[HN Gopher] Six mistakes I made in my dioramas-and-felt Steam ga...
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Six mistakes I made in my dioramas-and-felt Steam game and one I
didn't
Author : mjd
Score : 73 points
Date : 2025-03-14 16:41 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (novalis.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (novalis.org)
| mjd wrote:
| Dave Turner is making a point-and-click game with no CGI. All the
| locations are real-world dioramas he built and photographed.
| Special effects are done with stop-motion animation of felt.
|
| Dave says: Often when you watch videos of people doing crafts on
| the internet, they're people who have been doing it for years.
| They don't make mistakes, or if they do, they don't really show
| them to you. I haven't been doing any of these crafts for years.
| So I've made lots of mistakes, and I want to show them to you, so
| you don't get the impression that this is easy.
| troupo wrote:
| Last thing we need on HN is low quality twitter bots
| reiterating what's been written.
| petesergeant wrote:
| The irony of course here is that _mjd_ is a fantastic author
| and contributor, and not a Twitter bot. That said, it does
| read like an AI summary.
| maxbond wrote:
| Note that GP is the submitter of the article. I don't read
| this as low-effort engagement bait, but as an explanation of
| why they found this article worthy of sharing on HN.
| merelysounds wrote:
| > But it would have been a mistake to build High Mountain Abbey
| in Rust.
|
| I didn't expect avoiding the custom engine side quest in a game
| with a very custom art style; kudos!
|
| I think there may be an even bigger mistake avoided here: many
| indie devs build amazing projects and don't talk about them
| enough. If you ever created something you enjoyed, wanted to
| share it and somehow didn't, watch and learn; I know I should!
| SanitaryThinkin wrote:
| Love the creativity here, this is novel game level design.
|
| Can't wait to see the finished game. The blog posts are a part of
| the journey
| gorgoiler wrote:
| _The Dream Machine_ from Cockroach and of course _The Neverhood_
| from Doug TenNapel are some fantastic prior art here. TenNapel
| even reused his skills to make _Armikrog_ two decades later.
|
| I wonder if the creators of these physically rendered games ever
| get together to talk shop, or even host a conference, on the
| topic of non-linear animation and storytelling. It's the sort of
| thing that I, as someone who merely consumes their content and is
| absolutely nowhere near being able to replicate their skill,
| would love to take part in.
|
| Comic-Con but for games done the hard way. _Thimbleweed Park_ ,
| another remake in the animated adventure game genre, actually has
| a scene in it that's based on a conference for real-life point-
| and-click games developers.
| graynk wrote:
| I'm so glad somebody else has heard of The Dream Machine, it's
| great!
|
| Harold Halibut is also worth a look, though it's not fully
| stop-motion I believe
| atombender wrote:
| Harold Halibut isn't stop motion at all; they made physical
| puppets and then scanned them into Unity and tried to
| replicate the look.
|
| It's a gorgeous game, but I was really disappointed in the
| gameplay. I wouldn't even call it a game; it's basically a
| movie where you sometimes interact with things, but
| everything is scripted.
| graynk wrote:
| Ahhh, sad to hear that, I only played the demo
| flocciput wrote:
| Hylics by Mason Lindroth is the only other thing I'd ever seen
| do the "physical art" thing in a videogame. I love it a lot, so
| now curious about the other games you've mentioned! Thanks for
| the recs.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| With respect to Doug TenNapel's contribution to the field,
| Armikrog is only of interest I think to die-hard nostalgia
| fans. Maybe one day it will be (or already has been?)
| remastered into an even better game, but when I played it on
| release it was more like a mise en place of a great meal than
| a great meal itself.
|
| _The Dream Machine_ is all out body horror excellence from
| an indie studio in the truest sense. The fact that they saw
| the project through to the end, in real time, over the course
| of several years and while communicating the whole time with
| their Kickstarter backers is just as impressive as the game
| itself. Pure brilliance.
| timpark wrote:
| There's only a demo out so far, but Scarlet Deer Inn uses
| embroidery for its character images.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1553260/Scarlet_Deer_Inn/
| addaon wrote:
| Is it multi-threaded?
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Lol, the technique directing the art. Now everywhere a observer
| behind the wall would love to peep, there is a picture or lamp in
| the diorama. Basically , the artstyle subconsciously went towards
| subconciius thriller/horrorhouse with that .
| metaphor wrote:
| > _With seven rooms photographed so far, my repo right now is 53
| GB, since I 'm storing all of the photos that go into each focus-
| stack, as well as the raw (xcf) versions of each shot so that I
| can edit and color-correct without repeated JPEG compression._
|
| I wonder how the author manages this bloat if he has to pivot to
| a different workstation. LFS enabled in his GitLab instance?
| Shallow clone? Just swallow whole??
| em-bee wrote:
| you can copy/move/clone the local repo you already have. no
| need to clone from remote just to switch to a different
| machine.
| metaphor wrote:
| To clarify, assume in good faith that _pivot_ in context
| means compelled towards involuntary action---i.e. unexpected
| loss of local data, as opposed to a matter of routine shift
| in workflow---where the remote forge is being tapped for its
| secondary function as off-site backup.
|
| The question was more intended to probe remote UX resilience
| near the limits of pain when faced with massive git repos
| which primarily capture binary assets/artifacts.
| em-bee wrote:
| i find that interpretation a bit of a stretch. you could
| have expressed that more clearly. especially given that the
| obvious solution is to have local backups. what else could
| you do?
|
| i have been discussing this on HN before in the context of
| a multi TB archive of photos and videos (part of which
| happened to be for a film project, so similar
| considerations apply). raid, external disk, and remote
| copy. for the film footage, everyone working with it has a
| full copy too, even if they don't need all of it. just in
| case. if you need to work with the data there is pretty
| much no other option.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Two disjoint comments:
|
| 1. Film sets contain wild walls that can be easily removed to
| accommodate light and camera placement outside the space looking
| inwards. Wild walls in the dioramas could have prevented the
| necessity of cutting holes.
|
| 2. Git is not the right SCM for the job. My first choice would
| have been Plastic a few years ago, but this got rolled into Unity
| DevOps after an acquisition. But it is meant to accommodate truly
| vast repositories (53GB isn't actually that big). The second best
| choice is SVN - yes, really.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I find it funny how often people look down on SVN outside of
| game development. It really is a great tool for that job.
|
| The trunk our of studio's SVN is hundreds of GB and the full
| repo is many TB. And SVN handles this no problem.
| jfengel wrote:
| What is it that SVN does particularly well here? Handle
| binaries?
| gmueckl wrote:
| Yes, SVN handles large amounts of big binary rather
| efficiently. It employs some binary diffing internally to
| keep storage usage low.
|
| The centralized model also allows optional file locking,
| which reduces the risk of accidental merges destroying a
| file. This is a major concern for files that aren't source
| code when no dedicated merge tool exists.
|
| Also, the centralized storage of the repo history becomes a
| bit of a bonus at this scale as it doesn't need to be
| replicated to each client, saving a little bit on disk
| storage and data transfers.
|
| The one unfortunate downside of SVN is the implementation
| of merging between branches. That relies on per-file merge
| histories that are partially stored in per-file properties.
| This is opaque, internal information, yet it is tracked the
| same way as file changes. This leads to situations where
| it's all too easy to discard some of the merge history with
| harmless looking operations like reverting a file between a
| local merge and its merge commit to get rid of an unwanted
| change. Once something like this happens, future merges end
| up doing random looking things like re-applying changes
| that have already been merged. This is a major part of what
| gives SVN its bad reputation. You really have to tread on
| eggshells when merging. If you can avoid the pitfalls,
| merging works well. But it requires rather deep knowledge
| of SVN and discipline.
| zokier wrote:
| With LFS handling assets with Git shouldn't be a problem. From
| the sounds of it, the biggest problem they had here was not in
| the technology but GitLabs pricing which doesn't separate LFS
| storage. For example GitHub and BitBucket have separate pricing
| for LFS, both at more reasonable $.1/GB, i.e. five times
| cheaper than GitLab. If I'm reading it right Azure even offers
| LFS for free(!).
|
| Technically I believe you can even have LFS hosted in different
| place than the repo itself, although I don't know if these
| commercial providers handle such case. But in theory you could
| host your git repo at gitlab.com and selfhost lfs if you want
| to penny pinch.
| petertodd wrote:
| Git-annex is another good option: https://git-
| annex.branchable.com/
|
| I've been using it for many years now for data repos like
| photos. IIUC one advantage it has over LFS is its model makes
| it easier to store data in many different places (though I
| don't use LFS myself).
| gmueckl wrote:
| The one standout quality that git LFS has in my experience is
| the rate at which working copies with LFS enabled shred
| themselves and become unrecoverable. I've seen this on
| multiple projects and different users now and it doesn't give
| me the confidence I'd need to rely on it for a big project.
|
| I'm sure that there will be people replying that this is
| anecdotal etc. But this is my personal experience and what
| shapes my recommendations.
| timdiggerm wrote:
| Yeah, this plus the apparent lack-of-planning regarding lenses
| & field of view make me wonder if OP had any of the background
| they should have had in stop-motion animation?
| hnbad wrote:
| Are there any prior examples for AI interpolation in stop-
| motion animation?
| jerf wrote:
| This is the sort of project that, no matter how much you
| know, or think you know, and no matter how much experience
| you had, it'll still bring you right back down to Earth and
| humble you somehow. There is no curriculum for preparing for
| this. There is only "jump in and figure it out as you go".
|
| So let's not criticize anyone for jumping in and figuring it
| out as they go, as it is the only way to produce a project
| like this.
| esperent wrote:
| > So what I should have done is: first, create the Steam page for
| the game, then post the first blog post. Well, better late than
| never: please wishlist the game.
|
| In case the author is reading: anywhere that's not Steam to
| wishlist or buy the game? This would be a definite purchase from
| me on GOG - well, if it reviews reasonably well. I love quirky
| and unusual graphical styles.
|
| But I have never, and probably _will_ never, buy game from
| anywhere that requires me to install a launcher and look at
| advertising before I get to play.
| inexcf wrote:
| >But I have never, and probably will never, buy game from
| anywhere that requires me to install a launcher and look at
| advertising before I get to play.
|
| You'll be happy to hear that Steam does not require you to do
| any of that. If the game does not heavily rely on Steam
| services you don't have to have Steam started at all. I just
| tested some games and i could just start them from the
| executable without Steam running. I also disabled the news
| window you can get on startup and the Steam client starts on
| the library, not the store page.
|
| So have fun.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Some games on Steam are truly "DRM-free", but the default way
| is to use the Steamworks DLL which tries to open the game
| through Steam if the exe was clicked directly. This "DRM" is
| trivial to remove with the right tools (if not accompanied by
| a real DRM), but still you'd be basically cracking the games
| you bought.
|
| GOG (and also Itch and sometimes Humble) simply gives you an
| installer with no DRM at all, meaning that the games will
| continue to work even if GOG blows up.
|
| So yeah, that's why some people prefer buying on GOG over
| Steam. That, and European patriotism, sometimes.
|
| Creators are sometimes afraid of this model, sadly, due to
| the perceived increased potential of piracy. Even though CD
| PROJEKT RED have repeatedly demonstrated that they can sell
| their own games with zero DRM and still dominate the top
| selling charts.
| stavros wrote:
| But there's no way to download your games without Steam,
| right?
| gothroach wrote:
| The only ways I'm aware of to download your Steam games are
| through the Steam desktop client or using the SteamCMD
| command-line client.
|
| Edit: I think people really sleep on SteamCMD, I really
| like using it.
|
| https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD
| steeleduncan wrote:
| From a developer point of view GOG has the most hoops to jump
| through of all PC platforms, for very few users, so it wouldn't
| make a lot of sense
|
| Itch.io would be more reasonable. It doesn't have a lot of
| users, but it is trivial to setup, and doesn't require a
| launcher
| admiralrohan wrote:
| The steam marketing part is interesting. You said your post got
| viral, can you share the hackernews submission post? Can't see in
| your profile.
|
| Want to understand the user journey, as if people show interet
| they should check the game out.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it was this post, which I found by searching
| the domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41884283
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Walnut burl veneer is inevitably both warped and also brittle.
|
| If you're going to use it, it's worth making up or buying veneer
| flattening solution, wetting the veneer with it, and clamping it
| between two pieces of melamine or plywood with some packing paper
| to get it flat without destroying it. Change the paper a couple
| times as the veneer dries.
|
| Once it's flattened, you can glue it down using a caul (one of
| the pieces of melamine you used to flatten it will work) to hold
| the veneer flat to your hopefully flat substrate while the glue
| dries, or you can hammer veneer it with hide glue.
|
| Hammer veneering doesn't risk gluing your caul to your veneer,
| but it does require a warmer shop, and I wouldn't want to do e.g.
| a dining table that way. Melamine cauls usually pop free pretty
| readily if they do get glued to the veneer. If you don't have or
| want to buy melamine, a packing paper layer between the veneer
| and the caul will help, as will covering the caul with packing
| tape.
|
| Ideally, you don't end up with a lot of glue bleeding through the
| veneer, but burl veneer tends to wick it through.
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