do. We share platforms but somehow don't share problems. Spooky!

[@Squiffel]

This scope would have taken years even if you had a perfect run. It's enormous. Game dev is brutally hard and slow even with small games. You're making the right call.

[@PoorlyMadeSweater]

Totes. For something this big, you really want to make a basic prototype or vertical slice of some sort, then kick start/business loan/patreon and hire some people to distribute the labor. Its amazing what 3 or 4 trade professionals can do compared to a single "many hats" designer.

[@AbuHagag1]

Oh man your animations are so goddam good, keep going man, even if this channel turns into story telling channel or animation channel it would be great!. Instant sub

[@namesurname624]

Or use 2d animations as the visual language of the game

[@mgkjs1584]

thats exactly what i said when i watched him for the first time

[@innacurate]

As much as I liked the concept of the first game, what drew me to your channel, and what will make me continue watching your videos is the incredible quality you put out. Especially your animations are top notch. I fully support your decision to focus on creating smaller games instead, and I hope to be able to play them in the future!

[@antr_]

This is heartbreaking, this is the most creative idea I've seen for an indie game and seeing it all break is kinda sad

[@LaynaLatte]

probuilder is meant for prototyping. not for full 3d modeling, so i'd recommend using something like blender for the modeling. probuilder is probably what is causing all these problems

[@AlarkaPT]

Came to the comments to mention this. Probuilder is fantastic if you're using it for what it was supposed to do: whiteboxing and prototyping. More than that and you should be using something truly meant for 3D modelling.

[@LaynaLatte]

@@AlarkaPT yea. that is practically what i meant to say if it wasn't clear.

[@RobertThomsonDev]

Yeah fair enough. I didn't know it wasn't intended to be used this way. Perhaps I was a little hard on its utility as a level design tool.

[@MichaelKocha]

@@RobertThomsonDev I mean... It's called "pro" builder. I wouldn't have guessed it wasn't supposed to be used for anything other than prototyping... This is why I dislike third party tools in general.

[@Dogman_35]

@@MichaelKocha It's not third party though lol It would be much less annoying if it was just a third party tool that wasn't meant to be _officially supported_

[@fraser21]

Wow. This so perfectly summed up my years of experience with unity that I was basically shouting along with you for the half the video. This 100% is not the solution for most people, but I've swapped to engineless now (well, sorta - I'm using the bevy framework) and the grass really is greener, couldn't recommend it enough :)

[@r6scrubs126]

Agreed. I tried moving from Unity to UE4 and it was SO MUCH better in pretty much every way. Hell, the sample project in Unity didn't even render properly for me. The only problem is that UE4 uses C++ and the documentation is pretty poor. If you could just use C# with UE4 then it wouldn't even be a competition, but as I'm already very familiar with C# I keep coming back to Unity... until it crashes again and I regret everything.

[@Spartan322]

I feel like any engine other then Unity would've probably been a better decision then going practically without an engine, UE is usually considered pretty reasonable, or Godot might be reasonable for 2D. (and it seems with 4.0 3D will be a practical thing finally)

[@astroid-ws4py]

@@r6scrubs126 UE4 using C++ is a feature, not a problem, given the fact that C++ is a professional software development language and that C# is too much Micro$oft

[@isweartofuckinggod]

Same! I ditched Unity years ago because of how messy it became. I had been using it to make games for 6 or 7 years and it was a breeze, but as soon as they set their sights on beating Unreal Engine it became practically impossible to get anything done without the engine breaking. My problem now is that I haven't really found any alternative that has clicked with me. I haven't made a game in years now, and seeing how I used to make games every day, it's kinda sad.

[@Spartan322]

@@astroid-ws4py Eh, C# is fine as a language, the problem with Unity has nothing to do with C#, in most cases C# can get pretty close to C++ performance and C# is also more portable since its a bytecode compiled language. I have my gripes with it, but neither C# nor C++ are optimal for a game engine script language. (they might be better if not for compilation, but neither them are short and sweet, they are very verbose for basic things and aren't designed for this)

[@VyvyanTheGreat]

I've been making games with Unity for 10 years, and I really connected with this video. Game dev is brutal most off the time.

[@unluckypanda5448]

I think im slowly backing off of game making. If this is what it looks like most od the time with 10 years of experience then im not surprised i couldnt even start a simplest project in unity... Hopefully in like 20 years making 3d multiplayer games will be as easy as making a point and click game in scratch or soemthing, then i can start renewing my dreams... Ehh.......

[@voropserg99]

@@unluckypanda5448 Well if it was that easy everyone could do it then. But dont be discouraged by your failures, if you work hard you'll get there eventualy. Don't let go of your dream, you can make it !

[@ExploreImagineDefineCreate]

@@unluckypanda5448 I mean. Core is the sponsor of this video. Haven't tried it myself but it's made to make game development easier. I've just started learning Godot and making my first few games/prototypes on it. It's tons of fun, but definitely a taxing experience. You just have to decide if it's worth it. I do it for a hobby, not a job. It's definitely worth it for me in that sense.

[@danieleziaco7092]

@@unluckypanda5448 I mean in a way it's better this way, if it was so easy then everyone could make games and stores would be flooded with crap (more than they already are)

[@danieleziaco7092]

@@ExploreImagineDefineCreate I didn't try create a game with core, but I tried a couple of games made with it, and they aren't really inspired😅, 90% of them use the same models and are platformers

[@Sk4lli]

I feel that so much. It's actually one of the reasons that made me switch to Godot. Godot is lacking in some regards and initial progress is much slower as there's a lot of basic tools missing that Unity has (like FPS controller etc.), but it's much more stable and intuitive for me. I ended up spending much more time working on my games than fighting the engine. I know it's not the right choice for everyone, but for me it was a big relief.

[@Sk4lli]

@@8Kazuja8 well said! I can only agree.

[@jesperpersson9388]

​@@8Kazuja8 I've been having the same thoughts honestly about both Unity and UE. I used Unity for a few months and all the bugs + not having source access just made it impossible to continue with it. I also didn't feel it was made from the ground up with a concept of modularity. In UE4 I haven't experienced as many bugs with the components themselves, more with the editor being a bit clunky and blueprints not updating properly when updating the cpp parent class. Also without Rider, coding C++ for UE is just not feasible. But the same I feel with Unity, UE4 engine classes are very monolithic and the blueprint system, while making everything integrated, makes things very complex. I haven't used Godot that much but already using it a little bit it felt much more modular than the others and it's nice that the editor itself is written using the engine. I guess the lack of tooling and barely any 3d games having been released on Godot makes it quite risky though. Seems we are still some years away from having user-friendly and battle-tested engines to work with.

[@TheDetonadoBR]

Godot's A* path finding is kinda buggy

[@LineOfThy]

@@TheDetonadoBR and the damped spring just doesn't work half the time and is unintuitive as f*ck

[@seraaron]

There's a quote about writing code that I can't remember who it's attributed to, but it's something like "debugging code takes twice as much smarts as writing it", the implication being that if you write the smartest code you can think of, then you're not smart enough to debug it. For solo devs especially, I think this is a really valuable lesson to engrain in your mind. Try to solve problems in the simplest way possible, because you're the one who has to fix it when things inevitably break! Your widow shader problem is a perfect example of that imo. It's a *really* smart solution, but it's almost too smart. You've said yourself that you're primarily an animator, not a shader artist. The other thing to bare in mind is to try not to hold yourself to the standards of the industry. The camera not jerking around, the transparency shader, global illumination, even the way you're making the city... these are all nice quality of life features, but they're not essential. Not really. You've gotta kinda roll back your standards by like 20 years. Think original ratchet and clank or mario 64, not the reboot games or mario odyssey. I think, honestly, you're way out of scope. Also yeah, although it seems like a nice ideal (one I had myself once), it turns out that using separate materials to color everything is a really bad idea. Materials are suprisingly graphics intensive. You're much better off making a single material with a single texture with all the colors you want to put on it in separate squares, and then vertex mapping all the parts of an object that you want to be that color to that part of the texture. It has exactly the same effect, and it's a bit more work in theory, but it's easier to edit afterwards (or do pallet swaps by just chaning the texture) and it's easier on the computer's processor. Still, I can hear the exhaustion and exasperation in your voice. You're burned out. Don't feel bad about scrapping the project. But if and when you do start another big project (or come back to this one), it may be better to post more regular dev logs. Even when you think you have nothing to show, your biggest sounding board and potential source of help is your audience here. You have 40,000 people you can ask for help from. That's 80,000 eyes you can put on a problem. Which, yes, may also be overwhelming in it's own way, but it's potentially better than posting on lonely forums for answers. (edit: For example, you could have saved yourself a lot of time and stress if you made a video two months ago saying "hey I'm using probuilder to do level design", you'd have had a lot of folks saying "nooo, don't do that it's not meant for that, it's just a prototyping tool"... like I've seen some of the comments saying now.)

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

true, everything you've said is completely correct. the window shader problem KILLED me. i was like "wtf you're trying to re-invent the wheel, just make the windows the hard way" he spent way too long trying to make a shader that he could've replicated the effects of (more or less) in around 10 seconds ((just make the hole for the window...))

[@snage-thesnakemage]

as someone trying to learn the craft, this has been incredibly inspirational. Before watching this video I thought that my dream was just outside of my skillset because I kept running into dead ends or would have to trash huge parts of work, but hearing this, seeing you have such similar struggles, and keeping motivation and moral to move forward and keep growing just warms my heart. thank you so much and keep being awesome, cant wait for the next upload!

[@erikrutledge4940]

I've really enjoyed these Devlogs, but if putting them on hold for a bit means we get more games like Gogogo and Platwormer, I'm all for it! Keep ZeroTag as a side project and work on it when you want to, it's not much fun having a side project that turns into a chore. Keep up the great work!

[@T.O.L.D]

I love the fact that you used townscaper for the buildings, I would have never thought of that

[@HateSonneillon]

Mesh colliders are also really expensive. You would end up changing them all to box colliders during optimization anyway so you might as well just build everything with box colliders to begin with.

[@mitchell6679]

This was my first thought as well. Especially if your character is just a capsule, then it won’t even benefit from any additional detail in the collider

[@ronthehuman3618]

Though, you don't have to give up on this concept! You can make a small game using the robot and a small city, I think that will give some meaning to all the effort you went through (the polished character movement looks really fun) and also be a prototype if you ever do come back to making a big game.

[@GonziHere]

I absolutely feel your pain, however, I'm also dying from laughter here :D Your format is incredibly hilarious for this list :-D PS: Please, for the love of god, just create your models in blender, edit them in blender and just place them in your engine of choice.

[@GonziHere]

On a more serious note, it feels to me like you are trying to really bend Unity to work like you want, instead of learning how to use it properly. For example, doing 4 separate wall collisions is absolutely normal. While on topic - creating this kind of house (4 straight walls, A roof, one window) in Blender would take you like 10 minutes (if that), setting it up with collisions as a prefab in unity would take you another 10 and you would be done. Or you could create "kitbash" style pieces and a) build more complex meshes from it in Blender, b) build more complex buildings from it in Unity. I don't know about your specific input bugs, but IMO the speed differences might be from your code being tied to the framerate. Anyways, engine isn't end all, be all solution, you are supposed to just glue your game together there.

[@relix3267]

@@GonziHere I don’t know how to use Blender and for some reason I can’t wrap my head around it

[@lucbloom]

@@relix3267 you will feel at a loss when you don’t start simple, and then concentrate on using shortcut keys.

[@artisanmage5378]

@@relix3267 Its actually pretty easy after the first couple months. I had some students do some great renders in a week or two and totally learn modelling enough for lowpoly stuff.

[@Agent_Solace]

@@relix3267 it takes practice, i didnt understand it at first and took me awhile but its basically a continuous hill where there is always something to learn.

[@Hopecho]

I’m making my first game right now. And I know how you feel. It’s a real struggle. But look at it from the bright side. You already have a big amount of people who got your back. So one of the hardest challenges of game design is already done. Getting an audience. Keep up the good work!

[@suitNtie22]

thank you. Too often these Devlog channels make everything look so simple so when I try I feel so discouraged. Seeing you go through the same type of issues I do and the challenges really makes me feel better about my projects and everything :) thank you !

[@Betruet]

I've been developing in VR for the last year and man that intro (and the whole video really) hit home. You have a kindred spirit in me my friend, from a fellow soufflé brain.

[@HateSonneillon]

Having all those buildings in one level was going to cause GI to take forever, its not cheap. I suggest splitting the level by sectors into smaller levels and dynamically streaming in and out the sectors as you enter and leave them. This could likely also help with those loading times you were having.

[@jjacobs321]

I mean, there *should* be optimizations so that the GI isn't calculated from any lights that won't be able to hit the visible pixels within their bounce limit

[@MonsterJuiced]

Imagine having the make smaller levels bwcause GI does this.. the devs should have realised people the want to make open world games and use GI and therefore account for that in someway. I thought GI was screenspace only anyway?

[@HateSonneillon]

@@MonsterJuiced Not sure if you understand what I was saying. The game could still be open world and be fairly expansive, just the world has to be split up into several smaller levels that seamlessly connect. The sections that you're not in and cannot see would be unloaded from memory. This is a very common method that games handle large levels.

[@MonsterJuiced]

@@HateSonneillon yea I understand what you mean but his location was already very small anyway, about the size of trade district in WoW. Since it was more open plan if he split that into a grid not much could be unloaded without it being visible

[@HateSonneillon]

@Monster Juiced You should watch the video again. He is fitting several city blocks worth of buildings together to make a city. Which is definitely big enough to need separating into sublevels. Even different rooms in a house would get streamed in and out, let alone multiple sections of a city like the one this dev is making.

[@VirtuaVirtue]

at the city part i was so immersed that i felt like i was working on the city, and my heart dropped as soon as you changed the models to static

[@juliefranca7491]

The animation is amazing, loved it!!

[@dlxinteractive]

This is the most realistic game dev log I’ve seen. I don’t think us devs have a high life expectancy with all the stress

[@TheGamingzombie1]

Dude, Thank you so much for this video. Honestly, all us game devs need to see this kind of stuff every once and a while. You literally broke my heart seeing all the struggles you went through in this video. I fell in love with you game when I first found your channel and see so much of this game that you’re clearly super passionate about not work hurts my soul to see! Take the breaks you need, we’ll be here when you come back to this project! Keep being the amazing person you’ve been so far!!

[@Bassalicious]

Oh my days, I can relate to this entire video way too much. I laughed until my stomach hurt and was stun-locked in awe hearing more about the lore and design ideas for ZeroTag. Whatever content you decide to make I'm certain I will absolutely adore it. You're such a gifted artist it's absurd. Please don't get demotivated, frustrated or even depressed by all the stupidly large rocks on your path - conquering them will make you a skilled rock climber, but giving up will only make you wonder what could have been. I believe in you and whole-heartedly wish you strength. Much love

[@tanura5830]

Just don't use unity

[@bourbonbobo]

Hey Robert, as a Unity dev trying to move to Godot ASAP due to increasing frustration, I feel so much for you in this video. I think I might have tried to warn you away from Cinemachine in a previous video's comments. I also had a really frustrating undocumented issue when trying to use it on tight deadline for a commercial 3D platformer project. I feel it's good for a prototype but in the end you'll always want your own camera system on something like this. For level design I can however highly recommend trying the free plugin Realtime CSG. It has it's quirks but it's more stable than a lot of unity's official plugins and it's really good for quickly blocking in simple geometry. I've been using it in my current game and built a very large intricate level with it and am using baked GI for all my lighting with it (I'm using emissive materials to light the whole game) and it works pretty well! I'd love to see you give it a try for one of your upcoming smaller projects, it really revolutionised level design for me and I'll miss it so much when I'm (hopefully)fully moved to Godot for all my projects. I also just wanted to say how much of a shame it is to see this project put on hold due to no real fault of your own. The worldbuilding you outlined in this episode got me really excited, Hopefully one day I'll be rolling down the corrugated iron rooftops of this city you envision. Good luck with your next projects, excited to see more from you!

[@psychic-lizard]

I believe godot has a few csg nodes built-in

[@bourbonbobo]

@@psychic-lizard yeah, I'm excited to try them out though from what I've seen they'll be more awkward to work with than RTCSG. I'm thinking I may end up using an external level editor with Godot.

[@joshuaanderson6609]

Heyyy welcome aboard the Godot train xD

[@noxabellus]

Godot is even jankier

[@ap1evideogame44]

@@noxabellus I mean, yes and no. It's certainly a WIP

[@ataud9754]

Okay but the player character youve made is absolutely cute, from the actual Desing to its little animations, it just has so much personality, I love them

[@DragonplayerDev]

Having many materials on your mesh is a MASSIVE performance killer in the long run (1 extra draw call per material). You'd be infinitely better off making 1 tiny texture with all the colors you need and UV mapping the faces you want to each color inside the texture. (similarly to what Imphenzia does in his 10 Minute modeling challenge)

[@Husmanmusic]

I feel your troubles man! I felt myself silently screaming at the screen: “why doesn’t he use blender instead of pro builder”. I would really look into asking someone else to have a look at the pure bugs/errors. There are so many people who are happy to help. Keep it up! Love the videos!

[@JC-jz6rx]

This was great. I love seeing a more complete picture of game development. I follow A LOT of Devlogs. And most of them just make it seem so easy as if nothing ever goes wrong. This was refreshing.

[@Zoltec-q1g]

I feel your frustration. But I want to say that I really love the story and the artstyle you envisioned for the city. It‘s a very creative and interesting idea. Keep at it, it‘s a awesome project. You got this! Also: just get a video out even if it‘s not much progress rather than failure. There are many people in here who also have encountered problems and can maybe help you :)

[@RugbugRedfern]

I think you perfectly managed to capture the frustration I have working on projects in Unity. Sometimes things just break for seemingly no reason. Sounds like you were extremely unlucky as well! I really enjoyed the video, especially all the cute animations. Best of luck on your new game ideas :)

[@imaneeldealwithit969]

Geebus man, all these issues sound really painful, proud of you for moving on though, you're one of my favorite devs on youtube and i really want to overstate that there is no pressure on how fast you make games, I just hope you keep doing what you love and don't sacrifice your mental health by exerting too much pressure on yourself.

[@BizlaC]

I'm a 3D artist, and last year I was working on a project and talking to one of the programmers. We were being forced to use Unity for this project, which drove the programmer crazy, everything you have gone through was the kind of crap he was also dealing with. He said there's no such thing as a bug free game engine, but unreal was the closest it that he has used. I have used both myself, and the skills learnt in one, are pretty quickly transferable to the other, it's worth trying it out at least.

[@ModderOwls]

Heya, (2D) unity user here and thought I'd mention this: the probuilder extreme lag problem is something *extremely* similar to another one I had with the tilemap, it even caused certain unrelated unity problems in- and outside the scene like my controller disconnecting alot or even disallowing controls entirely (comparable to your input system problems). I had fixed this by instead making the tilemap a unique object (likely right click>prefab>unpack_completely would work, but i just made a new gameObject entirely and re-attached the scripts to it) and it fixed the input and player handler bugs. Apart from that I would recommend creating a back-up and opening said back-up with either an Long Term Support build or if that doesn't work, try creating a new project and re-import the ZeroTag "Assets" and "ProjectSettings" files. Only other way I could see it else would still be a problem would be through infinite loops such as no IEnumerator returns or for loops, so try checking those. Hope this could in any way or shape help you if you see this and sorry for the poor English.

[@mclama1139]

your explenation of how it felt to you to dev on unity perfectly sums up my experience trying to make anything with adhd

[@jazzwell]

I've loved these devlogs, partly because I love the concept of Zerotag, but in larger part because I love how you present things and your thoughts and personality. So if Zerotag is bringing you so much stress I 100% support pivoting to other projects and I'll continue to be here for it. I very much relate to your experience as well -- not in game dev specifically, but with other creative hobbies. Things can be so frustrating and stressful and just not go how you expected it to, and it's so easy to burn out or lose drive. I hope you find more success (literal and mental) with your new plans!

[@lollipop.4784]

just a little tip, when the game engine is not letting you run the game and its not your fault, go into the project files and delete the library folder. this will make the game rebuild the library and make the error go away if its a unity problem. this has saved me countless hours and i hope this will help someone a least a little time. hope you have better luck with your project, and continue the good work

[@codakairos8082]

I think most of your problems come from your meshes being too big... During rendering and physics calculations, the engine relies on "Spatial Partition" optimizations like "octrees" for example, to try to avoid making as many collisions tests or rendering calls as possible. For example, if your whole city is only one mesh, rendering only one triangle of this mesh requires the whole mesh to be iterated... (and frustum culling won't work) the same goes for physics. A better approach would be to create "building blocks" like walls, roofs, stairs, and assemble them inside unity to create houses. (you can eventually use tools to merge them into one mesh if they are close enough). If your scene starts to be overpopulated by gameObjects, you should also look into "additive scenes". Unity is not made to create open-world games, and additive scenes allow you to split a scene into multiple ones and load only the parts that matter. I hope this comment will be useful 😊 your project is wonderful and will surely become a great game take care

[@TeLLeK]

While it sucks you're dealing with all that it's also kinda selfishly nice to see someone experiencing the same bullshit luck I deal with regularly.

[@Walldasher]

really a motivation killer

[@Mightrue]

Hey, professional game dev here, I've been following you for a while, I feel your pain :( Not sure how useful that'd be to you, but in my experience one thing that really helps with modeling big cities is using modular kits: Instead of separately modelling each building, you can model a 4x4m wall, a 4x4m wall with window, a 4x4m wall with door... You can then vertex snap those modules to each other and build convincing buildings suprisingly fast. You won't need to rely on an in-engine modelling tool if you pick this method. Another benefit of working this way is that when you improve a module, since it's used in a lot of buildings, it instantly improves the whole city.

[@unrelentingpest]

Have you noticed a performance impact of using thousands of modules per level rather than a few normal buildings?

[@snailtan4332]

@@unrelentingpest I mean, the vertex count wouldnt be that much different, maybe a 30% increase. And the fact that each wall is its own object probably helps performance (up to a certain point) as you, or the engine, can unload walls and objects quite efficently now. And I mean, this method is used everywhere in gamedesign so I am sure its not a bad idea.

[@unrelentingpest]

@@snailtan4332 In UE4, having multiple static meshes at once requires a separate draw call for each one for geometry, then a separate one for the material, even if they have the same material. If all the meshes were combined into one, it would only take 1 for the geometry and one for the material. But I don't know if the draw calls for a smaller object are less performance heavy, and if that would cancel out the increased number.

[@gimemy2bucksback911]

Love that this video is more of a story of the pain of game dev rather then a fleshed out devlog of a finished game. Makes it one of my favorite

[@Eclectimaniac]

I was laughing too hard at your analogy at the start. And all your small animations to emphasize points were so good. I've never seen your channel before but this was such a great video. Only critique is im a blender-er and seeing 2.79 for the first time in a long while 🤢 Edit: just finished watching the video. Unfortunante zerotag didn't work out but that's ok. Good luck with with your future endevors!

[@AIAdev]

“You wouldn’t believe how much time waiting for these screen takes up” As a fellow developer, I certainly know how much time that stuff sucks up. Even after a few loading screens I find myself doing something else instead of the thing I really want to focus on.

[@AndrewDavidJ]

Setup a separate, fixed Cinemachine virtual camera inside the house with a higher priority value than the regular camera, and disable it. Save it in the house prefab. When you enter the house, enable that camera. When you exit the house, disable it. Cinemachine's blend transition system should handle the rest for you.

[@AndrewDavidJ]

Regarding ProBuilder: The delete key deletes vertices I think? If not, you can select the faces that the vertex connects and then use the merge tool to combine them into one and remove that vertex.

[@AndrewDavidJ]

Clearly I'm commenting as I watch lol. Regarding the speed/momentum not working in the new scene, could it be that your new scene doesn't have the same physics materials on the models/objects?

[@RobertThomsonDev]

@@AndrewDavidJ ah yeah I did check that. Same physics materials, tags and layers unfortunately. Also same collider setup. I tried also bringing in the arena from the other scene and no luck. Thanks for troubleshooting!

[@RobertThomsonDev]

@@AndrewDavidJ well, if it does then I have a special version of probuilder where it doesn't haha!

[@AndrewDavidJ]

Well then, consider me stumped as well haha

[@TylerBennett-vk4cb]

I love game dev. I love making games for obvious reason but I get the most enjoyment out of solving a really difficult problem.

[@firememes]

As a solo game dev, I totally feel every signle thing you're struggling with in terms of broken unity features that are claimed to be "resolved", broken omnisharp/vscode and just the general isolating struggle of encountering bugs that no one seems to have. Overall, Zero Tag's development has been a huge inspiration and motivation in my own journey and maybe with more resources, you could assemble a team to make things easier. Either way, love your content and your ability so I'll be sticking around!

[@McBroTime]

So much of this game is like Stray. The trash being through down, strange cities, security bots, upper / lower class, etc. Though the most obvious difference being gameplay. Your dynamic character with a large move set as opposed to a cat that can only do a handful of things.

[@lemonpaperplanes]

I really love your content, so it's great to hear you'll be aiming to upload more frequently! But I also understand that ZeroTag is your passion project and that it's hard to make the decision to put it aside, but I like to think of it as you can come back to it in the future with with fresher ideas, not to mention the extra experience to be able to make the game even better! Keep doing you king, you're awesome ☆

[@TheDeadSource]

Thanks for the video. It was simultaneously funny, sobering and humbling. I am glad to have seen it before falling into the scope trap which everyone ALWAYS warns one about, but that is so so hard to actually see and avoid. I am sorry for the stress you've experienced and hope your next projects bring you more joy and help you develop your toolset. This is a well-earned sub. I'll be keeping an eye out.

[@pedrocassenote4996]

This is a very important video for everyone involved in game development or in the process of doing a project. Thank you for showing us the journey can be difficult and stressful and sometimes we are not ready yet to finish something. I hope you find success in the new format of videos coming up and I'm looking forward to watch them. I also love your animations, they are so fluid and funny.

[@quintongordon6024]

From your previous dev logs, I thought the animations and movement controls looked really nice but now that you've gone over some world building and what not I'm genuinely interested in exploring this world. Update: dam, I finished the video

[@supermemio8098]

right after a nintendo direct dam he's quick

[@Samiho]

yes

[@Rampager10]

Watching this video was extremely cathartic, this "I swear I'm not even doing anything that complicated and none of it's working" on a project and just throwing the entire thing out, been there.

[@rijkbrouns7133]

Hey man it's alright! Take your time! It already looks so good! I'm stoked to see how to final product will turn out. Thanks for the devlog.

[@rijkbrouns7133]

Also don't forget to take breaks. Like you said in the video, I also think that it'll be better to let the project sit aside for a small period of time. Stay good man!

[@sammywammy1134]

That "nobody else seems to have this problem" thing you keep saying is so relatable that is mentally hurts

[@katamari_]

i love how smooth the animation is

[@deerdev6511]

Every now and then, when I’m on the verge of crying over my chemistry theory, I go to this video and just watch it, mostly because of the intro. Because the intro ist the best description of live I’ve ever seen. And then I sometimes watch the rest for your watching and my entertainment. Thank you and have a great time

[@SMABSYSTEMS]

Imagine 'ZeroTag coming to Switch' or something in 5 years or so and remembering these videos 🥰🥰🥰

[@KustProductions]

I'd be surprised if people were making games for the switch 5 years later

[@minchalop]

Not sure if you'll see this but I don't think you realise how good you are at solving problems. High level game devs take more time than you're taking to solve your problems. It's really impressive man, keep going.

[@jkr9594]

10:39 I HAVE actually run into that issue. for me, it was the straw that broke the camels back, and i switched to another engine. and while that engine has "a few" less features, it also has "a few" less bugs.

[@OrangutanMonky]

Which engine

[@deiticphantom8449]

@@OrangutanMonky I bet they're talking about Godot

[@aranthos]

Dude the summary of game dev at the start is the single best I’ve ever heard.

[@billyb6664]

You should use probuilder for a rough "scetch", then another tool (like blender) to create the finalized model with help from the probuilder "sketch" and import it.

[@r6scrubs126]

I see people say this all the time, but without being able to do simple things like delete vertices I struggle to use it for even that

[@kai-72]

I found this channel yesterday, watched all your videos, and I'm so taken by your sense of design and just everything about your videos! I totally get this frustration, and I wanna echo what everyone else is saying - making a bunch of experimental small things to break and then bugfix is the perfect way to get comfortable, figure things out in manageable chunks, and feel less overwhelmed by your bigger visions. You've already got me in love with the world of ZeroTag, so take your time to make that as you feel comfortable, and learn a little along the way! We'll be here to cheer on your progress regardless

[@Whimfoome]

That's why having the source code of the engine is such an important thing for me. That's also the reason I love Godot. It's open source, easy to grasp and most of the things are working as intended and make sense. If you find an issue, you can report it and try to fix it yourself by looking at the source code or ask the wonderful community, which actually helps a ton. After working with Godot for 2 years I came back to Unity for a project that required me to use it, and to be honest I hated it... Endless errors with no real explanations and there is no one else that encountered them before; slow loading times and compile times that killed all my productivity. Now I am back to Godot and I won't be looking back again :D

[@AndGoatz04]

No matter what happens, you gotta give him credit for being so good and clean wigh such a simple looking art style

[@seandaley8350]

It flabbergasts me that you’re world building, coding, and making building seemingly all by yourself. It’s okay if the game is gonna take a while to make, but I’m so excited when it finally comes out!

[@TakedownBard]

No matter what u put out, weather its just showing off the bugs you encountered and how you tried to find your way around it, small side projects, or whatever else u put out, ill always be happy to watch. The content you put out never fails to entertain and even this was a wonderful watch. What I might suggest if you do want to continue perusing this larger project is possibly swapping game engines to something like the unreal engine. From what little I have dabbled in both engines and what ive seen of them both from videos I watch like this, it seems that unreal has a much more consistent experience and a much better support and dev team sense they have the resources for it

[@Roockert]

From my experience all these issues all originate from wanting a shortcut, and it breaks. I personally don't use probuilder for anything but prototypes, only placeholders. Some unity extensions are as you say extra on an already broken mess, but in some cases use a program that is dedicated for that use instead of something half baked that is in a game engine

[@Vysair]

Your experience is highly relatable to programming which is why we have a memes about nobody understands how their own code work

[@abelcruz9151]

Can’t even imagine the amount of work something like this takes, great job!

[@mkks4559]

Congratulations! Your computer is constantly exposed to space radiation which flips bits! The chances of this happening are astronomical (pun maybe intended) and the recordings of this happening are rare. (Btw, everything you made is amazing. The game, the models, small animations, the editing, they’re all perfect!)

[@dazcarrr]

i like the cute animations

[@leandroleveron9933]

I get that feeling, and I dare to say that almost everyone who has dedicated a decent amount of time developing in unity feels it as well. We have all realized at least one of the following: 1. "The scope of my proyect is way too broad, I need to create something simpler." 2. "Unity gets slower and slower with every little thing I add." 3. "Learning 3d modelling, animation, rigging, C#, and Unity's interface all at once is hard". 4. "Hope I had more people with different skills to help me create my game." So yeah, best thing is to keep it simple, be very patient, and enjoy what you are doing. I really like your videos and would definitely keep watching no matter the game. You have amazing content-creation skills!

[@brynarn]

Concensus: Dont use probuilder

[@Crazdor]

You had a great idea, and I genuinely hope that one day you are able to see your vision through and we can all play the game you've envisioned, because it sounds truly awesome. But if I'm being honest, as a developer myself who has had the fortune of having a father who is also a developer and teaching me since I was like 10 years old -- you are making the right decision. Sometimes these things are outside of our control, there's not a lot you can do about Unity's issues (no matter how fantastic it may be in general) and you're absolutely right that as a content creator, you need to be focusing on projects that are smaller and allow you to get videos out more regularly. I've only recently discovered your channel and I must say, I absolutely adore it. In fact, I found it from your "ThisGame.exe" video (which was absolutely amazing, by the way, seriously well done) and am now going through your backlog. Especially after watching this video, there is no doubt in my mind that you are dedicated to what you do and willing to do whatever it takes to see your projects through, which is why I am certain that I will love your content and work going forward, and why I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if you eventually release this game, it will be a must buy for me. But as developers, we also must be able to recognize not only our own limitations, but also that of the technology and tools we use. Sometimes what you need to see your vision through just doesn't exist, at least in a stable enough state, to deliver the product that you've envisioned for so long, and in my opinion, it's way better to just put it on the backburner and wait for everything to catch up than try to cobble together a half-hearted version of what should be a passion project. And you're absolutely right that focusing on smaller projects now is going to help you later. Doing a bunch of small things gives you the opportunity to experiment with and learn different technologies, algorithms, approaches and tools that you haven't yet had the time to, and many of them are going to help with this project in the future. You're making the right decision. I know it hurts, I know it sucks to have something you're so passionate about that you've put so much time, effort, love and thought into, have to be shelved, but that's the way it goes with game design and software engineering in general. It doesn't mean you're giving up on it forever -- all it means is that you're saying "I don't have what I need right now to make the game I want, faithful to its original vision." That's okay, I guarantee most of us developers responding to this have had to make this, or similar, decisions before. I can't wait to see what you come up with going forward, and just the small amount of your content I've viewed so far makes me certain that I am going to love what you put out when you eventually return to this. I wish you nothing but the best going forward, and you've gained a new subscriber who's eagerly awaiting your next video.

[@JabberZhoc]

I really hope someone at Unity sees this. This is too awesome of a game for someone to not hear this.

[@drousinfo435]

bro, you are the best I swear. I'm going through the depression period of every game dev, where I want to make something, but at the same I don't feel like doing anything. Watching your vids gave me motivation to start working again. Thank you so much and amazing content if I say so myself. Best of luck with future projects

[@OtakuG]

GREAT CONTENT! So entertaining!...

[@AngryBeardGaming]

I love your animation/cartoon style. It really reminds me of Purple Ronnie for back in the day. Keep up the good work, pal.

[@saishsawant7410]

this is half an hour of ranting , but was so relatable , it felt so nice to see someone talking about game dev difficulties.

[@christianhall3916]

This video is the perfect explanation of why I always write my own engine in C++ when I mess around with game dev.

[@JayadevHaddadi]

amazing stuff, i never enjoyed seeing someone fail so much... still the desire was there to hear "But in the end I figured everything out and now the project works perfectly and you can download it in the link below" :D

[@darkind]

as someone who lives in valparaiso, oh my fricking god i lost my marbles when you mentioned it, im so happy, THANK YOU!

[@lefthandedartist]

I really like your art style. Also the way your game character moves is very pleasing to me. This video popped up in my recommended feed, and it's the first I've seen of your channel. It sucks that you've had to go through all that stress. I hope that you find time to rest.

[@SMABSYSTEMS]

Robert, I ABSOLUTELY FEEL YOUR STRESS as an Unity game developer... Buuuut never give up! I believe that you will have ZeroTag or any other large project completed as a one man studio! Just imagine 'ZeroTag coming to Switch' or something in the future 🥇🥰🥇

[@FugaceFugite]

Damn, the worst part about that nightmare development story, is that it is so relatable. I've myself spent so many hours, days, weeks even trying to fix bugs that aren't even coming from my code but from the tools, engine and third party assets I used. Even by limiting that to the minimum I still regularly lose an entire day being stuck on a random issue no one else seemed to have on the internet. You are definitely right to move on to something else, there is a point where investing more time and energy doesn't help, even restarting the project from scratch is a valid option at this point.

[@BraianStrak]

This video was so relatable hahah, having only done small projects with random spaghetti happening everywhere I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating this must've been. Best of luck in your future projects, I think it's definitely a better idea to make smaller ones for youtube videos even from a motivation perspective, as you're not looking at the same things constantly over and over, definitely more fun imo.

[@mikn999]

when i first saw this video, i thought everything about it was so cool. the story, the environment, and the entire development process. it was the reason i got into game development, even if ive fallen out of it by now. this was an incredible project even if it wasnt finished 🔥

[@ElijahRobertson3DBear]

Starting a huge project after you are just beyond the beginner stage and realizing that only months later that you are in way over your head and everything was a complete bust is a hard lesson all creative folks got to learn.

[@miidavid]

This video was 1 year ago, after I listened to all your problems I have one thing to say. DON'T GIVE UP

[@pebble2258]

I love this video because it makes me feel validated in my programming process.