Hi Pomal, I bought the domain when I started putting things online, and the realm went up at the same time. The Lemmy account was made for this project. The game itself had been in development for about 4 months before any of that (it started as an experiment and grew day by day). Any other mysteries I can clear up? 😄
As I mentioned in my comment above, AI was used throughout development, both for writing code and as support for the art direction. I’m not an artist :) and the “concept art” shared on the website is the base used to develop some of the places in the game. Today it’s standard practice to use AI extensively at every level of software development, from solo devs to large studios. It still doesn’t make a game on its own (not yet at least XD): there have been months of design, manual adjustments, testing and fixing behind this one, and that’s exactly the part where I’m looking for help.
Hi all, dev here. First, sorry for the silence yesterday: I posted and then wasn’t around, and on a brand new account that looks exactly as bad as you say. Most of the criticism here is fair, so here are straight answers.
Who I am and what this post is for. I’m GianLuca, an independent developer from Italy, not a studio. Harling has been in development for several months and will need many more. I wasn’t looking for players yet: I was looking for people who’d enjoy helping with testing and development at a very early stage. I should have said that more clearly.
AI. Yes. AI has been used throughout the process, both to support the art direction and to write the code. I should have said it up front, and calling AI images “concept art” on the site was a poor choice.
Real screenshots. Six in-game screenshots, only cropped to hide the HUD: https://cecchigl.itch.io/harling
Privacy, terms, contact. You’re right, they’re missing, and I’m adding them to the site. Until then the contact is info@playharling.com, and if you made an account and want it gone, write there and I’ll delete it with its data.
What the launcher connects to. game.playharling.com (game files and updates) and realm.playharling.com (login and game server). Voice chat uses Cloudflare’s STUN server. Nothing else.
Money. It’s free, there’s nothing to buy, and no crypto or NFT of any kind.
If you’d rather wait until the legal pages are up and there’s more to see, that’s completely reasonable. Thanks to those who actually tried it and reported what they found.
I use it a lot for writing code, creating shaders and textures, and getting inspiration for the settings. But all generated content gets analysed and rebuilt over and over until it’s something I consider acceptable for where the game is right now (just to give an idea of what the process looks like). Game design decisions are mine: AI can help refine the mechanics, but I decide what kind of game it should be, and of course I “borrow” mechanics from the games I love :)