Pontypants: Making Games Alone, Burnout, Coming Up With Viral Ideas & Finishing Games | Ep. #044

How do you come up with great game ideas, stay disciplined, but ultimately follow through to completion, and ultimately make enough money to go full-time? I had an incredible conversation with Pony Pants, the creator of Punch a Bunch and A Difficult Game about Climbing, about his impressive career making indie games. And at the end of the conversation, he even opened up a difficult game about climbing in Unity. And honestly, I was impressed, but there was a point where I couldn't stop laughing. And you'll find out why at the end of this podcast. We talked about his major upcoming update to a difficult game about climbing that he's working on. We talked about coming up with profitable game ideas, whether small games are better than big games for you, powering through burnout, the importance of relying on a spouse or partner when making games, and finally, we talked about the number one crucial ingredient that can possibly spawn a $100,000 game idea or a million-doll game idea out of thin air. This conversation was incredible, and you don't want to miss it. You may also be wondering how to turn that $100,000 or million-doll game idea into actual money. And some of you might want to do

it before you even finish your game. For that, I have a gift below for you. It's totally free. It's a workshop that shows you how to turn small game ideas into actual money. I'm starting to wonder, and this is related specifically to my game, Twisted Tower, and maybe your next project. I'm starting to wonder if the solution is not making small games and d-risking, but instead focusing on one incredible game and m like and making it your like magnumopus. I feel like that's way less risky than making six games and being miserable for like, you know, a decade. Well, I think you you had a very important word there right at the end. I think um which is the word miserable, right? I think if making six small games is going to make you happy and one big game over six years is going to make

you miserable. Yeah. Then I think maybe this I I think you know I think for me personally I can only speak for me this is such a competitive field that you have to do what I I have to follow my interest. I have to do what I'm interested in right and what makes me feel happy and and keeps me going. In a way you don't care. It's like who cares what the smartest decision is to make the most money or the biggest impact. Just do what you love. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah. I think because it's a good question. It's a very good question. Like what do you put your time on? Like would you rather if you have six years, let's say you just have six years of savings or something like that. Yeah. And you're thinking, do I make six games during these years or do I just make one game, right? Yeah. And I mean I think ultimately you're talking about like six years of your life. Like what's that? That's like that's like 10% of your life. I mean not really. If you live to 60 it could be it could be 10% of your life. So, I think

really like rather than worrying too much about how much money is this or that going to make, how successful am I going to be, it's more like how happy am I going to be doing this, right? Because I think if you're not happy when you're doing something, a you're probably going to give up. I mean, I know I would. And also, I don't know how good the product will be, right? I think that's for me that's how I think about it. I guess what you're asking is like technically what's the best thing to do? It's like, well, if you look at really successful indie games, most of them took, I would probably say between 3 and 6 years to make, maybe. You don't get a lot of those banger games that took one year to make, right? So, if you do make a game and it takes you a year, then like you probably it will you'll be very lucky if it if it really pops, right? Yeah. I'm fascinated by this, dude. I've been going through this for the last 2 years trying to figure out like I in a way I almost feel like sort of swayed by different

people's opinions. Should you focus your time on making tight focused games like like your game like um a difficult game about climbing. It's like Yeah. And I know that took you about a year, right? It did. Yeah. It took me yeah I'd say pretty much on the nose a year. Yeah. So, it's a hyperfocused game. Pretty short dev cycle and it it worked out. You know, you you you in in my mind, you 10xed. You you you did amazing, you know, whereas whereas most games that take a year aren't going to bring in that kind of revenue. I don't think, you know, I do think it's an outlier. Yeah, I think definitely it's an outlier. So, in my head, I'm like, okay, do I spend a year? Like, I'm thinking about my next project. I'm like, do I spend a year on my next project and make 200K or do I spend three, four years on my next project and make 2 million plus, you know? And look, it's my fourth game, so at this point I kind of realize I kind of know how to do it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So, it's hard to know. It's

hard to know. It's impossible. I mean, and that's what I'm kind of like kind of thinking like if you told me like do I want to spend one year and make 200,000 or spend 3 years and make 2 million? Like I'll take the 2 million, but the problem is okay. There's no guarantee, right? Like you just don't know. Yeah. So, but I do think Don't you kind of know though, man? Cuz like you've been doing this a while. This will be your third game when you're working on your like I know you're working on something else. will talk about it, but like don't you feel like game developers start to figure out how to how to replicate their success? I wish I wish I maybe maybe they do. I don't I don't feel that way. I just feel like I'm like a little infant in the crib. Just I don't I don't know. I I'm going to be I I'll be fully honest like I I don't know. I don't really don't know. But I do you know when with the climbing game I had a hunch. I will say I I was like this I mean I had a plan with it. I was like, cuz I I really tried to think logically.

I was like, I can't just do whatever and hope for the best. So, yes, I think you can have a hunch if you have a plan. What's that hunch? What's that hunch feel like? I just thought, you know, well, I don't know how deep you want to go on this, but it's just sort of Okay, so how I started with that game is I played Bennett's game in 2017, and I was like, man, I love this. I was so excited about I was like, man, I just I want more of this. And then I was waiting and waiting and waiting and I didn't really I mean, people were making rage games, but they just were focused on frustration in itself. Whereas, what I really liked about Bennett's game was that the movement system was so unique. Like, you move the mouse and that's the hammer and the physics that combines with it. It just made for such an interesting dynamic experience. And I was like, "Wow, it's so cool how it's so focused and yet there's so much depth to it that you can kind of keep exploring." Yeah. And I was waiting for more games like that and they just I didn't really find

anything. And so that was one of my first thoughts when I started making game like when I started doing tutorials maybe back in 2017. Yeah. I would have been 2017 when I played his game because that's when he released it. around that time and you know I kept waiting but I I and I tried to make something but I just wasn't good enough. I I just didn't get it right like I I needed more practice. So when I finished Punch a Bunch and you know time came around to make a new project I was like well you know hey maybe I should like explore this idea of make making something inspired by Bennett's game because I and this is for a few fact reasons. Um, a I was really, and this is very important, I think for me at least, I was really really interested in exploring this idea like in trying to really create something new and unique. Uh, and I know a lot of people say it's not, but I for me it is. I I think I really created something different that added it to like that

added to the space of so-called rage games. I think you did, especially with the hand controls. I mean, that's that's huge, you That's what I really and and I think that was my favorite part of making the game just like figuring out these controls. And then I realized that level design is not my for I don't it's not fun for me. I I it was kind of fun but I really mostly enjoyed just like figuring out like the feel of the game and I thought that was really fun and so I was really interested in it which allowed me to really explore it deeply and not you know lose motivation right. Uh, but to go back to why I had a hunch that it would succeed, um, I was also watching streamers at the time, just like random streamers. I was looking at I don't remember who I was watching at the time, but just, you know, random streamers, and I noticed that it's like they're always playing the same game. They just there's no there there are like hundreds of games being released every day, but they're just they just seem so bored and like there's nothing for them to play. I was like, rage games

seem like a good genre for streamers, right? Like it's something that they all kind of like, well, this is fun. It's fun for my audience. It's And so I thought, you know, this I could combine like my interest and my passion in something where I felt like a niche was underserved, so to speak. And also I saw this opportunity that hey you know if I do something good then maybe these streamers will pick it up and that will give great exposure to the game which also justified me not making any YouTube videos during the development of that phase cuz I was like well hopefully that will make up for it. And so there were like quite a few things that kind of lined up in my head. I was like well these all seem reasonable and unless I do I totally screw this up seems kind of likely that this might actually work. Okay. So, I think you know hunch I mean there were a lot of parameters that just felt good to me. Yeah. I I told you you um prior to this conversation on Discord how right now I'm kind of at a crux point with my

game Twisted Tower where I need to figure out like do I go allin with this final 10%. And you know that that final 10% of a game is actually like the final 30 40%. you know, it keeps expanding as you're trying to polish it up and tighten up the the loose, I don't know, screws and bolts. And so, there's there's just part of me that's really interested in trying to figure out like how can you know if it's worth your money and your time um to go in and finish something strong. And I'm just starting to think there there's there's a billion metrics you can look at, but at the end of the day, for me, for me, I found that if I really fall in love with my game again somehow while I'm in the final stages of production, that final 10% is where the thing just start it just has a glow up. Like I remember when I did when I when I was working on Pinstripe, the last 10%

of that game's development, I forced myself to fall in love with it again. How do you do that? I don't know. I So what I've been do I'll tell you what I'm doing for Twisted Tower. And the reason the reason why I think it's important to fall in love with your game again is because that last 10% of your game, you have no like I for me, I've lost all perspective of if this game is any good or not. I have no idea. Do you know that feeling? Oh, I'm there now with this new level I'm making. I'm just like I just wanna I just want to delete the whole project and do something else. Yeah. Yeah. And so what I've decided is um it's kind of like marriage where it's like look I promised that I would be with you and so just cuz we're having a fight and just cuz I've you know this this these last four weeks have been difficult for some reason with marriage whether it's money or something or kids you you got to remind yourself you're like I committed to this and so I need to do what I can to fall in love again.

And so that that is how I'm feeling right now with Twisted Tower. this weird feeling of like I refuse I refuse to just make this game fine and release it cuz I was telling myself that last year um all year which was like I'm just going to get it done just like just get it done and I had fallen out of love with it and so these last three weeks what I started to do is I started to listen to music that I felt like the game should feel like. So, there's this soundtrack um it's called Nightmare Alley. It's a it's a movie by I think it's Del Toro and the music is just really haunting and it sounds like an old like 1940s and50s circus and it's very dark and and just very sad. And what I'm doing is I deleted the entire story of the game. I just started a new fresh document and I changed the character's name and I'm re I'm just rebuilding the the story from scratch

with this music playing and I'm re falling in love with the game and the reason I'm doing it intentionally. I'm doing it intentionally because I know how important that last 10% of the development is. It is so important because I I I for me I discover what the game is in in the final stretches of development and more importantly when I'm in the most emotional pain in of development. So what I mean is when I'm the most stressed out and angsty and I feel the most pressure in development, that's actually when out bursts forth like inventive ideas. Does that make sense? Yeah. I don't know that that's how it works for me, but um So you do better when you're feeling cozy and relaxed and free? Yeah.

I don't know actually. I think yeah, probably when I'm relaxed more when I'm relaxed and feeling excited about it. But at the same time, I do think that you're you're right what you're saying and I've gone through that stage as well where you just want to be done. And I definitely had that with the climbing game the first time around when I created the initial game. And you know, at some point I was just like, "Okay, look buddy, you got to like you got to make this good. You can't just you can't just, you know, stumble on the finish line now. like make sure that you know try and cram in as many ideas as you had as possible. Really try and and come up with new ideas and I did like a whole pass of the whole level and all this stuff and really tried to make it as fun as possible without stacking on too much time. But you know what in that process yeah I I did really start to feel like you know hey this is this is pretty good actually. I'm I starting to really feel it. And so yeah, I think and and then ideas did come from just the sheer, you

know, will, you know, willpower of just wanting like I got to make this the best it could possibly be. And I'm actually going through the same thing now. So I created this whole new level. And the problem is that I really want it to be good. I didn't want to just like, oh, we'll just slap something together, just call it a new level, but really it's just the same thing over and over. I was like, "No, I'm creating these new zones just like the last level, and each new zone needs to introduce some sort of new mechanic that wasn't in the previous level, which turned out to be very difficult because I had already kind of grabbed all the lowhanging fruit, right? And so now I'm just like, man, this is like a bad idea. Like everything just sucks." But I kept like pushing and pushing and pushing and it's just it's got to be good. Like I got to make this good. And so I've I don't know how many I there was one section that was almost done and I completely killed it and so it's taken a lot more time than I What are some examples of this lowhanging fruit that you're talking about? Lowanging fruit is like when you're teaching the player something, right?

like, oh, so in my game, like you kind of jump a bit, like there's a bit of jumping involved, and so a lot of the obstacles in the first map were sort of centered around just a little bit of a longer jump, which was kind of enough to keep launching the player. Yeah, just like launching the player across like a gap or or maybe this time it was like, I don't know, in a different way or there's like a little obstacle that you got to watch out for or the grabbing point is a little smaller. But I can't make a new map and just be like, "Oh, well now they're even smaller and even more difficult because it's just it's not interesting, right?" So I was like, now in this new level, there are almost no jumps whatsoever. That was like something I told myself that it's like it's got to be interesting and making just harder jumps is not interesting. So what can I do that doesn't force the player to just get better at what they already practiced in the first map? So really try to explore like new things for the player like a novelty, right? You want to give the player a novelty

and now that the player's already played the first map and they've already gone through and and experienced that. It's sort of like yeah like the lowhanging fruit is really like the more easy challenges that they overcame. Now I have to introduce harder challenges. But I think John Blow has talked a lot about this where making something difficult isn't hard. And it's true. Like you can just give an enemy like infinite ammo, infinite health, and it's hard, but it's not interesting. And so that's really Oh man, I've struggled with that too, dude. Oh my god. Yeah, cuz you're making like a a shooting game, right? Yeah. And so we had this huge problem. And then I I I want to ask your thoughts on this. We had this huge problem where the enemies just felt like reskins. So, like a new enemy type, it was obvious to the player that it was just a reskin, but I just cranked up the the health, which is what exactly that's exactly what I did, you know? Um, and it it was obvious to them. And you can't just crank up the health. You've got to you got to like it takes a

lot of time and effort and money to create a completely new challenge, you know? Um, so what did you end up doing? What was your solution? You can't say. No, I can't say. Uh I mean I uh I think that what I do for this game at least, I don't know about my next game, but for this game, what I I really try to like identify like what is the game about? What is this game about? And it's like, is it about jumping? Mhm. No. So then we don't do a bunch of jumps. I was like, okay, what is the game about? So I really tried to distill it down to what it the core essence of the game is, which in my case is it's a game about climbing. It's a difficult game about climbing, but it's a game about surfaces. So, you have different surfaces that behave differently, right, with how the player interacts with it, right? So, it can be like, oh, it's a a rock face that has a little bit of friction, but not too much, so you can slide down. Or you can have maybe a ledge that has like a lot

of friction, but it's a lot smaller. You have surfaces that are moving, uh, and you have surfaces that are really slippery that you can't hold on to, right? And so I was like, well, what can I do further that I haven't done? So, for example, one example was like, well, what about a surface that you can't touch, like lava? Didn't do that in the first level. So, that's right. That's a bit of a spoiler, I guess, but I'll I'll give you that one. So, I thought, what if I made like a cool lava mountain where it's like there are these little rocks and if you touch the lava, it's like, right, and he falls off. So, that's a new section that uh I'm really happy with. is coming along really well and it introduces like it introduced new like new ways for the player to have to think their way out of a situation. It's like oh man now I got to wait a minute this kind of like changes how I think about the game because before I was kind of sloppy didn't really matter but now I got to watch out to really grab like the right you can't just you can't just click and grab whenever you want. Right. Yeah. You got to be like

precise. Yeah. Whereas the original build, you could just you could you could grab earlier a little bit and you'd have like I guess coyote grab time. Exactly. Yeah. But now with now you might be grabbing onto lava and then it gives you like oh for you know a quarter of a second you can't regrab, right? Because his hand is hot or whatever. So So that's an example of of what I tried to do and that came from the idea of like really trying to establish like what is the game about? Well, it's about surfaces. And so I was like, well, and then I just like started writing down on a list just like what are all the surfaces I can possibly think of, right? Like uh goo, lava, uh whatever, right? Water. And just really trying to think like what could be an interesting way to to utilize this mud I've played around with. Didn't work out, but could have been cool. That does sound cool. So I guess that's like for your game, I guess. So like you know, what's your game about, right? Like what is it what is it about? It's about the story. Okay. And that I I figured that out through um through the demo.

Just having people play the demo. They the same is true with with Bioshock. Um it's like in a way the the I don't know if this is this is a smart way to think, but in a way Bioshock was a decent shooter, but the foundation was the mood and the story. That is what makes that game great. the style the style the aesthetic properties and it's such a shame because or it's a shame for me because that that doesn't necessarily create like a viral game. Um it can just make it can like it can satisfy a small niche um of let's say 100,000 players, right? That would be awesome. But it c it's not like a solid mechanic like uh Bellatro, you know, where Bellatro just has just rock solid mechanics. And I don't think that's ever going to be my forte, you know, coming up with great game mechanics. Um, for me, for me, it's it's story, story, story, story story story.

Right. Right. And I'm I'm going to take a gamble this year and just really invest my time into this thing and make the story rock solid. And I'm just going to hope and pray that people still like story games, you know. Um, they do. I mean, people love a good story. I love a good story. I I just like most games don't have very good story. So, it's like one of those things where it's like you might think, well, who's going to want to play that? It's like if the story is good, I a lot I think. Yeah. I mean, I would I would want to play a good story game. I like I said, it just most stories and games aren't that good. I mean, you know, I know I was talking to my wife last night and I I think I might remember this conversation for a long time because it was a very meaningful conversation to me where I I said something that I thought was profound. So, I was like I said, "Hey, I think maybe like one of my greatest things

that I'm gonna do is like make Twisted Tower." I said, "Like this might be one of my best games. This this might be my best game and this might be more profitable than my other games and more profitable than my YouTube channel and sponsorships, right? And all this stuff, all this stuff that I do." I said, "I think maybe Twisted Tower might be the thing." And she goes, "Well, yeah." She was like, "Duh." She said, "Thomas, that's what you're best at." And I said, "See, I didn't know that. That's a keeper. That's a good way." I know. And I I wonder if I wonder if what that the secret sauce to a lot of these game devs, including David Whe who who dude, that guy is just like I think he's like three years into this game and just and he's been open about this investing savings and just burning through cash getting this game done. And what I've seen and I've talked to him, it's like he's just got a wife who's

just like, "You got this. You're good." Whereas I think a lot of a lot of partners and spouses would freak out if someone was like, "I'm going to make a video game and I'm going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars." What do you think? Well, yeah. Exact. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're um totally right about that one. I think there's a lot of people with uh I think you have to I mean, you don't have to, but I think it helps a lot if your partner is is supportive of you. Of course. Yeah. And what's that saying? Behind every great man is an even greater woman or something like that. I think so. Very sexist, but something like that, right? No, I think it's great. You know, I love that. I I wonder though, you know, you've you've uh you've you've kind of arrived in my head, Pony Pants is just comfortable now and life is great. Are you getting to a point where you're kind of a little stressed out again? Like I kind of got to do I kind of got to release another game. Yes. So, how's that going?

Well, I think that's part of why I also decided to make this map because initially I was like, I'm done with this game. That's it. It's a self a closed chapter, but then I was like, I started prototyping a little bit and realized I had no ideas. And so, I think there was a part of me that was like, well, it'd be really comfortable to just kind of dive into this project that I'm so familiar with and just make another map. Um, but I'm definitely feeling cuz I don't know about you. Are are you like an idea guy like in the sense that are you just like is your head just popping with ideas or Oh, sure. And I the a side note here to answer your question then I'll let you keep going. But like a lot of people are that way and the reason why is different for everybody. Um, some people they're idea people because they just they're just creative. For me, I'm a paranoid person. So, I'm always paranoid that something is gonna fall apart or like a business venture is going to fall apart or the YouTube channel is going to die or blah blah blah blah blah. And so, I'm always coming up with solutions to like fake

problems. So, so in my head I'm like the Twisted Tower is going to fall apart and the game is not going to be good. So, here are three other game ideas to like come in and save the day. Um, so yeah. What about you? Uh, yeah. No. Oh, yeah. That's very interesting. I'd never thought about it that way. Like I never heard that take cuz I feel like either it's like some people are just like, "Man, I got so many ideas." Like, "Oh man, like I remember reading like a thing about Team Cherry, the people who make Hollow Knight, right? They're like, "Oh man, we're making Silk Song and oh my god, we have so many ideas. Like we we can't even fit them all in the game." And I'm I'm like the complete opposite. I It's just like empty. Nothing. Just nothing. And so for me, like I well I do have ideas, but I'm very good at just like instantly just toasting them. Just like that sucks. That's awful. I hate that. That nobody's going to want to play that. So for me, it's almost like I'm just I don't know. I don't And to be fully honest, like I

don't have a game idea for what I'm going to do next. But I I have noticed though for me that when I just follow my interest, things tend to emerge. So I wanted to make YouTube videos, but nobody wanted to watch my gaming videos. So I was like, well, you know, I've been doing tutorials to learn how to make games in Unity or whatever. Maybe I'll just combine the two, right? I'm interested in both, so why don't I just do that? And then from that emerged Punch a Bunch and then when I was learning Unity, I was like trying to figure out how Bennett created his game. And through that, this idea for a climbing game came about. Now, let's talk about vibe coding really quick. Okay. Okay. Have you heard this term? Do you know? I've heard it. I don't know what it is, but I've heard about it. Yeah. Well, you might be doing it. You might not. Are you using co-pilot? What is that? Okay. Wow. You're you you for sure are a hermit. C-Pilot. Claude, are you using

Claude at all? chat, GPT cur. I'm using uh Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually using Grock a little bit. Okay. Grock, me too. And uh a lot of people don't like Grock and and maybe it's because they just hate Twitter, but like Grock's actually pretty great, especially one of the best things. I little side note here for anybody who wants to do a podcast or a big long form YouTube video. Grock is awesome because you can take the transcript that YouTube generates. They're going to YouTube is going to generate a transcript from this video. I can copy that transcript with its time codes. I can paste it into Grock. You can't do it in chat GBT because it's too long. You can paste it into Grock and tell Grock to generate chapters. And so this podcast has chapters and those are all generated from Grock. Nice. Um, so it's it's just really useful for like dude, one thing I did with Grock and then I'll move back to the code conversation. One thing I did with Grock was we're building a house. I uploaded a a like JPEG of the um floor plan of the

house and I said, "Put together a table for me of all the different sizes of the rooms and compare the sizes of the rooms and give me descriptions." So, it's like this beautiful chart of all this information from a JPEG, you know, that's crazy. Granted, half of the information was wrong, but Okay, well, that's not great. But it was still cool that it it at least tried, you know. That said, vibe coding is is basically using AI to code with you like pretty much, you know, the whole time you're coding. Oh, that's what it is. I just thought it was like vibe coding. It's probably like you're listening to music and you're just vibing. I mean, it's it's fun because and and look, I think every every developer is probably going to fall into it because Visual Studio now co-pilot. Do you know what co-pilot is? No. Is it like an AI plugin or it's it's basically Claude, but it's it's within the context of Visual Studio. Do you use Visual Studio? Because that's what I've been like I was talking to my wife about this who knows zero about programming. Uh but

I still talk to about programming with her for some reason. I was like, "Dude, I want Grock inside of Visual Studio. That would be the best cuz like I I found that I stopped using the debugger so much and like the errors things and I just like paste my code in. It's like Grock, there's something wrong. What do you think?" and it's just like try this and I'm just like, "Yep, that's it. That's great." You know? Well, let me show it to you really quickly here. I'm going to share my screen. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Let's take a look. Okay. Here we go. Let's say I wanted to say uh reset the player's stamina and also um reset the Yeah, sure. reset the crouch. It should write it for me here. There we go. So, you just press tab and there it is. And I will say 80% of the time it's it works. That's pretty cool. And it's cool, but it's also terrifying because people like me, you know, who I'm I'm old school. I know how to write code, you know. Um people like me, people like

my brother, he's a he's a software engineer. It's like, well, hang on. All these kids coming out of college are just coming in and using vibe coding and they're getting the job done. They push to get and then like three four weeks later when everything starts to break down. Nobody knows why. Totally. Because the code is just a mess, you know. Yeah. That seems like a very dangerous like what you just showed me seems like for me I'm I'm kind of instinctively just like I don't love that. It seems kind of dangerous. Like I I know I mean it's fine if it works it works, right? But I do think that you you need someone to to you need to double check that it's correct, right? what you really want it to do. And I think that because I use AI more for just finding issues or sometimes I'll ask it like oh hey I'm writing this function in this way uh is this optimal is there a way to optimize this further and then sometimes it'll be like well the way Unity works under the hood is

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so it would actually be better to do it this way and then I'll like read through it I'm like oh hey that makes sense that's good. So yeah, another example here is like if I highlight code here, I can say um reorganize the variables in various categories and I can even misspell stuff that are uh intuitive. Add tool tips and headers where needed. Let's see if this does it. Look, and here's the thing. It's like you can have everybody screaming. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, okay? But you can have everybody screaming about how this is unfair, but everybody is going, in my opinion, everybody's going to end up just doing it. There's like, look, it's just too easy. I mean, life's not fair, right? I think I see a lot of hate towards AI and it's like some of it is justified, but I mean, it's just the way it goes, right? Like this is now a new tool and you got to learn to use it. I think I mean maybe

you don't but people are going to use it of course. Um and I mean and ultimately I don't think it's such a bad thing. I think it can I mean look at that. It's just spitting stuff out. I know. Great. And I mean it's also a mess. So you can imagine like a college graduate saying oh fun this is great. All of the variables have tool tips and it's like a seasoned developer would be like that's ridiculous. Like we don't need this. So then so so you got to be like smart about it. you know, you can't just you can't just have it look cool. Um, yeah, you know, it has to be functional and you have to have experience. So, I just find it really uh it's definitely a conundrum. Um, and also you've got Steam, you know, Steam says, is your game using AI in any way? That's one of the things you have to answer. I'm not sure if you've seen that. Yeah. And it's like, well, how many people aren't using Claude or or or Grock or whatever for tiny little things? Um, I yeah, I don't know. I mean, what the fine print there

is, but I feel like this type of AI is not Yeah, I feel like they're talking more about stuff that the user can notice like assets or scripts. Like if there's like a story line and all the quests are generated using AI, like I feel like it's more cuz Steam is more about the end user, right? So, if there's some code there that you used AI to help you write, it's kind of like doesn't really I don't know. Don't take Hey, don't consult a lawyer, right? But that's just my take on it's like, well, who who cares? Like, no user is going to care about that. But if they play this game and it's like this just feels like I'm playing with chat GPT. It's like that's that's like different, right? I think in 10 years it'll be impossible to know if a deep fake is actually a deep fake. Totally. Even in just a couple of years. Oh, sure. or if a song was actually written by somebody. So when you when you hear someone's song and you're like, "That's a really cool song." And then you watch them play that song live on like NPR with acoustic

guitar and they're just amazing. That's when you go, "Holy crap, this person is special." Because everybody else is using autotune and AI and all this crap. Yeah. So the people who can do it locally like in person live Yeah. those people will stand out aka art forms will almost by necessity become performance art. So stuff like stuff like live streaming gamedev um stuff like like live streaming painting it becomes highly soughta and premium um to be able to do it with your own two hands. And so my theory is is that the social media is potentially the solution to AI because with social media you can perform your art form live without people questioning whether it was AI generated. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. Oh, that's what I've been thinking of in

similar paths as well that it's like it really becomes about the human creating the thing and the story behind it and like the and the fact that it isn't perfect that it is rough around the edges uh which is you know kind of like uh like an analogy would be um you know focus testing right which everybody recommends to do but I've been thinking a lot about focus testing um so for people who don't know just when you make a game and you kind of pay a group of people or not, but you have a group of people play your game and then give feedback and uh based on that feedback, you change the game. Oh, it was a little bit too difficult here or they didn't get it here or this part seemed boring so I'm going to cut that out. But it's like like what about like let's take Picasso for example like when he's painting a painting what if he along every step like first you do the circle drawing or the outline or little thumbnail for the whatever I'm going to do next right and then like what if he

like invited 100 people to criticize that and then started making changes based off what people thought and just to kind of maximize audience right and then you do the next you you put the wash on and then you invite people again and then you make changes and then eventually you end up with a final product. It's like if Picasso had done it that way, would he be the famous Picasso he is today, right? I don't know. Maybe maybe he would be even bigger. I don't know. But that's just what I'm saying. It's like does it especially as an indie developer, you have this super unique opportunity to really create something especially if you're alone or just two people like you can really create something personal that and you can allow it to be a little bit rough around the edges because you don't need to make that much money, right? So it's like you can afford to lose a couple of people along the way. Yeah. And create something really special uh that might not exist out there. And so I'm kind of thinking about it a little bit the same way. Like if you can an AI replicate that? I don't

know. Probably it can. It can probably replicate anything you can think of at some point, right? I don't know, man. I hope not. Um because that's how I think about indie development. And that's also why I don't want to grow like I don't want to hire people. I don't want to if I ever found a a person that I'm like, you know what, we seem to really share some ideas and we could really maybe make a game together. I think that would be amazing, right? But so far, I haven't really found that. And so, I make games alone. And And so, I really try and focus on that, like doing something special. And that kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, like ideas and what's next. And so, like I said, like I'm really into programming right now. And so, I've actually started following, I don't know if you know about it, but Handmade Hero by Casey Moratori. No. What's that? Never heard of it. Okay. So, but do you know who Casey is? No. So, Casey Moratori is a very famous programmer. He's made a lot of content online about it and he's uh friends with John Blow. They they share

a lot of ideas. But anyway, so he created this about 10 years ago or so. He created this series where he's creating a video game from scratch in C. Little bit of C++, but basically C with no libraries, nothing. Like you start from scratch. And I'm really getting into it. And I'm thinking, you know what, man? if I do this, my next game is probably going to be 2D. It's like no nothing, right? But I'm like maybe through that and like I said before like emerging games and ideas like maybe through doing this my brain will just this is what I'm hoping and I want telling myself my brain will sort of construct this new idea from this experience and I don't know it's just something about it man I just like so tell me tell me really quick so the premise of this handmade hero thing right is the goal is to be completely from scratch patch. Yes. Okay. What What

is the base layer? Like what is the most from scratch? Like he's not making his own computer. No. Right. He's not powering it with coal. No. So like what what is is it binary? You start with binary. You start with C. No, you start with C. C++. That's like the base layer. But you don't use any like wrappers. You don't use any uh basically you you you create the Windows platform layer yourself so that you're like using Windows functions. You're not using some like you know there's like this uh it's called Ray LIB. Mhm. Uh you've probably heard of it but it's basically this like almost no engine but it gives you some features like just drawing to the screen and stuff like that so that you don't have to do that. But so it's not even that. It's like you have to do everything from scratch and talk to the graphics card and everything all that stuff. Right. Right. And I just like cuz there's something working in Unity I've felt more and more and more frustration with like I feel like I'm just like writing snippets of code and I'm just feeding it into this black box and I have no idea what's happening and when I

run into an issue or a bug or something I feel really frustrated and I'm like dude I want to know how it works. I want to know what's going on in there. I want to make the blackbox. So that's when I started looking into Ray Lib and I was like, "Oh, this is so cool." But it felt like I was still feeding stuff into this blackbox that was drawing things on the screen. I was like, "I want to do it from scratch." Even if I don't make my next game in it, I there's just a sense of satisfaction. And I think it's just like I said, I'm interested in it. It's an interest that I have. I just want to explore. It doesn't mean that I have to make a game doing it, but I just want to try, right? And I'm hoping that so far in my life when I've done that, just dive head first into something I'm interested in. I don't know what's going to come out at the other end. Usually I I've never done anything like that that I regret it and it usually leads to something. So that's why I'm kind of just Yeah, I'm just trusting my heart here and I'm just going to do it. So I'm going to finish my map first, but then I'm diving in. See, that's that's so interesting to me because a lot of people listening are

probably thinking about idea generation like how how do you come up with ideas? And I think the answer is to know yourself, right? It's to know what what what what makes my brain what what sets the sparks going off. But how do you like this is something I've been thinking a lot. Actually, it was the first time I thought about it was when I started making YouTube videos cuz I kept hearing this advice just like just be yourself, man. Just do you. Do yourself. Like just that's the thing. And I'm just like, who's that? Who I mean, no, seriously. I'm serious. Like, who am I? Who are you, Thomas? Like, who are you? Yeah. What defines you? It's a question. Like, who are you? Well, you know, I I know what makes my Okay. This is going to sound weird. Question, but yeah. But this is going to sound weird, but I think it's it's a reasonable metaphor. Um, I know what turns me on, right, as a man. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. If So, I know that stuff about myself, right? Additionally, I know what what smells and foods I like, okay, that will make me salivate. I know the things that make me afraid. I know the things that make me anxious. And I've learned not who I am, but wakes what gives me a reaction. Okay. And so for for me, idea generation is knowing what makes your brain go and twist and like there are things that I I can I can input into my system that will make me go and and create an idea and a an idea will come out of it. For me personally, and we talked about it earlier, but for me personally, it's fear. So when pressure is put on me, like high stakes pressure, that's when the idea comes out. And you can't manufacture high stakes pressure. It has to be real. So I found that that being in

financial strain is one of the best ways to come up with great ideas. Don't say that. Don't say this now. when it's comfortable and when the money's there and everything's fine. Like for example, when it was great like two years ago for me and like I was just getting paychecks, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, from like funding because I and I talked about this last year, how how we had budget cuts from my publisher. But when the money was coming in quarterly, it was like, okay, what? Just make the game. We just made the game. But the moment where it was like, hang on, we're going to we're going to dry up some of the funding and you're not going to have as many team members and things are going to be a little bit difficult to see into the future. like what what's what's the future of this game? That's when all of a sudden it was like bang bang bang bang bang bang bang all these ideas that's when the magic comes. So pressure high stakes pressure and also for me it's um uh certain emotions make me tick. So like um guilt guilt is a big

one. So if I can engage in um like feeling feeling like what how do how did I feel in my guiltiest moments in life or this movie or this film that's related to guilt those things are when story ideas come. So I found that negative emotion negative it's like really I don't know right masochistic what's the word masochistic or something. Yeah. Yeah. Negative emotions are idea generators for me. That's so interesting. you input the pain, out comes the idea. Um, but that's me. And so that's why I say knowing yourself is the best way to do it is because if you know who you are and what makes you tick, the ideas come out. Yeah. Because I've had this like romantic idea that like the goal is to to make enough money so that I don't have to worry about money because I don't like I don't buy anything. I don't I live I don't live any differently from how I lived before

I released this game. like I no changes really. Uh I just I like to be here with my computer and do my stuff and that's that's how I'm the happiest, right? So so I have had this idea that it's like man if I could just like not have to worry about money then I can really just like dive deep into something and I'm going to just like disappear for hopefully not too long and then come back with this magical game. But maybe true maybe that's true for you. Maybe but maybe you're right. Maybe I'm on the wrong track here because like the other games I made that was sure as hell not made in that state of mind. It was just like pure pressure cooking, anxiety, pressure, stress, fear of like going bankrupt and you know having to quit this whole thing. So dude, that's adventure. That's adventure. Yeah, that is adventure. But maybe adventure also is maybe it's also to not have to feel so anxious all the time, but to be able to actually do something that makes you

feel happy. But I guess that will be an experiment for the next game I'm making. We'll see how it goes. Well, this is a this is a really wonderful conversation because I've been thinking a lot about courage. So courage courage um I think it was because of the book I'm reading, the 2x is easier than 10x book. It's really good book. I think I think there's a a What is this book? Like you keep referencing it. Great book. And it might it might make you feel bad because that's okay because because 10x 2x 2x is like doubling your revenue. Doubling your game's success. Okay. 10x is is 10xing your game's success. And most people most people live in this sort of comfortable state of like I'm fine with doing what I've been doing. Mhm. And the book says basically the book says the best ideas are generated when you force yourself and limit yourself into a very high standard and a very very extreme goal. So for example,

it's I don't want to make I don't want to make a difficult game about climbing again. I want to make Minecraft, right? You know, because it's it's it's the same as shoot for the moon miss by a little bit. You know, it's like that kind of mentality. But when it comes to courage, um the book talks about courage and how courage doesn't exist without fear because otherwise it wouldn't be courage. That's true. I mean, how can you be brave if you're not scared? Yeah. So, my theory is this. Boy, I don't want to die never having courage. Yeah. You know, I want to I want my kids to look at me and my grandkids to be like, "Dad was like badass." And we had the badassest dad of all dad. He was always taking the next leap. That's that's adventure, you know. That's adventure. And I don't And so so this constant dude, I've been pursuing comfort. I've been pursuing comfort for the last six years. Like how can I get to the spot where I just go to sleep at night and everything's great. And now I'm starting to realize I'm like that's

not an adventure. That's that's boring. Can you get to that stage? I just find that when when if I'm anxious about something and I solve that, it just like jumps to something else. Like it just I kind of always get worried about the laundry all of a sudden. You're like, why am I always worried about the laundry? And it's like that's the only thing you can worry about. Yeah. I mean, I feel like you that's very like that's very common. I feel like when people eliminate all their issues, they start like, god damn it, the neighbor's car is always whatever it is, right? Like it's always something, right? So I think it's Yeah. But so you think um speaking of that it's like do you think are you guys are you um are you of the mindset that constraints feeds creativity? I wouldn't say for me it's constraint. No for me. For me it's truly being okay. So if I don't feel man this I could I could probably change my I'm probably going to change my mind the older I get.

There's a feeling of looking out a plane window or a plane like a plane door. Have you Have you been skydiving or anything like that? No. When I went skydiving, I only did it once, but you look out that plane door, you've suddenly and then you and then you force yourself to tumble out. Okay, that that moment you've totally just you've just upgraded. You're like, you just become like a I should go skydiving, Thomas. No, I'm just saying there's this feeling of like stepping into the unknown, into the black, into the dark. Okay, that is so important for your psyche. I know that feeling because that's how I felt when I quit my job, right? That was like jumping out of that door for me. I was like, "What is going to happen now?" Like, I had been so comfortable all my life. Like, I started so early. I was

like 19 or something. No, 20. I think I was 20 or something when I got my first job in the film industry. And from that point on, I was just cruising and I did pretty well, too. Like, I was uh I worked hard, but it's like it came pretty naturally. I was like, "Ah, this is I really like this and it's really fun." And uh you know, money was always pretty much good. And it was like just like no problem, right? And I had grown up kind of I wouldn't say poor. Nobody is really poor in Sweden, at least at the time in the '90s. I get what you're saying. Yeah. But, you know, like it was like single mom kind of, you know, she was like going through university at the time. We didn't have a lot of everybody else was just going on holidays, getting new bicycles. I didn't get that. I got I got a new bike once cuz I kept going on about it, but it we never really went anywhere and it wasn't I don't regret that. I think that was like awesome. It's like this the way everybody should grow up because you really learn to value money and stuff. So, I'm not it's not any criticism. I I don't regret my childhood. I I love I love how it was.

It was similar for me as well. I mean, my and my my my family was very frugal and and we if we did go on vac I mean we went we went on vacation, but like it was always in a tiny little condo with like four six people in and and four of us in a in a living room. I mean, sometimes we'd have a separate room or something, but most of the time it was me and my brothers like crammed on a couch or something like that. That's fun. And uh, you know, we we barely ate out. Um, in fact, we I don't think we had cable for 10 years. Um, it was very we we really didn't watch TV until I was maybe in my teen years. But, right. Anyway, yeah, I know what you're saying. You know, it wasn't like we were poor, but it was like all of my friends got to do stuff and not me, you know, not really. Yeah. A bit like that, you know. And I mean we did stuff but yeah like definitely like the lower end of the spectrum right so I I always like grew up with this like man I don't want to struggle I just don't want to struggle I just I'll do and I think that's I've read about that in psychology and stuff and apparently it never really leaves

you like you always feel that pressure like oh man you get you got to get you got to do better or you're going to go broke and you're gonna struggle right y but so leaving my job that was so comfortable that that was a a really really big that was a really big dive for me and and that was one of my big hurdles in life just like letting go of that safety and just being like what is going to happen now? Oh my god. Right. Did you have a savings sort of safety net or Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did burn through it. But we took a very like I said we took a very methodical approach. My wife quit a few years before me. So we had like a vision and she was like building up a website and so that was making money. And so when I quit, she was already kind of making enough money to sustain us both. So there was sort of like we staggered it. And that I think that if I h if I didn't have that fear, I think we would have probably just like, "Oh, screw it. We'll just quit both at the same time. Let's do this, right?" But I was like that fear was

too too great within me that I was like, think about how much innovation came about because of that. I mean, may I don't know. I don't know if Punch a Bunch and your ability to do YouTube and also your ability to create a difficult game about climbing. I don't know. You know, maybe you would have come up with all that stuff if you were comfortable. But my theory is is that that kind of pressure cooker life creates some wonderful products um and and and crazy ideas. And I I know that's true for me. You know, I wouldn't want to put that on anybody else, but I know that's true for me. And as painful as it as painful as it is to be in a constant sort of pressure cooker state of are we going to be okay as painful as it is I feel like really um like isn't it exciting like when when I you know when I watch when I watch Game of Thrones I love Game of Thrones or like Brave Braveheart's one of my favorite movies. Yeah. When I watch those movies, I'm like, boy, man,

adventure is is almost always directly correlated to suffering and and struggle, fear, isn't it? Isn't it? That's right. Isn't it cool? Like, it's been a hard quarter for me. You know, we talked about this on Discord. It's been a hard quarter for me of of like trying to figure out how do I continue to to spit pour money into Twisted Tower. I've already poured plenty of money into Twisted Tower. And the other day, you know, I like to pray. So, I was just praying and I was just like kind of like just thankful in a weird way, thankful that for this adventure of like, isn't it exciting? Aren't I lucky to be in a position where I'm fighting for a game, you know, a g like so many people dream of like one day maybe I can make a video game and it's like aren't aren't I lucky to be in a position where I'm fighting to the death in in my head to the death

to finish this thing and to make it great and to bring my family along with me and to stand strong and to keep my chin up and and play with my kids and have a have have a an enjoyable life all while during the day fighting for this game and fighting for it to actually be done and to make it great. And I'm like that's a really kind of privileged position to be in to be fighting for something that cool. I don't know. And so I'm just grateful for it. Uh does that I'm not sure if that makes sense, but No, I I do. Sometimes I'll just like get up in the morning and sit on the couch and just be like this is crazy. I'm not going to like I'd be at work right now like I often think it's like five years since I quit my job but I'll still almost every day think about it's like man right about now I would be scrambling to get on my bicycle and bike to work and then I'd be late for the morning meeting and I'd be stressed about that and I'd be tired because I didn't sleep more than

six hours because I went to bed too late because I wanted to do something after work and I think about that probably daily just like man I just this is incredible. I'm so lucky that I I can I get to do this. And even though yeah, it comes with a lot of stress. It's like, man, I wouldn't change it for anything. Like, I really do I really do appreciate it a lot. Like, I I agree with you. I totally get what you're feeling. I don't know if other people feel that way, but I extreme gratitude. Most I think I think most people who want to make games just taking the leap and and actually dedicating themselves to doing it um they're unwilling to do that. You know, they're unwilling to and I'm not saying people should quit their job. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is most people can't dedicate themselves to actually doing it to just say this is the time where I work on the game after work and I just do it and I'm going to get it done. um to to actually

be disciplined and do it. And there's there's something really scary about like basically promising a certain amount of hours of your life every day for 3 years. You know what I mean? Yeah. Very hard. And not everyone should do it, but well, I think you know if you're it goes again with for me it's always just like if I'm interested in doing it, if I want to do it cuz I remember like just playing video games in the evenings years ago and just being like playing games and then I was like I don't want to do this. I I want to try and do something. I'm not having fun anymore. You know what I mean? And I was just like I I would rather sit and and try and learn programming than than play this game. And and so if you don't feel that way, it's like, well, you get to live once. If you don't want to do it, Yeah. don't do it. Right. Like that's so true. A lot of people ask like and then let's move into your game, but like uh opening up in Unity, but like a lot of people ask me like, "How do I stay disciplined, Thomas?" I'm like,

"Well, the only like are you disciplined about eating?" Like what I mean is like or drinking water. It's like no, you just kind of just do it. Are you disciplined about taking a dump three times a day? No, you just do it. You just do it. And that's because you need it. And so if you don't need to do this, if you don't need to build worlds and to be creative, you're probably not going to be disciplined about it, right? No amount of money in the world is going to make you disciplined about it. But if you need it, if you need like for me, I have to tell stories through games. I have to do it. But let's go ahead and open up your p or your project if you want. This is my favorite part. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's so much fun because like a conver like the conversations the podcast conversations always always always start slow and they're difficult and this was this is true with I told Jonas this you know difficult with Jonas and and difficult with uh um who else uh I think Dave Gilbert it's and Ken Lavine the

conversations are always hard to get started but when we're in unity and we're looking at unity together it's so freeing it's like we're all we're on the same sort of playground ground, you know, or it's familiar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's take a look here. So, this is a difficult game about climbing. What is this mess? Tell us how it works. Um, so it's all one huge level. The whole game? Yeah, the whole game is one huge level. So, I can zoom in here. Let me just do something. I think we might screw something up here. It might be a little weird. Let me just try reset everything because everything in Yeah, I had a feeling. Okay, Thomas, I should have prepared a little bit. I wanted to This is the same with Daniel Mullins. Daniel Mullins when we opened up Inscription, it was all broken, which is hilarious. Yeah, let me just get back to the beginning of the

game. Okay, so I have a cheat where I can fly obviously. So, okay. So, this is the beginning of the game. I think most people have tried it or seen it recognize this part. So you come up here and we climb and that's great. And how does the water work? So the water is generated uh at runtime. So right now there's nothing. This is just uh this is not the water. This is just like the background water. Yeah. And so the water is generated when you start the game. It just generates like I kind of explained it pretty well in my video I made, but it just generates water. Uh, and um, based on just little I think I'll if we Oh, you know, it just generates water, Thomas. It just generates generates water. Yeah. Come on, man. You don't know how to do that. Okay. So, now we should be able to Yeah. So, now you can kind of see the water here. Yeah. So, it's just like a card, like a layer. Is it matching directly to the 3D of the plane? Yes. So it's sort of like

Oh, so the water is generated. Where am I? So there's a plane that goes like this and attaches to a point and then it generates a plane backwards as well. Right. Okay. So from a third party perspective or whatever, you'd have this wave. This is from And so it just draws straight down like this polygons. Uhhuh. Okay. And then it also draws it in that direction. Did you code this from scratch, bud? Yeah. What? It's not super It's not super complicated, actually. It's pretty simple. There's some tutorials online. You kind of have to They're very bad, but like it gets you started at least. So, it's like just like It's like this, right? Mhm. And so, it makes sense. I just don't know how to do it. Uh it took it took a few days for sure. Like Okay. Well, I'll get I'll get Chad GPT to do it for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that's the solution. Even see how

there's like a bit of a misalign here. You can And that's why you have that line there. It It's a nice clean seam. Yeah. So, the line is because you want a You want like a bit of a refraction. See that? Yeah. Right where the surface is. Um that's so cool. That's genius. So, I put that line like on top of everything. And then I don't remember exactly how I did with the shader here, but it was a bit of a shader trick to put him in behind the water. Mhm. But not fully, because there's a bit of a thing here where the game is actually rendered using three cameras. I think this might be what I get asked about the most, like how is this game rendered? Like, what what's going on? So, I don't know. Can you turn off cameras? Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to turn off all other cameras. So, this is the main game. This is the main camera. And the reason it's

like just doing that weird stuff in the background is because there's nothing rendered there. So, there's the main camera, which renders the game, which is an orthographic camera despite the fact that it's Oh, can you click on the main camera for me? I want to see the settings. Sure. Okay. I was Okay. Yes. orthographic because it's really hard to make a a a game with precise with precision when it's not orthographic. Is that correct? Exactly. Like I could probably switch this to non-orththographic and it's completely broken obviously. Yeah, actually. Yeah, you can't really see anything. Never mind. You can kind of see a little bit of parallax if I fly around. If you look at the tires and stuff. Yeah. But then it becomes if you increase the field of view, you might you might see it a little bit more, but yeah. Um Yeah. Okay. So now it's actually in 3D, but then you can see how we have parallax on that rock. I don't know. This is probably motion sickness inducing. I can see it. Yeah. If you

look at the wheel, you can really see it. Yeah. And it might even look better, but it just it makes it like it makes it like it was very difficult. Like maybe this section looks good, but then there are other sections which just wouldn't have worked out. Like this actually looks pretty good. Well, the game is all about if if it's a rage game, you better be sure that the hand looks like it's actually on the right spot or people are going to be pissed off cuz it's like that just a subtle a subtle change in perspective is going to make them feel like, wait, I was touching it or I was holding it in reality. In reality, the camera made it look that way. Exactly that. I agree. Like that's what I was feeling as well is like it's got to be uh it's got to be precise. Like it can't be there can't be any confusion. So um yeah. So what I did was I'll just restart the game so that we're not like totally okay. So this is the game, right? So this is the main game camera which is only rendering the stuff that

you can climb on. But this isn't very interesting, right? So I was like, well, we need another camera which renders the background. And I'm pretty sure this is how Bennett Fod's game is rendered as well. Like you'll have an orthographic plane and then a perspective plane for the background. So if we turn on the background camera, now we actually have a background. And you can see that there's parallax. If you look at the tree, it's got parallax. It just looks a lot nicer and it kind of Oh, yeah. makes it look a little more interesting to look at. But uh I I think it's like everything. I think it's so crucial. Yeah. It's it's what makes the game feel scary. Totally. Gives it height. And so then the other thing is I wanted also to have things that block you that it's like, oh, you can you can't go through this rock, right? Mhm. Like you can fall and slide on it. Same goes for up here. Like I wanted these rocks to be like a protective barrier, right? The problem is like it looks like you can climb

them, right? Like there's no there's no perspective on them. They're orthographic. So it was like, well, what can I climb on and what can I not climb on, right? Like I don't know if that but here it's like what tells you that you can't climb on these rocks here over on the left, the darker ones. So what I ended up doing was to um create another camera which is the foreground camera which also renders in perspective. Boom. Like that. Oh. So let me just go full screen. So that that is you can see how that comes at you. And the reason I couldn't use the same camera for the background and foreground is because obviously the foreground should be on top of the game and the background should be behind. So, I unfortunately had to do two cameras. Maybe there would have been a better solution, but so now you can really feel how that kind of just like you can see that I can't climb on that, right? Because absolutely a

it's coming at you, but I also created a shader that depth ramps off like the so the closer it is to camera, it goes darker. Smart. That is, you know, you really feel like that's probably not climbable. Same if I come back down to here, like you can see how dark it is and how, you know, so that's how I solved that. It took me quite a while actually to figure out how to make it clear that you can't climb it. But I think I think it worked. I don't know. What do you think? I think I think it's perfect. And I think you're following a lot of like game design rules there just subconsciously. Um games like I said earlier that the these Rage games, their foundation is clarity. Uh yeah, clearly communicating what is and is not the rules. Um and if you were if you didn't have that foreground, I think that there would be so many people who felt like it was just unfair because they're like, I I thought I grabbed something I should have grabbed. Yeah. Um this is great, man. You know what's funny is when we look at it from the editor's perspective or from the scene view, there's there's

a sense of relief that I get in seeing this because when I first played this game, I'll explain what I mean by relief. When I first played this game, I felt like such a fraud because it looks so clean and it's like the way, and this is true with every game, you know? It's like it looks so like the developer was so so perfect in their development. It's just so clean and perfect. And when I was playing it, I was like, it's just so precise. And I'm sure it is precise, but when we look at it from this angle, it's like there's a lot of of it it feels messy. Smok and mirrors. Yeah, that's right. And I think a lot of developers listening and watching right now, I think they might feel relief, too, because when they're in their projects, they're like, "Why does my project feel so gross? Why is it when I open it up, it's like opening a trash can?" Yeah, I know the feeling. And I think every developer is it feels that way, you know? They just Totally. Yeah. There's a lot of cheating I had to do. like the arms. I had that in the video as well,

but like I had to do this. That's so funny. Which is, you know, to get the shadows, right, to connect. Can you Can you uh possibly move the camera so that we can see it in real time? Uh, how do I do that? Like, uh, just grab your like that. That's so funny to me, dude. Yeah, it's pretty weird. In your head, you're like, "This is just the way the guy looks." But in my head, this is how it goes. Yeah. But it's like I tried a lot of different things. But the problem is if I push him closer to the rock, then I started getting intersections and stuff. And actually, I also had to write a a shader that kind of cheats so that the guy is always rendered on top of the rock no matter what. So even if he penetrates, you still he's still on top. But the shadows obviously get screwed up. This was basically the best way to because it was really really important for the shadows to connect even if the arms look a little long sometimes. Yeah.

But uh yeah, to just to really feel like, oh man, my hand is actually on that surface. Like without the shadow, it just wouldn't work. So I mean, if you turn the graphics down, you don't have shadows. But I mean, yeah, that's how it goes, right? Can we talk about your use of lighting and fog really quick? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just ask questions and I'll do my best. go ahead and um give us an idea of of how you're using fog to basically make it look like the background is more detailed than it is. Oh, okay. So, this is a trick I learned from working in VFX um many years ago. So, you can see here how it looks like there's mountains in the back and stuff, and we've got a little bit of subtle fog going on the ground, but really all it is, it's just like a depth ramp that I'm coloring. So, I've got this system where based on where the player is in height of the map, it changes the background. So, you

can see as I progress up, we now we're more green, right? So, if you look at the bottom of the screen, we're more of like a sunset orange. And then we come to this green section and then it changes more into this sunset and now it gets dark. How did you do that? Um, it's pretty simple. It's like um Are you using Unity's global fog system or uh No. So I'm using a plugin that's called is it called volutric fog? I think it is. It's on the asset store and it allows you to create like fog and that's what I'm using for clouds and fog. But how the sky changing script is working is that basically there's I have these objects. See? Okay. So here's an object. So here's a sky thing. So I have this folder. Oh no, that's so annoying. Oh, because I Right. So I have

these balls here. So when the player reaches this point, it changes the So I have these like different things like start area, jungle, jungle 2, roam. And each of these, you can see I have a bunch of different color values and parameters. So it's just basically changing the post-processing and the depth processing. Yep. And so I can just add these into the game and then whenever the player reaches that point in height, it will update everything. Brilliant. So you can kind of see how it looks pretty bad in the background. Like I just have this one material for everything to economize a little bit. And it's all actually one object. Just one material. Yep. Uh even the boat here. You can see man. What are those? Oh, these are uh when I generate the um reflection probes like I wanted to have uh if you look at the water I see. Yeah.

Yeah, you'll see. Uh, so see that highlight in the water? Like there's like a bit of a bright highlighting in the water that's coming from those boxes cuz when I took it off it was just like totally flat. See the details? Yeah. So I added those. Brilliant. I love that, man. Um, okay. Another question is, um, so let me just hold on to finish what I my thought here. U, yeah. So everything looks bad, but in the game it looks good. So, I'll show you what it looks without the post-processing that depth layering. So, this is, you know, kind of looks okay, I think. And it also helps to just like fade off the background. Not important. Not a bunch of colors, right? Very monochrome. Like, you're supposed to focus on the guy and the rocks. So, but if I turn that off, you'll see how it might not look so good anymore. Um, where's the camera? Main camera. So, I think that is the foreground camera. That's actually that's probably the background camera. So here I have post-processing

scripts. So this is what it looks like without that. So that's not very good. No. Um so yeah, you can really do a lot with just using the the Zbuffer that comes out from Unity automatically and just coloring that and tinting it and stuff. That's right. I don't know if you're using that for your game, but Yeah. I mean, I just use a standard fog and then I mix it with a volutric fog. Yeah. Like I wanted the control, right? like I didn't want to I didn't Oh, I know. I don't like the black boxiness of the Unity volumetrics. I was like I just want a simple gradient, right? That's right. So, that's what that does. So, um let's talk about optimization here. Okay. And then we'll wrap up. Um you've got the whole game here. Mhm. What's being rendered? Uh well, how do you do this? Okay. Yep. Yep. What happened to my occlusion baking? I think because I'm

making a new map, it's probably broken potentially. Um it looks like it is. So, but it it's occlusion calling, right? Are you doing any other sort of optimizations like baked lighting? Um are you are you doing uh asset streaming? Are you loading certain sections of the level or is it all loaded by default? I'm obviously I'm using the built-in occlusion culling in Unity. And the way it works is that you can see how it kind of just populates the game as I climb up. Yep. So, it's kind of very automatic as you can see. There were definitely problems with this because I do have an orthographic camera and perspective cameras. There is also even a bug with the shadows which I can do anything about. So it's rendering more shadows than it should. But yeah, it's terrible. But it that's and that's also I want to make my own engine at some

point. But can we can we click the stats button if you don't mind? Sure. Um I want to see um I want to see what your tries and your batches are. Yeah, your batches are looking really good. Anything below like 500 is great for mobile. Yeah. Where are my batches? like uh to that right now. Right. Yeah, they're at 100. Um which is great. Uh yeah. Um yeah, 100. Yeah, I tried to my goal was to sort of keep it at around 100 or less, you know, if possible. Sometimes it goes up to 200, I think. But so yeah, I used uh Mesh Baker to just combine meshes. And you can even see how they pop in. like this is all one big mesh, but obviously they were initially just like rocks that I populated like little rocks and then I just used MeshBaker to just take chunks and combine them. Can you tell me about that? Does that does that actually help your optimization? Yes. How much? Tremendously. Uh I mean it brings your batches down like crazy, right? Okay. Do

you only do things that This is helping me because I need to do this for Twisted Tower. Yeah. Uh we have like cuz everything's a separate prefab like every little thing. Okay. Um, it's not like they're individual objects. Like what I mean is like we're using like 20 prefabs for railings and we just snap them together. So my question to you is is did you do it with just groups of objects or did you do it with the ones who had the same materials? Um, well I in MeshBaker you can create texture atlases for assets. So what I would do is I would I mean I'll see if I can find an example of this to just show you. Uh maybe I ultimately ended up cheating. I'll have to I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure there were. Yeah. So, these are single objects. Obviously, you mark them as static, which I'm sure you've done, which then Yes. like these two are obviously the same object, and so they're marked as static, so they should technically be automatically batched. But it doesn't always work that well.

So, you want to be careful about not doing that too much. Why though? Why doesn't it automatically work? Well, because I thought Gohead. you as the designer, you're better at knowing what is rendered on the screen at the same time, whereas the batching will try to figure out like, oh, well, you know, they're they're this far apart. So, when the camera is here, I can render this without rendering that, but then they need to be not in the same batch and then all of a sudden you end up with like two draw calls for these because they were too far apart. Whereas, you might be like, look, it's better to just combine them and even though we'll be here, I'll render this off screen anyways because it'll bring down the batch and, you know, combine everything. Here's a good example of a texture atlas because I know you were kind of asking Jonas about that. So, if you take a look at these rocks, this is like clearly a bunch of rocks that are the same that are just duplicated. Uh-huh. And then this is a rock with a different material because it has the moss on it, right? Yep. But if I look at this material, I created an atlas which

looks like this, right? So it How do I Hello. Okay, so you have an atlas. So I I knew that I was going to be like, okay, I have these different rock types that I would like to use, right? And I know that they're going to be kind of close together. So I'll create an atlas of these variations and then when I put the rocks in there, I can just choose which which texture to use, but it's all going to be the same material. So, you know, I tried to think about zones, right? It's like okay probably I'll have these type of rocks in this section and then further up I'll have different types of rocks. I'll create a different atlas and you can do this even after you've placed everything out because the mesh baker once you it it takes a little bit of learning but once you do the tutorials and you kind of understand how it works it's very easy to just like select objects bake mesh bake textures pop and it just spits this stuff out. But if you if if you're constantly creating new

texture atlases, um doesn't that mean you're you're creating a bunch of different texture atlases for your game or are you reusing them? Well, I didn't do any atlases until I was done. Okay, let me share let me share my screen so I can ask the question better. Okay, I should probably mention I am no optimization expert, but I just like watched a ton of videos and read a bunch of stuff when I had already built this game completely incorrectly, right? and then went through and and optimized. Well, I think you're doing great. I mean, you you have a massive 3D game and it's you're 100 batches, which is just great. All right, so I'm going to enter play mode here. I'm going to show you kind of what's going on. Mhm. In comparison to your scene, I'm looking at 16 1,800 batches, right? Baby, baby, baby. Okay. Yep. Now, now we're cooking. Holy. Yep. That's right. This is why people are getting uh issues with the performance. See that? Yes. But now if I turn shadows off. Okay. Wait. If it's

on, if shadows are on, I've got 7,000 batches. Okay. Um if I turn it off, let's double check. Did I Did I actually do anything? If I turn it off, you have a thousand. I'm looking at 1,500. Right. So shadows cause a crazy batches issue. Yeah. Now, let me show you kind of what's going on in the scene, and maybe you could try and um clarify why what you did makes sense and why I did what I did didn't make sense. We should also say that you have a 3D game and the player can rotate around and this game looks much nicer than my game in terms of assets and detail and different stuff. So, I mean, you are going to end up with more batches than me, you know. I I agree, but I think I should be aiming for 500. Um, okay. So, let's take a look here. So, I've got these two separate ones here, right? Yeah. Now, you would you would say you would use MeshBaker to just pop those together. Well, they're marked as static, so it's

not probably not a huge deal. They probably would be chunked together, but I mean, yeah, ultimately I would do that. And then uh the the brick on the wall that's just a poly that's a ProTools mesh. Okay. So not a ProTools. What am I saying? A Pro Pro Tools. That's a audio tool. Uh ProBuilder. A ProBuilder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I've never used that, so I'm not quite sure how it works, but it's like I would say like that should all be the same material as uh the pillars. Like that should be texture atlas together and like anything that's like within the Yeah. Yeah. That's what I would do at least. So, it's like anything that's like definitely always going to be together. I think that should be like you could turn this whole room into like one mesh or like you could split it up into like four different meshes or something like that. Really? That would be better. You have to test, right? It depends, right? But yes, in general, it it is. And that's not because of occlusion coloring. It's because of the textures.

It's because like anytime you render anything with a different material, you you you're b you're boosting up the batches and they have and the computer has to do another drop call and then when it comes to shadow casters like every like it gets multiplied, right? Because every time you have a new object, it has to create a new shadow cer for that. Whereas if everything is combined, it just one shadow caster. So, so if you have like a million polies on that object, then obviously that might also so it's a bit of a like it's a bit of a balancing act like because if you just combine this entire room into one mesh and it's just like a massive atlas and that means there's no culling going on, right? So, that's probably not good either. So, okay, I don't know what the I mean, that's the thing like you kind of have to just play around. Um h and also how many lights do you have in the scene that cast shadows? Um let's see here. A lot of them are baked. Okay. So they don't cast real time shadows.

So here's the real time. These are the only real time lights and they all cast shadows. No soft shadows there about 60% of them. 70%. Yeah. See, I have like two lights that cast shadows in my game. Yeah, that's what that's what I found. Yeah. So, what you can do, I guess, is like one thing you could do that a lot of games do is that they will create like a maximum light count for how many lights are allowed to cast shadows at the same time. I think actually Unity does that by default, doesn't it? In the uh render settings. I don't remember, but it's something that you should look into that is like you can set a maximum shadow caster count so that like on the lights so that maybe you have like a maximum of four. You may need to build this yourself, but it would be pretty simple because what you would do is you would just say like the closest four lights to the player. Those are allowed to cast shadows and that's it. And that's it. And then further away lights don't cast

shadows. Oh, I could do that. Might lead to some popping. you may want to do some fade in script or something, but it's just something to play around with that might really bring down your batches, right? But then yeah, combining materials and meshes that go together is generally a good idea, I would think, cuz like I'm wondering, go ahead. Like check in pro like so the meshes you have for the walls, you have walls and then you have arches. Are those how are they different meshes? The way it works is uh like this is the the base layer. Yeah. Which I don't see a problem with this. It's really low polish. Yeah. It I mean look at it. It's just like one sided. So I think it's fine. That's fine. Yeah. Um but then then the set dressing is all separate prefabs. Right. So what about like you have like arches there. Mhm. Those are those are prefabs. So is that a different type of mesh

compared to the wall? Yes, these are all these are all Blender and then the wall is pro uh uh probuilder. Okay, so what I do and this might take a long time for you to do but and this might not be the best way to do it but I can show you something that I probably shouldn't show you because it's for a new level. And so what I started doing is I started level designing in Blender. I know. Can you see this? Mhm. So for example here I have a lot of different shapes and objects like I have this I have that I have that I have that and so this is the starting level for the new or starting area for the new level which is like a sewer system. And so I have all these like there's like an arch here, there's a thing here. And so if I were to just like export these separately into Unity and put them in the game, then they would all draw a different batch because even though they share the same me material. Yes. Because it has to for the batching system to work. Unless I'm wrong. So maybe

somebody in the comments can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that unless the mesh is also identical, Unity's batching system doesn't batch it. So it becomes two draw calls. So what I'm doing here is that I'm creating segments for the map. So for example, here's uh segment one there. So I take all of this and just create one exported mesh out of this, which then in Unity means that I only have one mesh, one material, right? Whereas otherwise this would lead to like one, two, three. Why doesn't Unity Why doesn't Unity static badging do that for you? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, it's just something that, and again, like I I think like somebody should confirm this and you should confirm this as well, but last I checked, it's like it has to be, and I was reading this on the forums of Unity, so I could be wrong here, but that the mesh needs to also be the same, which is not so good. I mean, we

should could do a test, but it would take a while. But like, you could do a test of that. I'm going what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to take that one scene that I'm working in and I'm going to use Mesh Baker and I'm just going to play around with it and see if I can reduce those batches. Yeah, like what I did is I just I just created a duplication of my scene and just started like baking everything and then I just got way better performance. So yeah, you can see the same thing goes for here. This is another material, right? Like more of a rusted material and so these are all separate objects. So yeah, what I ended up doing was to just combine them all into one. Uh would just controll J and it's boom, done. Well, yeah. No. Well, I don't do that. I just like have them separated and have them in a collection. And so I have here I have like pipe. So these these this is how I split it out. So this is like wall rust. That's one material. So if I double click that, that's all the rusty objects, right? Oh, and then Oh, you're grouping it based on materials. Yeah. And so when I when I export like so here's one for example that I want to

chunk right and I've got the pipes that like these pipes. It's not perfect yet. I'm still working on optimization but that's so when I do export I have like a a preset export settings. I'll do export OBJ and I have like a two Unity here. And so then it's like include selection only. So because I've now selected all these objects in the export event, they get combined into one mesh. So I don't have to like combine it inside Blender. But So you're not using Substance Painter at all. Uh I do for texturing. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. But I'm moving away less and less because I want to kill off my subscriptions and stuff. I've been thinking about buying the You can actually buy Substance Painter in Steam or something and get a perpetual license, but I'm just like I really don't I don't know, man. I just I don't like Adobe. I want to get off Adobe. But so far, yeah, it's been pretty good, unfortunately. So, Yep. But I don't know. Does that make sense? It kind of

does. Not really. I I need to I I I've learned everything about optimization except for what like which meshes to combine. Like I I'm I've gotten really good at baking like light light maps and stuff. I've gotten really good at that. I need to look into it more. But from what I can gather, and I I I met with uh a previous podcast guest today, his name is Conrad, and he um he helped me realize that the shadows were a big problem. So, shadows are a problem. And then and and this is for everybody listening who's making a 3D game. In Unity, in particular, Unity, I don't know Unreal, but in Unity, shadows are just brutal. Yes. like you cannot use you got to bake them or have like one totally um light source and then also uh static objects are not what you think they are at least in terms of batching at least I I can't quite figure it out yet so I need to figure that out it's one of those things to where it's like it sounds wonderful and beautiful in

theory but it seems to me my understanding was that in practice it's not as great as we kind of want it to be because I thought the same as you it's like well as long as it's the same material it should just be able to combine the meshes. Like what's the problem? But for I don't remember now and it's like over a year since I did this. So I'm probably talking out of my behind now. But I seem to remember that that was the problem. It's like well actually you can't do that. And also if anything is moving obviously then it doesn't work. Okay. I'm going to let you go here. Thank you so much for your time, dude. That was a lot of fun. That one I learned a lot today, Thomas. Thank you for talking to me. I don't know how useful it was to the rest of the folks out there, but I um it was great to just talk about uh you know, state of mind when making games. Do you want to link in the description for anything? Um I guess my Twitter if if anybody wants to meet up that misses my YouTube videos, then uh you know, I'm more active on Twitter these days. So if you just want to talk to me or ask anything,

then Twitter and maybe my game, a difficult game about climbing if you want to check it out. Uh, so Steam Link. Yeah. You may also be wondering how to turn that $100,000 or million dollar game idea into actual money. And some of you might want to do it before you even finish your game. For that, I have a gift below for you. It's totally free. It's a workshop that shows you how to turn small game ideas into actual