Monolith of Minds: Godot, Game Development, Trash Talk

Transcript

Speaker: So you guys have been, how long have you guys been game dabbing?

Speaker: If that's a term.

Speaker: Seven years, huh?

Speaker: Did we ever really game dab?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Nah, man.

Speaker: We just pulled on a big playground, I guess.

Speaker: It's definitely a big playground.

Speaker: So like, what was your, is, um, so was resolution your first game or like your first official, or was it just like your first project period?

Speaker: No, no, it was, it was the first, it was the first and everything most probably.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, you can tell the story.

Speaker: Tell the resolution story.

Speaker: One of you guys tell me a story.

Speaker: I got coffee.

Speaker: I'm good.

Speaker: We have for the story.

Speaker: Coffee is actually the introduction to resolution or the entry point.

Speaker: Cheers.

Speaker: I have coffee too.

Speaker: Actually, it is.

Speaker: Coffee is the way.

Speaker: I mean, there's really a story, and I think I've told this here and there over the years, and I think it must have been at least seven years ago or something on these lines when we started to double with the idea of creating a video game.

Speaker: And the kind of story was really funny, at least from, not just from my point of view, I guess.

Speaker: At that time, I was running my company, and Richie was doing his PhD in physics.

Speaker: And we were both quite interested in indie game development.

Speaker: I think it was the time when Bastion hit and Super Meat Boy and Limbo and all this kind of... And playing, not development, just playing.

Speaker: Not development, right.

Speaker: They basically, yeah, we were just playing it.

Speaker: But all these kind of indie gems that became so ridiculously popular, they mostly hit the market within, I think, one or two years.

Speaker: And of course we like the idea because we've been gaming nerds from the 80s, obviously, to do a video game on our own eventually.

Speaker: But, you know, looking into the amount of work it needs, all this kind of artwork, coding, world building, storytelling, all this kind of madness that has to go into a video game was way over our heads.

Speaker: So we're like, no, this is too crazy.

Speaker: And then Richie was basically in his last stretch of the physics PhD, and I guess he was bored.

Speaker: So eventually he started to tickle with the game engine, which was Godot at that time in a very early build, obviously.

Speaker: And he asked me eventually, hey, Gunny, I have this kind of black dot who is like moving over the screen.

Speaker: Would you like to participate and draw something?

Speaker: And I was like, man, I'm not getting into this.

Speaker: That's crazy, man.

Speaker: It's like, you will not get anywhere with it.

Speaker: So, and I'm not wasting my time.

Speaker: So, and I think like a month later or something like that, his little black dot was able to move...

Speaker: to move, I think, through walls and through doors or something like that, or like bounce off walls and move through doors that he tried to convince me again, and I was still out of it.

Speaker: And I think another few weeks later, the little dog had changed me to, I think, like a Final Fantasy kind of character who was basically able to move and had a little sword that did this, nothing more.

Speaker: And I think two enemies, I think one was shooting bullets, at least there was some collision, right?

Speaker: Some kind of health management.

Speaker: And I was still not convinced.

Speaker: I think it took him something around...

Speaker: two to three months or something like that eventually came and said gunny i really have the full deal right now i have a little character who could walk in eight directions he can walk uh through doors and be blocked by walls i have two enemies and my character can hit with the sword that can do magic and he got me with magic that was basically the moment where i decided okay

Speaker: I just go in and try to create some graphics and come up with something that would be worthwhile.

Speaker: And then we started this kind of wide game journey that is so weird in hindsight because we had no freaking idea what we were doing.

Speaker: No experience whatsoever.

Speaker: No previous connection to the industry whatsoever.

Speaker: We just jumped in to try to muggle our way around and try to make some kind of progress.

Speaker: And from there, it's kind of tidy ideas started.

Speaker: I mean, initially, we just wanted to make one level.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: And from one level, it grew to something like four levels.

Speaker: And then eventually, we had this kind of massive, crazy project at our hands that just

Speaker: was not able to stop at this kind of train kept moving and moving and moving and became crazier and bigger and bigger and I guess like five years later resolution was done that was basically the idea so which one of you handles the code and which one handles the art and I handle I handle the code and he handles the artwork the we do all the game design more or less together and we

Speaker: This friend of ours, Garrett Wolf, who handles the music, who is just a fucking magician.

Speaker: He's the wizard.

Speaker: He's the soul of everything.

Speaker: I mean, up to today, we just have the feeling that everybody just plays Resolution for the music.

Speaker: I mean, who cares about the characters?

Speaker: Everybody says, I want to hear more of these kind of tunes.

Speaker: Fuck the rest.

Speaker: I have.

Speaker: I have three of the Resolution songs on my Music to Program to list on YouTube.

Speaker: Which ones?

Speaker: I have Fight Fight the Parasite, which is just... That song is just phenomenal.

Speaker: It's just amazing.

Speaker: I have Resolution, which I guess that's the first one on the soundtrack.

Speaker: And I've got another one, but I cannot recall...

Speaker: the name of it.

Speaker: Let me see.

Speaker: Actually, I think I got it up here.

Speaker: Sanctuary below the flooded shafts.

Speaker: But I mean, all of them are, are, are fantastic.

Speaker: Like it's ridiculous.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Great.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That guy's even, even, even to the point today, this is absolutely ridiculous.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: I'm curious.

Speaker: Did the soundtrack outsell the game?

Speaker: No, no, actually not.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: By far not.

Speaker: It's really weird.

Speaker: Like, I guess it runs under this kind of hidden gem thingy, you know, like that nobody, barely anybody knows about it.

Speaker: Yeah, so, but you know, that's also true for a game that is so massively misspelled that nobody can find it in Google, so...

Speaker: Where did the name come from?

Speaker: Who came up with that stupid idea?

Speaker: Holy crap.

Speaker: I think I'd say it's Richie's fault, right?

Speaker: I mean, we have to play around with him.

Speaker: No, we take a shitload.

Speaker: I mean, obviously, you know, finding the good name for your first video game that you work on so long, that's a freaking hassle, man.

Speaker: You try to turn every stone.

Speaker: I think eventually we settled with resolution because it had so many of the kind of aspects that we incorporated into the game.

Speaker: First of all, the kind of three, let's say, spirits, right?

Speaker: Red, green and blue.

Speaker: That's obviously the kind of pixels on a computer or the kind of color model or RGB.

Speaker: So, you know, like that is obviously very closely tied to resolution.

Speaker: And then I think the kind of story tells the story of Valor and while you play the game, Valor in the beginning is just this kind of faceless character, you know, he's just a, let's say, boring hack and slash cyborg whatever guy who's just like killing stuff, you know, there's nothing behind it.

Speaker: And as you progress, you know, like the kind of story zooms out step and step and step and step.

Speaker: You know, the metaphor that I really like so much is that the resolution increases, right?

Speaker: You understand more and more what's going on.

Speaker: And maybe not, right?

Speaker: The more resolution you get, the more you zoom out, the more complex and complicated it gets.

Speaker: And also, his motives change step by step by step because the resolution increases.

Speaker: So we decided the resolution is a pretty cool name.

Speaker: And then we think of all these kind of variants like the dark resolution and, you know, like Valor's resolution and resolution of alibi.

Speaker: You know, it's kind of how you can you permutate this?

Speaker: What can you move this into?

Speaker: And just nothing clicked, but the word resolution stuck along.

Speaker: And eventually Richard was like, man, we have to make this special.

Speaker: And then there was this kind of thing in the game already that Alibi, the kind of little AI character, like from the lore perspective, her real name is basically Alibi 2.

Speaker: But, you know, I didn't like writing Alibi 2 because it looked really weird.

Speaker: So I just changed the last I into this kind of Roman 2, right?

Speaker: Kind of I-I.

Speaker: And I really liked this.

Speaker: It felt like a cool way of...

Speaker: miss yo yo it's unprofessional as it gets love it right i am gonna turn my volume off and yeah you know at the end i really like this kind of uh what is it like like like decipher thing you know maybe like a code hiccup whatever and so we took this kind of alibi i2 thing into resolution

Speaker: And, you know, we liked it.

Speaker: Almost everybody hated it.

Speaker: But you know, that's Indie Game Dev.

Speaker: It's our story.

Speaker: Screw you.

Speaker: We learned from that mistake.

Speaker: We definitely learned from that mistake.

Speaker: Yeah, I think I was going to say, I think the title of your second game was actually a lot easier to find in Google.

Speaker: Yeah, that's the learning.

Speaker: That was the main learning.

Speaker: That was the main learning.

Speaker: Come up with a better name.

Speaker: Come up with a name that can actually be Google.

Speaker: Yeah, that's fair.

Speaker: What's your story, Andrew?

Speaker: What's your story?

Speaker: What's my story?

Speaker: Why are you running a Game Dev Podcast?

Speaker: Oh, I'm just running a podcast really.

Speaker: I talked to developers from all over the place.

Speaker: So in fact, I just talked to a guy, I think he was from the UK.

Speaker: And then before that, I talked to another guy in Australia.

Speaker: He and I talked a little bit about game dev.

Speaker: I've known him for going on like nine or 10 years.

Speaker: I think we met on a construct two forum.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I had a buggy project and he helped me fix it.

Speaker: I've been interested in game dev pretty much my whole life.

Speaker: But I always... What's your background?

Speaker: I have a weird background.

Speaker: So I've done all kinds of things for work.

Speaker: I've never coded for work.

Speaker: But I've done all kinds of crap.

Speaker: I recently went through an Elixir...

Speaker: bootcamp, Elixir and Phoenix.

Speaker: It's a Elixir is a it's a programming language.

Speaker: It's a drawing blank now.

Speaker: Anyway, yeah, it's a programming language and a web framework.

Speaker: So I went through that.

Speaker: Like the last, like I started that in last year, like toward the end of the year, I went through a beta and then I went through the first cohort.

Speaker: And I mean, like I said, I've always been interested in game dev.

Speaker: So anytime I try to learn a new language, I look to see, you know, what sort of game frameworks or engines are for it.

Speaker: It's just like a really bad habit.

Speaker: You're the tinker type.

Speaker: I'm the tinker type.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Throw me some Legos or tinker toys or...

Speaker: Programming languages.

Speaker: Have you been dabbling with game dev at all?

Speaker: Yeah, here and there, I actually started dabbling again, playing with Default and GDevelop a little bit.

Speaker: I've got a seven-year-old, so I'm trying to get him kind of, you know, more interested in that side of things.

Speaker: Make me some money, kid.

Speaker: Make me some money, kid.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: You know, if I can get him in the game dev, you know, maybe in the next 10 years or so, he'll be supporting me.

Speaker: So... No.

Speaker: But...

Speaker: Yeah, I've just always had an interest.

Speaker: I've been following Godot since its early days.

Speaker: And I was actually going to ask, what version of Godot were you using when you first started?

Speaker: I don't remember properly anymore, but it was something with the one in front.

Speaker: It was something 1.7 or so, or 1.9.

Speaker: And after a couple of months, the 2.0 version, and quickly afterwards,

Speaker: So I remember that most of resolution, or at least not most, but at least the first couple of years we used the whole 2.0 something branch and then the 3.0 came out, I think a year before we released resolution or something like that.

Speaker: So I remember that it took me a long time to port the whole thing over onto the 3.0 branch because they changed a shitload of stuff back in the day.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: No LTS branch.

Speaker: Yeah, totally not.

Speaker: So the whole, I remember too, struggling through the whole thing, especially because they changed all the audio notes and things like that, which were a pain because I just had to manually rebuild more or less all entities because every entity was, or a ton of entities because they were all using their own audio players and they fully changed the whole audio system thingy, how that worked.

Speaker: I think we released resolution with 3.3 and Lila with 3.5.

Speaker: So the technical changes then for the second game were kind of totally minor.

Speaker: But yeah, good times.

Speaker: How about you?

Speaker: What was your first game of the playground?

Speaker: Man.

Speaker: I probably didn't, I don't know, I kind of just kind of toyed with it.

Speaker: I didn't really get very far, you know, tried to learn it here and there.

Speaker: I think the last time I really was talking to you guys on Discord, that was probably the last time I really dabbled a bunch in Godot.

Speaker: You know, I had some family stuff happen.

Speaker: I had, you know, one of my brothers passed away.

Speaker: And so I kind of like stepped away from game dev for a good while.

Speaker: But as most things do, you know, they come back.

Speaker: The bug has bit me again.

Speaker: So I'm back to kind of playing around a little bit.

Speaker: But I've got some ideas, some game ideas.

Speaker: I've written stuff.

Speaker: So I've written a couple of unpublished novels.

Speaker: And I make pixel art and stuff like that.

Speaker: That's sweet.

Speaker: Sounds like a point and click coming up.

Speaker: Yeah, maybe.

Speaker: I'm kind of thinking I might do some sort of platformer, but I'm not 100% sure yet.

Speaker: I've got an idea for one.

Speaker: Actually, I have a couple ideas for one.

Speaker: But I played this game a while back.

Speaker: I can't remember the name of it, but it was sort of... It was almost like a dead space, but 2D.

Speaker: And then I'm sold already.

Speaker: Do it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I guess the developers never finished it.

Speaker: They just, I don't know.

Speaker: They made it about halfway.

Speaker: They released it, but they didn't finish it.

Speaker: So I was thinking it might be cool to make something similar, but more pixel art.

Speaker: I think their art was very kind of, you know, sort of like SVG stuff.

Speaker: Very clean, very pristine.

Speaker: I like muddy pixels better.

Speaker: We don't want the clean stuff as well.

Speaker: It looks so mobile.

Speaker: It always looks like a mobile game if you do stuff like that, which kind of feels cheap, although it isn't.

Speaker: It's weird.

Speaker: Our brains are...

Speaker: a heavily biased... I totally don't get it.

Speaker: I don't get why people with a clean SVG kind of style look always feel cheap.

Speaker: Maybe probably because of the mobile stuff.

Speaker: Because a lot of mobile games use this kind of look and mostly suck.

Speaker: They're really, really, really good mobile games out there.

Speaker: So yeah, that's probably some sort of weird bias.

Speaker: I mean, they probably use that because on a smaller screen, it looks better, maybe.

Speaker: You know, when you're dealing with something like, you know, it's only that big.

Speaker: You throw pixels on there and it looks really tiny.

Speaker: So I don't know.

Speaker: Maybe that's part of it.

Speaker: But making a desktop game with that just kind of doesn't, I don't know.

Speaker: I don't like it.

Speaker: I mean, there's also probably this kind of component that SVG always feels like you're looking at some kind of geometry.

Speaker: It just feels like way too technical because there's no real feeling in it, right?

Speaker: I mean, it's like perfectly placed and this kind of circle is going perfectly and aligned perfectly with everything.

Speaker: There's just a feeling to it, not this kind of chaos that we are looking for when playing video games or generally games in any shape or form.

Speaker: Yeah, I definitely prefer the pixels for sure.

Speaker: Or maybe we're just old.

Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker: I wanted to say that, man.

Speaker: We're just old, man.

Speaker: We're just old.

Speaker: Richie said when we brainstormed about how to do a little banner for resolution and what should the kind of Steam assets be.

Speaker: look like he said like man I'm always falling for these these pixel pixel looks you know like if the banner looks like a pixel game then I at least click on it right and I was like yeah this is most certainly that we've been growing up in the 80s and remember the kind of NES the little NES cartridges where they were literally like like zoomed up zoomed up pixels on it you know like kind of Mario I think was it like hitting the block or something like that you know they just put like pixel out of these kind of boxes and we're like it's just probably because you're freaking old

Speaker: I mean, pretty much all they got to do is put Mario hitting a block on just about every game and I would click on it.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Have you seen the movie?

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: The movie's really fun.

Speaker: Did you like it?

Speaker: It was awesome.

Speaker: It was so good.

Speaker: I mean, I mean,

Speaker: Go ahead, Oti.

Speaker: It was just such this awesome, awesome mixture between fan service and just feel good thingy.

Speaker: It was just like no deep message, no nothing.

Speaker: It was just feel good from the start.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Exactly right.

Speaker: My son is weird because my son, he grew up playing Mario games, you know, and

Speaker: Did you make him or did you want to?

Speaker: I forced him.

Speaker: Totally forced him.

Speaker: Good man.

Speaker: Good dad.

Speaker: Good dad.

Speaker: We played a ton of Mario Kart and just different Mario games.

Speaker: But he didn't want to watch the movie when it came out.

Speaker: And now he watches it all the time.

Speaker: It was kind of weird.

Speaker: Like, hey, you want to watch Mario?

Speaker: Nah.

Speaker: Nah.

Speaker: Meh.

Speaker: What's wrong with you?

Speaker: Didn't I raise you right?

Speaker: Did you brainwash it properly?

Speaker: I didn't do a good enough job.

Speaker: Back in the tank.

Speaker: I mean, seriously, man, with all these shitty movies that have been dumped on us over all these kind of years, I was really hoping... I mean, another way, how high are the chances that after so many horrible video game movies, one comes along that is just good?

Speaker: I was certainly not expecting it all anymore.

Speaker: What are you talking about?

Speaker: We had the Mortal Kombat movie 20 years ago.

Speaker: Okay, fair enough.

Speaker: Apart from that, you know that, was the Mortal Kombat movie good?

Speaker: I can't remember.

Speaker: I wouldn't probably.

Speaker: I'm not really sure if good is the right word, but it definitely kicked back in the day.

Speaker: And man, they are still, I don't know if you checked that out, but they are still using that awesome tune for the modern Mortal Kombat game.

Speaker: So this new one, did you check it or did you kind of follow the new one, the Mortal Kombat game?

Speaker: The new game?

Speaker: No, I haven't.

Speaker: I mean, I've seen bits, but not much.

Speaker: What totally blows me away is that they, or at least for the last couple of Mortal Kombat games, they do this awesome thing where they kind of create a, whatever, four hours movie in in-game graphics.

Speaker: And then it plays this whole, for the campaign, it plays this movie.

Speaker: And from time to time, the movie jumps into the kind of fighting perspective.

Speaker: Then you fight with a changing character every time.

Speaker: And then it jumps back into the movie.

Speaker: It's so mad.

Speaker: And the new one is decadent.

Speaker: the level of quality is so wild but then again they're still using this cool track from the 90s for all of those games it's awesome it's so awesome

Speaker: If you guys put Fight Fight the Parasite in every game, I would play it.

Speaker: I don't even care.

Speaker: There you go.

Speaker: There you go.

Speaker: I mean, that's only worth it because you probably make 50 bucks off Andrew all the time, you know, Richie?

Speaker: Every time.

Speaker: Like I see it.

Speaker: Oh, it's got that song.

Speaker: I'm in.

Speaker: Just put it in the trailer.

Speaker: I'm good.

Speaker: Oh, man.

Speaker: Yeah, looking at the 80s and all these kind of things, you know, that's something that we've also been tinkering in the idea of, you know, like,

Speaker: Would we be interested to do a game that is not pixel art, right?

Speaker: No, no.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I'd say we might try, but it would certainly feel wrong for the most part.

Speaker: And that's probably just because we've been growing up with these kind of games.

Speaker: These things feel like games, right?

Speaker: If it has pixels, it's a game.

Speaker: Everything else could be game-ish, but not that much, right?

Speaker: But I guess this is massively changing.

Speaker: Are you guys planning on expanding monolith of minds?

Speaker: You know, like hire on people or you know, another artist maybe?

Speaker: Only if our games make enough money to hire people.

Speaker: Depends on what monthly income you are aiming for.

Speaker: Did it generate enough for you guys to work full time or you both still have to

Speaker: Still doing it.

Speaker: No, by far not.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: I mean, it mostly generated a shitload of fun.

Speaker: That's what it generated.

Speaker: Honestly, there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker: A little side income, a lot of fun.

Speaker: I mean, probably indie gaffs always debate this kind of thing, like what a success in the gaming industry, right?

Speaker: I mean, then most people measure success if you make at least enough money to continue doing this as a full-time job.

Speaker: But I'd say it's probably the similar thing that you can also choose in every kind of other art form, right?

Speaker: You could basically choose, like, do I really want to go for the money?

Speaker: Then I do have to make a shitload of compromises and, you know, like work my whole life around it to a certain extent.

Speaker: Or you go the kind of, what she basically just said, the kind of fun route and do whatever you want to do, like in the kind of realm, how you want to do these kind of things.

Speaker: And for us, it was pretty clear quite early on that...

Speaker: that the gaming world is, if you really wanna be a full-time indie dev, then you have to be freaking lucky.

Speaker: I mean, really freaking lucky, but also, like, way too many compromises.

Speaker: Man, you have to tinker with all these kind of numbers and play all these kind of weird games and basically be on top of all these kind of social media bullshit things all the time, and, you know, like, we are clearly not the marketing guys, but not even too a little bit, but we actually hate this kind of stuff.

Speaker: And I guess it becomes pretty clear to us that one of mine is this

Speaker: is at the core the idea that humans love to do wild shit together, right?

Speaker: And so people have been coming on and off of the kind of project.

Speaker: I mean, of course we did the heavy load of the two games and the...

Speaker: Not even the novel, right?

Speaker: Because we also have a novel, which The Heavy Load was done by Brad Buckmaster.

Speaker: We just did a little bit of guidance and artwork and bits and pieces around it and so on.

Speaker: And we always liked the idea that people just come together and do stuff that they like to do together, particularly with Resolution.

Speaker: There are quite a bunch of people who just contributed little bits and pieces all over the place, right?

Speaker: I mean, that was one of the kind of cool things.

Speaker: And I guess a lot of the kind of fun came from that, right?

Speaker: That you just do what you need to do without the kind of compromises and strategic decisions or something on these lines.

Speaker: So no, one of the minds, and I mean, Richie and I were pretty clear about that.

Speaker: We won't change this in the near future.

Speaker: One of the minds is basically this kind of conglomerate of ideas that play around in the stories from the Red Coat universe.

Speaker: That's our universe that we created and leave it to the point where

Speaker: If you want to come in and just use some characters and try to tell a little story within this kind of universe, we'd be totally open for that, right?

Speaker: This should be, this already feels like it, it should always feel like this kind of organic thing.

Speaker: You know, like if people come in, they can take a part of it and move it along and make something from it and then bounce off and do something else again.

Speaker: You know, it's just got a very open door kind of idea behind it.

Speaker: Does that make sense or does it just sounded like weird rumbling from an old German dude?

Speaker: I mean, it was a little bit of both weird rumbling and also made a lot of sense.

Speaker: I was actually going to ask you about that because I guess AI plays a pretty prominent part in your universe.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Can you tell me a little bit about that and what kind of prompted you to include that?

Speaker: You really want to dive down the rabbit hole?

Speaker: We don't have to.

Speaker: I've got some other questions.

Speaker: You mentioned them.

Speaker: What's your favorite food?

Speaker: What's your favorite food?

Speaker: Favorite food?

Speaker: And why is it pizza?

Speaker: For Germans, it's sauerkraut and bratwurst.

Speaker: If you don't have pizza as your German, then you know the German.

Speaker: Beer and sauerkraut and... Brussels.

Speaker: Did you guys invent pretzels?

Speaker: Did you guys invent pretzels?

Speaker: We also invented hamburgers because there is a city in Germany called Hamburg.

Speaker: So we obviously invented hamburgers, right?

Speaker: Obviously.

Speaker: How could it be anywhere else?

Speaker: Have you been to Germany, Andrew?

Speaker: No, I have not.

Speaker: I haven't been outside the U.S. yet.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Because currently the famous Oktoberfest is raging on again as usually every year.

Speaker: Are you a beer drinker?

Speaker: Not really.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's so weird.

Speaker: No, not really.

Speaker: What's your poison?

Speaker: You know, if I ever do drink, it's usually a Corona with lime.

Speaker: But that happens so rarely that I don't...

Speaker: I don't even really think about it.

Speaker: Once in a huge while, but not very often.

Speaker: That was amazing.

Speaker: Richie completely got you off the train with the AI stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, he did.

Speaker: He was like, this guy's going into AI.

Speaker: I'm out of here.

Speaker: Quick, derail him.

Speaker: This will probably be weird in the video, but do you want to see a really weird cat?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Check out the cat.

Speaker: Can you see it?

Speaker: Can you see it on the bed?

Speaker: Oh, now I can.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, for a second, your screen froze.

Speaker: Maybe you can see it.

Speaker: It lies down like a human.

Speaker: It's so weird.

Speaker: It's a huge cat.

Speaker: Anyways.

Speaker: It is a huge cat.

Speaker: God damn it.

Speaker: It is a huge cat.

Speaker: You should put that in the next game.

Speaker: Well, it's in there already.

Speaker: Come on, man.

Speaker: I want to pick up on the AI shit.

Speaker: It's like when you... In Resolution, you can collect those little cats.

Speaker: Did you come across those?

Speaker: Who do the meowing?

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: So we have five little hidden cats and they do meowing.

Speaker: And the meowing of those cats are actually the sounds of our own cats.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: Oh, that's so funny.

Speaker: I guess they are in there.

Speaker: For Lila, Garrett, the dude who dis... Did you... The cat shit usually gets out of hand.

Speaker: Going sideways, eh?

Speaker: Did you play the cat, the optional cat miniboss?

Speaker: No, not yet.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: We have an optional cat mini-boss, and there is a track playing.

Speaker: And in the track...

Speaker: The more or less the instrument is a sample sound of Gerrit's cat, which is pretty cool.

Speaker: That's hilarious.

Speaker: Check it out on Spotify if you have that.

Speaker: What is it like?

Speaker: Is it like the cat slug song?

Speaker: I don't know, but cat stuff usually gets out of hand really quickly.

Speaker: That's hilarious.

Speaker: Anyways, we were talking about AI.

Speaker: Talking about AI, yeah.

Speaker: So you've got like an AI thread

Speaker: through your games.

Speaker: Oh yeah, okay man, sorry.

Speaker: Sorry, I got distracted by an American and a German dude speaking about beer and pretzels, okay.

Speaker: Okay, so like when we dabbled with the resolution in the beginning, that was like obviously seven years ago, and

Speaker: And what is called AI today was clearly not AI at that time.

Speaker: It was much more a scientific field.

Speaker: And we were like obsessed with it and really dug into it and really tried to read as much of it as possible and really get a good understanding of what it was.

Speaker: And...

Speaker: Even until today, I'd say, I mean, philosophically, I think there is no chance for an AI, even though big companies try to sell this shit all the time, all the time.

Speaker: Basically, we picked up on this kind of threat that the...

Speaker: If there is like an algorithm or like an artificial intelligence, what would be like its first kind of version?

Speaker: And funny enough, we came up with the idea that the first version would probably be some kind of entity that would constantly change the internet, like from a propaganda-wise side of things, right?

Speaker: That you just create an algorithm that is so freaking good that it will change like all kind of information that you can look at or basically consume through, let's say, the internet or something similar, that they would just basically control it in some way.

Speaker: It turns out like a propaganda machine.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Like a massive propaganda machine controlling every kind of information that humans consume.

Speaker: And that was alibi.

Speaker: The idea of that entity was basically alibi.

Speaker: This kind of every information controlling idea.

Speaker: Yeah, and then if you read a little bit into politics and, you know, like systems and structures and whatever, you come over this kind of idea of propaganda all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time.

Speaker: And it's so massive.

Speaker: Like, you know, like, by today we know, like, everything gets censored, everything gets changed.

Speaker: Information's just, like, one big motherfucking kind of bullshit and shit.

Speaker: You just have to basically turn every kind of stone over and over and you know like by now let's say most people who are somehow technically connected know that this is a thing.

Speaker: It's not just like a whatever kind of theory played constantly.

Speaker: And you know like obviously seven years ago this was clear to more or less always every kind of information scientists that humanity has been tinkering with this.

Speaker: So our idea was like what will happen if you take this idea of information changing algorithms or like let's say information changing AIs

Speaker: and extrapolate it like 100 years into the future.

Speaker: And that is the baseline of the world of resolution, right?

Speaker: This kind of thing.

Speaker: I mean, at that time, we didn't know that it would not take 100 years, but probably maybe 10, something on these lines.

Speaker: So we're pretty much off with our timeframe.

Speaker: But that was the original idea why AI has been such a dramatic kind of, you know, like it's just kind of running threat, like you said.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And, and I mean, at the, at the counter side, we were thinking with the idea that, you know, every kind of force has an, has an anti-force or like, like, like an opposite force.

Speaker: And, and I mean, this is, this is actually where, where our idea started to slightly spiral out of controls because when, when, when the, when let's say every kind of, of information in, let's say like a, like a,

Speaker: clear world is controlled by let's say a single entity that people have to figure out a different kind of system how to change ideas and have to change information so that was when we came up with this kind of dream world that you know like you have to kind of let's say a real world this kind of cyborg cyber and i future um

Speaker: um totalitarian system kind of side to it right and then you know we were like we need we need this kind of opposite to tell a cool dynamic story and then we create this kind of alternative world that is also like let's say a technological world but it's not connected through the web and fibers but more like like like people dreaming right and these kind of ideas then started to continue and have this kind of eternal battle with each other oh interesting okay all right

Speaker: That was clear as mud.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Just kidding.

Speaker: So you guys think about AI a lot.

Speaker: Have you?

Speaker: So most of what we have now that everybody calls A I, I feel like it's not really.

Speaker: No, of course not.

Speaker: Like they're doing AI research.

Speaker: So maybe in that sense, it's AI.

Speaker: But it's just really just text generation or image generation.

Speaker: Like it's not, I don't know that an actual AI is, I mean, I think we'll have systems that are much better assistants than they have ever been.

Speaker: But I don't think we're ever going to hit kind of a,

Speaker: you know, artificial intelligence where it operates independently without some, you know, without guidelines or, you know, like heavily, what's the word I'm thinking of?

Speaker: Controlled.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Sorry, you probably hear him as much shouting in the background.

Speaker: That's fine, man.

Speaker: He's probably playing Super Mario.

Speaker: No, it's actually school time for us, for him.

Speaker: So he's actually... He's very angry.

Speaker: I'm not sure why he's... I mean, I think to a certain extent, Richie, in my view, we basically share the kind of same basis when it comes to AI theory.

Speaker: But I think by now we are diverging a little bit.

Speaker: So maybe, Richie, you want to pick that up?

Speaker: Man, hard to say.

Speaker: So I have a lot of thoughts on that topic.

Speaker: But at least for now, in the present, I really like to tinker with that stuff a lot.

Speaker: I mean, for me, it's insanely fascinating what...

Speaker: The speed and the complexity that changed in the last couple of years, let's say three to five years quickly from like a big, big, large, large data models to what we now perceive or sell as AI is insane.

Speaker: That with the more or less with the rise of graphics cards, suddenly the idea of

Speaker: Creating intelligence programmatically, moving over to creating some sort of intelligence just by pattern recognition opened a whole new field.

Speaker: And I think we are currently learning a shitload about how our mind actually works because it doesn't run on logic.

Speaker: It mostly runs on pattern recognition.

Speaker: And at least from that side, the whole AI train, the current AI train for me is insanely fascinating because we learn a lot about ourselves and the outcome is really wild.

Speaker: Maybe let me add two cents to that.

Speaker: Go ahead.

Speaker: Yeah, let me add two cents to that because so far I absolutely agree with Richie, but then again, you know, like before you talk about artificial intelligence, you probably have to talk or define what is actually intelligence.

Speaker: And I mean, if you look into the literature, the kind of people are beating the crap out of each other about that kind of topic, right?

Speaker: Because it seems that, yeah, from a rational point of view, like what our...

Speaker: What is the kind of translation?

Speaker: What's a big part of our brain called?

Speaker: I know the German one, but I just can't pick up the English one right now.

Speaker: It doesn't matter.

Speaker: Oh, neocortex.

Speaker: Neocortex, that is the one.

Speaker: Neocortex, the kind of logical, big chunk of our brain is basically doing most of this kind of rational thinking.

Speaker: And from a rational point of view, I think we start to get quite an understanding of what intelligent actually is.

Speaker: But then it seems that humans are not running on only the rational part, but also massively on this kind of emotional part that maybe many sub layers below that.

Speaker: And when it comes to these kind of, let's say, intelligences, it becomes very, very wobbly, very sketchy what intelligence is and how they actually influence each other and what they mean.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You know, I was I remember when I was growing up, parents use these kind of terms of

Speaker: There is school intelligence and there's social intelligence.

Speaker: Obviously, they fall apart pretty quickly when you try to look at them through a social, not a social, but a scientific lens.

Speaker: But I guess that also plays into this kind of picture that by now we are getting all this kind of rational intelligence is sold as AI, but we cannot really compare it because every creature that is basically running over this kind of globe is not just one part of intelligence.

Speaker: So I'm pretty curious to see where this will be going into the future, if we're actually able to crack a little bit more of these kind of layers beneath this kind of rational intelligence.

Speaker: But honestly,

Speaker: I doubt it.

Speaker: I doubt it because there's this kind of megalomaniac side to it, right?

Speaker: That artificial intelligence is basically approached with this kind of arms race, right?

Speaker: As if there would be just money to be made.

Speaker: But the things like as soon as that intelligence becomes really sentient,

Speaker: Or does it care about money?

Speaker: It could totally change the rules of the game.

Speaker: Totally.

Speaker: That's what the kind of literature calls singularity.

Speaker: There's this kind of singular event as soon as this kind of thing becomes Satan.

Speaker: By then it's much more capable than most humans that will do whatever, man.

Speaker: We have no freaking idea.

Speaker: That's why it's called singularity.

Speaker: but isn't so yeah are you just are you just aren't you just replacing one muddy word with another because what's sentient what does sentient even mean are most people are most people are running around nowadays are they really sentient or are they just or are they just better recognition machines because man honestly what's your take andrew what's your take uh a little bit of both i think we think we're sentient and we are also pattern recognition machines

Speaker: Are you a sentient?

Speaker: Would you say you're a sentient?

Speaker: Or even better, would you say you have a soul?

Speaker: I'm conscious.

Speaker: Where's the difference?

Speaker: I think we have souls.

Speaker: You know, I thought a lot about Souls.

Speaker: What's your outcome?

Speaker: How do you say that?

Speaker: Did you get to a point thinking about Souls?

Speaker: I don't know that I actually landed on a point.

Speaker: I definitely think we have them.

Speaker: But I also am not 100% sure that we are in charge.

Speaker: So it's one of these, you know, like.

Speaker: That is amazing, man.

Speaker: I mean, to a certain extent, sorry for jumping in there, but I love it, man.

Speaker: You know, what you're just trying to describe is basically the journey from resolution to Lila, right?

Speaker: Because the more you dabble with these kinds of thoughts and what is intelligence and what is purpose and, you know, throw in a lot of other complex words.

Speaker: You go from like a very scientific, rational side of things to, let's say, some kind of a,

Speaker: when you dabble more and more into the kind of spiritual and or religious realm, right?

Speaker: And there is this journey and nobody who is really trying to dig in can really, can really like, like draw a clear line between these kinds of two fields and they mesh together more and more and more.

Speaker: And I think this is also what we really, or at least what I, from the kind of writing side of things, really try to explore with somewhere between resolution and Lila.

Speaker: The resolution starts, it's kind of a very technical game.

Speaker: Everything is about technology and, and, and, and clarity and simplicity and,

Speaker: And then there are more and more of these kind of spiritual themes basically dropping in.

Speaker: And it still ends with this kind of singularity side of things.

Speaker: But then Lila starts with a little bit of technology or scientific side of things, but massive amounts of spiritual input and themes and whatever.

Speaker: And then it tries to take it to the end.

Speaker: I'm not going to spoil this here.

Speaker: But, you know, I love that.

Speaker: The more you think about these kind of things, the more you try to write some kind of story out of it and make it, you can't take them apart anymore.

Speaker: They're mashed into each other, right?

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: One of the things, so I wrote a short story called Ghost Mechanica a while back for a

Speaker: um there was a contest so i wrote it for a con a contest um and it was about a mech pilot that crash lands on a planet oh you said you sent me that a long time ago right yeah yeah yeah okay can i can i spoil the ending or not yeah that's cool no no that was a really cool story man that was really cool i really like that so like i've kind of always explored spirituality and um

Speaker: you know, along those lines in, in my writing.

Speaker: The, the book that I wrote covers a lot of, a lot of like spirituality and things like that in it, even though it's, it's fiction.

Speaker: I kind of classified it as supernatural thrillers.

Speaker: You know, it's, but, but yeah, you know, I, I kind of like exploring those things, but I also like exploring the,

Speaker: I don't know, the kind of line between machine and man and just kind of everything in between.

Speaker: That sounds amazing, man.

Speaker: Is there an option for me to read it as well or at least for everybody who's listening?

Speaker: I can send you a copy of the short story.

Speaker: I'm debating on whether I want to submit the book to a publisher or just do another self-publish.

Speaker: I'm still kind of kicking it around.

Speaker: I haven't fully decided on that.

Speaker: Maybe you want to join Monolith of Mines if we publish it on the Monolith of Mines brand.

Speaker: Hey, there's an idea.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What are the pros and cons of having a publisher in the book's realm?

Speaker: Oh, come on, Richie.

Speaker: You know how working a publisher turns out, man.

Speaker: You made your experiences.

Speaker: Yeah, I know.

Speaker: I know it from the game perspective, but not from the writing perspective.

Speaker: So if you self-publish, obviously you get pretty much all the proceeds.

Speaker: But then you also have to do all the marketing and all that kind of stuff yourself.

Speaker: Which is fine if that's going to 100% be your thing and you're going to spend a lot of time developing an audience and things like that.

Speaker: But as you know, with game dev, that can be difficult.

Speaker: you know, to kind of get seen or heard or read.

Speaker: And I think for books, it's much harder to get read than it is for a game to get played.

Speaker: Everybody wants to pick up a game and, you know, if they know about it, you know, they'll at least check it out.

Speaker: Most people won't.

Speaker: You know, you tell them you wrote a book, eh, whatever.

Speaker: Unless it fits something, like a genre and they are big readers, you know.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: If you send it to a publisher, at least they'll handle the marketing and all that stuff.

Speaker: You'll probably get less proceeds.

Speaker: You might get more money up front.

Speaker: So it's kind of like one of these things, you know, weigh the options.

Speaker: So I kind of just haven't pulled the trigger on either one.

Speaker: But, I mean, I would still let you read it, you know, if you guys – if you want to check it out.

Speaker: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker: You guys said you wrote a novel, didn't you?

Speaker: Did you write – you wrote one together or –

Speaker: No, no, we published.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: We published one that was written by a bright buck master.

Speaker: And he's basically a friend of the one of the minds team by now.

Speaker: And yeah, I think he approached approached us, you know, after resolution was out for like, say, half a year or something of these lines.

Speaker: And he said he loved the game, he loved the characters, he loved the universe.

Speaker: He's a writer, particularly in the kind of military science fiction field.

Speaker: And he just wants to dabble with our world if it's okay.

Speaker: And, you know, like we became friends pretty quickly and talked about all these kind of ideas.

Speaker: And I think it took him roughly a year, something on these lines, to actually write this kind of novel.

Speaker: And for us, at least, it was this kind of perfect conclusion to the...

Speaker: the world that we have been set out so far, right?

Speaker: Because by now we have Resolution, which is like this kind of cyborg guy coming from the real world into the kind of dream world.

Speaker: Then we have Lila, which is completely playing out in the dream world.

Speaker: It's basically the beginning of the dream world kind of story side of things.

Speaker: And then we have this kind of novel, which plays exactly after Resolution ends in the real world.

Speaker: where this kind of battle cyborg basically beats the crap out of everybody that he beats.

Speaker: And Brad wrote that.

Speaker: The cool idea, let me jump in here quickly.

Speaker: The cool idea of Brad was that he more or less, while Resolution tells the story of a real-world character, Valor, transitioning into the dream world, the book flips it around.

Speaker: And there's a character from the dream world which transitions into the real world.

Speaker: And yeah, man, that was awesome.

Speaker: Oh, that's cool.

Speaker: He created our supervillain, basically, right?

Speaker: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker: Do you have that on the website or...

Speaker: Yeah, it's called Resolution Virus, you can find it.

Speaker: Oh, virus, okay.

Speaker: I didn't realize that was a book.

Speaker: Okay, I get it.

Speaker: It's a novel, I think it's something like 250 pages, something of these lines.

Speaker: And I mean, for us, it was basically an experiment that turned out wonderfully, because he just nailed it, man.

Speaker: I mean, obviously, if someone tinkers in your universe, you're quite cautious, is he getting it?

Speaker: How he's putting these kind of ideas together?

Speaker: Will he just, will he make it better or worse?

Speaker: Will he butcher the characters?

Speaker: Will he butcher the characters?

Speaker: And he actually butchers a character, but in a good way, right?

Speaker: I mean... So in the end, I mean, we were massively impressed.

Speaker: I was reading this kind of book and laughing and shedding a few tears here and there because he just nailed it, man.

Speaker: He just kept the whole feeling so, so right and all the kind of little details with barely any kind of editing or feedback process, right?

Speaker: So he really got the world back 100%.

Speaker: So that was a pretty cool experiment for us.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you're not selling a lot of books anyway, right?

Speaker: I mean, you're not making a lot of money from creating something like that.

Speaker: But for total morons like us that still have no idea what they are doing, it's just beautiful that someone else was able to jump into our world and create his own little art from it, right?

Speaker: I mean, that's cool, man.

Speaker: That's all you want as an artist, basically.

Speaker: Yeah, no, that's freaking awesome.

Speaker: I'm going to pick that up and read it because I'm a huge fan.

Speaker: The cover is badass.

Speaker: I didn't realize that was a book.

Speaker: I was looking at the website and I missed the part.

Speaker: Again, we fucked up our marketing.

Speaker: Thanks for pointing that out.

Speaker: That's what I'm here for.

Speaker: I appreciate it, man.

Speaker: Probably this is like a marketing consulting session.

Speaker: I'll fix your marketing for you.

Speaker: Now we talked a bit about Resolution, Lila, and Deliver the Virus.

Speaker: Now your obvious question should be like, what's next for you guys?

Speaker: When will you finally do Resolution 2?

Speaker: I was going to ask what your next game was or if you're working on one already.

Speaker: What are you guys doing right now?

Speaker: Oh god.

Speaker: I guess not what most people would like to hear on our server and somewhere else.

Speaker: You're not working on anything, are you?

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Well, we do, but it's not Resolution 2.

Speaker: I mean, Resolution 2... Oh, that's fine.

Speaker: Yeah, Resolution 2 was basically in the making.

Speaker: Because we started with Resolution 2...

Speaker: right after we finished Resolution 1 because we just wanted to produce this kind of story.

Speaker: We always knew that, not always, but very early on, we decided that we wanted this kind of trilogy and Resolution was in the middle and then we wanted to have Resolution 2 as the kind of final thing and then we wanted to have something like a prequel, right?

Speaker: And after Resolution, we figured out, goddammit, man, two noobs that had no idea what they were doing, going for this kind of five-year, ten-hour kind of game thingy that was way over our heads, you know, like Resolution was very unstable code.

Speaker: We had to redo things over and over and over again.

Speaker: So when we jumped into Resolution 2, we quickly realized, man,

Speaker: Basically, we are not up for the task.

Speaker: We burned ourselves mostly to death while doing it.

Speaker: It has been way too shaky ground.

Speaker: So how about we do a smaller game first and then we think it with another idea and this kind of idea try to do something different and eventually realize, man, the idea that we're putting together is the perfect prequel.

Speaker: This is exactly what we want to do with the kind of prequel story.

Speaker: quite smaller, much more nicer, gamey-ish, not as heavy on complex topics like AI, like I said earlier, politics, whatever, but just a smaller one.

Speaker: And then we basically did Lila Skyark from that.

Speaker: Apart from that, the ideas for Resident Evil 2, they are still in the drawer.

Speaker: So we do have a big chunk of the story written, we have plenty of concepts, we do have a really good idea about the kind of mechanics, what we want to do.

Speaker: But so far the problem is that it just still feels way too big for us.

Speaker: I mean, it just doesn't feel like a two-man project, right?

Speaker: Scaling it down in your head is probably something that eventually might happen for sure, but we have no idea when and how it will happen.

Speaker: So yeah, that's resolution 2 for the moment.

Speaker: It's funny that you... What did you say?

Speaker: A 8 to 10 hour game?

Speaker: Resolution, yeah, it's probably something these lines.

Speaker: Okay, and you're saying that 2, it would be just as big or bigger?

Speaker: Probably bigger.

Speaker: Probably Master Touch bigger.

Speaker: I was going to say, because...

Speaker: You would think, I mean, you know, the one thing about AAA games is everybody is like, holy crap, this game is so fucking short.

Speaker: You know, it's only 10 hours, you know, and for an indie game, like, oh my god, this thing is massive.

Speaker: It's 10 hours long.

Speaker: It's different when you're a small team building something versus a much larger team.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: For sure.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We're still waiting for the AI that is capable of drawing proper pixel art.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Tell me about it.

Speaker: I'm still waiting for it to either take over jobs or kill off all the artists or whatever AI is supposed to do next.

Speaker: I would say there's at least some certain art areas which are

Speaker: which are already killed.

Speaker: So like for example, I mean, so this, the stuff, so in the job we're working at currently, they're using a lot of mid journey and that stuff, man, that is quiet.

Speaker: If you go for a specific stuff, it's not, not yet there, but if you just want a cool background, man, it's just like, here you go.

Speaker: And that's, I think that's kind of a perfect scenario for it, right?

Speaker: It's just, you know, you just need to slap an image in somewhere looks good.

Speaker: In the U.S., our copyright laws exclude any AI art.

Speaker: You can't copyright AI art.

Speaker: So that causes a lot of issues for companies that require their images and things like that to be copyrighted.

Speaker: So that cuts down a lot of the, at least here in the U.S.,

Speaker: You know, because basically, if you make an image with AI, I can use it.

Speaker: You know, you can't sue me.

Speaker: But one of the interesting things I've kind of considered is when I do make a game, which I will make a game.

Speaker: I'm putting that out there right now.

Speaker: I will make a game.

Speaker: Let's go.

Speaker: Now it's official.

Speaker: Now it's official.

Speaker: Go with the release date as well.

Speaker: So pressure yourself a little more.

Speaker: Is making my assets kind of freely available for other people to use and do whatever they want with basically?

Speaker: I'm not putting a, you know, like, shit, you stole my art kind of thing on it.

Speaker: You know, if people want to use it, they can use it.

Speaker: I mean, I mean, I say something, something to always consider when we talk about this kind of, let's say AI technologies is that that I mean, remember about Instagram, like, what is it like when up?

Speaker: 10 years ago or something on these live where Instagram showed up.

Speaker: I mean, before that, a decent photographer was really worth his money or her money, right?

Speaker: In some shape or form.

Speaker: You know, if you had a good camera and a good eye and, you know, like a certain kind of feeling for lighting, man, people paid you money.

Speaker: And it was really special to see a really good photo.

Speaker: And after Instagram, like a few years later, nobody cared about Instagram.

Speaker: Everybody was deleting their photos.

Speaker: their photo folders or deleted their portfolios because it's not worth anything at all anymore because of the simple inflation of information.

Speaker: And I'm pretty sure the kind of same thing will happen with, first of all, like AI art, that you can't see this shit anymore, right?

Speaker: You don't care about it because it's everywhere all the time and it's just that there's no emotion attached to it, no value at all.

Speaker: And I'm pretty sure that this will happen massively to video games, particularly when it comes to...

Speaker: I mean, you can see it already when I say like this kind of cheap, cheap manga-ish kind of games on Steam where every day you get 10 of them or I don't know, similar very quickly put together games.

Speaker: So yeah, I'd say, yeah, they will be much, much, much faster to be created actually also by small teams, but then nobody will care because there are so many of them, right?

Speaker: You just basically create them like every day a new game, man.

Speaker: So, you know.

Speaker: So we are still advancing massively in this kind of attention industry to the point that people really need to figure out what do they put their attention to, right?

Speaker: How do they waste their lifetime?

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: I totally don't think that the tools that we have right now will have a massive effect on those who really try to, you know, like create something unique or at least something really emotional.

Speaker: But particularly everybody who is just trying to do something right get it out and flood the market Yeah, because the markets will be flooded beyond belief, right?

Speaker: Yeah, I definitely think the

Speaker: What is it?

Speaker: The cream rises to the top or something like that.

Speaker: It sounds wrong, but maybe it rises on top.

Speaker: But something rises to the top.

Speaker: So, you know, if you make something that's very, like, emotionally driven and, you know, has feeling to it, like, you know, it'll get noticed, hopefully.

Speaker: A corpse in the water rises to the top as well.

Speaker: Yeah, see?

Speaker: Don't get confused.

Speaker: Corpses are an emotional thing.

Speaker: You know, this is very emotional, Richie, right?

Speaker: This is very emotionally and challenging, right?

Speaker: In some shape or form.

Speaker: Have you guys been keeping track or watching the Unity stuff?

Speaker: That was fun.

Speaker: I was impressed.

Speaker: I was totally impressed how well thought out this, how insanely clever the Godot marketing team is.

Speaker: Those guys are badass.

Speaker: Running such an insane marketing campaign within three days, man, impressive.

Speaker: Absolutely impressive.

Speaker: With really no marketing budget at all.

Speaker: None.

Speaker: None at all.

Speaker: It's nuts.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Have you ever done it around with Unity?

Speaker: Because I haven't, so I have no idea.

Speaker: Yeah, so I've pretty much played a little bit with just about every game engine or framework out there over the course of a bunch of years.

Speaker: So I tried Godot way back when you guys first started with it.

Speaker: 1.4 maybe it was or something like that.

Speaker: And, uh, but yeah, so, but unity always, I just didn't like it.

Speaker: And partly maybe it was a clunky fucking interface.

Speaker: Um, and partly because there was just something about it that I just didn't trust.

Speaker: Even back then, you know, there was always something a little off for me, personally.

Speaker: So I just, I didn't get, I didn't dive too much into it.

Speaker: And then, you know, coming up, and then I've watched the changes, you know, I've always watched it.

Speaker: So again, isn't this like golden rules of the internet?

Speaker: If things are free, don't go for them.

Speaker: You know, in some shape or form, right?

Speaker: They always feel like they're all shaky.

Speaker: There are strings attached.

Speaker: Okay, unless it's open source or has a very liberal license.

Speaker: which is one of the one of the things that I don't like is that default has taken so much flack for not having an open source license.

Speaker: The only thing it limits you to is packaging it and selling it.

Speaker: You know, like Godot, you could package it up and sell it as yours if you wanted to.

Speaker: But when when King transitioned it to a its own foundation,

Speaker: and basically separated from it.

Speaker: You know, they, they re the only thing they really required from the license is that it couldn't be packaged and sold.

Speaker: And so they, they have a custom license, but it's based on, is it GPL two or something like that, I think.

Speaker: But let me see real quick.

Speaker: Are you an open source guy?

Speaker: In what fashion?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: You're running Linux and all you do is talk about open source stuff and running Linux.

Speaker: I use open source stuff.

Speaker: You almost can't get away from it when you program and things like that.

Speaker: But yeah, it's based on the Apache 2 license default licenses.

Speaker: So you just can't package it and sell it, but everything else you can do.

Speaker: So I find it weird that they get flack over not having an open source license.

Speaker: Because, you know, especially when all I do is talk about open source and, you know, use open source.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That was actually the main point of me choosing Godot because I wanted something that runs on Linux by the time and that's a long, long time ago.

Speaker: And the editor was running on Linux and I mean, after playing around, I think I played around with a couple of engines when I started that thing.

Speaker: But Godot instantly clicked, I felt so at home, it was so well done, even the first version.

Speaker: Although if you look at it nowadays, it would be a bit outdated, but yeah, they are doing a marvelous job.

Speaker: And man, but you can see... They've done fantastic.

Speaker: I think it's still one of the biggest growing projects in GitHub, so yeah, I guess.

Speaker: Yeah, it's huge.

Speaker: I guess they just got a shitload of funding over the last couple of weeks.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I was going to say the Unity marketing team has really helped them out a lot.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And actually that's, that's, that's one of the things too.

Speaker: Like I've been using Linux on and off for a bunch of years.

Speaker: I still have windows on one of my machines, but it's really just for games.

Speaker: I can't,

Speaker: I don't use it for anything else.

Speaker: I don't use it for development or anything.

Speaker: Usually I, you know, I use my desktop that I'm on now that is really ridiculously old, but runs Linux quite well.

Speaker: So yeah, I've always, I guess, shied away from not paid software, like I pay for software, but yeah.

Speaker: But I do try to support open source and, and prefer it for the most part.

Speaker: But yeah.

Speaker: What about you guys?

Speaker: Open source completely Linux driven both of you?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Twins, right?

Speaker: So, so you use the same version of Linux?

Speaker: Yeah, we also live in the same house and use the same.

Speaker: Share, share, share, share,

Speaker: uh no no no that's hilarious

Speaker: Yeah, when I first went to university many, many, many years ago, I had a flatmate and he was one of those who got a very early... And he showed your girlfriend as well.

Speaker: No kidding.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Stop it.

Speaker: Stop it, guys.

Speaker: No, he really got me into it.

Speaker: He really got me into Linux and everything in general.

Speaker: And I can clearly say that for at least 15 years by now, I'm a full open source guy.

Speaker: I think I remember there was probably a time where...

Speaker: where I probably must have been the only one or maybe one of 10 designers worldwide who used Linux and Inkscape instead of Apple.

Speaker: That was really wild by now.

Speaker: All these kind of things have catched up massively.

Speaker: I mean, there's barely any reason to go for open source, particularly if you do it for the getting stuff done side of things.

Speaker: So yeah, it's like never had any problems over the last couple of years.

Speaker: I use it in scape like tons.

Speaker: I use it tons.

Speaker: I use it for website, excuse me, website design.

Speaker: I use it for, so I didn't mention it, but I'm actually in the middle of a startup with two other developers.

Speaker: And so we're building a like small SAS projects with Elixir.

Speaker: And so, you know, I do.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The first one we're doing is a reminder app.

Speaker: So I have a terrible time remembering like when my streaming services are due or what streaming service I've signed up for and forgotten about.

Speaker: So it'll actually text you when like a few days before it comes due.

Speaker: I ignore calendar a lot because there's so much crap on it, you know, family stuff.

Speaker: So

Speaker: a text I text I look at pretty exclusively.

Speaker: So basically, is there this kind of premium version that if you don't respond to your text, and you know, like a day later, some some guy rides with the car and kind of baseball bat?

Speaker: reminding you.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is the only, yeah.

Speaker: You can start by someone calling you with a lovely voice.

Speaker: An automated call next.

Speaker: And if you still ignore that, then the guy with the baseball bat comes along.

Speaker: Baseball bat beats you over the head.

Speaker: I told you your shit was due.

Speaker: Damn it.

Speaker: That is cool, man.

Speaker: Is that like a startup?

Speaker: Are you trying to build up a little software company that is doing a software project?

Speaker: Is that like?

Speaker: Yep, yep.

Speaker: Cool.

Speaker: We've discussed even making some small games and stuff too.

Speaker: We just haven't really... We have a lot of ideas.

Speaker: But you got to finish one before you move to the next.

Speaker: So most of the game dabbling I do is obviously any free time I have outside of that.

Speaker: And of course, the podcast and stuff.

Speaker: But yeah.

Speaker: What's your playing?

Speaker: What's your playing lately?

Speaker: What am I playing lately?

Speaker: Dead Space 3.

Speaker: I'm almost done.

Speaker: And, you know, I really got pissed off at Dead Space.

Speaker: So I played the first three, and the third one I played roughly when it came out, maybe a little bit after.

Speaker: Oh, okay, sorry.

Speaker: Are you guys still there?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Okay, alright, it said I disconnected for a second.

Speaker: So, EA got really greedy, and they separated the end of the game into a DLC.

Speaker: Oh boy.

Speaker: I did not know this.

Speaker: I played the game.

Speaker: I beat it.

Speaker: And then the main character is stuck on this fucking rock in the middle of space or something maybe.

Speaker: I can't remember exactly, I think.

Speaker: Dude, it's getting to mobile territory.

Speaker: You get a game for free and then you play the first level and then it says, oh, dude, I'm not free.

Speaker: I was infuriated.

Speaker: And to this day, I haven't played it.

Speaker: so this is mad a bunch of years later almost 10 years later i'm like because it came out in 2014 i'm like okay i'm just gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna get the dlc you know i didn't even get the games like i got i think i got them on a humble bundle so i re-got them i think i might have played it on on a console or something at that point

Speaker: but I didn't give any of the money to EA.

Speaker: I was like, fuck EA.

Speaker: Charity can have all my money.

Speaker: I'm taking your games.

Speaker: So, like, okay, 10 years later, I'll buy the DLC.

Speaker: EA has since...

Speaker: They come out with a couple of good games where they didn't nickel and dime you.

Speaker: Those Star Wars games are really good.

Speaker: I don't know if you guys have played those yet.

Speaker: They're great.

Speaker: Very story-driven, of course, and kind of keeping with the...

Speaker: the original films and not, you know, not Disney's bullshit.

Speaker: But yeah, so there's my, there's my, I hate Disney for ruining star Wars.

Speaker: What about you guys?

Speaker: What are you playing?

Speaker: Oh, go ahead.

Speaker: Where's he?

Speaker: I didn't... What I'm playing, man.

Speaker: I finished a couple of smaller indie games.

Speaker: Nothing too fancy.

Speaker: I think the last little thing I really enjoyed was Carry On.

Speaker: Did you play that?

Speaker: Metroidvania with this giant red bubble alien thingy which grows and grows and you just munch humans and crawl through levels and get stronger.

Speaker: Oh, that sounds fun.

Speaker: It's pretty cool.

Speaker: Pretty cool indie game.

Speaker: I enjoyed that a lot.

Speaker: That reminds me of a game.

Speaker: I want to start Subnautica.

Speaker: Next game I probably will play Subnautica.

Speaker: That's amazing, man.

Speaker: Never played that.

Speaker: I'll dive into that.

Speaker: I've played it.

Speaker: I haven't beat it yet, but I've played it a good bit.

Speaker: It's fun.

Speaker: It's a lot of fun.

Speaker: Yeah, I played it way too much and eventually I realized that I do have this kind of weird subconscious fear of dark deep waters.

Speaker: And the more I played the game, I realized, goddammit, man, this was not just slightly gnawing on my bones, but eventually I realized after playing Subnautica for an hour, I was devastated.

Speaker: I was done, man.

Speaker: I couldn't do anything at all.

Speaker: So it drained all the energy out of me.

Speaker: That's not why I play video games, man.

Speaker: I play video games to relax a little bit and regenerate in the evening.

Speaker: So, yeah, no.

Speaker: But it's a really amazing game.

Speaker: Your brain was just flooded.

Speaker: There she is.

Speaker: This guy.

Speaker: That's like me with the first Dead Space.

Speaker: That game... The first time I played the first Dead Space, that game scared the shit out of me.

Speaker: And I was like... I was completely...

Speaker: overwhelmed by anxiety.

Speaker: And I don't even think I beat it the first time I've tried to play it.

Speaker: Like, it was that bad.

Speaker: And then I played...

Speaker: I played Alien Isolation.

Speaker: Are you familiar with that?

Speaker: That was good.

Speaker: That was really good.

Speaker: I enjoyed that a lot.

Speaker: Another game that I beat, but caused me severe anxiety while playing it.

Speaker: It worked.

Speaker: That was probably what they were going for, and it worked out well because I was terrified.

Speaker: I had to put it in the face.

Speaker: Alien Isolation was a really good part of it.

Speaker: But now, from at least kind of the recent years, the game that scared me by far the most was most definitely the Outer Wilds.

Speaker: Oh, no, no, Outer Wilds.

Speaker: Just Outer Wilds.

Speaker: Did you play that?

Speaker: Outer Wilds.

Speaker: Outer Wilds.

Speaker: We are traveling around in this universe.

Speaker: It's probably the best game ever released.

Speaker: So it's... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker: Man, by far.

Speaker: I cannot think of a better game.

Speaker: It's just like...

Speaker: It's from a perspective what a game is supposed to do.

Speaker: I cannot think of a better one.

Speaker: Fair enough.

Speaker: There are these giant angler fishes.

Speaker: But yeah, if you haven't played it, I will not spoil anything.

Speaker: I would say if you are going to play only one video game in your lifetime, go for that one.

Speaker: Okay, I'll check that one out.

Speaker: What would you guys say?

Speaker: What's the one game, if you are alive for only one week, what should you play?

Speaker: The Longest Journey.

Speaker: What was that?

Speaker: It's a childhood memory for you.

Speaker: No, I played it quite late, somewhere in my 20s.

Speaker: The Longest Journey is basically just like a point-and-click adventure.

Speaker: It's not really even special, but I have no idea why this game was such a journey.

Speaker: I played it a couple of times, and it was one of these kind of things that

Speaker: But even today, I was always juggling with The Longest Journey and Final Fantasy VII, these kind of massive stories that just threw me in.

Speaker: I have to give Richie credit for picking out a while, because if you look at game design through, let's say, a technical lens,

Speaker: through the right amount of story, the right amount of physics, the right amount of puzzles, the right amount of emotions, whatever, then I have to agree, otherwise it's like this kind of perfect gem.

Speaker: It almost nails everything.

Speaker: But it's not one of these kind of games where I'd say I will remember that in a dozen years, because in the end what resonates particularly with a character like me is a story, not the

Speaker: implementation or something like that right you know we are at least i i consider myself massively like a story driven creature and my whole life is just one story so i'm tying connecting massively with stories as well but you know through the kind of technical lens i totally have to give richie the otherwise it's like it's perfect in every it checks out every box perfectly totally totally down but yeah final fantasy 7 and uh and uh

Speaker: and the longest journey would be my my best games yeah and that probably followed by some mix between metroid and seltzer games um yeah yeah did you guys play ghost song

Speaker: No?

Speaker: Wait, it rings a bell.

Speaker: It totally rings a bell, but I can't.

Speaker: Yeah, I did.

Speaker: Yes, it's this kind of, let's say, Metroid clone.

Speaker: Yeah, with this kind of organic kind of look to it.

Speaker: Yeah, it was pretty.

Speaker: That was pretty good.

Speaker: That was really good.

Speaker: That was like one of the better Metroid homages.

Speaker: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker: When it comes to gaming over the last couple of months, I think I got more and more sick and bored of all the kind of big games.

Speaker: Nothing really, really took me.

Speaker: And I think the last one that I played was Dark Souls 3 because I hadn't skipped on that for all the kind of years.

Speaker: And eventually I just got it.

Speaker: I got through it for the most part.

Speaker: I think I had the kind of last three bosses or something on that left.

Speaker: And then I realized, man, I'm just not interested in the grind anymore.

Speaker: And that's absolutely true for all the kind of games.

Speaker: I'm too old, you know, I don't want to have like 30 attempts for, you know, every second boss or something like that.

Speaker: That is just, that feels like a waste of time, right?

Speaker: And then I eventually decided, you know, I'm probably eyeing for Steam Deck sometimes later this year.

Speaker: Then I was like, man, before I put my Switch away, because I've been gaming on the Switch for the last three years, I was like, man, I'm getting this kind of Nintendo, what is it like, this kind of Nintendo Switch

Speaker: special account thingy and then you can play all the old games.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: For the last four weeks.

Speaker: So I've basically been grinding through almost every Mario game, every Zelda game, and almost every Metroid game for the last few weeks.

Speaker: And it's a freaking blast.

Speaker: But now I've reached a kind of secret of mana, kind of nostalgia, kind of level.

Speaker: And I also get a little bit of, let's say, nostalgia fatigue at that point.

Speaker: So I won't be doing it for long, but, you know, like the last four weeks when it comes to gaming was just amazing, man.

Speaker: You know, like,

Speaker: Like having Mario 2 and 3 and then what is it like, Yoshi?

Speaker: What is it like Mario World?

Speaker: Yoshi's Island.

Speaker: Yoshi's Island, you know, like it's ridiculous the amount of creativity that these kind of people have been putting in these games.

Speaker: It's mind-boggling, man.

Speaker: It's mind-boggling.

Speaker: Every level has five new cool ideas.

Speaker: It's like, what did they do with their braids?

Speaker: Probably they ate a lot of mushrooms because that's the only answer here I have.

Speaker: But...

Speaker: Yeah, Mario is a drug addict.

Speaker: Are you guys looking forward to the new Mario game?

Speaker: Mario Wonders?

Speaker: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker: Which one is it?

Speaker: It's called Super Mario Bros.

Speaker: Wonder, something like that.

Speaker: Not really sure.

Speaker: I didn't realize there was another Mario game coming out.

Speaker: I probably haven't been hyped for a game for a rather long time, but that one really ticks my boxes.

Speaker: Looks so freakishly good.

Speaker: Oh, Mario Bros.

Speaker: Wonder.

Speaker: I hadn't heard of that.

Speaker: but now i guess uh i'm just just check the trailer just trick it's again one of those things where with the amount of creativity and ideas and every shot is like overwhelmingly cool and still isn't there this isn't there this kind of thing settling in the gaming industry at least for the most part that that to a certain extent you always just have the feeling that everything starts to just be a copy of a copy of a copy i mean because that's at least what i'm what i'm getting at least in the kind of in the kind of big picture

Speaker: that even though Mario Wanda looks amazing, man, and I definitely want to play it, man, it's just like, yeah, it's another Mario game and that's really cool.

Speaker: That's what I want for Mario, right?

Speaker: But it's just like, when was the last time that you picked up a game and you were like, man, I just really tapped into a completely new kind of emotion, like a completely new kind of experience, something that is really fresh in some shape or form?

Speaker: I mean, maybe that would be like a tieback to Resolution 2 because I think we still have an idea of what we want it to be.

Speaker: But to this point, I'm waiting for a game that is really catching this kind of vibe so we get a better kind of inspiration because we're feeling quite a bit lost.

Speaker: We know what we want to do, but we have no idea how to do it.

Speaker: And it's like a combination of, let's say, like a...

Speaker: like a real living world where you're not just going from script to script.

Speaker: The whole world is living and interacting, let's say similar to Rain World, but then have it combined with, let's say, Zelda-like kind of rhythm, something on these lines.

Speaker: That's what we want Resolution 2, or Children's Resolution as a working title to be.

Speaker: And man, I'm waiting for some kind of game that gives us the right kind of hints, the right kind of ideas.

Speaker: This would be the way to do it.

Speaker: So yeah, man, I've been dabbling with this quite a bit.

Speaker: What are the last couple of games that you were like, man, this was really a rich thing.

Speaker: I'm really happy that I played this.

Speaker: It's kind of opened a new door in my brain.

Speaker: Yeah, it seems like that doesn't happen too often.

Speaker: anymore unless you're playing like at least for me if i'm playing something really story driven and i'm like oh that you know and i'll write down some ideas like it'll just generate you know um but those games are kind of i don't want to say they're few and far between but i tend to find a lot more of that lately with like indie driven games um

Speaker: There's not a lot of AAA stuff that comes out anymore that really sparks my inner muse, I guess.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, man.

Speaker: What do we have?

Speaker: Is it like Uncharted 7, Gears of War 38?

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: They're as bad as the movie industry.

Speaker: They just keep rehashing the same shit over and over.

Speaker: And I don't mind if a game ends...

Speaker: you know, if a series ends, if it's got a good, you know, a good solid ending, then just end it, you know, it doesn't have to go on for years, you know, um, there's a, there's a show on Amazon called the expanse.

Speaker: I don't know if you've heard of it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I heard of it, but I haven't seen it.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So it's based most of it.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: It's based on a series.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's based on a series of novels.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: The show covers the first six books, which is kind of an arc because the book after six jumps like 30 years into the future.

Speaker: So, you know, the show doesn't have to go any further, but everybody's like, oh, where's season seven?

Speaker: Well, it doesn't need a season seven, you know, for a show.

Speaker: I mean, aside from the fact that the actors haven't aged 30 years yet,

Speaker: To pick up the plot.

Speaker: You know, it's got a good arc.

Speaker: It ends.

Speaker: The same with Battlestar Galactica.

Speaker: I don't know if you guys watched that.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: The original one or the remake?

Speaker: The remake.

Speaker: Yeah, that was amazing.

Speaker: I loved the remake.

Speaker: Yeah, it was amazing.

Speaker: I mean, it still holds up.

Speaker: But it had a great, a really great ending.

Speaker: The ending was kind of like mind blowing a little bit.

Speaker: I won't give it away.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They tied it up great.

Speaker: It didn't need any more than that.

Speaker: You know, it covered the arc and it was done.

Speaker: But, but yeah, companies just seem like they want to just grind the thing into the ground, you know, just squeeze every last penny, you know,

Speaker: out of an IP and it ruins it a lot of times.

Speaker: Yeah, there have been a couple of TV shows over the last couple of years where you have the feeling that, man, they really had a really cool ending, like a really cool cut after, let's say, season two or season three or whatever that might be.

Speaker: And then they were just going too well and they

Speaker: put on more and more and more and i can totally understand it you know like like if things are going well you really want to ride the train but from an artistic point um yeah it's like it's like maybe maybe that's also why it's really it's a really interesting approach to um or like an idea to approach an art project either through the lens of will it make me will it make enough money to you know like

Speaker: at least break even or is this just for me and the kind of story side of things right and I guess you really have to dabble with this idea and I mean it seems that today everything has to be has to be around this kind of kind of capitalistic idea that that whatever you put out needs to make at least the money that you have put in if not it's not worth anything but that's absolutely not true in the end right yeah yeah yeah

Speaker: At least for us, I could... Man, the amount of cool people that we met along the kind of journey and the interesting and the little adventures within our games, outside of our games, all these kind of interactions.

Speaker: I mean, we have a bunch of people on our Discord who are putting up this amazing art.

Speaker: I mean, it's just like they got inspired by two weirdos trying their hands on their first video game inspired by someone else.

Speaker: And this kind of generational story keeps going and keeps going and keeps going.

Speaker: I mean, it's the same thing probably...

Speaker: with your kids or the family, right?

Speaker: It's just like you don't have to finish the house.

Speaker: I mean, it's obviously cool if there's a roof on it, right?

Speaker: But if you're not able to finish it, someone else will finish it.

Speaker: And I think if we approach stories similarly, we have no idea what kind of cool things come out of it, right?

Speaker: I mean, something that might start as like a really cheap thing in your generation might be the biggest blockbuster, whatever kind of financial phenomena, like a generation later, maybe.

Speaker: I think the Lord of the Rings was pretty successful, was really successful during Tolkien's lifetime.

Speaker: Also, I think Dune, like Frank Herbert's massive sci-fi, was really successful during his lifetime.

Speaker: But I mean, there are probably some examples of writers or, let's say, artists in general that created something in their lifetime that was not successful at all, but later blew up massively, right?

Speaker: And some kind of other generation picked it up.

Speaker: And I think that's a very satisfying way to approach art or creativity in general or creating stuff in general.

Speaker: Yeah, there's been a couple of writers.

Speaker: Robert Jordan, who did the Wheel of Time series, but he didn't finish it because he died.

Speaker: He had outlined the last...

Speaker: story and so they brought in uh brandon sanderson who's a phenomenal writer on his own um to finish him and i guess he did a really good job i haven't read i haven't read those those ones yet but um

Speaker: But Lovecraft would be an example.

Speaker: Lovecraft, I think he didn't make a penny in his lifetime, but he's this kind of crazy influence today.

Speaker: Like if you're a little Lovecraft, right?

Speaker: I mean, he's this kind of... That's like, yeah.

Speaker: And they are like, if you read these kind of stories today, they are weird and they are written really weird, but they to a certain extent totally hold up or might even work better today than they did in the past culturally, I guess.

Speaker: um so yeah that's that would be an example of you know like like generational taking over humanity things oh yeah yeah yeah and even like like science fiction i don't know if you noticed if you've read any old old science fiction but it's it's very it it reads kind of strange sometimes because um because they didn't have any kind of frame of reference

Speaker: You know, they're just making shit up as they went along, you know?

Speaker: They might have a box, you know, that they talked into or something, you know?

Speaker: And we're just like, oh yeah, you know, a terminal or a, you know, some sort of whatever.

Speaker: I mean, what do you think?

Speaker: Do you think like 50 or 100 years from now, life on Earth would look like the kind of projections that some science fiction

Speaker: movies give us or something kind of stories because I think it won't, you know, like we project, you know, that everything is a very linear progression, you know, that future things are all the same, just a little bit different, but I think it's not this kind of place.

Speaker: Either we go like extra, what is it, like extrapolation or not extrapolation.

Speaker: Well, either we bounce up massively, you know, with the kind of massive spike, or we also could totally drop, right?

Speaker: Could totally drop, yeah.

Speaker: We don't really have a...

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: I think maybe a little bit of both, really.

Speaker: I would say as far as technology goes, I'd say the Expanse show or the books come pretty close to how it might be.

Speaker: Maybe colonizing the moon, maybe Mars.

Speaker: But, I mean, I don't think we're talking in this lifetime.

Speaker: I'm thinking, you know, a few hundred years from now.

Speaker: Do you think as a kid you have been thought about having like a video call with perfect sound with two German dudes that you met over the internet?

Speaker: Probably not.

Speaker: No, definitely not.

Speaker: I can see you.

Speaker: I can see massively both directions.

Speaker: I mean, on one hand, we have this kind of massive data hawking and future calculating side of society, which you could call like technocracy and, you know, all these kind of dystopian elements to it, like world governments and whatnot madness.

Speaker: On the other hand, you have this kind of massive nature-seeking kind of movements that go back to some kind of route, whatever that might be.

Speaker: It might be, let's go back 100 years, maybe let's go back 2,000 years.

Speaker: It's like all these kind of things that are clashing at the moment.

Speaker: And it seems that way too many narratives try to be the one.

Speaker: And barely anybody can...

Speaker: can, you know, like, like see, see a future where these kinds of two narratives work together instead of control, be the only thing.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And I mean, maybe that's, maybe that's also part of this kind of, um, probably like 2000 year old, uh, um,

Speaker: control narrative, you know, like might be even older than 2000 years, but, you know, at least we trace back to the Roman empire where, you know, everything had to be done like the Romans do, right?

Speaker: That was, that was, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: That's, that's actually coming back.

Speaker: If you watch Twitter, you know, like, like roads had to be exactly the same size and, you know, like, like this weight had to be exactly that kind of, that number attached to it and so on and so on.

Speaker: And, you know, it could be, you know, it could also be total end of this kind of, this kind of worldview within, within our lifetimes, I guess.

Speaker: So yeah, my name is... Go ahead.

Speaker: Oh, sorry.

Speaker: It's getting really popular on Twitter for everybody to be contemplating Roman emperors.

Speaker: Who's your favorite Roman emperor?

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: I'm like, yeah, that's so bizarre, you know?

Speaker: What is your favorite Roman Empire?

Speaker: I don't, I mean, Aurelius, he's the only one.

Speaker: Like, you know, stoicism, like that's the only guy that matters.

Speaker: How many do you know?

Speaker: I only know two.

Speaker: That's pretty much it.

Speaker: I could probably name some other ones if I really thought hard about it.

Speaker: But I don't really contemplate the Roman Empire much.

Speaker: Now the German Empire.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: That's another story.

Speaker: So, like, what was your kind of experience using Godot, building a game?

Speaker: Tell me a little bit about just

Speaker: the experience of using Godot.

Speaker: I've seen a lot of stuff and I, I read, you know, tweet threads and everybody's kind of the C sharp people are like, Oh, it's not ready for games.

Speaker: You know, it's, it's not ready for 3d or I don't know.

Speaker: What do you, what do you guys think about all that stuff?

Speaker: Man, I don't know from the, from the, from the get go, everything felt, felt just felt totally right.

Speaker: At least for me, it was just like the, the, the,

Speaker: the way how the code and the editor play with each other is just right.

Speaker: It's like you build stuff together with the editor, but you create all the complex stuff with the code.

Speaker: There's no weird like,

Speaker: block building tool kit or like, like how do you, how do you call these things where you just, where you click blocks to get that run code, stuff like that.

Speaker: But did you, you can actually, actually, yeah, this is scripting stuff, nothing weird like that.

Speaker: So for me, it was just like, perfect.

Speaker: G script looks like Python and I love Python.

Speaker: way more than all the curly bracket languages, these kind of things.

Speaker: I mean, we didn't build a 3D game or we didn't build 3D games at all.

Speaker: So we just worked with the 2D stuff.

Speaker: So I cannot say what's the performance side of things.

Speaker: But then again, everything is just like so well thought out.

Speaker: You get all the tools you need.

Speaker: It's not super high level.

Speaker: You still have to know what you're doing, but it's high level enough so you don't have to bother with the super low level stuff.

Speaker: I'm just a huge fan, a huge proponent of the whole engine and the people working on it.

Speaker: So we've got to know some of them along the ride.

Speaker: in uh in beginning of of of november there's the next code con is in munich which is kind of cool so it's kind of around the corner kind of close yeah so we so we go there and meet meet some of the dudes in in person which will probably be be a blast and especially now since since since that godot has gotten such a huge yeah huge huge marketing booster from the marketing department um so yeah man i couldn't thank you unity

Speaker: I totally couldn't be happier with the whole thing.

Speaker: And even, man, even the UI toolkit that Godot uses is insanely good.

Speaker: It took me a couple of quite a while to get to wrap my hand around it.

Speaker: But in the company we are working at currently, we are more or less building a UI, a super heavy UI driven app with Godot.

Speaker: And it's insane.

Speaker: Oh, shit.

Speaker: You guys are actually using that on a job?

Speaker: Yeah, we are more or less building.

Speaker: So we can tease it a little bit.

Speaker: It's some sort of mixture between social media app and card playing game.

Speaker: And it runs on mobile.

Speaker: So it runs on Android and iOS.

Speaker: And more or less the whole thing is built with Godot's control nodes.

Speaker: And man, it's so good.

Speaker: It's so good, man.

Speaker: The system.

Speaker: Yeah, man, Godot is just the way to go.

Speaker: Even for...

Speaker: for like kind of natively looking apps, which have a lot of lists because yeah, that's what mobile apps are basically.

Speaker: It's just like lists.

Speaker: Yeah, basically just lists of lists, lists with more lists.

Speaker: And even the whole Godot framework works so flawlessly for that kind of stuff.

Speaker: So it's really cool.

Speaker: Just a big shout out to whoever does that.

Speaker: Big shout out to the guy who,

Speaker: keeps all the developers in check to keep it still, to have the whole engine be so lean and still so powerful.

Speaker: That's really impressive.

Speaker: I mean, the whole engine is, what is it?

Speaker: Is it like 30 megabytes or maybe 50?

Speaker: It's just like it's tiny.

Speaker: Yeah, it's tiny.

Speaker: Yeah, it's super tiny.

Speaker: So yeah, guys, right on.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: Cool.

Speaker: Well, I will let you guys go.

Speaker: We're at about an hour and 35 minutes, which is about average for my podcast.

Speaker: Come on.

Speaker: We feel it.

Speaker: Want to keep going?

Speaker: We feel it.

Speaker: I'm good for another 30 minutes, at least.

Speaker: We can end it here.

Speaker: I mean, you know, like I could totally hop on Richie's shout out to Godot and the kind of Godot in general because in the end, I mean, I do have a bit of experience when it comes to developing and coding in general, but

Speaker: barely compared to Richie and I think my last line of code is at least seven years old or something like that.

Speaker: But I must also say that Richie explained in the beginning, I was like, why do you want to use the engine?

Speaker: What should I do in the engine?

Speaker: He said, imagine it being, I don't know, Photoshop or GIMP.

Speaker: Basically, you have shitloads of little graphics on a layer.

Speaker: And then what I do is that you paint all these kind of graphics on the layer and I just attach little scripts to each graphic, how it interacts with everything else on the layer.

Speaker: I was like, for a graphic designer, that is the perfect introduction of video game development, right?

Speaker: Because in the end, you just built this kind of massive canvas, and then you separate all these individual parts, what should move where and when and how, and what are the rules of how these kind of things are moving into or outside of each other.

Speaker: And that was perfect.

Speaker: And I was actually able at the end of...

Speaker: resolution i was able not to just you know like put in my assets myself and you know draw all these kind of things but also to the point where i was able to animate my animate my own my own objects and and at least dabble a little bit with the scripts you know i was never able to put together the big picture but i was always able to jump in and tinker with every little detail as a graphic designer in general and that is like also like for engine like that that's like a

Speaker: big, big, big, big plus, right?

Speaker: That, you know, everybody somehow jump in and more or less do their shit.

Speaker: I mean, even I remember even our sound designer used the engine and jumped in and actually put his own sounds and into the engine, you know, with all the hooks and grannies.

Speaker: And I mean, for like an engine like that, that's amazing that all the kind of people on the team that you need to build such a project can at least to a certain extent hop in and

Speaker: put their own bits and pieces to the big project.

Speaker: That was absolutely fantastic.

Speaker: Absolutely fantastic.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: So what did we manage to accomplish today?

Speaker: So we did a shout out to Godot.

Speaker: We did a shout out to Gerrit Wolf.

Speaker: Andrews announced his first full video game release.

Speaker: We gave a shout out to the greatest marketing team of all time, Unity.

Speaker: Fair enough, fair enough.

Speaker: Way to go, Unity, way to go.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, hey man, how about that?

Speaker: I want to have a shout out to, I started to draw comics and I have no idea if they ever draw comics, but I got a little bit crazy about continuing the kind of story of resolution.

Speaker: So man,

Speaker: I just got into drawing comics lately and hopefully some people jump on the Discord server and check it out and tell me if it's a good way to continue or if it really sucks, man.

Speaker: Many jump in.

Speaker: I just uploaded the first four pages that are continuing in those.

Speaker: Oh, badass.

Speaker: But also, there was an app component to it.

Speaker: If people see that the kind of story continues, they will probably or hopefully be up Richie's ass that he finally starts creating Resolution 2, right?

Speaker: So here, everybody, go and bother Richie because you all want Resolution 2.

Speaker: I want Resolution 2, but he's the bottleneck.

Speaker: So you bother him.

Speaker: Oh, you're the bottleneck.

Speaker: Send him money, love, and cars with people at baseball bats.

Speaker: Maybe get your app done, finished first, Andrew, so I can use it to kick my ass.

Speaker: Forever.

Speaker: The only nag you'll ever need.

Speaker: Now Andrews is the bottleneck.

Speaker: He just sloughed that off of me.

Speaker: You see that?

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Great time, guys.

Speaker: Thanks for coming on.

Speaker: I appreciate it.

Speaker: It was a lot of fun.

Speaker: We keep connected.

Speaker: See you guys.

Speaker: Bye.

Speaker: Thanks for listening to this episode of Citizen Coder Podcast.

Speaker: You can find links to anything we covered in the show notes.

Speaker: If you'd like to sponsor the show, you can reach out to me at info at citizencodercast.com or hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Speaker: Thanks, and as always, I'll see you next time.