Welcome!

This homepage is dedicated to sharing my home projects with whoever is interested. I won’t post regularly, only if I actually have something to say or show.

Heartcaged

I had a dream… some would call it a nightmare. A dark fantasy story with ghouls, ghosts and dark wizards, with an environment very reminiscent of 80’s 90’s fantasy movies. From this an idea was born, a dark fantasy metroidvania, centered around melee fights, exploring and some strange traverse abilities. The title refers to an artifact, that basically temporarily mummifies someone in exchange for power. The story will be explained in lore, within the game as collectible pages / notes to read. This would be a big project and of course things can happen and I may put this aside like I did with other ideas before (did I ever tell you about Retro 13? No? Now you see what I meant :)).

Ian Stokesworth

As per usual, I returned to this idea too. My original vision was a 16 bit graphical style game, but I saw some screenshots of Metal Slug on the NeoGeo Pocket, and fell in love with the limited palette and smaller sprites. On reason is the time, that would take to produce a game in 16 bit VS 8 bit. So, the idea is back on the menu, though this also on hold now.

Necromancer’s Quest

I made this game quite recently for a game jam and I fell in love with the idea. It could be that I like it so much because of the fact it’s inspired by a game I hardly played (see the story of this on the project’s page) and it was in the back of my mind for so long. Anyhow, I would like to expand on this idea, make some changes compared to the jam version and make a full game of it.

Retro 13

Another project I put aside because of GM’s technical limitations, namely how hard it is to make a 3D game in it. That, of course comes from that I am a 3D / 2D pixel artist first and I only dabble in coding (I have a low level degree in coding and never worked as a coder, only as a hobby). Anyways, there are news that Yoyo finally will step up and expand on the current 3D capabilities of GameMaker. With that, this idea also back on the menu: a cursed game that has multiple games in it and are interconnected this or that way, so the whole collection of games are puzzled together for the players to explore.

My take on the AI craze

I feel I have to write this, as a sort of proclamation what I think about AI and what is my take on it. I hardly cared about it when the fad started, though I tried some kind of image generator on my iPad at its early infancy and I saw that it was a mess and I left it as it was. All I remember are the spaghetti videos, and how funny hands it draw, through how pixel art looked like when a youtuber tried it, up until the Miyazaki style profile pictures popped up on Facebook.
But then it turned out that AI gets better somehow (well, trained on stuff up on the internet, without consent of the creators…). Despite it – on my opinion – probably started from a “Hold my beer” moment, it’s capable of crazy things now. I talked about it with some people who use it (even regularly or just occasionally), so it peaked my interest, as of could it support a game dev work. The answer was yes as it turned out, many bigger companies used it to some extent. I talked with industry veterans and they say, like it or not, this probably will be integrated in workflows in some way or another. Though I didn’t really liked the idea, but finally I decided to see for myself and experimented with it a little.
So, I used some AI generated thing in some of my jam games (mind you: was not against any rules, there was no monetary advantages connected and I disclosed its use – and later removed any I used. What I did, I generated a couple of reference images, some temporary placeholders and some music. I only implemented one music in one of my jam games (since that is removed too).
I tried to use Chat GPT for some code assistance too: only on one occasion was it able to help me significantly, otherwise it was a mess, maybe able to point me to the right direction. The biggest failure was when I tried to use it to figure out 3D in GM. It constantly tried to use D3D functions, inconsistent variable names all around and finally a dead end of so convoluted matrix functions that I abandoned it as it was.
So in the end I saw that though it could assist a little, couldn’t do much more – at least in the timeframe I was comfortable to use it. I haven’t used anything AI for my games since and even more convincingly, Youtube started to recommend AI related videos. I watched some and it turned out how bad the AI data center situation is.
Final verdict: despite many people say “this is the future” I will not use AI, avoid it as much as possible (even a google search is AI assisted now, and many apps, social media uses it, like it or not). I think, if the AI bubble will not burst and collapse, it will be some part of our life and of game development as a tool (and I don’t think of “create thing instead of me”, but “help me create the thing with a bit of help”). Regarding art, it is so easy to point out which image was fully AI generated. I hear “soulless” a lot, when people talk about it and it being not regulated properly, allowing it to pop up everywhere is a problem. But still, I think, the worst thing is not how it affects art in general, though it very well may be that it’s AI why I was not able to find a new job for a while now… Especially, when I check a job description, any mention of working with AI usually just makes me close it straight away. The damn thing is environmentally unsustainable. It requires so much water, electricity, space and it pollutes the air and it negatively affects people’s life. Even they should stop this madness or come up with solutions that negate these effects. TLDR: avoid it when you can.

What now?…

I am at a crossroads (for a while now) and even my first try as a semi-indie didn’t worked out, I may try to make another swing at it, as gamedev, creating games is a part of me for so long, I would be lost without it. There is a collaboration brewing with Wavedash, a possible job on the horizon and my plan to develop Necromancer’s Quest so at least I do have some options.

What’s new on the homepage?

• Added Stackropolis section
• Added Droid Hunter X section
• Added Necromancer’s Quest section