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dgbaumgart

@dgbaumgart.bsky.social

artist, game designer, art director, writer, independent game developer, he/him working in games since 2007 formerly Gaslamp Games, currently mostly Starsector https://www.dgbaumgart.com/ https://dgbaumgart.itch.io/

867 Posts1042 Follower222 Folgt
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 5d ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! Decided to do a test run through first two scenarios to find if any recent work broke any old content, plus noted any UX things that annoyed me. Figured the first End Turn in the tutorial needed a bouncy arrow (this one is a bit too insistent, I did pull it back!):

dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2w ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! Finished most Troll Bridge dialog. Finnicky bits remain; I had? to add a null memory type for reasons. Copying a memory that doesn't exist should make it "false" - but not just a bool. So this is a universal false for almost all conditionals (vs. int, float, string, bool). Hm.

Screenshot of my goblin game, just a bunch of goblins in the Goblin Swamp ready to move into the world and cause KAOS. I added shadows under the tokens. That's all I wanted to show off here.
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2w ago

Re last post: It is insane that the Canadian government is interested in funding the efforts of foreign tech companies to infringe upon and destroy our own creative industries. If you're Canadian + in the "cultural sector", I encourage you to tell them you don't want to be sold out by AI lobbyists.

Sonja Boon@storiedselves.bsky.social · 2w ago

Canadian arts and culture folks: the federal government has launched a (methodologically flawed) survey on "the Cultural Sector's readiness for Artificial Intelligence". If you're ready to resist or refuse genAI, here's your chance to let them know. pch.research-recherche.ca/f/s.aspx?lan...

National Survey on the Cultural Sector’s Readiness for Artificial Intelligence

Powered by SimpleSurvey.com | Build and manage your own online survey, voting, form and panel management applications.

pch.research-recherche.ca

dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 4w ago

Happy #goblinFriday! Sorting out the Troll Bridge. Been here a while, I know - but it's helping debug dialog/rules logic. You can cross by offering 1d6 snax to the troll. If the troll rolls higher than your snax, the troll just eats them and you can't cross. It wasn't hitting the fail state! 1/2

Dialog screen from my goblin game. Here, Bennybog is attempting to offer the Troll snax to cross the Troll Bridge. Bennybog only had 1 snax, so the troll would have to roll a 1 to accept this offering. Unfortunately, the Troll rolled a 2 and just ate Bennybog's 1 snax anyway. Fortunately for Bennybog, this still hit the "success" outcome for some reason. What the heck is going on???Here's a look at the dialog rules logic behind the scene. ... Unfortunately the full condition for the fail state is cut off (sorry!), but it is: $scenario.lastResourcesRollBlockChangeAbs > $snax_just_had What's notable here is I'm comparing two int 'memories' stored by the dialog system referenced by string 'keys', and it turned out to be the root of the problem.
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Like, the fundamental thing with "AI" - it all starts with a massive and ongoing act of theft (or infringement, if you like). It's a few billionaire, or trillionaire, owned tech companies stealing everything we ever did then selling it back as a worse version of the work we all do.

Aura/Moom@moomanibe.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Anyway I'm just going to say it outright: if you're an indie dev using AI for coding, above and beyond any other objections, what you're telling me is that you have no solidarity with anyone else in games. Not artists, not writers, not other coders. You beleive in personal convenience at all costs.

dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! Quiet day before a couple weeks off, so going through old locations to touch-up events and add new ones, mostly Dark Forest and Troll Bridge related (see shots). Found obscure bugs to fix (goblins love these). And the game camera is annoying me so might move up redoing it.

The extremely complex start dialog for the Troll Bridge crossing sequence. This is meant to be a bit easy in relative terms, with reasonable options for almost all character types so it can be the 'best' way for goblins to get from one side of the map to the other. If you just sit at one end or the other there will be a few random events that won't give any particular risk or gains - it provides a good neutral ground to catch your breath on your way to somewhere more useful. Unless, of course, you somehow truly piss off the trolls. I haven't figured out what that looks like, but you have to account for all possibilities with goblins... There are a couple interesting repeatable encounters you can only discover if you're lost (as in, have the Lost status) in the Dark Forest. The theme here is lost secrets, so _of course_ you have to be able to discover some of them. And is this going to be a riff on Old Man Willow? - Kinda! Maybe also that tree in Heroes of Might and Magic where you bury 30 gems at its base to get a level-up...You can find mushrooms. Did you know you shouldn't eat every mushroom you find in the forest, especially those you can't identify? Bennybog doesn't. This is a case where a character has rolled against his own stat (Mouth vs. Smarts) and lost, forcing him into eating *every mushroom*. (I'll tell you now, Bennybog absolutely picks up a couple bad status effects from doing this.)
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In the vein of "real concept art looks like crap", here are some #Starsector concepts for remnant/explorarium ships It's basically just dumping a bunch of shapes and colours and swapping bits around and seeing what hits the right vibe. (Some small ideas even get used way later in other places!)

BildBildBild
Aura/Moom@moomanibe.bsky.social · 2mo ago

those polished 3/4 glamour shots you're used to seeing in art books are nearly always done after the design is finalized and often specifically for PR purposes. they're not Process

dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! Short day- more camping to do! Set up the "Haunted Pines" location - a foreboding, hostile area which will have lots of spirit interactions. Fixed annoying UI movement tweening interrupt error for certain buttons! Also: a coconut test shows the spirit affinity notification.

A screenshot of my goblin game, showing a dialog panel with a description of the Haunted Pines location. This is meant to be another hostile area that discourages lingering unless a goblin is very well prepared to deal with hostile spirits and extreme weather. It's on the right side of the map, where there is less hooman "civilization" and more hidden treasures - and powerful, ancient things that perhaps don't wish to be awoken. The plan is you go this way if you need to find some good tools to use against the encroaching hoomans - but such a quest won't be easy!A screenshot of dialog from my Goblin game. Now THIS is pure test dialog, hitting a bunch of different game systems in succession: applying a negative status effect that halts movement, giving the goblin a new item (a coconut), and giving the Goblin affinity for a spirit. The coconut was to test if my item save/load code was working correctly because I thought it was double-adding the coconut item. I think this was a false report and I just ran the dialog twice, because this time it seemed to work correctly. As for the spirit affinity: this is used after the Goblin has done something (via the narrative dialog) that gives them affinity for a spirit. The goblin may then draw upon powers granted by that spirit by using their Ghosties stat and spending the Oooos resource. Each spirit has "domains" they can affect, and spirits can have overlapping domains. These are used as tags within the narrative dialogs - so, for instance, a dialog can change based on if a goblin can call upon a spirit with the MEMORY domain ie. if they get lost in the woods this spirit can help them remember the way back out.
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! I intended to work on the *Wizard Tower* location, but fell into fixing a list of annoying bugs. The good news is: they're fixed! Best bug: resource gains were limited by the pool of 'floating icons' I initialized at game start, just 20. Any gain over was lost to the aether.

A screenshot from my goblin game which shows a test dialog where Bennybog the goblin is rolling to gain lots of "snax" resource. He rolled and got 27 snax, and you can see a bunch of little turkey leg icons flying from the bottom of the dialog box over toward the resource display. Before fixing this, only 20 icons at a time could appear, and only 20 of whatever resource would ever actually make it into the player's resource pool. I do not wish to elaborate on the dumb code reasons for this, but I will (probably) fix various underlying issues. In the meantime, I just increased the floaty pool to 64.
Mary Gillis@marygillis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't find a single word in here about protecting Canadian artists from having their work stolen by AI companies, or compensating them for that stolen work. Why is it that people who create Canadian culture don't deserve accountability or control?

Mark Carney@mark-carney.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We just launched Canada’s new AI Strategy: AI For All.    We’re taking control of our future — with AI that’s governed by Canadian values, AI that’s accountable to Canadians, and AI that serves all Canadians.    www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news...

dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! Added interactions to another area today: the Windy Path (I love the double meaning. Could actually draw it to be windier though, come to think of it.) This location is a transition zone meant to be a moderately dangerous/costly place to linger. Encounters reflect this.

Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game. This is the default long description you get when you first enter this location, ever. I think maybe I'll add a location name title drop to emphasize that this is supposed to be a "congratulations! you found a new place!" moment.Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game. Here, Wormsy has a bad encounter trying to hide from crows. (Crow-goblin relations will be an important factor in this game. And making crows friendly? That will cost you lots of shinies, my friend, because there's little that crows love more than shinies.)Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game. Here, Eyeball has run into an encounter with not just high winds, but a Gale Spirit of some kind. Luckily she's *very* skillful at dealing with spirits, so can easily talk this one down. There are a few other ways to deal with the windstorm, and failing them comes with great risks considering the high altitude...Screenshot of a dialog encounter from my goblin game. Eyeball is successful! This will give her more of the Oooos resource that will allow her to call upon spirits and their boons. Note: only 6 dice in the top row! It should max out at 7. I have some work to do...
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Happy #GoblinFriday! Did a trawl through my Jira TODO board and shoved all the tiny bugs + polish tickets to one side so I could focus more on mechanics & content to build up a feeling for the 'critical mass' of the gameplay. Here, a first look w/ sketchy background, at the Hilltop Tombs area.

A screenshot form my goblin game showing Bennybog the goblin first entering the "Hilltop Tombs" location. The background is extremely sketchy, but shows some windswept hills with piles of stones that enter into the underground. There's a slightly creepy description implying that dead spirits protect the place. Naturally these tombs contain neat items (and are completely a reference to the Tolkeinverse barrow downs), so go here if you need powerful magical items - or simply lots of Shinies. Will there be consequences like vengeful spirits and wights and curses? Who can say! Goblins don't worry about such things. Much.
dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Sorry, going to head into the woods for a bit, so very few goblins this friday. (Did fix a minor issue with savegames saving over the wrong file + a little dive into making dialog interactions just a touch smoother.)

dgbaumgart@dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Happy #goblinfriday! Diving back in after some rather pernicious bugs (Goblins love bugs, and love to hide bugs), and... ugh, finally setting up a github repo. After being exposed to a decent git UI, my dumb-dumb system of backing up the dev folder manually has been confirmed as too annoying.

A screenshot of my goblin game with FOUR active goblins. Two of them are at Mudcrab Beach, and have a variety of (test) actions they can do. These goblins have hidden many bugs from me. Can I find them all today? Probably not.