Steven🛰️

PROCJAM - The Procedural Generation Jam A game jam from 2025-11-21 to 2025-12-01 hosted by PROCJAM. Let's Make Something! PROCJAM - the Procedural Generation Jam - is a creative coding jam about making things that make things. This normally...

PROCJAM - the Procedural Generation Jam - is back for another year! Join us on itch.io this November for another week of making something that makes something - a bskybot, a videogame, a digital artwork, a dice table or something else!

🗓️ Nov 21st - Dec 1st
🔮 itch.io/jam/procjam

besides spaghetti, amazing how much junk you can accumulate in a long project: dozens of obsolete items, systems, scenes, canvasses. maybe the positive is that it's evidence of ample iteration, but really is a chore to sift through and clean up

oh nice, I guess I haven't got that far. looking forward to it

duckov also has a very high level of polish, which is something you rarely see in more experimental games (no shade, just this is clearly an iteration/refinement of a design.) playing a run of my own game after, I was annoyed how small some text is, how clunky some interactions are, etc 😅

do wish there were random spawns/extracts though, because as runs are so short you might end up taking the same route 10+ times in an hour which can get a bit stale. otherwise only gripe is I find scope-overlays in these games quite strange, feels off so I avoid using them (personal preference)

duckov is pretty damn good. Feels like a lightweight, casual take compared to ZS. difficulty feels coffee-break level, and the silly vibe and simplicity plus the extensive progression seems to land in the addictive long-playable spot for a lot of people, like dave the diver, maybe arpgs, mmos, etc.

amazing how much more work immersive ux can be than arcadey. for example, right now flashbanged enemies have a ✨particle above their head. I'd like to replace it with an animation, but that requires: anim, anim state, logic to handle transitions, logic to turn off aim/look targeting, and .., and ...

added the trilux sight for the fal. feels pretty neat, though I'd like to make it take up less of the screen

(also trying to get the cameras working better, including viewing photos in-game. if I can get it working, could use it for quests as well as flavour. long lenses can also be used to scout ofc. years ago I made a system where you could snap procgen chars and it would tag them, so should be doable

have a bunch more I modelled a few months back, then shelved (as obviously not a main priority.) maybe I'll steadily drop them in when I need an easy mental break. they need to be textured/rigged but it's pretty fast

Added black-billed magpies as an alternate perching bird (only had crows). Not in the Arctic archipelago currently, but in this scenario (~2070) there is a bunch of natural and manmade forestation. Not a huge deal, but trying to add little anchors to the setting (also just fun/quick to add)

not much to show as been mostly slogging through invisible stuff recently: saving, settings, progression. did do a pass on the base NPCs though. pretty pleased with the approach, but still a few to do, as well as bespoke anims etc

(I think personally I also find most gamble-likes a bit too dry. STS is my all-time favourite roguelite, and although it is light on story, it still has great atmosphere, weird creatures and environment art, and a sense of adventure. number-go-up is maybe not enough for me for whatever reason

another way to look at them is a distillation of buildcraft: the careful collection of gear/relics/cards/etc to improve your odds of winning. normally build construction is paired with some type of 'piloting': card order, action combat, etc. but, when the piloting is rolling a RNG, the build is king

it's hard for me to get too excited about the new sub-genre of indies which is basically: gambling, with extra steps. at the same time I can't criticize them as randomness is the special sauce in many of my favourites; gambling-likes are arguably just distilling that down to its purest form.

worked in attachment compatibility (so not all suppressors can be used with any gun, etc.) Keeping it fairly loose, so each attachment can be used with at least a few guns. (can be frustrating in realistic games finding a new scope, only to learn it can only be used w/ one specific gun)

recently been trying persona 4, and I have to say, the story and characters are the main draw for me there. the dungeons and combat are a bit weak (to me), but the small town vibe and character drama is compelling. (I found the dojima cutscenes in particular very moving)

I once had the makings of a memory-vignette system: as you progressed you'd unlock cutscenes or playable scenes to show backstory, a bit like edith finch. quite heavy scope though, and seemed a bit out of place. there are more subtle and efficient ways to add drama though, so I'll have to experiment

interesting post-mortem on r/gamedev, with discussion that emotion is key for players. tricky for me as I enjoy works without that aspect, but it is a nice to have. (ie; the protag in 3body books is quite melodramatic, which pulls you along.) worldbuilding for arcti is fairly tragic, so maybe doable

letting weapons decide enemy firing behaviour, and split it into 3 ranges: they poke from long, burst at mid, and go almost full auto up close. had trouble with pistols spamming from afar; tried a hard distance cutoff, but it felt awkward watching them unable to shoot until nearby. a fair compromise

kind of funny to consider wandering across an austere tundra only to be greeted with a screen congratulating you on your Frags and Headshots

been starting to track more stats, and displaying them on run loss/win. besides adding a bit of flavour, I could potentially tie them into quests or steam achievements. it's a bit tricky deciding what to track/display though, as it's meant to be a more organic experience than an arcadey one 🤔

(this is spurred by my realizing I mostly stealth my way through my 'daily challenge' runs, as the only objective is to escape. in the campaign you have quests and a persistent stash, so have several reasons to pick fights. but, in the dailies I can't help but rat, the incentives are just too clear🤷‍♂️

certainly, player agency and a variety of solutions to a situation is neat to see in action. but, the fact that avoiding core mechanics is so easy much of the time in many games is both vaguely frustrating and really interesting somehow

of course a dev can encourage players to fight via quests and rewards, or force it with chokepoints or by locking the doors when you enter a room zelda-style, etc. but, if you were to try to force combat to be a regular thing without being heavy-handed, in many setups it would often be pretty tough

one thing I find interesting is how, in many games, it's easy for players to avoid combat if they really want to. ie, sprinting by mobs to get to fromsoft bosses, stealthing past 90% of enemies in an fps, ratting in battle royales, eco runs in tarkov, etc.

sure, it's natural and fine, just hard to wrap my head around it. especially when I see (often younger) people align themselves with certain games/genres as a sort of coolness badge. I guess I just view games as things to play rather than as an identity thing

doing 1-2 runs a day is really a great catalyst for bugfixes. every time I die to a bug, I get a huge burst of motivation and often resolve it quite quickly. the emotion of unfairness is really such a strong and bitter one (hopefully I can reduce the number of players who experience it to a minimum)

it's a bit confusing to me when I see people conspicuously consume and posture around games/gamedev like a 'scene', where coolness is to be hoarded. growing up, games were just something silly to kill time. I suppose the explosion in eyes around games makes status seeking possible and attractive (?)

a lot of the motivation for this came from my frustration playing daily runs. for awhile it was difficult to start a fire without getting lucky. now it's quite accessible, so I'm working on refining the processes of igniting, managing fuel, and so on to add more nuanced challenges and decisions