Well, last night I learned why my laptop is so bad with rendering graphics... it literally only has 128MB of dedicated VRAM. It's basically 6 year old integrated graphics on a small laptop not built for graphics. The tough part is that it's got double the RAM of my other, even older laptop. What's worse is that I have an even older Alienware box that had dual Nvidia 1GB graphics cards in it, but I can't use that because one of the cards is broken and the machine no longer has hard drives in it... not to mention it's 16 years old. The 1,200W power supply soaked up a lot of electricity and it was often loud when the fans were blowing.
So I can't use any machine I have to do graphics stuff for DamNation very well. This laptop is already challenged just compiling what I have now and I'm just getting started and have a long way to go. A cloud solution is too expensive for a sole part-time indie pretend dev like me. So do I buy a new computer? Not any time soon I don't think.
So more graphics may not come for some time. I'll just be working on all the other stuff for now. I have a lot to do... an almost overwhelming amount of things. I guess I've got nothing but time, so there's that. I learned one person had been working on their game off and on for 6 years now. I'm at less than 6 months I think, if I include when I tried this the first time Summer of 2025. I'm just gonna keep working on making DamNation better and better.
Hi! Since you commented on my game, I figured I'd come and try yours out as well (even though you didn't really like my game lol but it's all good).
I would say it's a unique idea, but the environments, at least for the first few levels are not too interesting. The water looks fantastic, I'll say that. The swimming is really cool. I also thought it was neat how the water level rises when you drop sticks.
But the scattered plants and landscape are not too interesting. I know you're still looking to upgrade assets and stuff, but for me it's about interactivity, not quality of assets. You have pretty big levels, and most of the things in them the player can ignore. Especially once I got to level 3 where the main challenge is finding resources among the evenly scattered plants. So you could have really limited art and assets, but if the design is good, the game is fun. Like you can literally have N64 level graphics and make a great game. There just needs to be more intention behind the level designs, the terrain, obstacles, where objects are placed, etc.
I think there's kind of a lot going on with the genre of game, too. It's a collect-a-thon, but also kind of a survival game, some dam building, and an education game. A game can have multiple aspects, but you might want to figure out which one of those is the MOST fun as a gameplay loop and just try to do that one thing really well. Making a game solo is a lot of work, so trying to improve ALL of those mechanics as one person can be pretty impossible.
If it's a collecting game. Leading the player through the environment with a trail of resources, maybe even some platforming would be fun. And faster and smoother movement would help. If it's more about survival, I feel like adding some kind of obstacle would help, like you have to succeed in damming up the mouth of a river before it rains, or before the sun goes down. Otherwise it seems like you can wander aimlessly looking for sticks for a very long time with no real obstacle besides happiness slowly sinking. Apologies if something like these suggestions actually happens in a later level I wasn't able to get to.
Thank you very very much! This is the best feedback and advice I've ever received! I love it! Nobody has ever provided anything like this for me until now. I agree with all of your observations, points, and suggestions. It's exactly what I was hoping for by doing random evals for people. Sorry that I don't know enough to be able to do the same for you and thank you for taking the time to write up very useful information for me!
I appreciate what you did here very much. It's beyond anything I could have asked for from anyone.
v_05 has been posted! I am loving the traffic to my page and the six downloads and the four followers! You all are great!
v_05 has the following new things: 20 more beaver facts, swimming, a pause button, fog, eyes that show up in the distance at night, owls that only hoot at night when you get close to them, and a "how-to-play" button under the in game menu button.
I ran into a few issues this time. Water engine stuff and adding external game objects. I saw that one thing was reaching out to the internet every time I loaded the game! no thanks! I don't know if the artist who posted the thing online knew it did that or not, so I'm not placing blame. I'm just not using that item anymore.
Thank you for downloading my game! Thank you to those who left a $$ tip!
If I generate enough $$, I will be formalizing my effort. If I make enough $$, I will be buying real game objects to make the game much more immersive and factually correct for plants and animals, including Agnes herself.
Anything above lvl 5 are "in development" levels. Lvl 9 is not completable. I'm aware of the current bugs and issues, I think. Feel free to read the readme.txt to see my journey. If you have questions about pre-v_03, just ask. It's been a wonderful learning experience so far!
I've also started doing game evals for people. Got a game you want me to check out? Let me know!
I'm strongly considering building a game reviewing sandbox on a separate throw-away system. I've built a google form so I can give consistent feedback at three different tiers of depth/analysis. I want to assume that not everyone that wants feedback on their game is just looking for malware victims.
While you can play my game safely, I won't be pulling anyone's game on my production system. I do want to review other games though. I just need to pull out my old crappy laptop and set things up first.
In other news, I'll be posting v05 this weekend. I've added some neat stuff on the existing 9 dev levels: swimming, fog, eyes in the night, and...
Agnes now starts each level on a tower where she has increased initial camera zoom so you can check out the terrain before you begin. You can see who created the tower in the credits in the v05 readme (not posted yet).
There's also a new "how to play" button in the menu. It's not great, but it's a start.
Small update from me. Level 8 is coming along nicely. It's a water level and I've been working on water and swimming physics (some new things are introduced in level 7). I've also figured out how to wire my stone spawn points to detect water when they spawn and put the stones on the ground surface under water instead of showing the stones as floating on the water. It sure beats manually placing the spawn points on each level!
If you are reading this and you know a good resource for free 3D stuff like grasses and bushes and trees, please let me know. My budget for this game is currently $0. At some point I may buy a full 3D beaver with skeleton, but I can't/won't right now. I'm also very new at importing stuff and making it work, just as I'm a complete noob at Blender. I'm not an "artsy" person so that stuff will come slower than new game functionality.
I'm learning a lot and successes like the ones I had this evening in making the game better and adding features have made the whole thing continually worth the time and effort.
I also learned that my laptop is too small, for storage and processing power and RAM. So things may come around slower than I could do them, and that's ok too.
Please try out the game! It's free but you have the ability to donate if you want. It's just me doing the whole thing and I really welcome your feedback.
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Hi all,
Well, last night I learned why my laptop is so bad with rendering graphics... it literally only has 128MB of dedicated VRAM. It's basically 6 year old integrated graphics on a small laptop not built for graphics. The tough part is that it's got double the RAM of my other, even older laptop. What's worse is that I have an even older Alienware box that had dual Nvidia 1GB graphics cards in it, but I can't use that because one of the cards is broken and the machine no longer has hard drives in it... not to mention it's 16 years old. The 1,200W power supply soaked up a lot of electricity and it was often loud when the fans were blowing.
So I can't use any machine I have to do graphics stuff for DamNation very well. This laptop is already challenged just compiling what I have now and I'm just getting started and have a long way to go. A cloud solution is too expensive for a sole part-time indie pretend dev like me. So do I buy a new computer? Not any time soon I don't think.
So more graphics may not come for some time. I'll just be working on all the other stuff for now. I have a lot to do... an almost overwhelming amount of things. I guess I've got nothing but time, so there's that. I learned one person had been working on their game off and on for 6 years now. I'm at less than 6 months I think, if I include when I tried this the first time Summer of 2025. I'm just gonna keep working on making DamNation better and better.
thanks for reading!
Ortisha
Hi! Since you commented on my game, I figured I'd come and try yours out as well (even though you didn't really like my game lol but it's all good).
I would say it's a unique idea, but the environments, at least for the first few levels are not too interesting. The water looks fantastic, I'll say that. The swimming is really cool. I also thought it was neat how the water level rises when you drop sticks.
But the scattered plants and landscape are not too interesting. I know you're still looking to upgrade assets and stuff, but for me it's about interactivity, not quality of assets. You have pretty big levels, and most of the things in them the player can ignore. Especially once I got to level 3 where the main challenge is finding resources among the evenly scattered plants. So you could have really limited art and assets, but if the design is good, the game is fun. Like you can literally have N64 level graphics and make a great game. There just needs to be more intention behind the level designs, the terrain, obstacles, where objects are placed, etc.
I think there's kind of a lot going on with the genre of game, too. It's a collect-a-thon, but also kind of a survival game, some dam building, and an education game. A game can have multiple aspects, but you might want to figure out which one of those is the MOST fun as a gameplay loop and just try to do that one thing really well. Making a game solo is a lot of work, so trying to improve ALL of those mechanics as one person can be pretty impossible.
If it's a collecting game. Leading the player through the environment with a trail of resources, maybe even some platforming would be fun. And faster and smoother movement would help. If it's more about survival, I feel like adding some kind of obstacle would help, like you have to succeed in damming up the mouth of a river before it rains, or before the sun goes down. Otherwise it seems like you can wander aimlessly looking for sticks for a very long time with no real obstacle besides happiness slowly sinking. Apologies if something like these suggestions actually happens in a later level I wasn't able to get to.
Hello!
Thank you very very much! This is the best feedback and advice I've ever received! I love it! Nobody has ever provided anything like this for me until now. I agree with all of your observations, points, and suggestions. It's exactly what I was hoping for by doing random evals for people. Sorry that I don't know enough to be able to do the same for you and thank you for taking the time to write up very useful information for me!
I appreciate what you did here very much. It's beyond anything I could have asked for from anyone.
thank you again,
Ortisha
Hi all!
v_05 has been posted! I am loving the traffic to my page and the six downloads and the four followers! You all are great!
v_05 has the following new things: 20 more beaver facts, swimming, a pause button, fog, eyes that show up in the distance at night, owls that only hoot at night when you get close to them, and a "how-to-play" button under the in game menu button.
I ran into a few issues this time. Water engine stuff and adding external game objects. I saw that one thing was reaching out to the internet every time I loaded the game! no thanks! I don't know if the artist who posted the thing online knew it did that or not, so I'm not placing blame. I'm just not using that item anymore.
Thank you for downloading my game! Thank you to those who left a $$ tip!
If I generate enough $$, I will be formalizing my effort. If I make enough $$, I will be buying real game objects to make the game much more immersive and factually correct for plants and animals, including Agnes herself.
Anything above lvl 5 are "in development" levels. Lvl 9 is not completable. I'm aware of the current bugs and issues, I think. Feel free to read the readme.txt to see my journey. If you have questions about pre-v_03, just ask. It's been a wonderful learning experience so far!
I've also started doing game evals for people. Got a game you want me to check out? Let me know!
Be well,
Ortisha
Hi all!
I'm strongly considering building a game reviewing sandbox on a separate throw-away system. I've built a google form so I can give consistent feedback at three different tiers of depth/analysis. I want to assume that not everyone that wants feedback on their game is just looking for malware victims.
While you can play my game safely, I won't be pulling anyone's game on my production system. I do want to review other games though. I just need to pull out my old crappy laptop and set things up first.
In other news, I'll be posting v05 this weekend. I've added some neat stuff on the existing 9 dev levels: swimming, fog, eyes in the night, and...
Agnes now starts each level on a tower where she has increased initial camera zoom so you can check out the terrain before you begin. You can see who created the tower in the credits in the v05 readme (not posted yet).
There's also a new "how to play" button in the menu. It's not great, but it's a start.
cheers for now!
Ortisha
Whoa! I finally took a step to put my game link out there more, in itch.io and elsewhere. I now have 42 views, 5 downloads, and $12 in yucky revenue!
I know people aren't downloading my game because itch is posting a security warning still. It is what it is.
I've been slowly visiting the community blogs and trying to expand my presence. I have lots of ideas but not a lot of time. Baby steps!
Ortisha
Hi folks!
Small update from me. Level 8 is coming along nicely. It's a water level and I've been working on water and swimming physics (some new things are introduced in level 7). I've also figured out how to wire my stone spawn points to detect water when they spawn and put the stones on the ground surface under water instead of showing the stones as floating on the water. It sure beats manually placing the spawn points on each level!
If you are reading this and you know a good resource for free 3D stuff like grasses and bushes and trees, please let me know. My budget for this game is currently $0. At some point I may buy a full 3D beaver with skeleton, but I can't/won't right now. I'm also very new at importing stuff and making it work, just as I'm a complete noob at Blender. I'm not an "artsy" person so that stuff will come slower than new game functionality.
I'm learning a lot and successes like the ones I had this evening in making the game better and adding features have made the whole thing continually worth the time and effort.
I also learned that my laptop is too small, for storage and processing power and RAM. So things may come around slower than I could do them, and that's ok too.
Please try out the game! It's free but you have the ability to donate if you want. It's just me doing the whole thing and I really welcome your feedback.
Be well,
Ortisha