itch.io

It just wouldn't be cost effective. You need infrastructure specifically built for streaming video. Also, moderating video content is an immense task...

Oh, that isn't my website. It was made by Sadness, who also created www.yesterweb.org. Unfortunately things there got out of control and she had to step away from webmastering, but at least some of the resources are still there.

The rest of the internet is still there (try Neocities and Nekoweb for an easy change of scenery). Remember, we used to have to search for websites. Google and many other engines try really hard to steer you toward products... go for alternatives such as the ones listed at the bottom of this page:

https://goblin-heart.net/sadgrl/cyberspace/surf-the-web

That isn't really the point of the original post which was mainly addressing privacy concerns. I totally understand the feeling of being pulled toward whatever has the biggest audience, especially if you are trying to make a living. But I think the struggle to monetize every corner of our internet lives is actually part of the problem (discord or any other service would not bother doing shady stuff without an incentive). You can still be a developer and want to chat with people without it being a brand mission.

<3

Wow. I haven't played ZZT in YEARS

10 days is not enough...

People can play your game without logging in to an itch.io account, so you would have to provide a way to manually enter a username anyway. I don't see much of a benefit from this unless you're trying to push people into creating an itch account. And that just seems antithetical to the vibe of itch, the one place where people are NOT treated like a commodity...

Revealing your age online is stupid, until you are in your 30s. Whatever steps you need to take in order to publish, you should be able to accomplish them without screaming from the rooftops about how young you are.

Your "understanding" of women says it all

Power consumption is more of a concern when using company servers that you don't control, I agree that using a model locally on your own machine would be (probably) harmless. And by the same logic, training it on only data that you own should also be harmless.

In regard to tagging though, I would suspect that Itch wants to keep things as simple as possible. If you really need a disclaimer then you can add it to your page, each developer can be as specific as they want about their process. 

On the other hand you are not purchasing storage space either. I think as long as you were reasonably able to download the things you paid for, then Itch has fulfilled their end of the bargain.

Think of it this way, if you paid for something at a physical store and then forgot to bring it home, you should be able to go back and get it within a reasonable time frame. But if the store closes down 6 months from now and you still haven't retrieved your item, it's really your own fault and it is unlikely that you will get your item even with court involvement.

Similarly, you cannot expect Itch servers to exist forever. You should be downloading things as you purchase them and preserving them on your own hard drives which you can easily have multiples of for security. 

Why does the quality of the end result matter? For those of us who want to support developers who refrain from using AI, the end result is irrelevant. It is the process itself that is in question. Your example is kind of like saying "Yeah I know they steal their cars, but they do a really good job of fixing them up afterward." Or, "I know this company pollutes the environment, but I like their burgers." 

You can comment on their game page. No need to necro such an old thread with off-topic comment :/

I don't see what is relevant about using resources made by others, with permission of course. I even pay for them sometimes. But artists or coders or anyone else who has had their work flushed down a digital toilet have -zero- chance of getting paid, or even recognized. The reason is that what comes out the other side is akin to a sewer pipe dumping the whole mix as one homogenized stew.

Now if people want to train on their own datasets that's fine. To be honest, I feel that this might be a self-correcting problem... or perhaps, not a problem in the first place. There's a lot of talk about how "this changes everything", but so far nothing really innovative has come out of it. Will it ever?

The workload is the least problematic aspect of AI. Although, I do think this could become a major problem... what if we get to a point where you don't need to learn much about principles of game development? I agree that current technology isn't there yet, but if eventually you can generate entire games using a few prompts, then your "it still takes effort" angle will disappear. You will succumb to your own justification as your potential customers decide more and more to simply generate their own game instead...

Anyway, the main issues right now, at least in my opinion, are leeching off other people's work, and depletion of real-world resources. And although the reduced workload isn't my first line of attack, it does still bother me a little bit. It comes off as lazy. I don't agree with you that "you have to understand and learn its mechanics." Unless you can program your own AI, you don't understand the mechanics. All you understand is that if you type in something different, you'll get a different result. It's like saying that someone who knows how to hit the gas and break pedals and turn the steering wheel, understands the mechanics of a vehicle. But all they actually need to understand is the interface. 

It is not obvious. If it were, it would be forbidden from day one, everywhere.

You are putting way too much faith in governing bodies. In reality, governments often need significant pressure before ruling on something "obvious" 

I've been using GDevelop, one nice thing about it is the exported project can run without WebGL 2.

Itch is not platform specific so you can have an embedded HTML5 game, as well as downloads for PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, C64, gameboy, pretty much anything

are you sure it doesn't say that you need to declare whether it has AI or not?

Doesn't seem like a fail at all for your first game. The one mistake you didn't make was to never finish the game and just endlessly move on to new projects without releasing them :P

Many of those free games include an option to donate, so there is still a bit of revenue coming in there. I'd be curious to know how many games are actually free with no donation option, although that section probably also includes the highest percentage of unfinished or extremely low quality content (and therefore not much bandwidth usage)

I don't haha, that's why I said "note to self"... I used to just use mIRC. I think I used kiwiIRC for in-browser at one time but right now the site seems to be down.

What about good old IRC

There are several mobile IRC apps around, not to mention embedded chats on websites that work just as well if you don't want to download an app.

"The thing is, Discord is a place where most people are. "
^ This is sort of the lynchpin of the entire Web2.0 exodus. The herd mentality is strong. But, to break out of it someone has to be first. You can't start a community by just expecting it to already be there when you arrive. I think the best strategy would be to start small, find a couple friends who also don't like Discord and get a small chat going. Then share your (hopefully positive) experience with others. People need to be shown an alternative, just saying "Discord bad" won't change much at all. Also telling people about an alternative is not as good as actually using and promoting that alternative (note to self lol)

hmm, I guess you could call it a directional lantern or something :) or some sort of magic device, flare, etc. With the idea to just take away some of the safe area from the player

Wonderful, I didn't want to get hired anyway!

Really nice idea, pretty fun for a few levels! It didn't seem like the difficulty was really increasing though, so I got lazy... it would be cool if some guards could actually chase after you, shine a flashlight, etc to challenge the player more. Nice to play something that is simple to play but still captures the feel of hardcore roguelikes.

Ah, that's what I figured, but I think that will look suspicious to most people. Having surprise .exe files in a google drive that is supposed to be a music portfolio screams malware. A video of the game would be much more likely to get clicked on, especially if it is on youtube which enables you to embed it directly :)

Why some of them are .exe?

I played Barony! Was really bad at it so I didn't get far haha, but it was pretty cool

I like when random dungeons are allowed to get a little bit crazy. I used to play a lot of ZAngband (roguelike) and sometimes a floor would be super small, which often meant that it was packed with monsters and items. Other floors would have huge open spaces (like almost the entire level). It really helped to break up the monotony of predictably sized hallways and rooms. It made things more fun to explore and also introduced strategic decisions, for example when entering an open-cave style level you could easily aggro too many monsters and get surrounded, so finding a safe spot to use as a home base was more important. 

I think your email is not listed anywhere?

"I was thinking about midi music that would sound like pc music" seems pretty clear but ok

I have some MIDIs that I could send you, if you would like to hear them feel free to send me a message at: magicsofastudios@gmail.com

MIDI is a specific type of music file, not related to chiptunes in any way. It is actually a communication protocol for musical information, so for example you can send MIDI data to an external synthesizer and it will play the notes using its own sounds. But your computer can also play MIDI songs, it will sound a little different based on what system is playing it but the file sizes are incredibly small compared to real audio.

"Effective in communicating the game's play" is a really good way to put it.. that's what I would say about Baba is You, when you look at the screenshots you literally start understanding the gimmick and imagining how to solve the puzzle, before even playing the game.

None  of the things they mentioned are specific to puzzle games. Also there isn't a single reference to anything other than The Company. It is basically an ad. "Backed by private investors in the IT sector"

discord is OK but pretty annoying with their whole gamify everything crap... also their privacy policy is pretty bad afaik

I like how it went from "I kinda do art" to "I got hired to do video and level design" and you're not even out of hs... haha give yourself some credit!

Dang, it really uses that much battery? What if you use an in-browser client, wouldn't it pause when you navigate away from the tab? 

I haven't used IRC in a long time, I used to just join rooms and say "sup", heh good times

I spend a lot of time on www.doomworld.com because I'm into oldschool Doom and there's a big modding community there (and I've been a member there since 2003!) I think it will be harder to find a good forum if you don't have a specific thing like that in mind. Most forums revolve around a specific activity so I would think first about WHAT you want to talk to people about, then look for websites related to that topic. Try not to be too general - so if you want to hang out with game developers, consider narrowing it down to the type of game you are interested in. I mean, there are general game dev forums (this is one) but I just think it can be a better experience if the topic is more focused, because the community will hopefully be a bit smaller and more intimate. And, you'll have a common ground to start conversation from.

You can also really do it the old way by making your own forum :P

EDIT: just realized you made a classic Doom map, awesome!

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and have this festering plan to de-google and de-facebook my online life... but damn is it hard to kick the habit! It doesn't help that I actually have a life now... I should have done this when I was still in school and had outrageous amounts of free time, but back then web2.0 was just getting started and things didn't seem so bad.

Thing about itch is that it is very focused on projects, which is probably a good thing from a wider perspective. It makes the site a little more professional (a little). I mean, there isn't even an "off topic" section of the forum, which is where this thread really belongs. The lack of direct messaging also reduces the social aspect.

I would say don't just make a website, go visit other sites and specifically look for forums related to your interests. Many people are still out there posting on forums other than reddit. Also try looking for ways to chat with people, preferably other than Discord... IRC is still a thing. There are also some modern platforms like VRChat where people actually just hang out. 

There is a whole internet still out there, just because most people only visit the same 5 social media sites doesn't mean you have to. Webrings still exist even! But you will need to search for them the old way, with non-SEO search engines and a bit of determination.