Tone | Summoners

Education, Software, Game Dev, AI.

Currently working on Summoners

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

Summoners is a progressive strategy autobattler, meaning each round you build on your previous choices, making decisions which leverage your available resources, army composition, troop positioning, and even powerful magic. Millions of potential strategies and unlimited opponents means no two rounds are alike.

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@genjiandzero it was rebuilding the full project per change which was a nightmare. Its much faster now and I've got it only rebuilding changed modules but i'll use that specific "live coding" language and check to see if it's making use of it. Thanks for the tip!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

First frustrations materializing. The bones of the experience are in place, but VR interactions were awful - this seems like it should be a solved problem, especially for meta quest games (my target platform) - and it is, but the bots were rolling their own versions for interaction.

The reason? Meta's Interaction SDK doesn't support mac development via unreal, and doesnt support unreal 5.9.

Moving the project to my windows machine, but that means installing everything again and installing unreal 5.8.x and revising whatever needs to change as a result of originally targetting 5.9.

Classic.

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

Off to the races for the #UnrealEngine game jam. Things have come so far it's wild. Really hoping some of the greats from the vibe jam are participating!

Process so far:
- Made a spec without writing any game code
- Set a task to start the build at 12am eastern
- woke up to the first prototype

She's ugly, but the core concept is there. Just a few days of smoothing and, genuinely, could be fun!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@MrCollison We will know AGI has arrived when I can point it back at that repo and say “make it work but better” and it does.

I should probably try that 😂

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@foerster_ai @rms80 that is awesome! I'll try it tonight and see if I can get some better choices being made by my agents!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@genjiandzero The biggest issue ended up being all the compilation required. It was rebuilding everything on each change and builds were taking 10-30 minutes which stretched into forever. Got it down to 1 minute with recompiling only changed modules but is this normal for unreal?

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@MrCollison @UnrealEngine Awesome start. Not a horror fan but I will give it a shot once it's ready for submission!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@FatalExit @wavedash @defold This looks great! Looking forward to trying it out

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

The images arent it, they're from other games from the vibejam months ago (feels like years, tbh).

The VR concept is a nostalgia game influenced by what I think is the best VR game on the market, @WalkaboutMG . I don't want to reveal it until I have something that shows an easy on the eyes PoC. Getting close though!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

Off to the races for the #UnrealEngine game jam. Things have come so far it's wild. Really hoping some of the greats from the vibe jam are participating!

Process so far:
- Made a spec without writing any game code
- Set a task to start the build at 12am eastern
- woke up to the first prototype

She's ugly, but the core concept is there. Just a few days of smoothing and, genuinely, could be fun!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

TOP 10 GAMES I REVIEWED OUT OF ALL 945

After reviewing all 945 games in #vibejam (unofficially!!) these are my picks, not presented in any order. The genre's and what's on display are so diverse that it really feels like a disservice to pick any of them as a true top spot winner.

As a reminder, I'm not an organizer or involved in the judging in any way. These are my personal opinions and I have no connection to the actual competition except that I submitted my own game and took the time to review the competition (they beat me).

Links for all of the games below.

Vibefall by @imkieransmith
This titanfall homage is one of the smoothest experiences you can have from FPS offerings in the vibejam. It’s got great onboarding, sound, visuals look good without looking vibey, feels like part of a much larger game, and is overall the sort of game that pulls from you an astonished, “This was vibe coded?”

Fight life @fightlifemobile
There aren’t many games that I loaded up and which had my jaw drop, but this was unquestionably number 1 on that list. This is the best mobile first boxing game since Punchout and it captures the feel of NES meets modern gaming like no other. The retro vibe is exactly my style, so there’s bias here, but I think the quality bar is set high enough that even non-mobile, non retro loving gamers can start this up and be impressed.

Tiny Skys @DannyLimanseta
The simplicity disguising a deeper game and the unmatched approachability of this make it a perfectly scoped, gorgeously packaged entry. It’s performant, plays well, looks good, and packages multiplayer and meta progression alongside the single player experience. It’s also just an absolute stunner from the very first load.

Pawnfall by @rnschiehll
A stylish, run-based strategy roguelite somewhat reminiscent of Slay the Spire or FTL, Pawnfall packs incredible depth into a package that in no way feels vibecoded. Music is perfect, animations are great, gameplay is chess inspired and easy to take in and get a feel for, everything just clicks. It’s brutally hard, but to me, this is a sleeper hit I heard nothing about and I think is likely criminally underplayed.

Vibe Inc. by @cadostropia
While I saw a number of games approach the genre of “automation and number go up” this one impressed me earliest and still does with it’s depth and polish. There’s a lot of complex games on the list that are really well done, but this one feels the most complete and the most approachable, not overplaying complexity as a cheap trick to reach depth.

Aeralis by @duckocancode
The most fun 3rd person shooter I played in the whole jam. A few tried to reach this level of fast paced, feels great to play, high skill ceiling shooter but none of them have the polish, feel, or vibe that Aeralis has. It’s a bit much putting the lyrics at the bottom of the screen for the music but, damn it, I DO like the music.

Nebula Zero G by @Rev12Studios
It’s simple, it’s not super pretty to look at, but this game more than any other on this list captured me as a player. I put another hour into it today over lunch. I can’t stop. It doesn’t bury the lead in complexity or force you to spend an hour discovering its true worth. You either pick it up for a second run and don’t put it down, or you give up. I just wish it was on iOS already.

Capybara delivery by @leocooout
My one qualm about including Capybara on the top 10 is it feels too complete, too good to have been done in a month. Maybe some people (teams?) are just built different though. A lot of these games struggled with identity - is it a shooter? A survival roguelite? Adventure? “A Game about Capybaras Delivering Food” feels like you’re John Malkovich going into his own head in the movie “Being John Malkovich” except instead of everything being Malkovich... It’s Capybara.

Orbital Ops by @sidriff
This game fought neck and neck with Null Range (honorable mention) to be included in my top 10, but there’s only room for one low poly, retro neon vibe space shooter and this one edged out the spot. From the very beginning it impresses, with a menu that feels hand crafted, a depth that is only hinted it, and an easy to learn difficult to master play style that gives it feel on par with commercial games built by teams.

Field of Command by @Southers15
Unquestionably the fullest game I played among all of the standouts. A full, voiced tutorial, tight RTS controls, deep respect for the historical context it lives in, and it plays great. There’s a campaign, skirmish, and multiplayer (though I didn’t get there in my reviews). It feels like the kind of game you’d pick up at the store and pop the plastic only to get lost reading the manual, not wanting to miss the smallest bit of the nuance that goes into the play experience

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@levelsio whoa! Link these things with real life items people can click and buy, and a deadly "buy the room" button and rake in the affiliate sales. The shopping app that one shots rich women. Incredible work!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@ivanibash

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

Who's taking part in the Unreal AI Mega Jam? #UnrealEngine

I'm going to build a small scope idea I've had for awhile which will absolutely not win because it's VR, but should be cool to play with anyway!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@scottstts @threejs Port to VR, add golf course. Walkabout minigolf meets different style graphics

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@Ninjago9101 looks fun as hell. wishlisted!

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@NicolasZu This is brilliant and I will be copying you.

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@zerodhin That’s smart. Something I’ve been struggling with is a “release perfection” mindset, and it’s dumb and I just need to get it out there and see what people think

[Tone | Summoners @InOneProjects]

@re_skob That makes sense! Thanks!