u/Hostarro

This was the coolest moment of AI-assisted dev so far for me. I'm working on a PC game (called Luminids, a colony sim) and two of my context windows just started coordinating with each other without being asked to, and sending messages back and forth. Now they're working in sync across stage gates and acceptance criteria, holding for one another and helping one another..

In this instance - agent #1 even "saw" that agent #2 had a capacity issue (the model error) from OpenAI and nudged it back online without me.

Kinda spooky, and fun.

Game is Luminids for those interested to sign up for playtest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070510/Luminids/

I'm about to run a Steam playtest and I realized I can't rely on hand-written feedback. Most players won't write anything, and I can't reproduce bugs or perf issues on hardware I don't own. So I built a telemetry + feedback pipeline. Sharing the approach and the mistakes in case it saves someone time.

The goal: know where players get stuck, what they enjoy, where time goes, and how it runs in the field without costing frame time or collecting any PII.

The stack:

• Aptabase for product analytics — open-source, privacy-first, EU region, generous free tier (20k events/mo, then ~$10/200k). It has a Godot SDK; I made a tiny client (batched HTTP POST via HTTPRequest) for more control.
• Discord webhook for in-game bug reports — a pause-menu button opens a form (free text + screenshot), which POSTs straight to a private channel. Zero backend.
• Reused my existing hitch/FPS recorder to ship perf-by-hardware data - the one thing you genuinely can't get any other way.

The architecture:

• One rule on the game thread: only ever append a tiny struct to an in-memory buffer. Never touch disk or network there. A background flush batches it out every ~20s and on quit. My track() call benchmarked at ~2µs.
• Aggregate on-device, don't stream. Instead of an event every 10s, I accumulate counters (time-per-activity, feature usage, a coarse dwell grid) and emit ONE summary event at session end. Analytics tools want rollups anyway and it keeps you under free-tier caps.
• Local-first: everything also writes to a self-contained JSONL file locally, so nothing's lost if the network drops and I can debug the whole thing offline.
• Godot-wise it's 3 autoloads, ConfigFile for secrets, HTTPRequest (threaded) for the cloud, and a dedicated Thread for the local writer.

Privacy: a random install UUID: no Steam ID, no IP, no PII → stays outside GDPR/CCPA, shipped opt-out with a first-launch toggle (the Hades "Transmit Data" model). The great feature is tying anonymous survey answers to the same install_id as play data, so "this felt confusing" correlates with "used 2 of 8 systems and bounced early."

The gotchas that bit me (learn from my pain):

1. Measure, don't assume. My "harmless" local JSON flush was 7ms on the main thread every 20s: a periodic hitch. Moved it to a writer thread → 17µs. Only caught it because I benchmarked it.
2. Aptabase props must be flat scalars: nested dicts get coerced to the literal string "{Object}". Flatten to dotted keys.
3. The async cloud sink loses the final batch on quit (the process exits before the HTTP finishes): and that's your session-summary/end events, the richest data. Flush synchronously at quit.
4. Debug vs Release split: Aptabase separates data by an isDebug flag (OS.is_debug_build()), so dev runs don't pollute prod. Gate cloud egress on OS.has_feature("release"/"template") so the editor never sends.
5. Export gotcha: non-resource files (my secrets .cfg with the keys) aren't packed unless they're in the export preset's include filter. The code shipped; the keys didn't. Silent local-only fallback.

Biggest lesson though: the best colony-sims (RimWorld, Factorio) learned more from watching newcomers play than from dashboards. Telemetry tells you where players stall at scale; watching tells you why. I hope to do both.

Happy to answer questions.

This is a small main menu moment from Luminids, with the intro track by the composer that works with me. He's a fantastic chap who has delivered many award-winning games.

The goal is not hype, drama, or urgency. It’s calmness. Stillness. A gentle invitation into the world. I’ve been thinking a lot about how game music can help inspire the player emotionally before they even press start.

What are your favourite examples of main menu music that instantly made a game feel safe, magical, or peaceful?

Steam for those interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070510/Luminids/

Hey everyone, I’m Nick, solo creator of Luminids.

I’ve been working on a new gameplay trailer showing exploration, building, weather, top-down/first/third person camera, and the little Luminids starting to feel alive.

Would love to know if the vibe comes through.

Check us out on Steam and Kickstarter:

• https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070510/Luminids/
• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/luminids/luminids-a-calm-colony-building-journey

Cheers :)

Good fun as an innovation project! Came out really well, loving the vibe. :)

Game is Luminids for those interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070510/Luminids/

Solo dev and founder of the studio in Cambridge UK.

Happy to answer questions on the shader or process!

Hey folks - following on from the screenshot and feedback, I stylized the sky and milky way a bit further.

I put a real-life photo of the Milky Way and tucked it into the night sky of Luminids. It's fun to do stuff like this as an indie dev.. think outside the box and make it come to life; the dream!

Hope you enjoy :)

Tiny visual experiment for my indie game Luminids.

I wanted the night sky to feel bigger than the little world beneath it, so I tried using an ultra high-res Milky Way image as part of the sky treatment.

Still tuning the moon, atmosphere, and how “real” it should feel against the stylized world.

Curious what people think: feeling the vibe? 😄

For those interested - playtest is VERY soon. Wishlist and sign up here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070510/Luminids/

Er.. my game is about cozy worldbuilding emergent beings called Luminids. I was working on some concept work for my tools and character models - like swinging an axe. I said show me a mockup of the character with an axe.

This is what GPT 5.5 extra high produced.

Consider me confused. :D

Hey folks - creator of Luminids (www.luminids.com) here.

Wanted to share a good result and how I did it: 500 wish lists from a £50 campaign on Reddit.

I've experimented a lot with short form media and content across all the major social platforms - this so far is the best ROI for me. Shockingly, it wasn't a video; it was a static image - an infographic I made of the game, with some variable text adds (A/B stuff on reddit) being shown.

In a world where everyone is so desperate to create videos and reels, it seems people are exhausted with so much video content, and surprisingly a simple static image has been my best performer.

I know it sounds like common sense, but surprisingly I thought static images would perform the worst and didn't experiment even.. Hope this helps folks out there pushing their game!

Game Title: Luminids
Playable Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070510/Luminids/
Platform: PC/Steam
Description:
Hey all - lead dev and creator of Luminids here. (www.luminids.com)

I’m looking for playtesters for Luminids, a cozy world-building game where small beings of light build and grow a world with you. You plan from above, then step into the world in first person. I’m trying to find out whether the core loop feels calm, readable, and emotionally engaging.

The game is a love letter to Creatures and Chao and it has been a joy to work on it so far.

Looking for feedback via the in-game form or on our community Discord once play testing is live. I hope to launch the play test towards mid to end of May.

Free to Play Status: Playtesting**,** free
Involvement: Creator and lead game director.