iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 03/01/2026

Playing around with #Unity new graph toolkit stuff to build out a tool for defining my 'expeditions' (choose your own adventure type system). Seems pretty good, but missing a fair bit at the moment. Hopefully 6.4 sorts a lot of it out.

020

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 03/12/2025

Happy to say that The Fire Must Grow🔥 is taking place in the #MidwinterSpirits steam event! ❄️ A great celebration of current and upcoming games that celebrate the cosy start of winter! Check out the sale page! store.steampowered.com/curator/4412... Thanks @IvyJuiceGames

120

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 15/11/2025

Keep your villagers safe from the terrors that lie beyond the light. #screenshotsaturday

020

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 11/11/2025

New game! The Fire Must Grow. A hex-based horror city builder. 🏘️Grow your village. 🔥Tend the flame. 💀Sacrifice your villagers. 👹Meet strange people and creatures. Coming soon! Wishlist on #Steam ! #gaming #horrorgame #indiegame

173

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 23/08/2025

This game is over 10 years old. Still looks amazing. Arkham Knight.

010

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 16/08/2025

Added a table UI class. Supports dynamic column/row changes and sorting. Editor and runtime support. Here it is tracking total existing resources. Will help me add various stats windows. Quite neat. #gamedev #madeinunity

083

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 11/08/2025

Basic farming system done (sped up). Villager plants/maintains/harvests crops. Crop can fail, be affected by weather, temperature etc, which can effect final yield. Needs some UI, but quite happy at the moment #gamedev #madewithunity

0102

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 27/06/2025

Devil's Derby is 20% off in the Steam Summer Sale! Give it a go if you like fast paced shooters. #indiegames #steam #fpsgames

042

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 31/05/2025

This gives us the lightmap value! If this is above 0 we just use that, if not we fallback to the regular lighting value. This gives nice separation of areas, a nice falloff into darkness, and also allows partial lit areas to create fully lit areas. Very good.

110

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 31/05/2025

But the main con for this actually is I want partially lit areas to be able to merge into a fully lit hex, if their lightmap value reaches a certain threshold, and this can't do that easily. In fact it doesn't read the lightmap value at all- just mimics the area of it. So not the solution.

100

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 31/05/2025

Pros: Clear separation of lit area. Nice falloff. Cons: Hard to tell what is partial lit, and the start of the darkness fallout area.

100

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 31/05/2025

Next thing was to use the freeform lighting shapes. Calculate the edges of the lit region and set that as the freeform light shape. Then added another freeform light to add the falloff around it. A range of pointy top hexes makes a more or less flat top hex, so mostly easy.

100

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 31/05/2025

First thing I tried was ignoring lighting system and toggling tiles on/off dependant on hex lightmap value- where partial lit just overlays a semi transparent black tile. Pros: Easy. Cons: Objects "clip" at the edges where object is technically on hex, but pixels fall outside of it. No falloff.

100

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 31/05/2025

Working on "the next thing" which is all hex based with a lighting mechanic. I wanted clearly defined hexes of fully lit (where player can build), partial lit (risky to build here), and darkness (big no no), with a nice fall off at the edges. But how did I do this in Unity? #gamedev #madeinunity

A screenshot of a hex based game, in the centre a fire, with a building to the right, and people around the fire. The fire is illuminating the surrounding hexes, showing the forest.

2162

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 13/05/2025

Devil's Derby is Steam Deck Verified! And it's also 15% off for the week! Go try it out! #indiegame #madewithunity #gaming #indiedev #steamdeck

053

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 27/04/2025

Making pixel animations is hard. Never done it before. This is my first walking animation. It's not so bad. #pixelart #gamedev

1182

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 07/04/2025

So cool seeing somebody beat my high score! Humbled at my own game. Well done Arcotash! Still time to get Devil's Derby for 15% off- until April 11th! #indiegame #gaming #indiedev

022

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 02/04/2025

Devil's Derby is OUT NOW! Fast-paced FPS on skates in a single arena where you fight endless hordes of demons using advance movement to compete for high score! 🛼 Get it on Steam! #indiegame #madewithunity #gaming #indiedev

042

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 26/03/2025

Devil's Derby is OUT IN ONE WEEK. There is English, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese language support at release- which is pretty cool. #indiegame #gamedev #madeinunity

052

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 18/03/2025

Added control remapping. Wasn't as fiddly as I thought it would be. #gamedev #madewithunity

051

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 10/03/2025

200 wishlists! Thank you! Devil's Derby is out April 2nd!

030

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 01/03/2025

Survive for long enough and you may see what causes this blood to rain down. #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #madewithunity

0101

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 08/02/2025

Added a new enemy, the Spit Bat! They will follow you around, spitting acid at you, which if it doesn't kill you, will create a temporary area on the ground which will slow you down and kill your speed! Wishlist Devil's Derby! #gamedev #indiegame #madewithunity

1204

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 30/12/2024

Added some achievements to Devil's Derby, actually had a lot of fun implementing these and writing stupid puns for the names 😁. Might improve the art later though... #gamedev

040

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 20/12/2024

Surprised how well this plays just from assigning the controls! Are there any #SteamDeck specific options people like for shooters on this? #gamedev

050

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 14/12/2024

Added a new enemy for Devil's Derby. A 'Pus Fiend' who will fly at you and explode when it gets close. But don't worry- you can bash it away (and into other enemies) to avoid the damage. #gamedev #indiegame #madewithunity

0102

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 07/12/2024

Fixing up the main menu for Devil's Derby! UI stuff is so fiddly 😖 #gamedev

050

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 28/11/2024

Here's a nice wide shot so you can see how it fits together, and a nice screenshot of the effect.

000

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 28/11/2024

The shader in question if anybody wants to use it. Don't know if there's any easier way to share it on here! #gamedev #shadergraph #unity3d

2111

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 26/11/2024

Made this neat CRT shader effect, but don't think I'll use it- makes it all a bit visually busy. Still, it's cool. #gamedev

250

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 26/11/2024

100 wishlists! Wow! Nothing for a big game of course but massive for me! Thank you! 😁 Game is coming together and hope to have it out in the new year. #gamedev #indiegame

162

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 24/11/2024

Been working on "game feel" lately, mostly adding camera shakes and other feedback. Feels good, but room to add more! #gamedev #indiegame

1122

Elliott Ayling | The Fire Must Grow 🔥 @elliottayling.co.uk · 23/11/2024

Here's my original blockout for the level vs the current one! Always helps to look back to see how much progress you've actually made! #gamedev #indiegame #screenshotsaturday #madewithunity

041