Lys
@lystingdangerously.bsky.social
Game director at Eridanus Industries, and lead developer of NEBULOUS: Fleet Command
Give this thread a read. It's a great synopsis of how the speculation- and finance-driven approach to managing game development has gutted the industry. Everyone who actually has their hands in the mud of making games knows this in their bones, but I rarely see it put into words so cleanly.
A lot of the business failures of the games industry are really rooted in this desire to create a product that dominates the market. The recent Amazon thing really highlights that: they wanted to create a product that outperformed Steam, but they didn't understand Steam or what the audience wanted.
October 31, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Give this thread a read. It's a great synopsis of how the speculation- and finance-driven approach to managing game development has gutted the industry. Everyone who actually has their hands in the mud of making games knows this in their bones, but I rarely see it put into words so cleanly.
Well, I successfully got the enemy AI to stop focusing on the flagship. Caught some rockets in the process...
October 31, 2025 at 2:38 AM
Well, I successfully got the enemy AI to stop focusing on the flagship. Caught some rockets in the process...
Gazing into the abyss of my AI mission prioritization system. I started my day trying to diagnose a strange behavior with the enemy AI and instead ended up making this AI state viewer. #gamedev
October 31, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Gazing into the abyss of my AI mission prioritization system. I started my day trying to diagnose a strange behavior with the enemy AI and instead ended up making this AI state viewer. #gamedev
No one ever tells you how much math there is in gamedev. I just spent *all day* figuring out the correct formulas to remap the UVs for the socket's damage mask to the individual modules of the scalable VLS launchers. At least it finally works.
Just ignore that we haven't made new textures yet.
Just ignore that we haven't made new textures yet.
October 23, 2025 at 9:31 PM
No one ever tells you how much math there is in gamedev. I just spent *all day* figuring out the correct formulas to remap the UVs for the socket's damage mask to the individual modules of the scalable VLS launchers. At least it finally works.
Just ignore that we haven't made new textures yet.
Just ignore that we haven't made new textures yet.
Still in there, 5 years later. Still don't really know why...
October 20, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Still in there, 5 years later. Still don't really know why...
Time for some more #gamedev #techart: Damage effects from the hull being mapped onto the turrets! Using the alternate UV map hack we came up with for the engine damage decals we can now make damage appear on components mounted on the hull as long as their material has the correct properties.
October 14, 2025 at 7:56 PM
After a whole season of harvesting and freezing tomatoes from our garden, it's finally time to make and jar some sauce. This pot is like 15 or 18 quarts and it barely fit half of them.
October 12, 2025 at 7:49 PM
After a whole season of harvesting and freezing tomatoes from our garden, it's finally time to make and jar some sauce. This pot is like 15 or 18 quarts and it barely fit half of them.
Something funny we learned working on this graphical update for Neb is that apparently there are two models for the Vauxhall light cruiser. One is 10% larger than the other and at first we weren't sure which one was actually currently in the game. #gamedev
October 1, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Something funny we learned working on this graphical update for Neb is that apparently there are two models for the Vauxhall light cruiser. One is 10% larger than the other and at first we weren't sure which one was actually currently in the game. #gamedev
More #gamedev tools for our singleplayer campaign: In order to balance the ammo economy, one must understand the ammo economy. We're about to start testing the third (of four) zones in the campaign, and testers were reporting how they were starting the feel the resource strain by the end of zone 2.
September 5, 2025 at 3:53 PM
More #gamedev tools for our singleplayer campaign: In order to balance the ammo economy, one must understand the ammo economy. We're about to start testing the third (of four) zones in the campaign, and testers were reporting how they were starting the feel the resource strain by the end of zone 2.
There's nothing quite like wasting an hour debugging a simple issue to make you spend the rest of your evening (and the next morning) making an in-game visual debugging viewer for your homebrew campaign scripting system so you can see the values being passed around in real time. #gamedev
August 23, 2025 at 3:50 PM
There's nothing quite like wasting an hour debugging a simple issue to make you spend the rest of your evening (and the next morning) making an in-game visual debugging viewer for your homebrew campaign scripting system so you can see the values being passed around in real time. #gamedev
Last night was my real playthrough of the first 8 missions of my campaign, and despite knowing everything that was going to happen and constantly stopping to fix bugs I actually enjoyed playing my own game for the first time in years. It helped me remember why I got into #gamedev in the first place.
August 11, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Last night was my real playthrough of the first 8 missions of my campaign, and despite knowing everything that was going to happen and constantly stopping to fix bugs I actually enjoyed playing my own game for the first time in years. It helped me remember why I got into #gamedev in the first place.
Maybe we should plant less cucumbers next season...
July 30, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Maybe we should plant less cucumbers next season...
