Game Dev

Silksong reignites Difficulty debate

Silksong is out now and most people are loving the game, however some people are finding the game to be a bit too difficult, meaning the usual "game difficulty" debate is on fire once again, this happens every time a souls game comes out.

What is the correct difficulty setting for a game? This is actually an extremely difficult game design question to answer and different developers take on different approaches. Most games just have difficulty settings, but some developers really insist on having one specific designed difficulty and that's it.

Silksong takes the second approach with only one difficulty setting. And for some people that setting is just right, whereas for others it is too frustratingly difficult.

I have a theory on game difficulty that I have no idea if it has any basis in reality. My theory is how there are basically two types of people.

• One type finds a difficult boss fight to be challenging, but they can see they are making progress, and when they finally defeat the boss they get a massive rush of endorphins that makes them feel insanely good.

• The other type finds a difficult boss, but every time they lose they just get more and more frustrated, and when they finally manage to defeat the boss they do NOT get that rush of endorphins, instead they think "oh thank god I finally beat this stupid boss and now I can keep playing the game"

I am very much the second type, I get NO pleasure from finally defeating a difficult boss, I don't even feel a sense of relief, so for me it's just never-ending frustration with no positive feelings in sight, therefore I do NOT like punishingly difficult games.

That's my theory on why some people LOVE difficult games and others (like myself) hate them. I have no idea if that theory has any basis in reality but I do know I never feel the massive sense of accomplishment that some people talk about.

The excellent channel Game Maker's Toolkit has a video on this. If you want to be a good game designer then you NEED to study this topic. This is not just important in terms of difficulty itself but also super important in terms of accessibility. Some people might physically not have fast enough reflexes to beat some boss, regardless of how much they practice, and without difficulty settings it just means the game is unplayable for them.

There is an interesting comment in that video that makes an analogy to spices in food, everyone has different preferences for what they like. If you give me some super spicy food I won't eat it no matter how delicious you tell me it is.

My advice to you on this topic is how you should include difficulty settings in your own games. In the case of Silksong and Souls games they can get away with this because they have massive audiences that will love the games no matter what. But for your indie games, if you go with just one difficulty setting that is too hard then you will likely get lots of negative reviews.

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Game Dev

DON'T finish your tasks!

Here's an interesting tip for motivation, do NOT finish your tasks!

It might sound odd but it's a strategy that can work quite nicely. If you're coming to the end of your workday or just a focus session, try to leave a tiny task left undone. Maybe just a button missing a click handler, maybe you just need to write an event and hook it onto the UI, maybe you just need to drag some references, something simple that would complete that task.

That way when you get back to work you have a quick easy win waiting for you! One of the hardest parts to do with "motivation" is starting, so if you have a very easy quick win that you can get started with then it will help you start and after that quick win you will likely keep going.

However when it comes to this advice it might or might not work for you. There is an interesting thread on Reddit talking about this and the OP sees this as a great tip, whereas someone else commented "I just can't sleep with an unfinished task".

So on this I would say two things. First of all if you're trying to make games seriously (as opposed to just a hobby) then I would advise you to rely more on self-discipline as opposed to motivation. Self-discipline means you do what you need to do regardless of whether you feel like it or not, whereas Motivation is something that you have no control over. If you're trying to make games seriously then you should "just do it" as opposed to only when you feel like it.

And secondly, when it comes to literally any kind of advice, my best tip is just try everything and see what works for you. Some advice might work great for one person and terrible for another person. In this particular scenario maybe leaving a task left undone will work wonders for you, or perhaps it will leave you stressed until you get back to it. For some people working mornings will be great, for someone else working at night will be better. So always remember how YOU are a unique human being, try out all sorts of approaches and over time you will learn what works for YOU specifically.

Tech

Meta's new AR (AI) Glasses!

Meta has just unveiled their latest AR glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display which is an insanely impressive piece of tech. It has the format of normal glasses (slightly thicker) and within the frame it contains an entire computer capable of processing all sorts of voice commands, it can show you a screen directly on the lenses (full color!), and is connected to yet another super impressive piece of tech, the Meta Neural Band.

This band has been shown before and always amazes me, it can read brain signals to your hands and use those to control the glasses. By doing various gestures you can "click" on buttons, do slides, zooms, rotates, and many other actions. I hope this EMG Band will be purchasable separately sometime soon, you could do a lot of fun stuff with this! And of course the glasses also contain AI, in fact they're actually calling these AI Glasses and not AR Glasses.

Very important is how this is NOT a prototype, it's an actual product you will be able to purchase on September 30 (US only) for $799.

So perhaps most impressive of all is the rate of progress. MKBHD did a video on this and in there he talked about how just a few months ago he was playing around with their prototype and now here we are not long after and it's coming out as an actual consumer product! Usually it takes years to go from prototype to final product so this is a super impressive timeline!

The live demo went pretty terribly with constant fails. Funnily enough the CTO told Yahoo how the reason is when they said in the demo "Hey Meta, start Live AI" how it started every single Meta Ray-Ban in the room which basically caused them to do a DDoS attack on themselves heh.

Fun

Dev wanted a Walk-Cycle, got a Walk->Cycle

Sometimes you have to be very explicit with exactly what you want, especially with AI tools, it will give you the exact result you ask for it, even if it's not what you meant.

Here is a funny example of a dev that asked for something, and got literally what they asked for even though it wasn't what they wanted. They wanted a walk cycle, as in just a looping walking animation, but the AI interpreted it as "oh this dev wants an animation where you start walking, and then jump on a bicycle!"

It's a pretty funny result and the output is surprisingly good, it genuinely generated an animation that starts walking and gets on a bike and cycles away, very nice super niche high quality animation!

This Unity AI tool for Animation generation is actually pretty excellent, if you don't know how to use it then check out my detailed tutorial on it.