Glass Dragon Studios https://glassdragon.xyz/ Sun, 31 Aug 2025 04:30:13 +0000 Sun, 31 Aug 2025 04:30:13 +0000 Pico Blogging Roadmap (And About Roadmaps), or: Can blogs even have roadmaps or is that just a tech thing? Cal A month or so after my last update, I realized I was doing the thing where when I'm not feeling like death lightly-warmed-over any more, I get so excited at the prospect of being functional again that I just start flailing around at all of the things I want to do until I overwhelm myself and wind up not able to do anything and being miserable about it. At which point I forced myself to step back away from ALL my projects, take some time to just chill and finish recovering, and then revisit everything in a more... sensible... frame of mind. ... Mon, 04 Aug 2025 17:40:26 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/blogging_roadmap An Update on Progress, Post-Major-Life-Event Cal Well. Due to Life Events ™️, February was entirely a lost cause on accomplishing anything involving game development. Or blogging. Let alone blogging about game development. I'll be keeping this brief and to the point so that I actually can get it written up while I have time! Hurray! ... Sat, 08 Mar 2025 19:13:28 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/just_some_studio_update "Cozy Game" Dev Log: Prototyping gather mechanics Cal I'm finally getting into the actual mechanics of the game! I always like to take the approach of building from the "bottom" up - which means, in this case, the first order of business is building all the "go out and gather raw materials" mechanics. These are usually the simplest, but ironically, as a result, they take the most thought to put together. (Unless you want one of your core mechanics to just be "go out and click on a bunch of things until you run out of inventory space", in which case it doesn't take any thought at all.) ... Mon, 13 Jan 2025 19:35:54 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/cozy_game_initial_gathering A Better Review of Critter Cove Cal In my last post, I had a section about playing Critter Cove and my opinions on it. Since then, I've "finished" the demo (as in, I got through all the main progression line that the demo covers - the game lets you keep playing as long as you want and there's still stuff to do) and... honestly, I'd say my opinion is substantially more favorable than it was before. ... Sun, 12 Jan 2025 01:01:46 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/critter_cove_but_properly Progress, Despite Everything, or: Being "Free Tech Support" isn't really any better when it's for yourself Cal WELL. It's been a fun week! Somehow I've managed to have pretty much all my domain renewals/expirations coming up in the January/February time period, so I've been having to deal with some... unexpected systems admin stuff as a result of one of them. Nothing dramatic, just annoying. But I've managed to do some stuff, anyway! ... Thu, 09 Jan 2025 16:00:53 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/progress_despite_everything Game dev, how I missed you Cal Great news, everyone! I can work on game dev in my IDE again without my entire computer locking up and dying! I'm so happy. ... Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:08:23 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/progress_update_2024 The Challenge of Online Games, or: What's the best way to build an endless-lifetime game, and why it's horizontal progression Cal There's a phenomenon that I personally find super interesting - especially since my main interest in creating games is online and web-based games - and it lies in the key difference between those online games, and offline games. With something like an MMORPG, you might expect that the fundamental difference is in the size of the playerbase - but it's actually not. The M-is-for-Massive part is just a flavor, a concern of scalability of design. No, the fundamental, key difference is: content. ... Mon, 30 Dec 2024 21:16:09 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/online_games_horizontal_progression "Cozy Game" Design Notes: Themes Cal It's been a busy month, what with The Holiday Season happening and having to troubleshoot my computer issues, but nothing can stop me from working on game design stuff - even if it's just the thinky bits. And I've been doing a lot of thinky bits! Specifically, I've been thinking about what I want to do with the overall setting, theme... let's call it "vibe" for this cozy browser game. ... Fri, 27 Dec 2024 04:35:25 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/cozy_game_genre_themes Experiencing Technical Difficulties, or: When you try to make lemonade, but life grabs your lemons and squeezes them into your eyes Cal Since my last blog posts, working on this new game was going really well. Key word: WAS. For the entirety of a few days! It was great! ... Sun, 15 Dec 2024 23:50:53 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/lemon_juice_in_the_eyes "Cozy Game" Design Notes: Player Customization Cal If there's one thing I really, passionately, way-too-strongly care about in Online Multiplayer Games, it is the ability to customize my character - or "character", as the game may be. If there's any kind of representation of The Player3 (and in an online multiplayer game, there pretty much HAS to be, right?) then I want customization options. But not just that: I want to be able to get more customization options. By playing the game4. This is incredibly important to me, and if a relevant game fails to give me that option, it drops a giant anvil on the negative side of the scale. ... Sun, 08 Dec 2024 01:34:28 +0000 https://glassdragon.xyz/blog/cozy_game_customization