Adriaan

Adriaan

@adriaan.games

Director at Hidden Folks (@hiddenfolks.com). Game designer of ~many~ games. Usability contributor for the Godot Engine. Organizer & investor at Midgame Fund.

10.7K followers262 following3.6K posts

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

I'm having the first weekend in months where my kid is at his grandma and I have some me-time (scarce as a caretaker of my wife and solo dad), but I'm spending half of it working. I love the freedom of being my own boss, but sometimes the responsibility just sucks :( wish I got a massage.

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

it's my own fault. there's a deadline on Sunday, for a teaser of the game that'll lead to a good marketing beat, and I bit off more than I can chew saying yes to it. it's just hard to say 'no' to marketing opportunities. we all know those are hard to come by.

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

of course my team is just having their normal weekend. I didn't even involve them or ask them to help our. the tasks would normally already fall on my plate, and they didn't say yes to the opportunity; I did. so yup, it's all me. I'm a dumdum

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

been getting 4 emails a day that contain the sentence “fans of Hidden Folks love the mouth-made sound effects and …”, all from companies offering different services; some do ads, others community management, others wanna invest… but all using the same LLM i guess 😞 pls catch up soon, spam filters 😞

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

updated 23 domains to latest php. i have too many websites :P i’m hosting sites for most of my games, for some of my side projects, for every company i own, some sites for family, and a few for some friends. living the digital dream i guess!

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

In addition to this, the macOS app will no longer be universal (meaning that it includes both intel and arm architectures). Instead, you’ll be able to download each Intel / Arm app separately! I didn’t check thoroughly but i believe this is like a 40% size reduction on macOS 🫣

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

yuck

Morgan Johnson@poormojo.bsky.social

No joke. I think this is the most important video I have ever seen about mobile games. This guy breaks down how this game psychologically profiles you, and makes the game harder or easier in order to show you ads

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i’ve steered away from making 3D games in my 14 year career but I’m afraid I’d love to play around with something like this!

Paulo 🔶@cyanceps.bsky.social

Take on Me filter in Godot!! Pen-and-ink style compositor effect with real vector polylines. Normal-Driven Hatching and Depth-Based Contours in Godot Compute Shaders. I've had the idea for a while now and decided to try it out. I'm very happy with the result. And it's fast too. #gamedev #godot

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

A few more ideas made it into the proposal. and we're gonna need another proposal to get rid of the close button across the entire editor, but that would make this window look like the second image. squeaky clean!

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

Follow up on my search for short form video content tools to post to TikTok / Instagram / YouTube simultaneously: I tried Buffer & it indeed seems like TT penalizes content posted through 3rd party tools. But IG/YTS don't seem to, so posting on TT & reposting to IG/YTS with Repurpose seems to work

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

I've only done a little bit of testing though, so it's a bit anecdotal and I can't be certain IG and YTS don't penalize not using their native tools. But the time saved is massive! No more fiddling with different video editing UIs for the titles and captions and descriptions and whatnot.

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

The only thing repurpose doesn't do is set / adjust the cover. You can adjust that afterwards though. I'm just not sure yet how important the cover is when the main thing for discoverability is being served by the algo as people doom scroll 😅

Adriaan reposted

Hidden Folks
@hiddenfolks.com

We met a Hidden Folks fan at gamescom who 3D printed this incredible figurine of Kiki the Monkey, one of the characters in our searching game! 🤍🖤🤍 our fans 🤍🖤🤍

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

the next @hiddenfolks.com newsletter (sent in 2-3 weeks) has been a fantastic guide to me in laying a foundation for the remainder of the HF2 project: - setting up a playtest signup. - setting up a 'help translate' signup. - planning content & features. - setting up the merch shop. exciting times!

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

So proud of what the Hidden Folks team and I have achieved so far. - 3,5M+ Hidden Folks downloads across all platforms. - 47k newsletter subs with an 86% open rate. - 9,5k Discord members. - 10M+ YouTube views on HF content. - Fans of truly all ages between 5 and 85. - … and so much more. 🤍

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

I'm in love with portal.app on my desktop. The rotating, high quality, moving backgrounds (which I don't find distracting) together with the always on ambient sound (at an adjustable perfect low volume) give me so much joy. I regularly just close all my windows just to experience it for a little.

Adriaan reposted

passivestar
@passivestar.bsky.social

4.8 will be the strongest godot release in a while texture streaming, contact shadows, multi-bounce AO, lightmap specular, 3d trails, mesh buffers on gpu, visual shader groups, label text fitting, symbol renaming, more flexible editor layout and a lot of ui improvements what are you still missing?

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

PSA for Godot users soon upgrading to 4.8 (still in development): The built-in Script editor has become a regular dock and to pop it out, use the context menu (opened by right mouse click) on the Script tab and select 'Make Floating'. The previously dedicated button has been removed. #godotengine

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

today i asked a peer to compile the godot engine to better debug their crash and they did it in a heartbeat! it was very exciting and it also made all their crashes go away lol. yay open source

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

clone the godot repository install dependencies with a oneliner from the docs `scons target=editor dev_build=yes debug_symbols=yes platform=linuxbsd` that’s it.

Adriaan reposted

Mike Bithell
@mikebithell.bsky.social

I heard the term ‘meat proxy’ recently, meaning someone who places themself as a human middleman between an employer and genAI, and it is simultaneously a perfect term for the practice, and existentially depressing when you realise how many want to nominate themselves for the role.

Tony Gowland@tonygowland.bsky.social

Do indie games need someone like me, who prompts AI to make marketing materials?

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i’ll beat this drum over & over again: game devs obsessing over Steam as if it’s the only viable platform is self-sabotaging and potentially the death of their business. case in point: rift riff was designed for Steam with $30k marketing spent. yet it makes 6X on the App Store with $0 on marketing

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Adriaan
@adriaan.games

the cost of adapting for mobile is soooooo small. yes, store reviews suck. yes, portrait may require a redo of your design. yes, try before you buy as a business model is questionable. but we’re talking about 2 months of work here. those costs are linear.

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

if you have a game that shows even a hair of potential, i urge you to consider: - release on mobile - landscape is fine - premium (harder sell) or try before you buy (easier sell, more work for you) - log in to game center / play games services - send apple a feature request 4 weeks in advance

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i’ll beat this drum over & over again: game devs obsessing over Steam as if it’s the only viable platform is self-sabotaging and potentially the death of their business. case in point: rift riff was designed for Steam with $30k marketing spent. yet it makes 6X on the App Store with $0 on marketing

View full thread
Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i’m not saying every game will do good on mobile. and of course, fitting your UI to mobile and adding a few mobile features takes dev time. but the opportunity is non linear compared to the costs. it’s 2 months of dev time for potentially millions in profit (or nothing, as such is the market).

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i can talk about non linearity all night! we humans are so bad at spotting & understanding it: adding a mobile platform doesn’t just increase your opportunity by a factor of one or two. every additional ‘big’ platform, taken seriously, potentially increases your chance of success by 1 – 100 times.

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i’ll beat this drum over & over again: game devs obsessing over Steam as if it’s the only viable platform is self-sabotaging and potentially the death of their business. case in point: rift riff was designed for Steam with $30k marketing spent. yet it makes 6X on the App Store with $0 on marketing

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

another case in point: Hidden Folks made over a million USD on Steam and would have been successful just considering that, but it made waaaaay more on mobile. several millions. and before you give me the “yeah but it’s a good fit for mobile” crap: yeah, because we put in effort to make that so.

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i know a thing or two about game dev. i know a tiny bit about 3d stuff. but what @passivestar.bsky.social is doing & talking about here is lightyears out from what i understand about 3D. like those good but very complicated math videos on youtube, its rabbit hole p*rn, and oh boy is this dirty talk

passivestar@passivestar.bsky.social

the reason godot lightmapper leaks through walls is... interesting it thinks they are transparent!

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

i mean bsky.app/profile/pass... 🥵🥵🥵

passivestar@passivestar.bsky.social

that's because lightmapper determines alpha from bilinearly filtered albedo-alpha atlas, and padding around the islands is 0 alpha. filtering between solid walls and transparent padding gives lightmapper semi-transparent walls

Adriaan
@adriaan.games

hey game marketing folks; are you using any software to cross post to TikTok / Instagram / YouTube Shorts? anything you can recommend? #gamedev