Clomper by Rob Lang

🐞 5 years of game dev! 🥳 ➡️ 12 top game dev tips 🤔 How to keep motivated 🎓 Learn from my mistakes It's Clomper dev log 71. Let's GO! 🎥 youtu.be/LemC0Fe9Qk0 #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #steampunk

Today I'm preparing for #gamedev 7 year #devlog by watching my own devlogs on 2x speed. I don't mind my own voice anymore (I used to hate it) but there are 80 devlogs: 11h, 25m and 4 seconds of video. SEND HELP! 🤣

After a long day of work, it's nice to settle down to some #gamedev and complete the last fix of issues I found during my #twitch #livestream 🍻 Now it's time to prepare for my 7 years of Clomper devlog! What have I learnt? What would I change? #indiegame

Players: Make the tutorial notepad brighter. Me: #gamedev #indiegame #gamer #pcgaming #steam

Going LIVE! Clomper play test and bug hunting on Twitch and Youtube. #streaming #gamedev #steampunk #twitch #youtube www.twitch.tv/roblangdev www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbNn...

Putting a tutorial area into your procedurally generated world be like... #gamedev #indiedev

My target is 60 FPS, so my frame budget is 16ms. The algorithm that works out steam flow through the pipes took 14ms, that's most of my budget! Loads of lag spikes on the host. Reworte in the Unity Job system. Runs in less than a 1ms and doesn't block the main game doing it. 🙌🏻 #handmade #gamedev

I've been given a rare thing: a whole day to work on Clomper. SO LUSH! Been moving the steam calculations into the Unity Job system. Going well so far!

Before and after moving the lighting toward how Clomper looks like in me head. Not full there but much, much nearer! In short - I gave into light map generation.

While deeply impractical, I do love these kinds of pipe layouts.

Am I making tutorial images or preparing for an IKEA interview? Here's why: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5zs... #indiegames #steampunk

Go on, kick the barrel into the grinder. You know you want to.

A notebook-style tutorial fits a tactile game better than another modal. The teaching UI becomes part of the world.

I gave scrap a proper coin, faked some shadows with a gradient shader, and started building a tutorial you flip through like a notebook. 📖🪙 Clomper Devlog #80 🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5zs...

I've started referring to my ineffecient style of #gamedev as "artisinal".

I've reached the point in the edit of devlog 80 where I'm bored at looking at me-from-a-week-ago. That fool that kept going off on tangents, being silly and cracking non-jokes and making editing hard. I get past this point by sharing unflattering pictures of the idiot from a week ago. #gamedev

😟 Thought I had a chance to record a devlog tonight but it took 45 minutes to get ready and now it's 21:45 and I'm just too tired. I have a day job and family responsibilities and only get time once all that's done. Don't know when the next opportunity will be. Thursday?

⚖️ Balancing the tutorial is tricky! I want players to feel accomplished for figuring out how to use the Clomper at their own pace without handholding. ⭐ Behold! 📋The notepad! 📃 Doing the pages in order will lead you through everything but you can skip about too.

You live inside a mechnical ladybird called a Clomper, which you control by creating pipes to power machines with steam. The outside world is a hellscape that you explore from within the Clomper, doing quests etc. @clomper.bsky.social

First tutorial mockup. The pipe drawing will probably remain but the mouse/keys will need to be super imposed because they can be rebound. Still unsure about the menu controls in the top left. What's this all about? Explained here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UegA...

Behind the scenes demonstration of how some tutorials force you to play a certain way! 💡 I am pontificating about how to build the tutorial but the video feedback has been really helpful. 🫶🏻 Clomper Devlog #79 out now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UegA...

🐞🎓 Tutorials are super important. ➡️ the first time anyone plays your game 💖 must be good from the start 🧑🏻‍🏫 teaching without preaching Clomper needs a tutorial, but there was something I had to do first! 🎥 youtu.be/UegA6gODz8Y #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #steampunk

Quite a lot of devlog editing is cutting out me laughing at my own jokes and then trying to stop laughing so I can get on with recording.

Writing notes for the next 🐞 #devlog makes me look like a complete muppet: ✒️ "Tried A, that was wrong. Tried B, also wrong. Tried C, too complex. Watched more YouTube. Tried D,E,F - all wrong. Going with G but not started yet." And this is just the Clomper tutorial! 😂 That's #gamedev for you.

In 1997 I was a Cybernetics undergrad at dept of Cybernetics at Uni of Reading, UK. Back then I pithily wrote on a webpage: "AI has the potential to tell us what human consciousness is by showing what it isn't." Sadly all the recent efforts are going into replacing people, not understanding them.

LANDLUBBERS! Scallywags! Ne'erdowells! (and gentile folk) AVAST! It be time to plunder Steam and have yourself Rise of Piracy at a princely discount. #steam #games store.steampowered.com/app/1400660/...

Can't wait for this! Pirates, RTS, awesome!

😱 I spent 3 weeks fighting Unity's lighting - and almost lost! ☀️ Beautiful lighting, global Illumination, adaptive probe volumes and a new machine to plug in. 🐞 Clomper Devlog #78 🎥 youtu.be/LvPlo0i6vCo #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #steampunk

At this point in a #gamdedev devlog edit, I'm a bit bored of my own face. A perfect opportunity to freeze frame and mock the me from last week! He who couldn't speak properly, made loads of mistakes and missed some important points. What a tool! #editing #youtube #video #gaming

⚠️ This is what happens if you leave your Clomper🐞 running and don't pay attention! 💥 I've been making devlogs for years, you'd think I'd get used to stopping the Clomper🐞 and turning down the boilers. I accidentally drove this one off a cliff into a crevasse! #steampunk #steam #gamedev

Oh my. I don't know what to say. Ben was a huge part of the YouTube game dev community and a superb musician too. I knew he had been fighting cancer (he did a brave video) but he ploughed on regardless. My heart goes out to his family. Fuck cancer.

🍻 Weird #gamedev thing to celebrate, I've just hit my 900th issue in GitHub. And it's a bug too, which is nice. That's 0.38 issues a day!

💡Global Illumination problem update! I can either have surface contributing OR Emissive light. BUT Not both without dark patches. Anyone know why? Detail + download here: discussions.unity.com/t/how-to-rem... #unity3d #gamedev

It's been a weekend of struggling with Adaptive Probe Volumes and global illumination in Unity. The Unity docs are written from the POV of someone who already understands everything. Do you know of any good resources to get rid of these patches or explain why the probes are dark?

Lol obviously not Clomper (open beta definitely) but you might have a game that can be included here!

I never, ever use #YouTube AI comment replies. Ever. I hate that they exist. Comments should be a connection between two humans, not some button click platitude. As if to fight back against this meaningless drivel, my comment reply are going to become even more flowery and bizarre.