Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer
apps.apple.com
apps.apple.com
More than playing video games, though, what I wanted to do as a kid was to MAKE games. I still remember punching in a borrowed Mario Bros cartridge for the first time, pressing START and having a freaking epiphany. How cool was it that someone MADE this?? To heck with being an astronaut, when I grew up, I was going to do THIS. I knew it with all the certainty of 8-year-old me. But you know how it goes: like most childhood dreams, I put this one on a shelf and gradually left it behind. I didn't become an astronaut either (in case you were wondering).
What I did was drop out of university in my third year. And since then, I've been a copywriter, graphic designer, business owner, immigrant, stay-at-home spouse, and for a long time, the stay-at-home parent. And it's been great. Life with all its up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A's...it's all been wonderful.
"Hold up," you might say, if you're still reading this. "Why are you telling us all this? Boring."
Right. Let me get to it. I'm 48 and if there's a lesson that has been inescapable these past two years is that we may not see tomorrow. So, I've decided to focus on happiness in the here and now. Carpet diem, as my kid used to say when he was little. And you know one thing that has added to my happiness? Dusting off my dream, sitting my ass down and finally learning how to be a game developer. And happier still? I've done this with my husband.
So we've published our first mobile game. It's called "Slingshot Effect" and it's available on App Store or on Google Play. It's an infinite jumper that's easy to just pick up and play. Perfect for commutes or if you're stuck in a waiting room somewhere. It's a paid app because we feel strongly that the level of monetization in the casual game space is just...ugh...it's bad. Thanks for listening, I really appreciate it.
TLDR: When I was a kid, I wanted to make video games. And now that I'm kind of old, my husband and I made one.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slingshot-effect/id1537916631?...
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thirteenba...
I'm only 28, but during the pandemic I decided to dust off my old electronics hobbies that fell by the wayside when the mobile app boom started.
Middle school and early high school me thought I was going into robotics, but the iPhone came out the year I started high school. When the App Store came out the following year, the smartphone revolution started, and about a year later I went all in on mobile apps and gaming for the rest of high school and my college years. Contract iOS and Unity3D work got me through college.
It's somewhat ironic, because I haven't written or worked on a single mobile app since I left college (nor have I owned an Apple device). I ended up taking all of the knowledge of embedded Linux systems I gained doing robotics and started doing esoteric high performance storage virtualization systems as the starting point of my career. Never saw that one coming.
I hadn't really done any serious hobby electronics in nearly a decade, but I've continued to lug all of the equipment around every time I move. So, I dusted off some old hardware and got hooked once again, only to find out that the AVR is old news and everyone is into ESP32 and ARM these days :)
9V batteries sound and look like they should last long, but putting 6 1.5V batteries in series should last much longer. 9V batteries have a typical capacity of ~550 mAh, 1.5V batteries (even rechargeable ones) have a typical capacity of 2000~3000 mAh.
And I don't know much, so thank you.
Advantages: fairly cheap, rechargeable, and you can give PowerBanks to kids or whatever when finished or if you upgrade to something better. Maybe get kids to help!
> sorry if that's totally kiddie to you
Things are only kiddie if you think they are (personally I enjoy learning from children).
Worrying too much about what others think will hold you back from having fun! Enjoy the game programming!
That's one of the things I miss about "the old Internet". I remember when I first started using it around ~2000 to communicate with other electronics hobbyists, back when avrfreaks was big or just random people's widget shops has forums. There seemingly wasn't the level of toxicity that exists today. The first time I think I ever ran into someone being toxic (directly to me) was about 2009. IIRC they were saying that because I wasn't an EE I shouldn't be attempting to help people or something (I was halfway though high school at that point).
I’m not sure how to nurture my own inner child of discovery and protect it from the unconstructive bullies in the world, or my own negative inner voices. We all have to learn our own techniques, since they have to be personalised to our own personalities.
Anyway, good fortune on your own path of discovery, and thank you for publishing your journey. I do find it inspiring!
Not kiddie at all, AVR microcontrollers have been used commercially for ages and they have some properties that can be nice, e.g. they are fairly simple cores, they operate at 5V and their output pins can sink ~40mA, so you can easily e.g. drive a MOSFET gate.
The Arduino ecosystem is huge and it's great to get things up and running quickly.
One day, I'll do something about everything!
It is wonderful that you have been able to do something you find worthy in and of its self and find fulfillment here. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for reading my post.
- Replaying shouldn't take two taps. I just want to get back into it! I now know the middle button replays, but it's not immediately obvious.
- I don't understand what the floating aliens are for. I keep trying to get them but they don't seem to do anything.
- My score doesn't stand out, it took several plays to notice it, and I still don't feel better about reaching 20 planets as opposed to two planets.
- It feels awkward that each planet has quite strong gravity when you hit it, but if you barely miss there's nothing. (This ties into the next point.)
- There's no incentive to do anything, as far as I can tell. I can wait ten minutes to rocket off to the next planet and my score is the same. Along with the previous point, maybe make the score decrease while orbiting, or make gravity weaken.
Just messed around a bit more and I realize now that the score does decrease after orbiting, but it's not obvious. Maybe make the score multiplier show decimal points and/or be more prominent.
I also discovered the autopilot button, which is fun, but I don't understand when or why I can use it. It also wasn't clear that it was a button - I thought it was some godot logo. That might just be because I know of godot but not very well.
While using the autopilot I noticed my multiplied going up, but then it drops immediately. Dropping it all at once feels bad since it's such a towering mountain to climb - maybe drop it every orbit or two (maybe drop it more frequently based on current multiplier) so you can still climb.
I don't understand what the last two options are in the options menu.
All of this is to say I had fun, and I'm glad you made this. I hope this didn't sound bad. Good job!
- UI has always been my weakest point in the sense that what seems logical to me might be puzzling to others. I've been taking notes on what's confusing to players and will implement improvements on the next go-around
- Floating aliens are just...that. I've thought about making it more obvious that they are part of the environment or just removing them altogether
- The score HUD needs to be improved if it's not giving players the satisfaction of keeping a streak. Will test a few things.
- The regular planets give you more turns and they are more present in the lower levels. I might reduce the amount of allowed turns. But in the higher levels, you'll need them if you want to rest a little bit because most of the planets will allow 3 turns at the most or only 1 turn.
- I agree that the multiplier probably needs to be more prominent.
- Autopilot gives a countdown about how many auto jumps are left. The incentive there is that it's entirely possible to keep your streak going if you're paying attention.
- LOL @ the last two options. I'll tell you the story about that. We tried to keep words to a minimum because we have a multilingual option and some terms just don't translate well. FYI, they control camera shake and camera smooth/snap, respectively. If anyone has better icon suggestions, I'm all over it.
Thank you very much. I'm glad you enjoyed the game despite some moments that gave you pause.
There aren't many elements to the score HUD. It seems straightforward to just have a "pop up" at the top of the screen when a multiplier is increased and/or a big score increase happens. Maybe with a bit of a shake.
I don't know what "regular" planets are. Maybe different colored outlines akin to RPG item rating would be helpful.
The justification for the camera options makes sense. Maybe you could show the change when adjusted. Shake the camera or move it around when a change happens. That would at least make it more obvious, and the user wouldn't have to mess with it, play the game, and see what changes happened.
You've inspired me, and thank you for that!
Good luck.
Your personal story is nothing short of inspiring. A sincere kudos to you and your husband :) Your children are incredibly lucky to have two such productive role models, and I hope they grow up to see computers as not just tools but as friends (as it seems they were to you in childhood)
To me, computing is somewhere between a philosophy and a spirituality. I'm still very novice, but welcome to the rarefied air of technological wizardry! You had a vision, a meaning in your mind, and you manifested that into the devices of strangers. You created something wholly new and thereby opened a port from the rich inner world of bananabat &co. into the reality of our shared experiences. This capability, to me, is nothing short of miraculous. It was your combined passion and effort that seized upon such miracles to create novel spectacles. As I said: nothing short of inspiring!
Best of luck to you and your family as you continue down this journey! I wish all of you well, and who knows? Maybe in some years from now, someone will post a Show HN with their own project, their passion fueled by Slingshot Effect!
Keep rocking!
I like your privacy policy: https://13bananas.com/privacy-policy/
Thanks for sharing it!
Sonnet.io seems to be less chatty, except for the requests to Heroku.
Congrats on you game! It looks really nice, and I wish you the best of lucks!
Yup 100% agree. One of the reasons I do this is that I used to work in adtech (focusing mainly on privacy, which is a complete joke in that industry, but we all know that), so in most of my projects I try to use privacy-friendly alternatives.
For instance, the Heroku requests will either use umami (without sessions/state) as well as stripping unnecessary headers/cookies from the payload from the network traffic (e.g. credentials: none). The code is available on GH.
I still want to know what's happening on my site, e.g. UX-wise, so I can fix and adjust stuff. But, so far I've never needed to know "who" is visiting vs. what are the general interactions with the content.
Just like oil/CO2 emissions, user data should be considered a burden, not an infinite resource.
Even if your expectations of adtech are already low, I can assure you that some of the shit I've heard considered acceptable is just mind-boggling, and scary.
But I wasn't paying attention to embeds and also WordPress stuff that's going on. I'll probably roll a local audio player to address that. As for WP...maybe it's a plugin I'm using. I'll look into it. We really want all our interactions to be a pull from the user. Because as a user myself, I try to avoid services and products that want to be my friend forever.
Thanks again!
Keep up the great work! We use Unity3D for our development
[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gibberish-game-against-friends...
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-setting-sun-block-puzzle/i...
Thanks for the links, I'm gonna check out your games!
I admit that building 2D games with unity is a bit of an overkill but the fact that everything just works across different platforms makes it well worth it. I originally developed games using Java and a cross platform framework called libgdx. It was fun till you needed to implement things like cross-platform advertisements and IAPs. With unity you know that the support will be there for the foreseeable future and no other engine comes close in terms of the available free online resources.
Also, 800 upvotes can't lie. I wonder, which part of the premise resonates with the HN crowd: "it's never too late" or "I always wanted to make games too"?
As for "never too late": maybe when we're older, we do become aware that we are closer to the end than the beginning. Part of it is also the last few years. You don't thing the blackest of black swan events will happen until it does. So are you gonna do your best to be happy right now? Or are you gonna keep punting until the meteor comes?
Umm, I would totally buy your game. I love isometric shooters, rpgs, etc. First-person shooters, sadly, make me nauseated and barf-y within minutes. How far along are you guys in development?
>> How far along are you guys in development?
Movement and gunplay are basically done and feel great. Graphics is looking pretty decent (the video is a bit outdated). Story / progression is being written and integrated at the moment; it will be text-only so no voice acting is required, which should speed things up. Some items and their stats (armor, guns, sets, etc.) are already in place, but there are no proper legendaries yet. Crafting and talents are not yet in place. Sound is completely nonexistent at this point -- we're going to try an approach without music (it may work, see No Country for Old Men).
I'm 49 and I have basically the same story you did... and also share the same secret dream to write games "one day", so I'm starting really small with a simple little 2D game in GameMaker Studio. So far it's slow going but super fun. But you've inspired me to keep going, so thanks!
EDIT: Purchased! Looking forward to playing it!
Some things about the GML language are a bit odd, and sometimes it seems like people on the forums believe wrong things about it (I read more than one person complaining that you couldn't define your own functions, which is not correct, but the docs could be a lot clearer on that) But overall I'm happy enough with it.
I'm recreating a game I wrote in interpreted BASIC back in 1987 [1] and so far I've got the levels, basic player movement, simple enemy AI, and a very basic game loop. It's nothing fancy but I'm learning a lot so far.
And it's adorable that you had stuffies on your monitor.
The stuffed animals are from my childhood, so I kept them on my childhood computer. I think they're happy there. :)
I haven't played this, but there's something appealing from the screenshots. The flat colored backgrounds, the slightly unaligned colors, the typo on the screenshot. It's like an alternative rock band.
Thanks for your comment. Made me smile.
What path did you take to start learning game development?
CodeCombat
Construct 3
But my son is learning programming (started when he was 6, he just turned 8 recently).
He started by goofing off with some robots programmed in visual languages. Then moved to goofing off even more in Scratch. When pandemic started we found a school that teaches programming online and they used Scratch to program Minecraft which got my son hooked up -- he likes Minecraft a lot and having it do stuff that wouldn't otherwise be possible was a huge motivation for him to learn. He is now attending a second semester in that school and they are using Kodu for some more advanced, 3d goofing off.
My son became big fan of Undertale recently and he approached me to learn to make some fan content based on Undertale. We did some research and found Undertale was made in Game Maker -- a game engine for 2d games. So this is what we just recently started learning. He is excited to finally start learning something that can be used to make professionally looking games and says that if it was good enough to make Undertale it is good enough for him:)
He also just got his own Minecraft server (ehm... Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM) and I am hoping that when he is bored with vanilla gameplay with his school friends he will want to start modding the game in some ways.
Additionally, I can write plugins for PaperMC which is the whole point of having the server in the first place (at least in our case).
Very cool that you can write plugins for your kid's server!
So I wrote a plugin where you can save your current location with a name and you get a small overlay that tells you where you are pointing -- ie. what is saved destination closest to where you are pointing and whether it is right or left of where you point and how far (1, 2 or 3 angle brackets ).
I am also working on couple other plugins.
[1] https://www.dk.com/us/book/9781465477330-coding-games-in-scr...
- Try a bunch of free engines and platforms. Depending on your son's age, this might mean starting with something like Scratch. I've played around with it myself and it's fun. It at least gives you a feel for game logic and how a game loop should feel.
- GDevelop has come a long way. My son prefers it when he's just doodling around.
- My husband prefers GameMaker Studio 2. But it's a paid program and the export modules (mobile, console, html5) are extra expenses that can add up. Also, GML is a nightmare (just my opinion).
- I use Godot Engine. It's free, lightweight, GDScript is Python-like so pretty easy to get a handle on. It's perfect for 2D development. And the teaching community is very rich.
- There's really no "x is better than y" as far as game engines, IMO...all depends on what you're trying to do and how far you are in expertise/experience. And it also comes down to what engine feels right to you.
- Start with 2D, cannot stress this enough. Make as simple a game as possible when you're starting. This also means staying away from Unity and Unreal because both are simply too much engine for a beginner.
- At some point, you're gonna have to learn how to code for real. Don't have to be a wiz...just enough to be competent.
- Be a generalist, if possible. Depending on what you want to do and/or whether you have collaborators or not...you might also need to have basic art skills. I'm a graphic designer by trade so this wasn't an issue. But I had to learn Blender because I wanted to incorporate 3D art in my games. My husband learned how to make music. I also learned video editing so I could make good trailers. Etc, etc.
- Love games. All kinds of games. I think this should've been first.
- I hope that helps.
Are you working on a next game?
Congratulations on getting it finished and out there!
Maintaining this game but also starting on next ideas.
Thank you very much!
Back when I had enough spare time to do game jams, one critical thing I learned was, once you have some idea, make it simpler. Now make it even simpler. And then, make it simpler again. Repeat that about 20 times, possibly more. Now you have something that you can possibly build and actually release, and guess what, counterintuitively, it'll be fun as hell.
Coz what makes a game fun is not the thousands of wonderful ideas you may have bolted on together, it's just a couple of things you distilled for the love of it, chiseling away, down to the core of the game mechanics, into some magical essence.
It's been frightening alright but I learned so much, and not just about game dev: lots of takeaways that apply to day-to-day development, like finding the balance between quality and getting things done, keeping things ultra-simple, understanding the value in inlining or even repeating code, finding the minimal abstraction sweet spot...
It's OK to be afraid! Turns out it also teaches that you can just let it go, go for it and enjoy the wild ride.
Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.
EDIT: Still totally fascinated by this. I asked my husband because I remembered that he had a much-beloved Spectrum when he was a kid and sure enough, he had digitized Your Sinclair issues on his iPad and he showed me several examples of games in Basic and hex. Super cool.
https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-3/
Have been following it for years and would recommend reading it all the way through. Maybe even get an idea for the next project :)
However, debugging it helped to learn the language. :)
Dr. Dobbs Journal was probably the king of source code listings in magazine format.
Pre-Internet, there were some remarkable mass-distribution Unix magazines with significant source code for utilities: Unix Review and Unix World. Even today, the back issues would be useful.
I remember lusting over the AT&T 3B Unix machines advertised in those, but never could afford one. So I waited until VAX Unix in uni (the arts dept. had an unused one), then SCO and Linux.
By the way, do you have a blog or a github account?
I am quite comfortable finding useful information and lately I have collected a good amount of game development libraries and resources that could help me become a better programming adventurist.
Heads up! You misspelled 'distractions' in your screenshot.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnf6zSXFCIXHgHO9kXu3dAA/vid...
Their privacy policy is pretty cute: https://13bananas.com/privacy-policy/
I'm going through a similar phase myself spurred on by the pandemic (games are, after all, why I started programming in the first place).
I'm continuously amazed by how complex even simple games can be, especially if you're not using one of the big game engines. It's incredibly easy to get sidetracked or over-engineer a certain aspect. It's made me realize just how tough shipping a game - so congratulations on that. It's a huge feat.
I've re-written the game several times over the years - always a pleasure.
Current iteration: https://github.com/whyboris/Gravity-Wars
Bought!
Also: great set of credits including the tutorials and such, and waves to fellow Canadians
EDIT: The video from your 13bananas site should be the first thing in the App Store page.
Looks very well done, still confused about what the goal is other than flying around planets.
Do you have a next one in mind? Or are you going to see what the reception for this one is first?
I must admit I focused on game jams to start, I've tried going down this road a few times before with little success. Having managed to complete a jam game has given me enough confidence to try and build something small which I can slowly add to. My aim is to have a playable, if very likely ugly prototype ready by the end of the month. Followed by a bunch of requisite refining and iteration.
I am afraid of game jams lol and I applaud people who enjoy it! Maybe I'll get brave enough to join one someday.
I'd say give it a go if you're feeling adventurous with the goal being just participating and maybe learning something. That's what I aimed for in my first jam and it ended up being a great experience when I had a bunch of fun collaborating and getting positive feedback from people for a game I'd made.
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next then!
https://www.kongregate.com/games/oopixel/escape-the-red-gian... (requires flash)
I make little games (inspired mostly by burnout):
How to Run an All-hands meeting: https://rafsters.itch.io/all-hands
Tommy the Toe and the Chamber of Hostile Carpentry: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/tommy-the-toe/id1498417487
> And since then, I've been a copywriter, graphic designer, business owner, immigrant,
Sounds like your skill-set is very well rounded. From my experience, coding was the easiest part, marketing and narrowing down the game logic to what's really needed/fun is always so hard. Congrats!
If you want to exchange ideas or just chat about your experience making indie games, I'm running occasional pairing/rant sessions, where everyone can just call me and chat: https://sonnet.io/posts/hi/
If you're interested in a chat, give me a shout! Otherwise, good luck! It makes me so happy to see people building stuff like this. Thank you.
The artwork is ~ chef’s kiss ~ .
Found myself truly watching out for that knife. I guess humans have a deep-seated fear of stabby things.
If you ever feel that this game could be expanded, that would be awesome. This is so much more fun than something like Doodle Jump, imo.
> This is why I love indie games: the stuff you experience can be fucking sublime, no matter how long or how little it lasts.
oh my god, yes, I can only dream of making as simple and powerful as this, for instance: https://laurahunt.itch.io/in-the-pines
(tip: if you have a chance to play it, put some Nick Cave/Warren Ellis on Spotify, the whole game takes 5-10m)
I am, actually, in the same age category and have suddenly realized that I am super excited to understand, explore and (eventually) produce something that relies on 3D game engines. Not necessarily a game, but something leveraging the game/3D/ Meta/Multi/Omniverse tooling that is available for free/cheap. Watching Borderland game's creators explaining how the game is really produced on Unreal engine and knowing all the same tools are available to me for free is just mind-blowing.
Did you find any community on the web to hang out at with this new focus? I saw a couple (itch, etc) but I am curious if there are secret gems out there.
Also, I am curious if you leveraged any of the commercial tools that are targeted at pro-crowd but have free/cheap licenses? Something that is an overkill for your development needs but turned out to be a great return on (time/money) investment anyway. Unreal is that for me, so I am looking for other gems.
Ps. Yay, maple syrup :-)
I like Unity, it's free for a super small indie. I liked learning C#. However, when I reached the point where I was thinking of more sophisticated functionality, I started using a lot of 3rd-party development plugins (all so wonderful in the Unity store) and they were becoming a giant crutch.
Now don't get me wrong, I am a fan of NOT remaking the wheel and I'm a total code snippet learner. However, I don't have a foundation in math or science. In the beginning, something as simple as rotation_speed = PI was utterly confounding. So I switched to Godot, which uses a Python-like scripting language. Far easier to learn and awesome for 2D. Also, the lack of a "store" with readily-available packaged solutions forced me to understand what in the actual fuck I was trying to do. It's free as in speech and beer.
I actually learned Blender much earlier because it's closer to graphic design than game dev. It'll be useful if we ever do 3D or VR.
And yes, maple syrup is a superfood. I will not be taking questions on that topic.
I have to get better at being okay with sharing what I feel like sharing and also being okay with whatever I get back.
Thanks for giving our game a try!
I hope that people will play our game so that we can keep doing this. But maybe they won't, that's ok too. I've been discussing this very thing with my husband and he said something that was inspiring to me: our dream and our income stream don't have to be the same thing.
In gamer metaphor, we know our main quest...but sometimes you need to gear up before you can tackle the more challenging stuff. And so I've never minded the side quests. :-) The path will reveal itself.
I have made some money on crypto and I left my programming job 5 years ago. I have had some reservations, like can I still learn new stuff, would I be efficient enough with it to make anything valuable, how can I compete with the young guys. And I still don't have answers, the project seems to crawl so very slowly. But I enjoy the work.
We have some advantages that only accrue with age. It seems you have a nest egg that lets you do what you want to do, that's a major thing. Also, you have a professional, social and experiential foundation that serves you in good stead.
I'm happy for your enjoyment. Best of luck!
Hey, there's a reason why the roller coaster is always the most popular ride! Best of luck and hope to see your WIP.
Will check yours out.
I was born and raised in a 3rd world country. And while we had consoles and devices thanks to being in Asia, hardly anyone had a computer. I first touched a PC when I was in university. Before that, personal computers might as well have been alien technology.
Nowadays, there are lots of free/affordable game engines to choose from. Soooo many game devs who are also great teachers (I'm not one of them) and they put out a lot of content.
If you're an artist who knows how to code, you are already way ahead of the game. So many indie developers are hampered by being a specialist in one domain or another. Give it a go!
Nevertheless, I appreciate that you tried our game even with some UX friction and if I could impose on your kindness a little more, please consider leaving our game a rating and a review if you have extra time.
Thanks again!
This is especially the case in multiplayer games. Making it free removes a check on "low quality users" - e.g., hackers, griefers, etc.
This is just our preference. We don't have anything against ad-supported or IAP-supported games. We just feel that there is still a pool of mobile players out there who don't mind purchasing a casual game outright.
And who knows, we might decide to collaborate with a publisher on a future game. We'll see what the future brings.
I can only say anecdotally from my own experience, but the games we had listed for a price got 1% or less of the downloads of the same game after we made it free. People complain about free with IAP, but the $ shows otherwise.
If you want to do this as a business, free with IAP is a must.
Out of curiosity, when were you approached by publishers? After you had launched?
Just my 2 cents.
Ok, but maybe I can relate in a way...I love cultivating pot. For real, my other dream is to be a boutique grower one day when regulations aren't so red-tapey. But I really don't care for it. I don't like being sleepy. Just gimme a beer.
Btw, do you have a game engine I can check out?
In the end all our learning, experience, and content consumption is wiped away. Only what we produce remains, and most of that remains only a little while longer. Still, that doesn't provoke a mass of memoirs from the majority of mankind, so it's okay to sit back, relax, and enjoy entertainment.
Many of the UI practices developers have absorbed through osmosis– such as grouping buttons with like actions and having them change color when you click on them— have their roots in pre-computer design disciplines. While they often work ok, they often aren't optimal, and an interaction designer can make your users lives' much better. For example, I might look at buttons grouped because they perform a technically similar function and think "what are the user's goals here? What likenesses should gestalt communicate for them? Do the other elements nearby alter the meaning of their grouping?"
Or I might see a standard modal where an alert pops up if the form fails validation because it uses an API which can't yield real-time feedback. Error popups are a big emotional disruption— like getting pulled over and given a warning rather than being redirected with a well-placed road sign. They also add cognitive load because they have to read it AND find the problem fields, the extra click can take time, and dealing with all of that can totally kill a user's flow and concentration. If it's common user stumbling block, I might make the button border and problem field switch to the same color and rapidly shake horizontally like a head shaking 'no.' The emotional rebuff and interruption to the user's flow are significantly reduced. It will drastically improve that user's experience.
While many technical folks consider these trivial issues, good interaction design is consistently one of the reasons folks will shell out serious skrilla for proprietary, less technically sound, less secure, and less flexible commercial software and why open-source alternatives will remain alternatives for everything but developer and technician focused software. One of my primary goals is to ply these skills in the FOSS scene.
It is never too late to learn anything, what matters is being able to enjoy doing it.
Good luck with whatever else comes up.
Since I haven't seen it mentioned here so far, there's a typo in the screenshots: 'Play without distrctactions'.
Good luck!
Now now onto the 3GB IOS 15 download…
And thank you very much.
You'll also find it with other music streamers or on Bandcamp, if Spotify isn't your thing.
One interesting note was that TempleOS which is called a religious OS had a Commadore64 structure and it was apparently easy to make games on it. You mentioned learning unity, the old game programmers would make ISA games that had no OS overhead, ran on all hardware that supported the instructions which happens less when the engines are abstractions that are designed to run on more abstractions like the OS, which of course costs performance, has more bugs, and basically filters your intentions, as well as every version of the engine, OS and other factors a game developer can't control will degrade their software through no fault of their own.
Check out this game made on TempleOS. https://scumgames.neocities.org/blazeitfgt.html
I moved to Godot because you can totally configure it to suit your needs. You can compile the engine yourself, rewrite the editor, etc. When exporting our game to iOS and Android, I was a bit disconcerted that it was around 100MB...and it's just a jumping game! I tried to pare down all the graphical assets to be as light and as undemanding as possible; but ultimately, a good chunk of that was overhead.
There were instructions on how to strip away all the 3D parts of the engine and just recompile...but I chickened out. Not confident enough at the moment but I'm learning. I might try doing that when we push the next update.
Thanks again. Really appreciate it.