Creating the world for my indie game [DEVLOG] 

Artist tip: in real life, shadows form a single light source create a single shadow, so the pine shadows from the sun would be a flat single shadow. If it’s easy for you, try it out, you might like it. I only mention it because you got joy out of making sure the shadow is cast on the mushrooms. The game continues to look great!

This looks so good! I love the update to the lighting. Though the shadows of the trees overlapping and getting darker definitely stands out! Generally shadows overlap and are the same level of darkness as the original two shadows.

wow you absolutely nailed the pixel isometric style. i want to stare at those trees all day long

Wow, this looks great, the visual style is incredible. It feels like terraria with a bit of factorio, but looks unique and beautiful! Love it

I love your art style, it's unique and very cute! I'm currently working on an isometric indie game too and you're a huge inspiration. Great video, keep going!

this is one of the most eye pleasing 2.5d pixel art game I've seen, cant wait for more

Really enjoy the insight-per-minute ratio of this dev log! 5 minutes or less is so refreshing.

a little toning down on the transparency of the grid lines on each tile would make the world look more cohesive and immersive, most importantly. i absolutely adore how this is turning out now!

I love the art (and background music). An idea that I had for a survival game is that the monsters at night are after you and your "heartstone" or something. The heart stone would be the only thing that regenerates your health, so you need to protect it. Something like Minecraft meets tower defense. Ofc, as you progress you can build more/choose powerups for the stone.

Dungeons or dilapidated structures as some hints to explain the world. Also would love to see some regions/biomes that may require something to enter them, maybe some rune from other region and etc.

Literally just liked and subscribed based on thumbnail alone. This is beautiful isometric work.

The game looks great, good job! One minor correction: Cellular Automata is a giant field of mathematics with many different things in it, not just the 1D "Wolfram Codes" that you mention in the video. There's a ton of fun stuff to study and/or code in the field of Cellular Automata :D

I know everybody says it, but I will say it too, the game looks amazing, especially now with the shadows. As for suggestions, idk where you want to go with this game, but I think ruins would look cool, like random pillars with moss on it or vines. Also more variations of rocks, trees and bushes, but this could be let at the end.

Your pixel art style is so good and unique, at 0:47 those buildings you made look similar yet nice due to the 2.5D perspective

nice project ! if you want an idea, I would say focus on the gameplay and give a feel the player will be rewarded everytime it does an action. For example chopping tree will fall some wood and gain you some xp and lvl up

TBH I preferred the island look, it focuses more on quality than quantity and one could Unlock new parts 🤔 but I'm still happy with what you worked out! 😀

The game would need something different about it. Something to make it stand out. I am recommended lots of dev log videos by RU-vid and I have seen a lot of people gravitate to make this sort of game, as well as games that have already come out. some of those games would include: Terraria, Stardew Valley, Forager, and Goblin Island. BUT on the other hand, not everything needs to be the most groundbreaking, new, or different. The game just needs to be fun. It looks fun to me . :) I hope you succeed. I want to play this one day.

I originally searched some pixel art video for inspiration to practice for a gameproject. Now I found a game that I dont really know yet what it is about but love the artsytle and interactions that are already in the game that I look foreward to see how it turns out. Looks really cool what you created there. Nice one!

I'm subscribing without even watching, I feel it'll be worth

Looks great, and the open world was the right choice. So much to look at, so many things to click one at a time lol. Consider adding stone walls so that you can create elevation. Rolling hills, cliff sides, etc. Stairs to go up them, etc. Keep it up :D

The visuals are absolutely stunning!

damn the art style is so nice looks great so far man keep it going!

I've played mobile mini game that made of mini pre made challenges on islands that are connected randomly - it gets old very fast so small connected islands may be good idea for style of a biome or some kind of challange in larger game but not key gameplay. There is a ton of games with randomly generated dungeons where you progress floor after floor - they are good for at least one game clear and generation is needed for dungeon to make floor you finished not being the same every time. Separate large islands generation would be best in this case - entering new island would be very exciting after mastering previous one. It is hard to say if open world better or not. It depends on your overall idea of a game. If the game is about surviving in generated environment consder using both methods or even more. Minecraft have a ton of mods with diffirent generation patterns for a reason. Pre made levels are best for linear game or places like hometown. If your choice is open world like in minecraft or terraria I guess you'll need to focus on the some kind of goal and scenarios of accomplishing it. Start with a simple goal, think how many ways you can have for accomplishing it. Survivals often falls for a one possible path. Minecraft is strong in other cases but also has this problem. Kill the dragon with a diamond sword or explosive bed gets old after 1-2 times at least for me. I think in this kind of game replayability is measured as scenarios multiplyed by number of goals. Terraria is better in this case it has multiple builds for player. I played enough survivals for 3 hours and left because of 1 goal and 1 approach problem and generated world does not help it - its just mixed decoration in this case. Open world without goal may be fun but i think indie dev should not consider it because game becomes more of a tool not a game by itself. From this I can imagine dozens of diffirent approaches you can take from tower defense to rogue like. But from what you have now i think you should make floor by floor progress game challenging player again and again with new stuff on diffirent island with unique biome and goal. I can imagine game loop like collect recources -> enchance character -> slay king slime or survive 5 days in desert biome -> enchance your character permanently -> start a new biome -> finish all biomes start a hard mode. And you can add challanges as much as you want. Enchancing character permanently will change the way player interact with world each time and add excitement to try new ability. Uh I got carried away a bit. This is just my thoughts - most important is to make what you feel the best. The isometric pixel style is enough for me to wait for new stuff you will show - good luck! :)

i think it would have been interesting if you had kept the island genre instead of the open world and you could have made some island have different stuff and mobs but either way im looking forward to your game

This game looks so pretty! Seriously awesome work, I’m looking forward to see where you bring it :)

I'm trying to achieve something similar on my channel. I think having a great colour pallete and shadow effects make a huge difference. You sir have given me so much inspiration and ideas for my own project. ^^ Love the work!

I’m so glad I found this, I’m about to go to school, I’m programming technician by trade, so it’s nice to see people doing smth with programming, your game looks amazing, I want to see where you go with it, so you got my subscription

Your art looks gorgeous, so I wonder if it can shine even more without the grid, especially for an open world game. If you haven’t already, you could try getting rid of the grid lines completely and only having them appear if the player needs to place something on the grid

The island aproach could have been really athmospheric and unique, feel to it, but the way you wanted to implement it (if I interpreted it right) would feel like just the game being limited, thus lazy. Therefore I really like the new openworld aproach, I think often going the conventional way, is better than one might think. I really look forward to trying this in the future.

It reminds me of Forager in a good way. Keep up the good work.

daaang the game looks so beautiful. very inspiring ngl. ❤ hope to see more updates in the future!

This is great stuff! Such a good job! I was trying to make attempts at a similar project myself but a full-time job is always in the way, I am glad for someone to make my dream live! I was really excited to make terrain with levels, as you generate a noise already it'll be not that hard to make another one and smoothly elevate areas of the map by one block, Maybe it'll be challenging to make shadows right, but it'll add so much to a game visually and break up a flat concept. I was doing this myself in my pet project and this change boosted the prototype so far. Hope you will consider the idea, keep on, you doing amazing!

Wow that's incredible, very inspiring! I tried some procedural generation stuff and it was ok haha. But your worlds look very cool! Nice work.

OMG, your game looks extremely cute! 😍

look great, I think the floating island idea is original, the open world one is done alot of times. I havent seen many games with the crafting/placing mechanic and on floating island. also honestly I would make the crafting system simpler. like maybe similar to minecraft with the furnace, only two ui elements. Im new to this channel, so I cant wait to see how it will go :)

What a vibrant world! My game will be only in the inside of a tavern, but boy I wish I had something that looked at least close to this. The devlogs I'm uploading here are working as a motivation keeper!

Subscribed within the first 30 seconds. This looks awesome! :D

You can stack wave collapse functions to keep things original and lively, this also opens up lots of combinations for your stack of sets.

wow, dude! this looks amazing! I'm hyped! keep going 💪

Your game looks so good. I can't wait to play this game!

this looks really cool! My only suggestions, for later lvls, would be a change in scenery/different biomes? Like a biome with black earth and dead trees (spooky forest), maybe poisonous puddles and lakes. Also, if you wanted, you could make the floating island its own section of the game! Maybe a different dimension? Or, maybe you could have them like floating dungeons, and when the player is under their shadows, they can somehow ascend to them, and that will give them the chance to try and potentially conquer the dungeon, take the rewards. It'd also give the players the chance to potentially make cool bases on the floating island, kind of like you would in minecraft in a pyramid or a jungle temple

This was so well presented! Thank you for this great video.

games got a good art style. I'd recommend adding some water, and dirt to break up some of the green.

Clear enough to follow, pleasant game to look at. Instant subscribe.

Pls continue, I feel something special building up in this game.

Be careful using seeds to regenerate the level in real-time. SDK updates can change the rng's, OS's can do different things in them too. It's better to use the seeds once to create the terrain, but then keep the resulting landscapes (compression can help here). This also has the benefit that you can make a manual pass on the generated result to refine gameplay or add bespoke areas.

The art is so clean, i love this. Definitely will be keeping an eye on the project. My only suggestion is that you make the grid a bit lighter. Still visible, but more subtle as it's a bit distracting and cluttering the visuals a bit. Another thing you could experiment with is different hues for grass and trees, just to add some variety with subtle splashes of yellow and blue here and there.

randomly bumped into your video. Game looks great! Interested to see how you take it forward :)

I think some kind of terrain elevation would be interesting, it could make the world less flat, but I think the trees already help with that a lot. But different terrain heights could maybe cause problems with the camera or your lighting system.

Whilst I'm not too clear on some of the game mechanics it's looking very nice so far. Looking forward to more updates!

This game looks super cute! Edit: the flashing when gathering resources is a bit intense, maybe have an option in the menu to make that effect less eyestrainy?

yo know something really nice is that it is actually all pixelised so no rotated pixels (which imo rlly breaks the immersion in these kinds of games)

Honestly, I feel like the islands were a good idea and can be expanded upon. In my opinion too many survival games use the format you switched to. You will still be making a great game, I just think the island concept you had was unique.

The game looks awesome. I love the art!

Hi. I just found your channel, and I think you have big potencial. Your game's grapichs are on the top, and your style for the video is also very informative!!

I really like the transition to the more "open world" system, however I think the "islands" could be an asset for the mid-late game content as a new part of the world

First time i see your Devlog so I don't know how advance you are on your game but it's a beautiful world that you created here. As I said, I don"t how advance you are so I permit myself to tell you that you should add biomes, or things like this to upgrade it, if it wasn't in your mind. I'm full of kindness, I don't blame you and I'm open to discuss about this ^^. Beautiful job (I love pixel's game), have fun for this project ! Nice job buddy

I believe transitioning from the island format to an open-world design is a good idea. It has the potential to significantly increase the player experience and immersion into your game.

I just came across your channel and immediately subscribed. This game looks already so good! I love the simple design and the open world seems better than the island idea that you had. I think you could also improve the game by adding the item drops (when you cut the tree the items would drop on the ground and then would be picked up automatically) not sure if this will be hard to do so this is just an idea 😊 it's definitely not necessary the game looks amazing as is. Keep up the good work ❤

This looks brilliant. I am so glad to see this incredible project.

First time seeing your game and it looks great, I don't know what your vision is but I think this would look even more beautiful without the gridlines permanently on the ground.

Gosh this world is gorgeous. Hope i can make a game this pretty someday!

Looks very good - looking forward to following this project. This is probably best a feature for later down the line, but I think it would be a good idea to have the grid be toggleable - I reckon without the individual lines the scenery would become more appealing.

Wave function collapse is my favorite, I kinda expected you to mention it from the beginning of the video

I realy like how your game looks, I hope you will continue soon :)

I really need a video of you just going around this world with this song in the background so I can enjoy coding :D

Dig the vibe and look, very curious to see where this is going. I'm a fellow game developer and love seeing others progress alongside mine.

I really like this type of isometric larger scale forest/world map, possibly heavily influenced by AOE2 when I was a kid. It used to the trend for old rpg game in Nokia and early Andriod even early mmorpgs that has a combat system like diablo or Zenonia (a early android game series). Don't know when nobody make this type of game anymore. Really nostalgia (in a good way) and lovely, it still has infinite potentials (map (weather season, light) style wise like maplestory, play style wise, monster variation) to explore.

beautiful content and beautifully looking project. keep on going!

I've actually spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what makes procedural generation work and what makes it not work. I've narrowed it into two major things; Structureless and dead worlds. By structureless worlds, I mean that procedural generation will produce interesting and distinct features but, as you zoom out, the procedural generation always becomes more uniform. If the world feels uniform, players will become lost both physically and narratively. Having distinct landmarks that players can assign meaning to is very important. These landmarks don't have to be truly unique but they do have to be large enough or rare enough that they cannot be considered common or repetitive. For example, if I were to say 'The mountain' then everyone familiar with my world should know which mountain I'm talking about. By dead worlds, I mean the world doesn't feel lived in; The world seems more like a snapshot in time rather than a world that creatures inhabit. There are two general solutions. The first is to make the world more dynamic; Introducing mechanics that change the world without the player's intervention like seasons. This can be difficult to do and doesn't always fit with the game's mechanics. Another solution is to trick the player; Create structures in the world that server the purposes of its inhabitants rather than the player. These structures might be anything from roads that 'other people' use or burrows for wildlife. The world should serve the purposes of more than just the player; Otherwise, it will feel empty. From a technical perspective, getting large features in a procedurally generated world can be difficult because the world is generated in chunks. You're constrained to continuous functions to produce a continuous world. This isn't entirely true; There are strategies to generate continuous worlds with non-continuous functions. I've experimented with tiered generation. The idea is to generate a very large scale but low quality representation of the world. It would only include details like 'there is a city here and a road there.' From that, you generate progressively more detailed representations of the world as the player approaches. Here is a video where I originally got the idea. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GJWuVwZO98s.html&ab_channel=runevision

Yay a new video! subbed hoping it would one day come 🫡 love the style

dude this game looks sick!

Love the direction everything is going.

I need this on my wishlist on steam ASAP!!!!!

An idea for the slime, I’ve always loved that in Terraria the slimes sometimes have a chance of dropping some random material as they picked it up from somewhere You could have a rare chance for them to drop something, and depending on the slime type and rarity, depends on the loot tables Though I’m not sure if you are working on that aspect of the game yet

Damn 🥹 the pixel are so crisp 🥵

Love the visuals, keep up with the good work!

It reminds me of Moonstone Island!

Damn the game's so pretty. Subbed to see more.

this game looks so pretty already

the islands make it look less flat. i think adding some vertical elements would help that.

Graphics look Amazing! Open world looks alot better imo. Id love to see Some level progression with xp for gathering, combat, crafting, etc.

You have a start, but you should spend some time to think about the end of the game so you can plan and design the path. I mean designing every elements and how they will work between them, then trying to anticipate if the game will be fun before making it If you keep making things at the day and change big aspects of the game in production (in will happen anyway) you take a risk that first never finishing it and second, it will not be fun

Perlin noise is a great way for performant noise generation. How are you storing player coordinates in memory? A lot of bigger open world games move the entire world instead of the player, so that the player remains at 0,0 always. Otherwise the further you get from 0,0 the less accurate physics and other nearby calculations become, because floating point math is less accurate with really big and small numbers.

i love the stylistic choices

I dont understand much, Im too stupid

so much progress nicely fit in 3 minutes wow

This game looks gorgeous!

This looks great! I wish i knew where exactly to start from for game dev lol all i know is messing up terrains and downloading assets in unity

very cool i want to make my own indie game too

I feel like shadows shouldn't be darker if they overlap. Not sure how you implemented it but maybe draw the shadows in a layer at full transparency, and then set the alpha to translucent after all the shadows are drawn.

This looks nice!

Beautiful art

this style is crazy good

only 308 subs? I'm sure you'll reach 1000 by the end of this month if not week.

Congratulations on blowing up! People are really digging your art style. Any tips on beating the YT algorithm?

this is looking amazing! however i would suggest removing the grid on the plain grass tiles, i think it would look cleaner

You should probably use Simplex Noise because it is better (don’t ask in which way) and probably faster. Great video!

I would love to to see 3 biomes each with their own resources

Your game looks really cool.