Days 42 and 43 of making my own indie MMO without engine or team

Yesterday I reached performance parity with souffle's datalog compiler on my tests, I was holding out this post in hopes that I would be able to beat it, and I managed to do so. My implementation may be faster overall since I only handle EAV form, but I won't claim it is when I haven't tested all different possible workloads (which can be a lot) in which souffle's compiler will beat it but these benchs were representative of the loads I expect.

So far I can only think of a couple more improvements I could do to get better performance:
  • Introduce some sort of sort of pgo. Right now I decide the order in which coditions are solved based on the size of the first query, but it may be better to profile it since that way I could avoid building some additional indices and save bandwidth there.
  • Shrink the size of the different entities and values encoding down from 25 bits to 18 (this would be a really nice speed boost but I don't know if I can do this yet).
  • I have this idea to make resizing of hashtables faster at the cost of making probing slightly slower, but since it would change significantly the hashes It'd be hard to empirically measure if there have been any measurable, reliable gains or not.
Either way I'm mentioning this as a way to log them in case I want to check them out in the future. Since this is the fourth or fifth day working on this, and it's currently a little over 9100 times faster than my original implementation. Beating souffle's compiled one with my interpreter (on my single-threaded benchmarks) is good enough for me, so I'll call it a day and go back to integrating this with my half-baked parser, then with my ir/jit, then into the engine to have aot scripting.

I also started reading the #gamewriting #kaleidoscope, It's a very interesting book, and I'm sure somewhere inside I can get an actual tip to execute on what I have in mind. I already talked in the past about how I want quests to work, I also mentioned I have a vague idea of how I will workaround my limitations to implement proper chat and instead go with canned phrases. But I have no idea how to execute the writing I'm thinking of, the closest reference I know of would be something like Magicka, or Bastion. I've been sharing my thoughts of the different chapters I've read elsewhere, because I'd like to focus here on my daily progress, but I'll eventually mention if I find what I'm looking for and whether I can recommend the book to non-writers or not.


#woao #programming #coding #gamedev #indiedev #langdev

With the release of Crimson Desert by Pearl Abyss this week, I'm delighted to announce that I contributed additional writing to the game.

"Countless destinies await your discovery
on the seamless open world of Pywel.
May Solumen’s blessing guide you on your journey
across the living, breathing expanse of Pywel."

Check the game out here: https://crimsondesert.pearlabyss.com/

#GameDev #GameWriting #Writing

Beautiful Glitch (Monster Prom) discusses their custom work to bridge the gap between writers and programmers:

“Consider tool-building part of the general development process – not an annoying detour.”

https://unity.com/blog/monster-prom-building-a-dialog-system-for-a-dating-sim

#GameDevelopment #Programming #GameWriting

Monster Prom: Building a dialog system for a multiplayer dating sim | Unity

Go behind the scenes of the Monster Prom series. Learn how developer Beautiful Glitch built custom Unity Editor tools and complex branching dialog system for their popular competitive dating sim series.

Unity

I have exciting news! This June, I'm going to be appearing as a panelist at the first ever North American Games Industry Summit (NAGIS) in Edmonton, AB. I'm thrilled & honoured to be part of this new game developer event in Canada.

More details coming soon!

#GameDev #Canada #GameWriting

nagis.ca

Should players have complete control over a game's story?

Some designers prefer responding to player decisions with surprise and entertainment.

https://pmjg.blogspot.com/2021/02/should-games-have-meaningful-choices.html

#GameDevelopment #NarrativeDesign #GameWriting

Should Games Have Meaningful Choices?

In an online event with the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Jon Ingold discussed his methods for creating memorable games.

"...we all hold secrets in our hearts that we do not wish to be revealed to the world, and these characters are no different."

What secrets do your characters hide?

Find the clues in my essay “The Case of the Mystery Game Writer” in the new collection “Game Narrative Kaleidoscope”.

#GameWriting #narrative #gameNarrative #writing #videoGames #mysteryGame #mystery

https://ironiciconicstudios.ca/2026/03/04/the-game-narrative-kaleidoscope/

The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope

100+ Essays on the Craft of Game Writing Our very own Chris Tihor has contributed an essay to the brand new publication: The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope, 100+ Essays on the Craft of Game Writing, w…

Ironic Iconic Studios

Story engineering: A look at conflict, causation, progress, and transformation as ways to set the stage, keep things moving, show how far the reader has come, and give everything meaning.

https://nathanbaugh.substack.com/p/4-tenets-of-story-structure

#Storytelling #GameWriting #Fiction

4 Tenets of Story Structure

Reverse engineering the fundamentals of story structure

World Builders
Video Game Masterpieces That Have Greater Writing Than Shakespeare

The greatest masterpieces since Hamlet.

Game Rant

Last call for Issue #2 of Games & Comics Quarterly! Our newer committees - games, comics, and poetry - have been doing wonderful work for their subgenres. If you are a SFWA Member with a recent or upcoming games or comics title, we look forward to celebrating your latest work in our special extension of the New Release Newsletter!

#SFF #GameWriting #Comics #SFWA #WritingCommunity
https://www.sfwa.org/games-and-comics-quarterly/

Games & Comics Quarterly - SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association

Introducing the Games & Comics Quarterly For years, SFWA has offered a space for its members to promote their new […]

SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association

Tuesday Progress Update 🎮📖
📅 December 16, 2025

#Beyond365DaysOfCode Day 352
#100DaysOfCode Day 352
#freeCodeCamp

📖 Daily Reading
✅ freeCodeCamp News – 1 article
✅ Daily.dev – 1 article

💻 Current Focus
• Winter VN Jam: Tested dialogue triggers for side characters to support story flow and player choice

Building stories one line of code at a time.

#RenPy #Python #GameDevJourney #StoryDesign #GameWriting #VNDev #DevJourney