Let's Make A Game - Episode #177

It's a beautiful rainy spring day on the East Coast. And we're going to make games together. Look, let's just hang out, guys. Let's hang out. I'll try and answer questions as I work. I've got a ton of bugs to work on. So, come on in. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Hey, I wanted to say a huge huge thank you to George, Wesley, David, David, Ryan, Alexis, Irwin, Philip, Adrian, Ar- Arvind, Mark, Ross, and K. Davis. Welcome to Full Time Game Dev. By the way, if you want a shout out in my next live stream, check out the sponsor of today's video, Full Time Game Dev, which is my massive program. Um it's 40% off for the next, let's see here, double check. I I extended it by 4 hours for you guys. Uh you got 4 hours left. 4 hours left to enroll in Full Time Game Dev. Get 40% off. This is a massive sale. I do this probably maybe every season. Um when

there's a seasonal seasonal shift. I'm not sure what I'll do for the summer, but for this one you got 40% off for the next 4 hours plus 2D and 3D art pro completely free. These are my art programs. Look, if you want to get into game dev, and you want to one day, hopefully, turn it into a paycheck, and potentially do what I'm doing. I can't make any promises, but I can tell you what I've learned. There's thousands of other courses out there. There's tons of other YouTube channels. There's tons of other YouTube content. And all of this stuff is great, but if you want to be taught by an actual indie game dev who's actually published currently by 3D Realms working on his third commercial release, if you want to be uh taught by someone who knows how to get funding on Kickstarter. I've been funded on Kickstarter twice, each about $100,000 um for both projects. Or if you want to learn how to get press coverage, and you want to learn from somebody who's actually done it. I've been featured by Time magazine, Washington Post, Kotaku, PC Gamer. Or taught by somebody who's had YouTubers play his games. Okay, recently

actually with my Twisted Tower demo. Tons of big YouTubers played the game. I could teach you how to do that. So, it's a business course, it's a marketing course. It's a development course. That's Unity, Godot, Unreal, whichever engine you want to learn, it's in the course. There's art programs as well. I think this is a great course. I really do. Chris Stair, Bart Mamzer, Everflux Games, they went full-time with the help of the course. So, check out the reviews below. And by the way, if you're a student, let me know in the chat what you think about the program. And thanks as always, guys, for letting me do these ad reads. Um it supports the podcast. I'm trying to build this big podcast. Um it's going great. Um but any support you guys have is awesome. And obviously, this supports you and your future if you enroll. So, it's a win-win for both of us. So, check it out below. And if if that's not something you're interested in, check out the webinar below. Totally free. It's going to teach you how to turn a demo into a six-figure paycheck. No promises on any of these things, guys. I can just tell you what I've

learned. All right, come on in, guys. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. How's everybody doing? How's the weather where you guys are right now? It's like one of the most depressing It's like a race car head outside. Um it is very rainy and and cozy and kind of beautiful. Space Dodo says, "I like the The podcast is nice." Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let me pull the chat up and put it right there. And then we're going to get busy. We're going to just hang out. Guys, throw on some lo-fi. Throw on some jazz. And let's get going. Really, really cozy here. Okay. Um Where's Where's the live stream here? There it is. I'm going to grab the chat and put it right on my camera there so I can see you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank I always have to do this. And I'm thinking about starting a new live show. It's called Dev uh Game Dev Plays. And I want to play normal games. Like it's fun playing indie games,

um but I'm thinking about playing normal games like Resident Evil. Uh I'm really interested in playing Resident Evil 4. I want to I want to find the time to play games, but I will also love working. So I'm like, "Hey, let's do it on YouTube." What do you guys think about that? The idea is to play it from a developer's perspective and sort of analyze it um and offer my thoughts uh as a game developer about a popular game. That's kind of the idea. So I'd love your thoughts about what you guys think about that cuz I might do it today if I have time. Um Blue skies in England not the norm. Amy says it's sunny in the UK. Leonidas says RE4 is sick. Yeah, I think I want to play it. Okay, um Guys, let's take a look at what we have to work on today. This is due on April 25th. Okay, all of this stuff right here is due on April 25th, which concerned I'm a little concerned. We can

see here we've got basically 2 weeks. I'm also moving. So this studio, bye-bye. Um so it's going to that's going to be a pain in the butt, too. I'm going to miss this studio a lot. It's gross in Tennessee. Yeah. Yeah. That's close close to where I'm at. Okay, um Let's Let's Let's do some low-hanging fruit here, okay? Um Change name of floor three to Clown Casino. Okay, I can do that. Go to startup. Clown Casino. Good. That's it. So that's done. It It always feels good try and find a low-hanging fruit from your uh task list, guys. And I highly highly highly recommend task list for your game. Um even if you're solo, even if you're not working with anybody, even if you don't have a budget, create one, manifest one in the

abstract. A budget, a schedule, a list of things to do. Guys, it's okay if it changes. You don't have to stick to it, but you need to have something cuz it keeps you sane and it makes you feel better. Watch this. Ooh, that felt good. Okay. Remove the flyers from the bridge on floor three. Make it turrets in this room and something to hide behind. Got it. Okay, so let's go do that. Where am I? Wait, what? Oh, here it is. So, here's the uh the room and there's flyers here and these are really annoying. This is not a good room for these enemies. Not at all. So, instead, my theory with this room is that it's best to do a turret. Um and so, and if we turn on the the uh effects here, you'll see why it it's much prettier.

Um there you go. Yep. So, my theory is put like a turret. Um let's see here. I break these. If we put a turret here, the problem with this is that there's nothing to hide behind, right? So, I'm going to do something like this. See if we can like rotate this. Create some kind of wall that you can hide behind. Hmm. Should there be enemies in this area at all? Well, why Why we do this? This might be a terrible place for turrets. Why don't we do this? Let's think about the jump zones. For some reason they're able to jump across, which is very annoying. So, let's double-check. Yeah, that is ridiculous. So, let's get rid of that one. Actually,

No, let's get rid of that. That's That's weird. So, I'm I'm cool with having just a couple flyers here. Maybe one there and one there. Okay. And How do you How do I make my textures? Well, all of these textures are photoshoped. This is from Hollow Pine. All of my textures are from um textures.com or they're just custom, right? Point being, I want them both to be like royalty-free, meaning I I've paid for the license or they're just from scratch. So, it's funny, you know, a lot of people think, "Well, I'm just going to go download an asset pack." Or they think, well, or or the idea is I got to do it all from scratch. Instead, you should you should flip it, right? So, you should flip textures, you should combine your own custom art with assets you find. So, in this case, if I open up this in Photoshop, like this stripe texture here, you'll see exactly what it is. Give me just a sec. And it typically contains various

textures in one material. Like a normal map texture, that's one thing, and then also um these purple and and and green stripes are another thing, and you sort of merge them together and you get this sort of ugly-looking and it I like it, but it's ugly. It's like this gross texture. Okay, these are cool over here. Um I kind of like the idea of potentially a turret right there. We could try it. Well, let's open up this up Photoshop. You can see I'm so sorry. I'm sniffing, guys. I know you get annoyed when I sniff. But, it's just basically a PSD, and I've just sort of changed the uh the hue and saturation of of the gray to be green. That's basically it. And then you you also have this normal map, and I just grabbed that from textures.com.

Yeah, I'm I'm interested in in creating this sort of puzzle moment here in this hall to sort of give the player a feeling of uh accomplishing something. And um I'm I'm trying to figure out how we could do that. But, there's a lot more. There's a lot more that we can do or that we have to do. And focusing on And doing it here, like creating some sort of puzzle moment, I don't think I want to waste time on that. I want to get the low-hanging fruit done for this entire game, get it fully playable, and then and then we'll work on Let's do a cannon here.

We'll do And then we'll work on uh creating some more unique puzzles cuz like I was talking about this last week. Um Well, first off, I always say this, lean into your forte. My forte, I'm starting to learn, is I love creating puzzles and and moments where the player has to sit and think for a little bit. It's something that I've always felt like I've been good at. Um it's that what me and my brother, we used to do it all the time when we were kids. We'd draw mazes on paper and create keys and maps and stuff and force force each other to sort of go through and finish the level. And I've been doing that with my kids with Magna-Tiles and it's really fun. Um, but it's just it's how my brain has operated for a long time ever since I can remember is basically taking a maze and then placing various tools or like puzzle tools I call them. So, like a keys, and doors, and teleports, and

bounce pads and placing them and arranging them in such a way that is mind-bending. It's pretty straightforward, right? That's game design. But for this game, a lot of the game design's been about the enemies and about the guns. But what I'm learning is that's fun, but all of the stuff that frankly, I just haven't had time to do like puzzles, that stuff I need to jump in and do now. Um, hey Jeb, wake up. Wake up. It's okay. Wake up. Turn the fan on, guys. One sec. All right. What I don't want to do is I don't want to create new rules and new tools and new puzzle elements. I want to use what I've got. So, actually limiting yourself with what you have tends to be a good idea. Um, sometimes you have to create something new, but

Right, exactly, Space. Space says the demo felt like Ocarina of Time dungeons and I liked that. 1,000% I would I I think every single floor here in this game is meant to feel like an Ocarina of Time dungeon or uh, the what do you call the the the underground temples in uh Breath of the Wild. And that's that's it. That's kind of the game is. Just little little dungeons, right? Okay. So, you go through here, you walk out, and then you start getting shot. And you're like, "What? Wait." And then you look back. And there it is. That's the idea. We'll see if this actually works. Um let's go ahead and uh clear this uh the save data. And hit play and see how it feels. Shrines, yeah. Juby says, "Hey Thomas, love your podcast and videos. Really amazing

channel." Also, game looks amazing. Thank you. Okay. So, this is the area. I love how it's feels empty. That's really cool. I don't know. But, we haven't loaded stuff here. So, let's load that. So, I break this. Ooh, how did you get over here, dude? I think I kind of want to use a cannon on the other side as well.

The cannon's great because you can dodge it. Yeah, I would say that this game is styled like BioShock, but it's um it's gameplay is more like Zelda in its dungeons. Um which I think it's just great, you know, I I I gravitate more towards Zelda-esque uh, puzzle design and level design. I've always gravitated towards it. And so I'm I'm happy to do it, you know. So we can put one here as well. So basically, the player sees that this might drive them might be really annoying if they're getting hit from behind like that. But, we'll see. We'll We'll do a testing pass and see how it feels. Um, and then they shouldn't be getting shot yet.

There's also part of me that wants to put a teleport down here and they can drop to it and it takes them to like a secret goody up here. That kind of stuff is always really fun to me. You take that. Yeah, but we're not going to do it right now. We're not going to get distracted. We're going to stay paying attention. HP before the room so you don't one shot people. Oh, that's a great idea. So like that you reward the player with like health here or some or some crates. So let's do that. Let's put a crate here. That's a great great idea. And by the way guys, if it's like, "Wow, game dev is easy. You just drag and drop." That's not true. So that's that's

because we have built this entire system. Um, now you can find assets out there, obviously. Breakable crate. Really, I can't find the crate. There we go. So, we can put here in this area, paste it. Zero it out. And then drop it down. Yeah, so all this stuff has been built over 3 years. All of these tools. Every little thing meticulously crafted. And now I can go into the various level designs um and just polish. So, it's kind of like, you know, taking a big piece of granite. You've got to pay for the granite.

Right? You've got to source it and find it and deliver it to your studio. That's kind of all of these assets. And then, when it comes to actually like designing it, it's just chiseling it down. And so, I've got this very basic level. And it works. Felipe's done an incredible job, but we can chisel it down even more and turn it into an actual structure. Okay, so I'm going to make sure that this one necessarily drops two things. Um this one's going to necessarily drop health. So, you can't instantly die. Drop fries. And this one is necessarily going to drop uh like pistol ammo. Ammo pistol fast.

Okay. So, it's going to drop ammo and health. I'm totally fine with that. We're going to go ahead and generate the GUIDs. Solve repeated GUIDs. Thomas, after this game, will you make another 3D game? I may make another shooter. Because I've got this whole system here, I may use it to make another another shooter. I need to fix this uh rotation here. And I already I have it in my head what I want. I don't know why, but for some reason Why can you shoot at me? Okay, there we go. Why Why can you see me? I have no idea why he could see me.

Is there That should be a wall there. Hang on, y'all. I see. There's all these box colliders here. What we need to do is remove all these and put one here. So that he can't see through it. Yeah, so what I was saying was I for some reason For some reason, I really like the Twisted Tower universe. And what I mean is I haven't gotten sick of it for some reason in 3 years. Um And so there's part of me that wants to play in this universe and build in this universe a little bit more. I I have a I have a very strong affinity for clowns lately. I don't know why. I love clown

clowns and carnivals and theme parks and old Disney vibes. I watched Snow White with my kids, the original. The original. I watched that with my kids yesterday. They loved it. There's something so beautiful and and almost like almost biblical in its weight. Um the old Disney movies and and I just love There's something really magical about carnivals and fairs and amusement parks. I don't know what it is. I can't put a finger on it. Um There's something there. I don't know exactly what it is. Anyway, let's let's figure out what's going on with this stupid uh the nav mesh link here. I think there's another one. Yeah, there's all these nav mesh links that allow them to jump across this chasm, which is silly.

We don't want that. So, let's see if there's another one here. Okay, there's Okay, good. So, that's solved. Let's go ahead and do some occlusion. Yeah. Yeah. Reusing the assets. No, I have an I have an idea for another Twisted game. And um I can't I don't want to say what it is, but I want to see if I can do it quickly and and create it with uh the system we have in place here. And just make another Twisted game. Not the assets, but um the uh the system that we have. Fox Eye says, I not like clowns. They are scary for me.

All right. Well, let's go ahead and just take take a look at this little area here and we got we got a Honestly, we got to move forward here. Twisted used car lot. I like that. That's funny. Guys, do you see how this has a uh Well, never mind. Okay, so he can't see me now. So, that was the solution. This is a very quiet, gentle level. And super spooky. So, I don't want to

I have an idea, guys. I know I shouldn't be doing this. But, I have a really cool idea. This is what I love about having a level that's in place. I love being able to go, "Okay. What can I do to make this a little bit more complicated and a little bit more fun?" So, you have you look at it and it's sort of this uh you have your ingredients in front of your face. And then you go, "What can I do to make this more interesting?" Well, my theory is allow the player to dash across. Let me grab this one. And but they have to go at a higher height. So, if I take this and then bring it up to this. Let's double check this really quick. I want it to snap in place.

There we go. We're going to snap it in unit sizes of four. I'm going to set this here to zero. That way I can just drag it up and it snaps. It should That should be just right. I think. No, I think it needs to be right here. Crap. One. There we go. So what I what I'm thinking about doing is making it so that they have to get up here. So with this long sort of chasm, they have to get up here and then dash across to get here. So then you go, "Okay, well, how do I get up here?" Right? Well, we need to find some kind of teleport to get up here.

Sorry, this will make sense, I promise. I think it will. So that's good. Good, good, good. Okay, so he can't get hit yet. He breaks through here. He sees he can't make it across with the dash. So he has to figure out a way to get up here. And so the theory I have is what if you had a teleport all the way at the bottom right here that they drop down to and they hit and it takes them up here. Right? That's the theory. And I know I should not be working on this. Cuz we've got other things to do, but I can't I can't help myself.

We'll put a uh like a light right here, so it's sort of you're able to see a little bit better. But then you can get up here. This. So this means we had two there. There we go. Like teleport up here, then they drop down, and then they can go across with a dash. So I want to try this and see if it's a fun little puzzle.

Does that make sense, guys? Okay, so let's go ahead and uh put a two-way teleport right here. Zero out the rotation. So this is the two-way. This is teleport B. We're going to put it right here. I just love the idea of introducing some kind of teleport puzzle at this point cuz I think the player might be getting bored of the mechanics that we currently have in the game. And so I feel like right now is a good time and we're going to rotate it like this. Right now is a good time to uh

introduce this. I could be wrong. Let's see if this actually works. Right? They're going to see a teleport down here and they're going to get what? I need to go down there? Okay. I'll try. And then they can actually go back on the teleport and go down here and get some free goodies. I love that. That is so fun. So right here we could put a treasure chest. Pick up chest. Like three of them. Isn't that funny? There's something odd about this and I don't know if this is actually a good idea or not. But we'll give it a go. So where is this? Broken hallway left side, is this this?

Yeah, that's that. So if I collapse everything here, I can go ahead and grab the teleporter. Um I'm sorry that the coins and bring them inside of the folder here. Broken hallway left side, good. And the fun here is about to begin. So let's give it a go. The idea is you jump down here and land on that. It takes you up here. And then you can either dash across or you can decide to go back down again by teleporting back into this and getting these goodies and going back up. So, let's try it out. Me and my daughter were playing

what we call I'm calling it like dungeon crawler or something. And we take Magna-Tiles and we build maps with the Magna-Tiles and then we have like jump pads and and you take your fingers and you walk through the level and you have to beat it. And she got so excited when she found out that if she puts a jump pad she can use a jump pad to get over a wall and then she got really excited that you can't get back over to the the other side if there's not a jump pad over here. She went She like did this because she knew it meant that she can create a challenging situation where they have to solve it or the player can get locked and they have to restart the level. So, making things really hard is uh what makes game design so fun. Creating a challenging situation is what makes it so fun. Otherwise, you're just walking through a world. Okay, let's try this out. You guys ready?

I'll remove those. Can't see it. I'm going to need to put a light down there. Ooh. Okay, so I need to stop it the player from being able to get hurt on fall. Feels a little unfair, but we'll see. And then I can dash across. That worked. Am I able to dash across like this? Okay, I still can. So, we need to solve this.

Park Jimin says, "Honestly, I feel like you are the one of the worst game developers out there. Your creative thinking is very superficial and old, and most of your work is not yours, but rather your team's." Okay, Park. Chill, man. Take it easy. I won't argue with you there. I I do think I'm I'm probably the worst. But, I'm enjoying myself. See if we can move this up. Let's see here. If we take this one and then this one, I wonder why. There we go. These two and then these. I don't love that these aren't grouped.

There we go. Okay, it's these two. I'm having trouble selecting them for some reason. Paintings. Then I can grab these as well. There There go. And move it up. Awesome. So down here, it's kind of just quiet, right? If I clear the bake, you'll see why we might need a light right here. Okay, so it's pretty dark right here. Wait.

There we go. Oh, that looks so much better. When it's real time, but hey, that's the way it goes. This is kind of cool, like really dark here. I wonder why I couldn't see that. Is it cuz of the occlusion calling? I think it is. So let's bake it. No, guys, don't worry about Park. I think Park is just I think Park doesn't quite fully understand what making games is, and it's not cuz I used to feel that way, too, which is like I have to do everything from scratch, right? And everything has to be state-of-the-art, and everything has to be unique and new. And uh that's not true. Um number one, you can make games with a team, and it's totally fine. Um number two, you don't have to make everything from scratch. That's okay, too. If you try to do that, you're going to get left

in the dust. Um number three, um what was number three? Oh, you have to reinvent the wheel or be super unique or come up with something new like no, I'm going to use old-school stuff like Zelda dungeon style game dev and design. I'm going to use that all day until I'm in a coffin. Why? Because I enjoy it, and I love it, and I have a strong passion for old school games cuz that's what I grew up with. Um so, don't worry don't worry about uh don't worry about starting up stuff in the chat, guys. We're we're all uh We all need to be nice. Be nice. No reason. Okay, so I want What I want is some sort of light. I guess we could do

Let's see if we can find a lamp of some kind. There we go. We could do a string light. Right? We could do that. I think that's fine. Thomas, how Can you say how well Brave Boy is doing? No, not good. Not good. Brave Boy, I always said Brave Boy is not going to do well. I I've said that from the very beginning. That's why I didn't really market it well. I didn't care to market it because uh well, it's um I don't know. Nobody ever responded to it from the get-go. Even though I love it, I think it's great. Nobody responded to that game well. It was just like kind of kind of a meh response. And that's okay.

But it it's not worth my time if it's not going to do well. Where Why Why can't I see the string lights? There they are. Strange. They're at a weird uh rotation or a pivot point here. So, let's go ahead and set it to local. There we go. And I can bring this here and set it to a baked light. Why is it like that? Okay, so what we're going to we're going to do is just use this as a light source. Like this. And have one light here. I'm going to bring it down. Set the range. I'm going to set this to 1 by 1 by 1. There we go. Squash it just a little bit. Just so I

can walk in here and see a little bit better. Reduce the intensity. Um and then do a flicker. We're going to do subtle and constant. And I think that's all we need to do for this area. I will say though the dropping thing um is potentially a problem. So let's let's try that out and see if we can solve it. Let's see if they got an issue here with some clipping. No clipping up here. There's going to be a real-time light up here. Uh I can get across. So I'm going to delete this. So I walk up here and I immediately am like, "What? How do I get across?" And then I look down and I see that. That's the idea. So let's see if this is any fun. I think it will be fun. Did I develop this game alone? No. Um So I've made

I made a game solo for 5 years. I did the artwork, the music, the the code, the story, hired all the voice actors, um did a Kickstarter campaign, raised $100,000. That was called Pinstripe. That was a solo project. Everything was me. Then I made a game called Never Song. Everything was me except for the code. So, the all of the artwork, all of the music, all of the sound, that was all me. Um then, I signed a deal with 3D Realms, and I was the project lead for this game. So, I was the project lead for 3 years, and art directed everything. Um so, that was the first time I used artists, and musicians, and sound designers. Actually, no, I did the sound. Um so, yeah. This is the first project that I did with a team, like a a full team. Um All right, let's go ahead and enter play mode here. But, now I'm solo again, because the team finished up their work. I'm sort of going in and cleaning it up.

park Okay, let's go. Ooh, this looks good. I really like this. I got to shrink those. So, for some reason, I still can't see it. I don't know why.

Okay, that's really annoying. So, what I want to do is probably put one here, and here, so that I can see them up there. This is really fun. Actually, this hallway is might be one of my favorites. I think it's really interesting. Park says I need to be honest with you, those harsh words I wrote before weren't really about you. I said them to see how you'd react. Oh. That wasn't fair and I had recognized how low it was. But here's the strange truth, you're the only person ever made me believe. Okay, Park, you are forgiven. You are forgiven. As long as you submit to my authority. You are forgiven. I'm I'm kidding. Um and Park, if those are your opinions, it's okay. I disagree with them. And but

it's okay. It's all right. Okay, for some reason I can't see that and I'm trying to figure out why the F not. You know? Is it the occlusion calling? Is there something down there occluding it? That could be the case. Cuz I can't see it and I don't know why. I wonder why that'd be. But we do need to bring it closer to the drop here. Is it disable? Disable renderer. I see. What does that script do?

Why on Earth would that happen? Why would I want to do that? Disable renderer? What is that? That is so strange. No. That's so strange. We want to see it, man. Point light. Spiral. All right, let's try it again. I know for a fact I want to fix both of these things really quick. There's two issues um with this lobby and then we're going to move forward.

By the way, those who are joining us just remember you can join full-time game dev below for 50 40% off. Um it's my course that teaches pretty much everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games. There's a billion ways to make money as an indie game dev. I've kind of done almost I think I've done all of them, honestly. Maybe I I maybe I'm missing one. Um but I've pretty much done them all. So look, if you want to if you want to learn how to take an indie game, um whether it's Unity, Godot, Unreal, I'll teach you about all of them. Uh whether it's 2D or 3D, you'll learn 2D and 3D art in the program. Uh but only for this spring sale cuz it includes the two art programs. Um and you're going to learn how to take it to a publisher and pitch it. And you're going to learn how to pitch it on Kickstarter and do crowdfunding. You're going to learn how to hit the Steam front page. You're going to learn how to get major press coverage like Kotaku, PC Gamer, um Washington Post, Time magazine. It's like, "What, Thomas?

Shut up, dude. You're such a liar." And I'm like, "Well, you can Google it and see that I've done all these different things and I I know you I know how to do it and I could show you how to do it. So, I you know, you can get mad and you can say, well, stop telling me lies. I'm like, I'm not lying. I'm not telling you that I I promise you'll be able to do what I've done, but I can tell you what I've done and I can show you how to do it. Um Why am I getting so frustrated? I think I'm frustrated because people get so fussy about courses and I'm like uh If you want to be taught how to make games from somebody who doesn't do it for a living, then sure. Um go ahead, you know, go to go to college or something. And that's fine. But if you want to learn from somebody who's actually in the trenches doing it, you can I shouldn't get so frustrated. I'm sorry. I should not be getting frustrated. I'll shut up. Okay, game manager. Clear the save data and then so I want to make sure that's in the elevator cuz

it was spawning out here, but also this. You'll notice that this is set to baked. It really should not. This should be a nice beautiful real-time light because it's rotating, right? Um why are there so many point lights though? I guess to add some pink. That's cool, I guess. Okay. Let's go go ahead and bake lighting. Thomas, what did you do to have such nice fonts? Well, the fonts the fonts are the solution. You're asking about TextMesh Pro. TextMesh Pro is great, but that's not why the fonts are great. The fonts are great because the fonts are great. Um and the ability to choose great fonts and understand which fonts look good together. Um so, I in college, I took a graphic design program and that me a graphic design job. Let's go It was called graphic

communications and that gave me a graphic Hold on, let's wait for the bake. And that gave me a graphic design job or It was hard to explain. I I was an email marketer, I did website design, I did print uh print design. I kind of did a lot of stuff. I did motion graphics. And so I did that job for 3 years and during that time, whether it was college or these 3 years at a desk job, I learned how to use fonts. Um I'm not perfect, but I learned which fonts look good together. So like I feel like that looks good together. You've got this nice serif font mixed with this and it's got like thin serifs and then you smash it together with this really old school bold font. And I feel like that kind of combination is what makes fonts look good. Um same sort of thing is true with the Twisted Tower logo mixed with like the actual text of the game. They just work well together. What's my profession? I'm a game developer, I'm a YouTuber, I'm an educator.

Park, what I'm just messing with you, man. Well, you Park, you kind of started it. Uh I'm not And I wasn't mean about it. I just said I just I don't know where that's coming from, bro. I don't know why you'd say that, but um it's okay. And if you feel that way, it's okay. Thomas, I mean you said colla Oh, college. Uh Oh, my profession in college? It was graphic communications. It was like print design. Okay, let's enter play mode here and see if that uh this this light got fixed. I want to be able to see the real-time light moving along with the bake. So, let's see if it looks good.

There we go. So, we've still got all this room baked, guys, but we have this real-time light rotating, which makes it feel much more dynamic in here. At half the cost. Oh! By the way, um this uh the teleport that I Ooh, Thomas, what are you saying? I I worked on teleports with you guys last week. I got them working really well, so they rotate towards the door now. Thank god. Um so, we can actually do a puzzle with them. Okay, I need to get the elevator card, good. So, I just wanted to play from the beginning of the level all the way to this final part. That flickering light adds a lot,

actually. Here we go. Super dark, but that's great. I can't get over. So, let's just drop down and see if we can do it. Oh, man, that sucks. For some reason, it didn't work. Crap. Oh, crap. As fun as that is, it just doesn't work. And I don't think I have the time to fix it. Why doesn't it work?

Why doesn't it work? Whoa. I think I moved the wrong thing. Please God. So, this my theory is is that the box collider's in the wrong spot. There it is. Okay. So, I ruined I moved this and I shouldn't have. Will you forgive me, guys? So, we just need to move this over and then it should work just fine. And the theory is is that I should I should basically stop the velocity of the player once they land here. So, once they touch the teleport trigger, we should set the velocity to zero.

I'd like to set the fall velocity of the player controller to zero on line 60. Um Although, I will say I feel like I feel like it should already do it, but let's set it to 5 by 5 by 5. No, no, no, that's good. We could set it higher, though. Just for this one. And let's try it out. Oh, and let's remove this guy cuz it is kind of annoying right here. That's super annoying. And maybe we could put uh Yeah, we could put them on the floor. Right? Like this, so the player can see it clearly. You really want to give the You don't want it to feel too unfair. So, the player lands here, they look right here and they start getting shot at, and so they can back

up. Right? It's pretty straightforward. There we go. Right? Thomas, you're going to be back in 5 hour Oh, 1 and 1/2 hours? Probably, Spectrum. Yeah. Midlo. That's the funniest comment I've ever read in my life. Oh, man. Y'all are silly. But I'll take it, Midlo. I'll take it. And I'll use that comment to sleep at night when I feel bad about myself.

Okay. Um Jason, quiet your mouth. I'm sick of it. You always jump in the chat, and you think you're so cool, and you start saying snarky comments. Anyone named Jason needs to stop with anything. Just stop. Don't talk. Don't say anything. Um But Jason, take a look at what we're working on right now. I'm trying to make this cool little puzzle zone. My theory is if if I if I approach this game with Doom 2016 or like Serious Sam and like and lean into that or maybe even Painkiller and then every like 10 minutes you throw in a puzzle. Just a little subtle puzzle to make the player feel smart. You've got a winning game.

Okay, we'll go right here. All right, this is the final test for this area guys and then we can cross it off our list and move forward. I I will say that this level felt a little rushed at the beginning. So, I'm glad that we're adding this little puzzle moment. Yay, it works. I just need to rotate that. Can't return. Actually, you can. Yes. Yeah, you can return.

I kind of want to make the player jump to it. Ooh. Youssef says, "Hey Thomas, I enjoyed the demo." Great. Thomas, are you going to do the game reviews or playing your games series again? Probably not. Probably not. It's resulting in Um I've had several people in reviews feel like I was being mean in them and I wasn't being mean. I wasn't trying to be or it just felt mean and I I felt like I was hurting game devs and so I just want to stop. It was making me feel bad. Let's move this forward a little bit. Force the player to jump to it. And then

We do 4 by 4. Just make it a little bit bigger. Yeah, sorry guys. I might jump in again. I I just I was having a hard time stopping myself from being sarcastic. And I am I like being sarcastic. It's one of my favorite things to be. But um it wasn't a good tone for those kind of videos because people put so much effort into them. So, I just stopped. Right?

Make them sign a disclaimer. No. But I might I might just play regular games though. It's not No, I mean I that's the thing is if I was if I made a game and then I submitted it to Thomas and Thomas had negative things to say, I'd probably go I'd probably cry a little bit. Because it Seriously, I I've cried before. I got ripped apart by IGN or not IGN, Indiecade and IGF for my demo submissions when I was younger, and it hurt so bad. It like felt so painful. And I But, then again, I took it and made a great game. So, that's kind of what you have to do with bad feedback or negative feedback. If the player dies, they have to start

over. So, I'm going to put a little checkpoint there. I'm I'm not going to have the jump. Thomas playing my first game caused me to stop working on it after a full year of work. Jason, Tug Max says, "Well, I'm just kidding, by the way, Jason. Tug Max says, 'Why upset a solo dev in review in a review when you can upset a whole team of devs reviewing AAA games?'" Well, they're used to it. That's the thing, you know, a a AAA team, they're used to getting negative

reviews. And so, that's why I think it's it's going to be And they're not going to notice me, you know. They don't know who I am. Whereas a lot of indies really respect what I have to say, which I don't I'm not like super smart. Um I have a I guess I have influence. But yeah. Let's Let's do a bunch of these going down. Okay, that's all we need. And then I'm going to move this one up. These goodies, no. Don't need those anymore. Look, I I've every single game I've ever worked on gets negative feedback, guys.

Or negative reviews. It's just what happens. It's It's how it goes. And it's It's one thing to um Yeah, there we go. This looks great, actually. It's one thing to to get negative feedback. It's another thing entirely to get it publicly. And I think a lot of indies who submit their games aren't fully aware of what it's going to feel like. Yay, Thomas played my game. But to play it on a live stream and I I got to admit, you know, most of the games I play aren't very good. And so you're just going to get you're going to get publicly criticized. And I I don't I don't know if I want to do that anymore. It's very painful for a lot of people. So And Jason, you and I talked about this, actually, about like how do I approach this? And uh how should I approach it? And I thought, well, what if I do it if I

frame it as a roast, maybe that'll be better, but I don't think that would help. Okay, so we're not going to leap like that. We're going to actually drop down below. So I'm going to be like I could even do this. That and then just sort of dangle it like it's broken. I think this will be kind of fun. Drop down, go into there, it brings you up here and you're like, "Where am I?" And then let's rotate this a little bit. We need to rotate this so it's facing the correct location. Let's go to pivot. local I think it needs to be at 90. I think. Nope. This. There we go.

So, if I take a look at the arrow, it's pointing crap. Where's the arrow pointing? Really? I should have an arrow here. We're going to have to test this again, guys. Give me a sec. Yeah, Arcanstone said it well. There's a sweet spot you need with indie and solo game devs or a dev games. Too little or soft criticism and the game comes out bad, too much and the game doesn't come out at all. It's right. I That's all I've ever done though, Jason, is I I think that's what you're saying. I've only ever played games that

are submitted to me. I don't play random games. So, I mean, I get it. I get why you guys might want me to play more, but I just it hurts me. I go to bed feeling gross. I hope it's not I hope this isn't too personal, but I hope all goes well with selling your house and moving. You mentioned in the last podcast. Any insights into what's going to happen next? Yeah, we're we um me and my wife want to move sort of to some acreage. So, we got some acreage and we're going to build out there. Um

Yeah. Generate the lighting cuz it looks a little off. And hopefully this area will be done. That chopper game was hilarious. I agree with you. Um Why does the portal spiral not have a rotation animation? That's a good question. Thank you, Ryujin. No, I I I I met I I was hanging out with a friend and he has a horse and I I was petting the horse and kissing the horse and massaging the horse and hugging the horse and playing with the horse and I realized that I love horses. And so, I'm like, well, if I if I want horses, I got to live on some land and get a horse. And so, I'm going to try and get a horse next year.

Cuz I like the horse made me happy. I felt like felt like twice as happy. And I was like, well, if the horse makes me happy, I have to get a horse. The horse was Well, the horse was a bigger horse. It was cute horse, and I kissed the horse's nose. And I think that's when I realized I love horses, and horses are Well, horses are Horses are I love horses. Mr. Nam Nam says, "Horses are like 10 times as expensive as children." Yeah, that's what everybody keeps telling me. And then I met my friend who has a horse, and I went over to his house, and he was like, "This thing cost me nothing." Cuz he doesn't ride it. Um Okay.

I think, guys, I think we're good to go here. Let's just double-check, and then we can move on to the next task. This took way too long. Surprise, surprise. Oh, yeah, we're getting goats. Definitely going to get into goats. They're just I feel like there needs to be more light right here. Okay, so I was facing that direction. Let's go back, though. Okay. Okay, so I I feel like, yeah, so I need to rotate it this way. There we go.

I'm thinking, what if there was a lock here and you had to go back and do something? Like there's a hidden lever. And you can only see it from that side and you're like, "Oh, I got to get that lever." You know what I mean? Let's try again. Let's take a look. Let's say you jump across and you're like, "Wait, it's locked." And you're like, "What do I do?" And you look back and maybe you see it on the ceiling or something.

Or a grapple target. I think it's good for now. Let's not overcomplicate this little puzzle. I'm going to have fun with it, though. Reading the chat here. Uh Thomas, do you think that every good game must be a shooter? No. No. What was the problem? Oh, I just need to rotate this. Rotation. Yeah, see how it's facing this way? I just need to rotate it. Like this. To 90 and then it's good. All right, guys. We got that done and I feel pretty good

about it. What do you guys think about that little puzzle? Tuck back just retracted a message and I want to know what it was. Um Highlight it with a light. Put on the red light. I think this down here just needs more light. I really do. So, I'm going to Is that baked? No, let's make that real time. And then scale her up. I'm going to clear the lighting. Yeah, you might be right. Uh

Ray Castedly says Thomas Kristakowski said horse games are an untapped market. That's hilarious. Wait. Uh did I just bake everything? No, I didn't. Um Okay, I think I know what I want to do here. Let's uh crank up the range and the intensity. We're going to do shadows. There we go. So, I walk in here, it's flickering. And that should be good. We're going to bring it down a little bit. The shadows are way too intense. And then now all I got to do bake the lights but I Yep, we're going to bake the lights and then we're going to move on, okay? Thomas uh Spectrum says the main reason for you to go back to your game reviews is they are high value. Better to hear

one bad feedback and fix it up than to release and get hundreds of bad reviews. Yeah. Tuck, you're in trouble. I'm just kidding. Um Ellie says, "I I don't this that the demo statistic is accurate enough because even though I want to buy it and play it, I intentionally didn't download the demo to play the game on release." Yeah, probably. All right. Uh let's go to uh um I'm like really, really wanting nicotine right now. Um

Here we go. Let's clear it out. So, remove the flyers from the bridge on floor three. We did a little bit more than that. Music and ambience on both levels. Yeah, sure. Um so, this is pretty straightforward. I think that all I need to do is

Well, let's think here. Do I want any public domain music? Maybe. Let's first Let's first just get the music done, okay? Oh. Lightning and thunder. Thomas, are you doing Lent? No. I'm uh not Catholic. I know that you can do it and not be Catholic, but I'm not Catholic, so yeah. Okay, uh this song here is good. Clown Casino. How big is it? Let's take a look. Okay, covers the whole area. We really don't want that. So, what we want to do is we want to find one public domain track,

like a public domain cartoon, that we can put on this level. Cuz this song, in my opinion, can get a little annoying. Also, arena tracks. So, let's just get the song working, all right? Um, and then we also I don't think we're going to have combat tiers for this level. No, yeah. Mhm. Intro area. Where's the intro? Is it right here?

Okay. Wow, this level is super complicated. I love it. Wow, okay. Such good level design from Philippi. So, this is the elevator. Look at that, guys. The majority of the level goes behind the elevator, which is really cool. Um But, yeah, the the 3D audio here, what I want to do is position it so that you just hear this creepy creepy clown Yeah, let's let's do this. Let's Let's Let's have some fun here. We need old TV shows playing. So, I'm going to put this here. So, this is the music. And if you're anywhere on this side,

you're going to hear music playing. Whereas over on this side here Okay, we That's fine. We can do that, and then we can do I'm going to copy this. Delete. Delete. Yeah, let's copy this here. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to shrink this down, and I'm going to put it over here. Cuz I believe Let's see here. The player They go over here, down here. And then they do some crap over here. Yeah. So, I want them to start hearing music while they enter this hallway. This is the hallway we were just in. So, I want them to hear music here. Yeah. And here. So, these are the places

they're going to hear music. Once they beat this part, they enter reenter this lobby area, and all they're going to hear is public domain music. Uh that's great. I think there's nothing wrong with that. The ticket room I don't think there's a ticket room on this level. So, I'm going to delete that. And then we have this public domain section. Okay. Or yeah, right here. So, this is the intro area. And we're going to have I can't see it for some reason. There it is. We're going to hear public domain music playing right here in this intro area. Right? Um make sure it's properly set up. Yep, we're good. And then we have this song here, which is

That sounds like Disney World. That doesn't sound like clowns. Now that you have heard my story Is Coco the Clown public domain? Let's take a look. 1933 James Let's see. So, his first appearance pre-1925.

Okay. Let's see here. Coco the Clown. What's that song called? Let's uh archive. internet.

Let's go to audio. And let's look for some more carnival-sounding songs. We can use our filters here. Uh we're going to do 1900 or 1910 to 1925. Or or was it 1930? Um Stop. No. What?

Coco the Clown. Let's Let's see here. Let's see. I doubt it'll find anything. Let's do 1920, 1930. And we should find some like jazz we could use. What's this one? We're just going to find something. I

think 1920s music by default kind of matches this environment. We'll see. No. I stream daily when I feel like it. So, yeah. It's just whenever I feel like it. To answer your question. Like this guys, this song it does really work. I I think if if there's any song that works great, it's Coke this uh Coco the Clown one.

So, let's let's hear this out, you know, and go from there. Yeah, 1930s jazz big band is would be great for this kind of music. Let's hear it out though. Why can't I hear it? Some reason I can't hear it. What's it at? Point four. But, there's no music playing.

Where is it? There we go. I think that kind of works. Honestly, let's let's feel this out.

Yeah, so for some reason we don't hear a lot of it and so I think it's going to make it bigger. Um So, let's see where we're going wrong here. For some reason I can't hear it. Yeah, I guess I could just make the the max distance bigger. There we go. Let's try that. I Yeah, I'm I am crossing my fingers that this song is public domain cuz I like it's actually public domain cuz I really like it. This is great.

I think this should be a place to loot and relax, honestly. So, I'm going to get rid of that uh that turret. It just disrupts the player too much. Let's turn off the gizmos. Let's go find the area. I think it's over here. Yeah. And I mighty I might even move this real boy station in here to give the player a moment to like, "Oh, I can just uh make some upgrades."

It's a central hub, you know? As long as we fix the occlusion culling and the light bake, I think we'll be okay by just letting the player upgrade right here. Yeah. Got a real boy station right there. Let them upgrade. And this is just a nice place to do a little bit of a puzzle. That's all it is. Okay? All right. Um let's let's do a little bit of occlusion culling

while we search for a song that's actually public domain. Okay. We need to be extra sure. When does public domain start? 19 Okay. It's 1925. Wait. In the United States, works published before January 1st, 1930, enter the public domain. Okay. So, pre-1930. So, we're going to 1929. So, between 1920 and 29 is I think what I'm what I'm hoping we can find.

We're going to just have to Guys, we're going to have to feel this out and go, "Okay. This feels like it could work in a carnival or a casino." That could work. These are amazing. We don't know, though. This is I wouldn't be so sure because it says 1930s.

So, I wouldn't be sure that those are public domain. You know? What year is this? 1920? Okay, let's take a look. These are like church songs. So, I doubt those will be any good. Oh, man. All of these are like spanning different eras. What about this? Is this Ada Jones? No. Let's see. There's no copyright information on that, so we're not even going to We're not even going to touch that. What's this? 1926

No. Moon River by David the Bar Harbor Society Orchestra. That's pretty cool. We'll save that just in case. I

Strauss 3 This could work. Oh, this is great. We're going to find one that sounds like a clown. You'll know it when you hear it.

I don't know. Not really. Bee's Knees. I just feel like jazz and and big band is probably going to be our best bet. Although, I'm not seeing license information here. And so that that bothers me. Harry Smith Folk music, no. The Colombians

Let's try this one. Okay. I'm going to do my best here with vetting this. Um

for now, but we're probably going to do need to do one final vet. Uh So, I'm going to paste this in here. I think this sounds fine. It's not perfect, but it's fine. And I'm going to put it in here. And see if this sounds good. Here we go. Let's take a look.

Super super eerie. I like it. What do we think? It's good enough. Cool. I think it works, guys. Um There's some weird lighting issues going

on. If I'm being honest. But overall, I think we're good here. What I'm going to do is just remember this clip. It's called Because of You. And then this one's called Chapter 3 Ambience. I'm going to copy this actually. And we're going to go to the next floor, floor 4. And we're going to just apply this to that as well. All right. Okay, so this level has a flipping it flips upside down. So, I believe the music crap. Yeah. Okay, the music is all done. I just need to swap it out. So, not Betty Boop. This one's What was it called? Because of you? Yeah, there we go. Same here. Good.

And I believe we have another public domain room here. Is it Because of You? Good. The ticket room. Entry of the Gladiators, which is public domain. So, we'll go with that. Um the game music. Let's double-check. If Clown Casino stand-in exploring, what is this? Oh, man. We need a new song.

Oh, we got to do the arenas, too. Yeah, what we're going to do is swap out these uh game music areas with ambiance Clown Casino. So, these all need to be the same track as what we had earlier. And that's just because less is more. Letting the hear that track for the entire two levels, I think it's totally fine. So, let's enter play mode and feel this out. And generally, I believe we should be good here. Have we baked the lighting? Yep, light light lighting is baked. All right, guys.

Super loud. Sorry. Let's add some lightning and thunder as well to this level. It really will make a big difference. So, I'm just going to drag in my lightning and thunder. Lightning directional light flicker has sounds on it as well. Let's make sure this works. Um But yeah, the the the sounds is good. I think it's good. Um

Let's see if the the lightning and thunder works. We need to change the name as well to gambling golf. This is floor five, isn't it? No, it's floor four. forget. I'm just looking for the lightning and thunder. Not seeing it.

What's that pillar doing there? Where's our lightning and thunder? I'm not seeing it. Okay, so you should be able to see it. Let's enter play and see here. Where's the player? Let's go to the controller. Some reason I'm not seeing it. I don't know why. Okay, we're going to go to our lightning directional flicker. Wow. Okay, no. We can see it.

Mhm. You have to be facing the right direction. Okay. Yeah, I should work fine. Um Makes it feel like there's rain, which is really cool. Um so that's good. Music is good. The level name's wrong. So let's choose the right level name. We're going to call it gambling golf course. Good question. Now are you playing How are you playing in the game mode? Are you Are there going to be any mobs? Or at what? I'm not sure what you're asking. Sorry. I need to get rid of that pillar. I don't know what that's for.

That's great. Thomas, have you ever experienced using spatial audio? Audio? Like not just 3D sounds, but actual spatial plugins like Steam audio? No, I have not. A lot of those things are great and I'm sure they're awesome. Um for me, they're rabbit holes. Um they they cause me to be way too delayed. Um so that's why I don't um do them. There's so many things so many things I have to focus on and that's something I'm just not going to focus on right now. Okay, I mean this is great. What was the

issue? Why did I Why did I There There's Oh, the pillar. Let's kill the pillar. I don't know what you're doing here, buddy. So, let's open up this prefab. This whole level's a prefab, so I'm going to delete it and then go back. No idea why that was there. But overall, ladies and gentlemen, I think we've we've done well there. Um What else we got? Arena music. So, the arena music, for now, it's going to have to be fine.

Because we don't have it written, and Chris Palazzo's going to write that. It's fine. It's not perfect, but it's fine. All right, let's go to floor three, and I think we have a couple arenas on this level. Yeah. We're going to change them to chapter three's arena. Even though it's not perfect, we're still going to change them. So, it's consistent. Perfect. Perfection.

Okay, guys. That's all I got time for today. Be sure to check out full time game dev below. You got 2 hours left and 18 minutes to check out the spring sale. You going to get 40% off full time game dev blog. If you want to learn not only how to make games, but you want to actually turn it into something sustainable and actually make money doing it, check out fulltimegamedev.com below. It's taught by someone who that's me. It's taught by someone who actually makes indie games and gets paid to do it. This current project is funded by 3D Realms, okay? So, I I can show you how to get publishers. I can show you how to hit the Steam front page. I can show you how to get funded on Kickstarter. Um I can show you how to get press coverage. I can show you how to get YouTubers to play your game. I've done all of this multiple times. And then also you're going to learn 2D art and 3D art. And also Godot, Unity, Unreal, whichever one you want to learn, you can take your pick. All of this is taught by an actual indie game dev, which is, I think, pretty cool. And that's why I think this program is is great and I highly recommend it.

If I do say so myself. So, check it out below. 40% off 2D art pro and 3D art completely free, but only for the next 2 hours. After that, going back to its regular price and these are no longer going to be included. Gone. Check out the link in the description to check out the reviews. Chris Stair went full time. Bart Mamesor went full time.