Announcing The Void - a wave based survival horror fps inspired by the movie "The Mist" and spiritual theology. My first venture into solo dev. Looking for your support through this venture #solodevsurvivor #indieddev #survivalhorror #gamedevlife

Tim developed the 1st UE and might have been developing it throughout UE3's era and perhaps early UE4 as well. A lot of current day UE issues can be tracked to these legacy systems that were built before this time under Tim's leadership. CMCs are like 2 decades old at this point and really hindering performance and the engine haven't undergone an overhaul in over 2 decades. I used to think Epic hired only the best when some of my friends ended up having to clean up engine source bugs in UE that were just ridiculous. Regardless, while his early efforts demand applause, the period from where Epic sold shares to Tencent and onward requires scrutiny. Epic grew. Hired lot of people, and moved from being a game dev studio to becoming a platform and ecosystem developer. Billions flowed into Epic. They made billions too. And with that Tim's focus and priorities also changed. And it is evident from what they are pursuing. Fortnite was pushed to make Tim's version of the metaverse a reality. UE was pushed more towards a platform tool at the center of the ecosystem rather than focusing on solving issues actual game devs faced. A place where it makes easy for anyone without experience to make anything and just push it into the ecosystem for everyone else to play. And the push to opening up UE for use with Ai is only even more evident of this. This is not for the reason to "empower" developers as their marketting would suggest. The developers aren't even their priorities as Tim has mentioned in UE fest few years ago. Game royalties only make up for like 0.5% of Epic revenues. Their money making machine is Fortnite and Fortnite makes money as long as it has content coming in. User generated content. It doesn't matter if they are high quality or slop as long as it's content and people stay on the platform. So if Ai makes that process easier for the average person, so be it. And lets not forget what all Epic tried to do simply copying trends in chase of money and failed. Fortnite BR was also infact a copy when og fortnite bombed, paragon bombed. Their anti consumer practices with EGS and the terrible junkyard called Fab are all examples of how much into chasing money they are at the moment. There is literally nothing in here that is about empowering developers. Just mere facade. To think that this is some next level foresight is simply ignorance in disguise.

As someone who has been part of experiments with ai workflows across most disciplines for game dev - character art and animation, gameplay coding to even render engine coding - I can say with confidence that those who think this is going to solve problems are going to be in for a real surprise as this creates more problems than it is meant to solve. You can use it to automate chores, and there are a lot of it in every departments, sure. These set of instructions are always static and rules are set and doesn't change so that can be followed properly. But serious work be it on gameplay or rendering or any form of coding side that is part of dynamic gameplay - from my experience , you shouldn't use AI for it. Preferably, stay away as it breaks more than it creates. People also fail to realise that this thing is trained to duplicate or immitate things that exists because that is what it is trained on. Including code. This thing cannot invent anything new, or come up with techniques or technology that are new because it cannot analyze or rationalize logically and is incapable of reason. At the end of the day, this is an LLM that even when it gives you a right answer, doesn't know it gave you a right answer. So on its built on misunderstood foundations. So it has to be used with utmost caution and not to be relied upon fully. Anybody who says otherwise is simply gaslighting or outright lying.

Don't worry guys, @Steam will do the classic pro gamer move - "do nothing" - and end up winning yet again.

Because they can and they love every bit of doing it.

I want Ai to be trained on this

God forbid somebody has an opinion. God forbid somebody is willing to change their opinion over time.

Nearly half of this list arent indie games.

I concur. It also need a "Best Technical Achievement" category for stellar engineering works with respect to realtime rendering tech and game performance, etc.

This is what it looks like to be a sufficiently ignorant ai homie.

Acerola - Just because 2-3 people working on an idea for years on conception / ideation, you cannot call that an indie when the game later started with a probably a million in upfront capital for hires and office space of 1.5-2 years and then took close to 10mil in funding to complete. And on top of that the publisher hired A list Hollywood actors for voice acting, and a lot of other things. At that point it is "NOT" indie anymore. What is so difficult to understand about this? All this when the lead creative comes from a family of wealth. And blocking just proves that you have nothing to back your false claims.

Man can you fix Lords of the fallen end game balancing? Its seriously dogshit. I haven't had an experience where I loved a game for the 1st half but ended up loathing towards the end because of all the cheap bullshits thrown in. It's as if you ran out of ideas, or just wanted to artificially pad the game.

"Indie" always was about the struggle against the odds. To be the lonewolf and make it. It was about the spirit of achieving the impossible. It was about being the David amongst the Goliaths. And being an example for the other "indies" to aspire to. And all of the time, achieved with no resources or help or sometimes even no budget. How much you spent to get this done - basically. So dev cost can be a good indicator of if something falls in an "indie" category. Those who say "oh indie doesn't mean anything" simply don't get it and must be added to

Lulz that tree, a plank rather xD

This looks like Buzz Lightyear going through alcoholism and depression.

Is this some kind of fetish or a joke that I'm too poor to understand?

Ryse Son of Rome makes DLSS 5 looks like a mere color grading effect. 13 year old game showing you how it should be done. Yet here were are, more than a decade later, at the opposite end of progress.

Good. Make sure you give us the option to turn it off though.