Gawain(DarkGriffin) / is on Nostr

CEO Moonbow Entertainment LLC
Game designer, writer, and programmer. Swings from VR immersion to game jam spam on the fly, and loves it all. Games are art.

Last Notes

2024-06-29 21:53:40

Hi. We made a thing. You may play it. It is a little "survivors" style game about communication and severe space weather. It's clean, and should be pretty funny and mostly fun. Very off balance, but eh, we did our best.
No web build this time, performance was a big challenge during the game jam, and we haven't found a way to solve it yet. You can skip donation with the "No thanks, just take me to the downloads" link in the popup.
Enjoy the game, art, and funny sounds!
https://moonbowentertainment.itch.io/ambassador-of-pluto-vs-the-celestial-bodies

2024-06-16 05:09:54

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@npub1wjr…yhsu Oh no it's adorable! Reminds me of the little tabby slimes from slime rancher, though your design obviously predates it. Nice texturing too, it made me smile. 😺

2024-05-23 02:01:51

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@npub1vlm…n68a Oh my goodness this control method is so dumb in all the good ways, I love it! 😻

2024-03-15 21:11:41

#UnrealEngine5 Is there a good learning resource out there for Unreal 5?
I'm a Unity vet who is trying to broaden their toolset. The manuals and youtube are ok, but I find a lot of outdated explanations for older versions. These get really frustrating when I don't know what normal looks like.
I'm interested in whatever tech would let me paint an object at runtime, and the vr stuff mostly. But also open to any smaller projects to learn the interface and how to do things the "unreal way".

2024-03-15 17:54:58

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@npub167n…4su3 or worse, they get cut off on thinner windows so you get

2024-03-13 20:32:28

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@npub1vlm…n68a This idea is absolutely mad. In all the right ways. I love it!

2024-03-13 19:12:49

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@npub1ffe…h0gh Is it AAAAAA!

2024-01-16 05:07:12

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@npub1em8…au8q My thoughts as a player: I would want to uncover some logic to the generation, or feel smarter next run. Even if the risk is still there every run, I don't think the system will be as fun if it's truly just fantasy random dice rolls.
It must still feel like I could learn how it works, and like I am still making progress understanding the game, if I'm expected to keep playing.
Otherwise, I can get the same experience rolling a die and picking a win number. We can do better! 👍

2023-09-14 21:04:06

#gamedev #indiedev #foss Does anyone have recommendations for a small team path to market for VR environments? Looking for options outside the Unity bubble, we know there is Unreal. But would like more options on the table. If you know any that can reach the insane framerate requirements and control/exporting for like Oculus Quest target, please share! Open to paid stuff too, just want to know options for a team of 2 in the for VR headset space.

2023-09-01 09:57:11

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@npub1wp9…gw6s @npub1dcz…67k0 Oh, he also does the adorable sound effects! Kobold slide was so far the most funny one to do, he spent so long recording different versions of the "whee" and "whaa" sounds. It was super funny seeing our local office/house cat react to the final game spamming his voice recordings all the time. :)

2023-09-01 09:55:14

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@npub1wp9…gw6s Thanks for the encouragement, I've passed it to our artist! The art in our games is all thanks to our artist, @npub1dcz…67k0 He does a lot of research to give his art an amazing level of charm. I can't wait to bring more of his designs to life in our RPG project!

2023-08-24 03:03:31

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@npub1wp9…gw6s https://moonbowentertainment.itch.io/kobold-alchemy
This funny little endless activity of a game. And pretty much everything we've made as Moonbow Entertainment on itch.io
We are now working on a big low res but high content turn based RPG for Steam/itch.io. We've learned so much, my artist and I, and are super excited to put all this design experience to the test on a bigger (and for sale!) target. :)

2023-08-19 11:10:44

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@npub12dy…s7uf I will say though even with that the game is like an 8/10 easily for me. They nailed the weird, the almost horror but no combat, the puzzle solving of lore, and the rewarding loops of finally solving something only to be confronted with yet something stranger. It creates a non violent exxplorer feeling I wish other games would strive to embrace rather then encourage us to destroy.
I have to knock it for accessibility, and that is made more painful because I LOVED it so much otherwise.

2023-08-19 11:06:15

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@npub12dy…s7uf I enjoyed my 40+ hours with it, it has some fantastic ah ha moments.
However, I've never won the game, and probably never will. There are two sections where the timing requirement is just too exact for my puzzle non-action dexterity to reliably perform the tricks needed. (Fatally, for spoiler reasons, both tricks have no checkpoint between.) After a week of trying what I am pretty certain is the winning route, I just had to give up because it just made me very angry every evening. :(

2023-08-15 18:01:19

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@npub1vut…rad5 The community is smaller, but they take assisting developers very seriously. We recently needed an edit text field and one of the other members is now hammering away at it for free. Very big on open source, collaboration, and the principle of getting tech out of the way for design. Total opposite of Unity in terms of providing support for their product, lol.

2023-08-15 17:57:25

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@npub1vut…rad5 We have been swapping to #Dragonruby for our 2d stuff. The downside is you now code everything, the upshot is a fantastic one command publish to itch.io (and now steam once setup). The live code refresh and lack of the Compiling bar of doom have literally doubled how fast I as programmer can iterate with my graphic artist.
https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game
If code doesn't scare you, check it out. The creator is happy to provide income assisted copies to let you get started as well.

2023-08-11 00:23:47

#gamedev #games #accessibility
In slideshow adventure games, the player clicks to move between scenes. "Distance between" is shown by how many scenes you need to mouse through. The connectedness comes from being in Scene A to get to Scene B.
In modern games, the joystick or keyboard is used instead. The distance is literal seconds of travel walking.
Are there other ways to express this "feeling" of travel time and interconnected "A leads to B"? In particular focused on more accessible travel?