#Dev Pile

[talenlee]

Dev Pile 2025-10 — Instructions

Rules are magic. Rules are a way for you to to put words on paper, and then, without any involvement from you beyond the words you put on that paper, another person can come along, read that paper, and play a game that they did not know existed before you put those words on that paper.

Rules are also incredibly hard and it sucks to write them and it sucks to read them.

An Exercise: What games can you fully explain the rules to? If you’re a game designer, how much of your rules of something you’ve made can you explain, easily and coherently, to another human being such that they can play your game?

If you’re talking about a videogame, try and explain the instructions for interacting with the game. The interface can be very complex for games, but the fundamental instructions of what a player is doing, and how they should progress through the game, that should be explicable. Even if only in broad genre terms, such as ‘it’s a platformer where you head to the right.’

If you’re talking about a game of pools like Magic: The Gathering, the fundamental instructions is almost like a folk game. You have a basic set of steps that you can go through, and then when the game pieces introduce new rules information, you address that. You address it one piece at a time, and those pieces are all part of a very large, very complicated archive of information.

What if we’re talking about a much simpler game, like Poker? Poker has a set number of hands and rules for just following the patterns of player behaviour. Not ‘how would you teach someone to play poker well,’ but rather, ‘can you explain a set of rules for one specific form of poker from start of the game to the end?’

You might think ‘hey, Poker isn’t that simple.’ It depends on what you mean, though. Poker, the game of hands and cards and betting and showdowns is reasonably simple as a set of instructions. The values of the hands are complicated, but only in that they’re not obvious until you’ve mastered them. Playing poker well, and working out the emergent properties of poker, like signalling and defending ranges, those are things that aren’t obvious until you play, and they’re also skills that form a sort of inner club. Defending your ranges is something that will serve you well against less skilled players, over time, but in any given hand, it’s not fundamentally relevant the way ‘players get five cards’ or ‘there are three community cards are.’

Now, the point of this exercise is to get you in the mindset of thinking about not just what kind of rules you can explain but how you explain them. Game rules, expressed in the game you share, are going to be explained in a particular way, and that language is itself, part of the game, and part of how they communicate. You can convey that one and one is two, and you can present 1+1=2, and you can even do that as one plus one equals two, but each of those comes with different language benefits. Highly technical, mathmatically concise language is going to benefit game designs where the game has to make adjudications quickly and decisively, for example. Magic: The Gathering has several rules defining just the basic idea of ‘the turn’ and ‘this’ and ‘target,’ all terms with seemingly obvious meanings that the rules need to very technically adjudicate.

When you know how to communicate in your rules, you get to start using the game language to pre-load player behaviour. If you can talk to players clearly in one language, you can lie to them in it.

Heck, not even lie – cajole. Mislead. Obfuscate.

Consider a Warhammer army with a special ability that says you do minimum damage when you roll a 6 and get maximum damage on a 1. This is a simplified version of a rule that exists: by flipping two numbers’ results, statistically, you’ve changed nothing, but you’ve created a technical piece of rules information that a player can relate to when they ‘feel’ unlucky. It’s just raw stats – there’s no way for a flip of two digits like that to make a mathematical difference without other interactions – but the way it’s framed can make a player feel like they’re getting something when they’re not. This is a way you can create an impression of a rules space without the specifics of it. In an army-based game like Warhammer 40,000, there are a host of factors that are involved in balancing an army, and sometimes there are things that are there to feel good that aren’t meaningfully good, because the rest of the balance is being handled over there, in math-land.

Mark Rosewater calls this kind of thing trinket text on a Magic card. Where a card has some small rules concession on it that makes a card feel less empty even if it’s not mechanically relevant.

Alright while I distracted you, can you do those instructions again?

How different are they to last time? Did you find something you’d rather do differently?

Instructions are both a very technical thing to do, a set of proceses for a complex operation, but they are also an empathic experience. You need to think about the person reading them as if they are a person, but also, as if they then need to explain those rules to another person, and the way they will explain them being easier to say than it is to put on a page in the way you might if, say, you were doing technical documentation. This can get as nitty gritty as considering whether or not game language you’re using is phonetically varied, so players can’t mix up spoken language terms easily. You may love a pun but if the pun makes it hard for people to play your game, or worse, recruit others to play your game, it’s got to go.

I’ve said it before: Writing instructions to a game is like programming a random stranger, and there’s no way to know if it won’t compile.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[nshtn]

would you still love me if i was a machine

[anti-fairy-world]

You know, while we don't think Stuck In My Head/Mind The Gap were bad episodes or anything, we kinda wish they'd been cut in favor of making that time the part one to The Battle of Big Wand, with the actually episode being part two. Make it a whole big forty to forty-five special instead of trying to fit it with a twenty-two to twenty-three minute run time

We actually like everything they were trying to do with the special, but we just wish they had more time to flesh things out and play around with the jokes between the plot moments. The writers probably didn't really have much of a choice with the time they were given to work with and had to prioritize where screen time was used, and honestly they did what they could, but sometimes it felt like 'and now this is happening so we can get moving with the plot'

[bf-rally]

2 guys dialogue in, 2 more to go!

[ellraiser]

BUGS

[pinacoladamatata]

I'm fascinated by your retail AU solas. love seeing him in situations (positive)(love your art btw)

putting him in Situations(tm) seems to be an all time favourite

[hurricanek8art]

Hello, I just glimpsed your tags on a post and no pressure (I myself am. So anxious about this ask rip) but if you would like to talk about your trooper and bounty hunter cousins I would love to hear about them, that sounds like a delightful recipe for a character dynamic (like. Is one essentially betraying the other? Did they come up in a situation where they just went their separate ways? How do they feel about the demands of their jobs putting them at odds/how close were they???)

DO NOT BE ANXIOUS I CRAVE ENCOURAGEMENT TO YAK ABOUT MY STORIES 🥰🥰🥰

Okay SO my Ordo cousins are kind of a mess in the best way family can be, with the added heap of Mandalorian Family Drama on top. A good portion of the story for them came from me being really fascinated by all the lore around the Mandalorians of this era and kinda disappointed with how little we actually know, and then me realizing "hey I accidentally made my Mando cousins look a LOT* like the Ordo brothers completely unintentionally" and then my brain went a-plot-bunnying away and came up with More Lore for my stories that I really need to put down in a coherent form/document. But I had maybe three hours of sleep, I know if I nap that I'm gonna murder my sleep schedule, and my dog is chewing on my desk chair again, so that is not happening here today. 🤣😭

*I'm not kidding, I've changed Jaiga's hair and Devika's makeup/tattoos since I made this, but I mean look:

Accidental cousins go BRRRRRRRR

Aaaaaaand I gotta put this under a wall of text because I have Cannot Summarize in a Brief Succinct Manner Whatsoever Because Infodumping Is Fun problems and I don't wanna take over the dash. If this makes no sense, again, three hours of sleep. 🤣😭

Basic barebones (i say like a liar 🤣😭) backstory: Devika and Jaiga grew up as two of six of the Ordo chieftain's grandkids together and are basically siblings. So Artus Lok becomes Mandalore the Vindicated then turns around and reinvests Mandalore's loyalty to the Sith Empire, Jicoln Cadera falls out with him over it and starts rallying clans. By that point Jek and Rass' part of the family split to do their own thing on Makeb for Reasons I Have Not Determined (I try to be a little canon compliant) so it's just Dev, Jai and Jaiga's older brother Korvun left with their respective parents, and Jicoln shows up to talk Clan Ordo into joining up with his uprising against Vindicated. Their grandpa Kinkaid doesn't like being loyal to the Empire either but doesn't want to turn on Lok, but Devika, who is being groomed as a future successor to the chieftaincy, rallies the clan into supporting Cadera because they're all sick of being used and abused by the Empire—they're Clan Ordo! Their forefather was Mandalore the Preserver, close ally to Revan! He and Clan Ordo helped bring down Darth Nihilus! So why are they bowing and scraping for the Sith when all the Sith have ever done for the Mando'ade is use them as cannon fodder? Speech is awesome, Ordo joins Cadera's rebellion, and when Clan Ordo does something like that, a whole bunch of other clans follow them because of Canderous' continuing legacy of loyalty and honor. They're gonna start a revolution and get them the kriff away from the Empire once and for all!

Which. Obviously. Doesn't happen. And goes very... very... very badly.

Jaiga and Korvun end up the only ones in the chieftain's family to survive the Schism—Jaiga fought, Korvun was born for clan politics but has some mobility issues that make him prefer to stay out of the actual fighting, both have some intense PTSD from losing most of their family. At that point they're sixteen and eighteen and technically traitors, so Clan Ordo gets appointed an "advisor" (read: Lok-approved supervisor) to ensure reparations go smoothly. Korvun takes over the clan chieftaincy but is pretty powerless to affect much without the advisor's approval. Jaiga is "volunteered" as an ijaat-sur'eyir, an honor-seeker, to basically wander the galaxy as an exile, no aid whatsoever from her family or clan, and find a way to regain Clan Ordo's honor and her own. Basically, she gets Zuko'd into a quest to find the Avatar, but the closest thing she gets to an Uncle Iroh is Braden, who gets killed only like six months into her bounty hunter apprenticeship to him, so she has to figure all this stuff out on her own (well, and with her crew). All that time out there alone makes her really bitter, disillusioned with her chances, and resentful of Devika for rallying them into the Schism, though. Because what do they have to show for all that loyalty to Mandalore the Preserver's legacy? Everyone's dead!

...except Devika did not get killed in the Schism.

She managed to get away with only a few scars. She tried to get back and fight for Clan Ordo in the aftermath, but she got betrayed by someone in the clan who felt betrayed by her actions in turn, and ended up in a Zygerrian slave camp for two years until she managed to jerry-rig a transmitter and reported their activities to the nearest Republic army base. SpecForce shows up to clear them out, since they'd been using the post-Treaty of Coruscant chaos to expand their enterprise into Republic territory with Republic citizens, and Dev's efforts in helping fight back get noticed. The leader of Cyclone Squad (made it up for fic purposes!) catches on that she's a Mandalorian who escaped the Schism real fast, but she's a dang good fighter and she went out of her way to save innocent lives, and points her in the direction of Special Forces since she has nowhere else to go and clearly wants to fight. Dev picks up the name Mav Darmani out of worry that if Mand'alor notices her fighting for the Republic that he'll bring the hammer down on whoever is left alive back home, graduates top of her class from Carida, serves a few outer rim tours with Cyclone, then gets transferred to Havoc just in time for All of That Business.

Neither Devika or Jaiga know the other survived the Schism until they both start making the galactic news (for vastly different reasons 😬) and recognize each other. Devika is overjoyed that Jai and Korvun survived. Jaiga wants to kill her for everything that happened. I haven't worked out how the reunion goes but it goes Badly. They're fine as of KotFE (and happily reunited with their other cousins! I can't remember which one but one of the Ordo bros' codex blurbs mentions they were at Darvannis), but it takes a long, long, long time for them to work things out. They're a mess that loves heckling/teasing/driving each other up the kriffin' wall, but I love my mess.

[welcometoteyvat]

i need people to stop saying shit about gamings name* rn

[talenlee]

Dev Pile 2025-06 — Starter Kit

Making dev piles is a new experience for the blog in that they are explicitly deliberately timely. Where most of the work on this blog is thrown weeks, sometimes months in advance if it doesn’t fit neatly in a single spot, I am trying to make sure I write any given Dev Pile article covering the ‘week before’ the article goes up. This is a new kind of work for me, and it’s necessitated working ahead.

The week this article is being ‘written in’ is the week after Cancon. I had a plan for this week: I was going to spend the week writing an article developing the game dev I did, at cancon, in the dull periods at the table between the sales. Thing is, this year, that did not happen – Cancon was pretty much completely constant, so much so that the first day I didn’t even notice I never pulled out my notebook and what notes did get taken during the whole event were surface, or sketching out some minor ideas.

Therefore instead of a single intense focus here, this is going to be something of a hello and hey, here’s how to get started article about game making, tools, and prototyping.

Who Can Make Games?

You can make games. I can make games. Anyone who wants to can make games. The access you have to industrial scale production equipment to make the game you’re designing into something that looks like conventional product is a little more attainable than you may think, thanks to modern tools.

The core of you making games is this: Can you explain a set of rules to another player that let them understand how to play the game?

Great, then you’ve made a game. The next step is working out how to make that game the kind of game you want it to be. And to paraphrase what Adam Savage once said, the difference between doing game development and screwing around is just writing things down.

Tools

First things first, if you have a tool you like for any of the stated purposes, then you should use the tool you like. The tools I describe here should all be free, but that can make them less convenient in ways you may not like.

To write rulebooks, I use LibreOffice. This is a text editor in the same vein as Pages and Word, and much like Google Docs. We’ve pretty much solved ‘writing in a document for a computer user to read’ as a format, and that format has been kinda the same for thirty years. Notably, a formal editor like this lets you do tables and give texts formatting entries like heading styles, which means you don’t have to work to translate that stuff to a website like a wordpress content management system. Under the hood, these two things know how to talk to one another.

Notepad is a valuable tool as well for when you need ‘scrap’ text – no formatting, just some numbers or the like, but literally anything will do here.

Almost inevitably any given game design I have will need a spreadsheet. Sometimes a spreadsheet lets me present a skeleton of a game, with say, a sheet of 52 entries that just indicate the information on a card’s face. That means I use LibreCalc, but I only started using that seven months ago, when I learned about the IFS function. The version of Excel I was using from 2007 didn’t have this ‘new’ functionality, and I found that very useful. You may ask: How often do you need ‘IFS’ in game development and the answer is never. There are definitely thihngs I can use spreadsheets for, but these functions are not super necessary.

To do visual editing I use GIMP, pronounced ‘noo-imp,’ because gimp is a silly word to use in everyday conversation and it has worn its welcome out in my tongue. GIMP is a program that takes some getting used to, but the heart of what it is is a powerful photoshop-level program that puts almost everything it has directly under your control, including warp tools, healing tools, stamp tools and other simple filters. I will usually use GIMP to generate a template file or example for how a card should look, and then, when I want to put those cards into a file to make a pdf for printing, I turn to…

Scribus! Scribus is my layout and DTP program that I avoid using in every situation I can. I dislike Scribus interface a lot, and as a result, I route around it – I try to make sure that if I’m doing something in a design that Scribus ‘could’ do, I will ensure that Scribus is the only thing that can do it, and if something else can do it, I’ll do it that way. This is a combination of familiarity and convenience: Scribus is by no means a bad program, I’m sure, but I don’t like using it and it feels very easy to break things, which means when I do use it, I’m probably using it ‘wrong,’ and a Scribus expert would want to correct my technique.

For making simple slideshow videos, where I just show a thing, talk about it, and move on, I use the program OBS, which you can use for rules tutorials or explainers. OBS has its own ability to do slides – which you can make in a slideshow program like Google Slides or powerpoint or Prezi if you like – and then you talk over it, advancing the slides in OBS. It’s a very powerful, very flexible tool, but I can understand if it’s a bit overwhelming to start with.

If you want to record audio for your game, which is a cool thing to do, I use Audacity. It’s a simple audio program if you’re just using it for its basic functions, but it can be great if (for example) you want to record audio diaries of your creation process.

Also, mixed in with this is, cardboard, paper, scissors and glue. Playing cards need a standardised form so you can make a ‘blank’ deck of cards by taking an ordinary deck of cards and putting large, white, laundry stickers on each face, ‘wiping’ it so you can write what you want on the face.

Art Though?

I use free art where I can. There’s a lot of art assets, paid and free over on itch.io, which you can definitely use to make your game work look more interesting than base. And of course…

Bandaid tearing off time,

There are free image generators that you can use if you are comfortable with that. My advice is that you should only ever use generators for ‘zero value’ forms of media; that is, nothing you intend to sell and nothing you intend to use as identifying for yourself; don’t use a generator for a logo for your identity or brand, for example, because that’s uncopyrightable and then someone can just copy it. Even if they don’t, the fact they can undermines the copyright value of designing your own logo and title.

But yeah, image generators are available online. When I need an image for an example, the one I recommend using is dezgo, because it doesn’t require a login, doesn’t require you to pay money, and all it asks of you is time to let it finish working. You’re not going to get timely bulk media out of it, but that means, in my mind, that any artwork it generates is going to be worth scrutinising and editing to make it more appropriate to your needs. This is part of a greater conversation, but for now, the important thing is that if you’re going to use generative tools you need to make sure you recognise what they’re bad at and what they’re bad for.

Getting Started?

Alright, you have some tools to make what you have in mind more possible. What I recommend you do, and I will delve more into this later in the week, is make a prototype, and then, once you have the prototype, look at it seriously.

You’re going to have to get your head around the question what do I like without asking the followup question why at first. What is it about your prototype that satisfies you? What would you change if you could? Why isn’t it satisfying to you, what about it makes you concerned. Are there things you haven’t thought about because of biases you have? Is it a game you can’t play with one hand?

The point is the prototype marks the point you start finding out. You don’t need a perfect game to prototype – indeed, I have a lot of very ugly games as prototypes and I think those ugly prototypes work really well as a place to start working out what to do next.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[tarczar]

some doodles I made in a sleepy/goofed up haze at night after I started thinking about a story about angol mois while I was in the shower

[mrkanman]

how to make the most unethical clan in clangen and how fast can i make everyone explode

[manonamora-if]

December Check-In

I promise I didn't almost forget :P Even if I definitely forgot to do the weekly devlog last Sunday... To be fair, it had been a week...

Recap of last month’s progress

IF Events in the Next Month

Plan for the next month

Still long post ahead. If you want a mini version, head over to itch.io!

November Progress

Still play more IF and maybe review. ✅

Finish the edits of Harcourt Ch5 ✅❌

Fix one of the semi-completed games: ❌either the Egg parser or TRNT (and make it a proper parser)

Finish that darn SugarCube Guide: ❌there aren’t much left in the guide to cover, but there are a few things to fix.

Again, I knocked the first one out of the park. I reviewed all inkJam, EctoComp, and Bare-Bones Jam entries (which helped me get on the main page of the IFDB). It was nice to play shorter games again - it makes reviewing pretty quick... Now that the IFComp is also over, I kind of want to go back and check out the entries I didn't manage to play.

As for the rest... It's been a bit of a hell of a month, and it's not looking like it's ending any time soon. Still, when I had some free time I managed to:

Finish my portion of the edits of Harcourt (and MelS was almost done with it... before he ran into computer problems - dw the file is safe!)

Assess the damage with The Roads Not Taken and come up with a plan to fix all of it. I also started on this one, but there is truly a lot of damage.

Make a bite game in binksi, Tower of Sleep, for the Two-Button Jam

Make a One-Button prototype, Don't press the Button, to test some JavaScript/jQuery (half-failure)

Make a zine for the first time: An Ode to Pissaladière

Make a new code template: the Character Creator

Submitted a bunch of seeds to the SeedComp!

Does it look like I got distracted by a shiny new thing instead of finishing my projects? Yes. Do I care? Nope. It brought me some joy and amusement in some weird months... Banging your head against the desk because code is not working is... not, obviously.

What’s happening in December?

A bunch of jams are happening on itch, because end of year means maybe some free time, and also, you might as well do something for the sake of saying you've made something.

The ShuffleComp (@neointeractives) has started, though the entries won't be available before January. You can listen to the kickass full playlist in the meantime!

The Sprouting Round of the SeedComp! (@seedcomp-if) has just started. There are 99 new seeds available for use to make a game! Deadline is March 1st.

The Deck-Month has just started, to make a game with Decker.

The PunyJam #4 ends in about 2 weeks (if you have the time to learn Inform w/ the Puny extension...)

and of course: la Partim 500 numéro 8, for those who want to do the Neo Twiny again... but French!

I'm probably gonna pop-off a Partim. I did it last year and it was fun :P

The PLANtm for December

December is a busy month for me, which includes a lot of time offline, full days travelling, and lots of planning. So I will take any free time I have and do fun stuff if I can!

But if I have space for IF, I'd like to:

Play more games! Well... I already am, just not really IF. My Steam Library is crying for attention. I would like to knock down maybe a dozen more IFComp entries if I can. There were a lot of good games, a lot of loooong games.

Code Ch5 of Harcourt. That will be MelS dependent - well, MelS's computer dependent...

Finish fixing The Roads Not Taken. I have a plan, I have the notes... I just need to sit down and re-code (and re-test).

Finish the Guide for real! I know SugarCube 2.37 is coming soon, which will affect the state of some pages (and maybe require more pages). BUT I've been working on fixing old pages (typos - re-explanation - clearer examples). So, this is likely to be done sooner rather than later...

~

Taking the list of TO-DO from August…

To-Do not require much of new stuff:

translate Escape Goncharov! into French. ✅

fix the bugs in EDOC + overall the French version to match

fix the bugs of TRNT + find a way to add the missing pieces (ongoing - translation unlikely)

fix the formatting of DOL-OS + translate into English ✅

update LPM with the missing content + translate into English ✅

No change this month :/

The rest of the To-Do pile was:

Finish The Rye in the Dark City (and maybe translate?)

Finish P-Rix - Space Trucker (and try to translate)

Finish Exquisite Cadaver (translation unlikely, current gameplay too complex to port for French)

Add a chapter to CRWL + fix/reopen the blog

Re-working TTTT to its originally planned state (lol, not likety)

Re-working SPS Iron Hammer (samesies)

Coding TTATEH (MelS dependent - shooting for end of year)

Emptying my inboxes (they are not all answered tho)

Honestly, this pile probably won’t get done this year…. Maybe TTATEH has a shot...

[hassianlovebot]

MINING NODES ACT LIKE GATHERABLES NOW YESSSSSSSS

[rescuefield]

btw if you ever wonder what type of mom claire is, she has zero idea about how refurbish furniture and all that stuff people on instagram do YET you can bet your ass she will be on youtube watching tutorials because one of her kids wants their bedroom a specific way

[kyomaakuma7]

For FOP requests, can I request a cozy sleeping pile for Dev? Doesn’t matter with who but I think the kid just needs a quality cozy nap with at least someone who cares for him :)

I agree, he does need a nap. A nap with family.

[downthesea]

An Objective Summary of Iskall85’s Video

I am making this summary of Iskall’s claims so that you do not have to watch his video and inadvertently support him. This is an OBJECTIVE summary containing only his points, and leaving my opinions out of it. I must state however that I do not support Iskall. I don’t feel like inserting any more of my opinions into this so as to not get attacked by either side.

TW: MENTIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, DEPRESSION, SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, THREATS

All of the things henceforth stated are ALLEGED, and I, InsoucianceArt, do not necessarily believe or support them.

A Hermit was presented with the allegations and brought it to the other Hermits without Iskall’s knowledge.

The Hermits summoned Iskall for a hearing with a deadline of 1.5 hours (time zones considered).

Iskall had contacted the police and was advised to not comply with the Hermits’ demands. Iskall told the Hermits of this, but they told him that if he didn’t attend the hearing he would be publicly removed from Hermitcraft. 

Iskall resigned.

Iskall has no income, has received hate and threats, has seen no reason to continue living.

The investigation on the rumours and allegations is still ongoing. Iskall was advised not to speak in public, hence why he has only done so now.

Iskall goes through the typical explanation of cancel culture and why things can be blown out of proportion

One of the victims has done this (aka bringing claims of sexual harassment from a content creator) before.

Iskall states that Hermitcraft should have waited.

Iskall has increased the security of his private life.

Iskall compares cancel culture to witch hunts.

Nobody has the right to infringe upon Iskall’s private life.

Hermitcraft was biased when they posted the tweet and subsequently did not moderate the Reddit forum.

One of the Vault Hunters devs has been calling shots and claiming they have taken over the project, all without Iskall’s approval. However, Iskall claims ownership of Vault Hunters, as he owns the rights to it.

The developers have received due compensation for their work on VH. 

5 VH devs wrote a document that, according to Iskall’s solicitor, can be seen as extortion. It demands full ownership of VH, its assets, and its funds. Iskall did not sign this document and sees this as a huge betrayal. These devs are now no longer representing VH or part of Iskall’s team.

Iskall is going to continue work on VH. 

Another spat about cancel culture.

Iskall states the goal of all of this was to “delete him from the internet” and to wreck every opportunity he had/has. He states he will never go that low himself.

Iskall is waiting for the police to finish their investigation. 

Iskall thanks his remaining supporters and says to keep an eye out on his Twitch and YouTube, meaning he will probably return to content creation.

Then he explodes a pile of diorite for some reason idfk man