Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 17/03/2026Got stuck on the camera code so pivoted and working on some music today :) I think it's quite good so far #gamedev #indiedev #music #reaper 0103
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 10/03/2026redid climbing anims, not 100% sure on L/R, but up/down looks cute :) lil dust cloud when landing, not done, but looks ok! + more music early days, but I get excited + want to show things also working on v nice levels not just ugly test environments i promise lmao #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 0143
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 08/03/2026dug out my old CRT! also been working on lots of new things, more animation states, and a new ledge grabbing mechanic that took me bloody AGES. looks pretty good i think though? #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 073
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 26/02/2026first step is this rough skeleton, getting a feel for the scale of things, where the walls will be, climbing/sliding/jumps etc..... #gamedev #indiedev #leveldesign 0132
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 26/02/2026level design (unreadable) #gamedev #indiedev #leveldesign 093
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 08/02/2026Couple more manual pages, unfinished, messy writing, but just trying to get out as much worldbuilding-ish stuff as I can. The districts are taking shape!! (My fav are either the obsolete partying robots or the ineffectual politicians that control the weather) #gamedev #indiedev #worldbuilding 042
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 05/02/2026more manual pages. this started as a fun little side-project to see if I could make something era appropriate, but surprisingly has helped nail down some design decisions eg. District themes/item names/names of other stuff, as well as refine the lore of the world #gamedev #indiedev 062
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 01/02/2026Procrastinating by making fake manual pages. Getting really into the idea of spreading encoded text around the environments to provide extra worldbuilding, secrets + whatnot. I love the thought of someone actually sitting with pen and paper trying to piece it together #gamedev #indiedev #gamemanual 082
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 30/01/2026In lighter news, I made a silly font for worldbuilding purposes, signposts/environmental text etc. might be fun to hide messages with it, if people can work out which symbol corresponds to which letter #gamedev #indiedev 1103
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 07/01/2026more animation! i used to make little stop motion animations when I was like 9 using a terrible webcam + some clay + remember my dad bought me a book on like techniques of animation. all these years later I'm getting to apply them lil running fellow! #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 081
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 06/01/2026Climbing animation! playing w/ my DIY vertex weighting system for animation, easy to grab + stretch parts of model, no complex heirarchy of bones, each limb can have a min/max range of motion defined by me look at him go :D #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #unity3d 0142
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 30/12/2025i hate using bones. fiddly, complex heirarchy, bugs w/ positions sticking used vertex colour to create a weight system + use RGB channels as alpha in lerps to transform positions of verts w/ the shader can set min/max positions for each part + move w/ friendly sliders #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 062
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 24/12/2025intentionally breaking the VRAM for a laugh merry christmas eve! #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 0143
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 23/12/2025experimenting w/ mind boggling effects taking a portion of the tex atlas from VRAM + scrolling within its own tile, or tiling only that portion not the whole thing, was a ball ache its silly + complicated + there are far easier ways to do this stuff but I'm having FUN #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 0103
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 20/12/2025here is the fake PS1 VRAM that I put together to create the menu inside one shader (with a script to change values based on input) there are far easier ways to go about this, but it's been SO much fun recreating stuff like this but with the added benefit of modern tools #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 042
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 19/12/2025final post about menus, I SWEAR pretty much finished (apart from "options" menu) idk if anyone is interested in a deeper dive on how it's put together in one shader? ps: i will always maintain that subtractive fading out/in looks better than a smooth even lerp. #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d #UI 063
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 18/12/2025finally added something v special, I was putting it off for ages, bc it was hard but.... framebuffer feedback fx! One of the best fx on the PS1 used in battle transitions, entering levels in Crash 3, fake motion blur in MGS etc. it's not perfect yet but I LIKE IT #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d #ps1 083
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 15/12/2025another menu update !! now done entirely inside 1 shader. a script reads controller input and sends values. all sub menus, cursors, FX, and dynamic BG are actually a complex bunch of UV manipulations on ONE texture atlas, all blended together in different ways! #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 094
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 24/11/2025with things like the cliffs, walls, detailing and hedges etc, where the texs are larger, I use smaller chunks of the texs for connected faces - which takes longer but allows me to have a larger texture over a larger area rather than it being really small and noisy 100
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 24/11/2025thanks :D no real trick, it's done manually - rather than unwrapping UVs - i reset them so every face has the entire atlas texture on it, then select eg. the faces I want to be grass + manually scale the UVs for all those faces down so they cover only the portion of the atlas that has the grass tex 100
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 24/11/2025closer look at my new textures (besides the grass and water which I still liked) still fitting into the texture atlas, but no longer using uniform squares trying a holistic approach, diff sizes based on how detailed texs are, how close they will get to the cam, etc #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 194
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 20/11/2025these 4 notes are used throughout the music i've written for this project, they appear everywhere in different ways, sometimes as melody, sometimes as bassline, inverted, reversed, as chords.....etc. (2/2) #gamedev #indiedev 051
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 20/11/2025still working on this, making the textures a bit more interesting, quick comparison + some piano I recorded this morning (1/2) #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d #ps1 1193
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 06/11/2025more shader stuff 1 flat plane (4 verts, 2 tris), parallax map offsets stone tex to appear deep below the surface tex. distortion on the surface is also applied to the stone, offset by the PM to the same depth then blending in various ways to put it all together :D #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d 0287
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 05/11/2025I can grow fake grass now!!! all done with @amplifycreations.bsky.social ❤️ slightly longer video BUT it's got captions and pictures to explain stuff, and I think it's p cool (i swear I'll stop banging on about POM soon but it's been SO much fun to play with) #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d #shaders 1165
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 03/11/2025PARALLAX obsessed by this. so many possibilities even without the complex fiddly fake 3d w/ occlusion mapping, just a simple flat plane w/ textures. BGs are from Rayman 1! music is a lil sketch I was messing around with this afternoon! #gamedev #indiegamedev #unity3d #PARALLAX 0123
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 16/10/2025despite how long it takes my laptop to render these, only for me to immediately crunch it down to 320x240 and lower the colour bit depth, i'm massively enjoying making them!! thursday render 110
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 08/10/2025Took a few months off and was overwhelmed loading up unity and figuring out how tf everything i'd set up works so instead I got sidetracked experimenting w/ my other fav PS1 aesthetic...fixed cam + PRE RENDERED BGs 🖼 + some spooky music I threw together in 5 mins #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d #PS1 093
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 18/07/2025just a little update on the district of machines still VERY rough - I'm not gonna post every time I make slight changes but I thought the factory sounds were cool video is me messing around in clipchamp. i'm 100 years old and don't know how to edit videos #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #music 0183
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 14/07/2025yes! only issue I had (w/ using a render texture) if I set a wide resolution like 512*240 but then stretch it back to 4:3, it squashes 512 to fit, BUT if you crop it then you lose any additional resolution you gained. had to scale the actual objects in the scene by 1.6 on the X+Y axis at runtime :D 100
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 13/07/2025512*240 resolution! some games (Spyro+Crash) used this unusual mode + scaled back to correct aspect ratio. gives higher fidelity than 320*240, a slight but noticeable difference! I wanted to try this purely for the beautiful effect it has on the dither #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #unity3d 2243
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 11/07/2025held off on SFX for so long, but the difference = huge bouncy mushroom is my fav 🍄 (ground ray checks coordinates of a secondary UVmap (each face assigned to a portion of a 4*4 grid, 16 total surfaces) + assigns walking sound! jumping sounds are me! 🎤 #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #unity3d 0194
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 10/07/2025thought it was time I showed a real level, not a weird testing environment.. been remodeling this one based on an earlier version from 2019, here's what I have so far - just so you get a vibe of the place the entrance to THE DISTRICT OF GARDENS 🌳 #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #blender #unity3d 0173
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 09/07/2025I'm either testing fun new ideas, or having a breakdown due to said rewrite. . . as always, the Gardeners will explain what's new 👩🌾 (feat. the new movement system. looks exactly the same (sort of the point) BUT ITS BETTER I SWEAR I WROTE IT FROM SCRATCH) #gamedev #indiegamedev #unity3d #indiedev 0152
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 30/06/2025Being v organised + writing out a game bible so when life inevitably gets in the way + I don’t have as much time to devote to the project, I don’t completely forget everything about the process and my spaghetti code, which has happened like four times before now 📚 #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev 093
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 29/06/2025BIG update to the sliding system. ⛷️ it's a little rough around the edges, but it already feels better than trying to manually wrestle the camera around corners, or having it try to always be behind the player without constraint. wheeeeeeeeeee #gamedev #indiegamedev #indiedev #unity3d #surfsup 0113
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 29/06/2025Bouncing has had an update, all done in shader! Shader checks if player has an isBouncing state + deforms the mesh around the player position. changed up the vibe of the test environment, just for my own sanity. I painted those rocks!! dead proud 🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄 #gamedev #indiegamedev #indiedev #unity3d 0124
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 28/06/2025despite my lack of skill, I’m v proud that all the art/animation is made by me I’m dunning-krugering my way through game development, idk anything about these disciplines + am probably doing it all wrong, but idk any better so I have blind confidence lol #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #textures 0231
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 27/06/2025Had a reasonably good idea that the climbable wall surface should warp underneath the player's weight, although it turns out it was harder than I thought...here's the before and after lol #indiedev #indiegamedev #gamedev #unity3d #bugfixes 0215
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 27/06/2025small update but a LOT of work ☑️ climbing! (transition between directions+animation needs work) ☑️ hand painted textures! ☑️ climbing walls can also move! ☑️ selective UV scrolling + cutout transparency! this entire test level is 1 material, and 1 texture #gamedev #indiegamedev #indiedev #unity3d 0213
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 25/06/2025I can’t draw for shit but planning a v simple platforming challenge for the proof-of-concept demo. a little intro/showcase of all platforming mechanics, moving platforms, bouncy platforms, climbing walls (new!) and sliding down slopes. #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #unity3d 0123
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 23/06/2025Was inspired by these guys!! Glad someone noticed the spyro connection. I love their strange muppet heads 010
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 23/06/2025Would anyone be interested in a playable proof-of-concept level? Won’t be for a couple weeks + I’m not sure how to do these things, (need to make an itch.io ?) BUT it will include: - fun platforming, bouncing + sliding! 🎮🕹️ - collect things! 💰🔑 - explore the District of Gardens! ⛲️🪴 #gamedev 171
Stuart @stuwhen.bsky.social · 23/06/2025apologies for posting the same thing twice in one day but i've spent all evening/night on this...obsessed with how good it feels now, and there are some upgrades 1) BOUNCY PLATFORMS! 2) BOUNCY PLATFORMS THAT MOVE! 3) SLIDING ANIMATION! 4) SLIDING INTO BOUNCE MOMENTUM! #gamedev #indiegamedev #unity 2328
