You can *entirely rid the sky of flecks*.
To do this, pop a **Sun/Sky** gadget into your scene,
open its tweak menu and on the 2nd page put **Sky Tint Intensity** to 200%, **Horizon Definition** to 0%, and **Fleck Shade Randomness** to 0%. If the sky doesn’t fully clear of flecks, then wiggle the slider of **Sky Saturation** to a different setting for a moment.
Unrelated TIP: on the first page of that gadget there’s a slider for **Sun Shadow Scale VS. Detail** that lets you increase how far away you’re able to see shadows of things, but the further away you can see them the lower the quality of *nearby* shadows becomes… So, my tip is not in describing that, but in letting you know that illumination from **Glowing** objects is *ALSO* affected by that slider — so if you make a scene where the glowing effects are important to you, exercise great caution with that shadow slider tweak.
Being mindful / efficient with thermo from the beginning will help. Find/make good sculpts and using only a few in different sizes and rotations helps in the long run (ie, use only 1 tree sculpt but rotating it and resizing it to make it look like a woodland).
Ps. There's loads of good tutorials on youtube
Solid advice, thank you for the response.
I've been watching tutorials on YT and learned a few things that will be helpful down the road but I'm not quite at that point yet. Just looking for some shortcuts or good habbits to get into
Personally I learn better from interactions and discussions than I do from watching videos so I figured asking reddit would be the way to go.
Don’t blast through the tutorials. Chill out in the tutorials and just fiddle about. Use that time to get used to the controls, and the way things generally work.
Yeah I figured that out on day one tried to just power through then got burnt out and overwhelmed so I went back on day two and started over but took my time to get a better grasp.
Thanks for the response 👍🏼
Seconding this, because this is where I gave in.
As a separate piece of advice for creating games: start with the smallest possible version *of the game*. Models, environments, animations etc can all be added later but the game can not.
For example, if you were creating a platformer: a rectangle that can jump over one object that's too high for the rectangle to pass without jumping. Then the rectangle becomes your character model, you fill in your backgrounds, set the lighting etc.
Writing could be used to justify the simplicity of the game design; a voiceover describing the character's journey to overcome this one obstacle in its life, as the character speed gets faster and slower erratically, until finally... Success! And you could add detail in the voiceover and music to choose a tone: comedy, horror, indie etc.
Edit: I realised I am describing the premise of [Thomas was alone](https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tLP1TfIriwpzMgxYPQSKMnIz00sVigH4sSc_LxUAJstCl4&q=thomas+was+alone)
Is there any particular thing that you'd recommend focusing on while I get the hang of it ?
Should I focus on my strengths and build from there or should I be practicing the things I struggle with ?
I have like 5 different games buzzing around in my head at once lmao
I was thinking I'd try and start by just remaking an old game like conkers bad fur day or something to familiarize myself with things without having to plan everything out while I'm still learning
Also thanks for the advice.
Don't start out with the intent of making a whole game immediately. Start with small scenes, learning to optimize them to the best of your ability. You can potentially string them together into a game at a later point. Proper optimization will allow you to have much larger/detailed scenes.
Take your time when learning. It's easy (as in tempting) for me to jump in trying to work logic, but I have to take lots of breaks because my brain is running at higher power.
Also, I took some classes in school learning about how to use certain programs and coding languages, and they recommend to take notes on how to use tools as you learn, so you can look back on it later. Maybe have a laptop or phone document next to you as you learn?
I wish Dreams had a special comment function, but for now I use turned off text displayers set to big gadget to walk myself through my process. I neglected to do that the first time I made a contraption so I kind of have to decode my own work. Name the gadgets you use based on what they're supposed to do or keep track of.
You can use keyframes and transmitters/receivers to cut down on the amount of wires going everywhere, but you may want to come up with a method of keeping track of the names you use for the transmitters/receivers and what they're for.
I try to get one thing working how I like before working on the next, but maybe that's a me-thing. I can't stand odd controls or annoying bugs. Still, sometimes you can only get to a point where it's eh, good enough, and that's okay.
You can use switches and value sliders to mess with numbers during test mode. Handy for tweaking time limits, strength and speed, gravity, etc on the fly. You'll probably want to give them good names.
I keep wishing I had a set of logic tools to see certain outputs of my other logic. I'm able to find some of them in the Dreamiverse, but sometimes I get a bit stubborn trying to figure it out on my own. There is a balance.
If you want to be precise about sculpts and paintings, turn on the grid before you stamp things down or start sculpting. I'm still learning so it drives me a little crazy. Is there a way to turn off that clicking sound when you move something to another grid position?
if you're working on making a doohickey that will be placed in multiple parts of the scene, select and group it together and save it as an element. Then when you want to stamp multiple of them, search for the element in your stuff and stamp them down that way. That way if you need to make tweaks you can work on the element separately, and presumably update all your clones in the scene with the update tool. I haven't gotten that far along yet so I'm not sure if it will work that way exactly, but I have gotten slightly annoyed when I tweak one item in-scene that I haven't saved as its own element and then realize I have to do the same thing to multiple older clones of the item.
Learn to use signal manipulators and variables, they are lifesavers
Timers have a "timer finished (signal)" output
Start making a super simple 3d platformer or puzzler where you need to press a button or collect a key to open a door. Don't matter how good it looks or if it's not that fun, just try to make it work
The big thing I wish I knew at the beginning is: make your elements separately from your scene, and try to minimize Remixing things if you can. The reason for this is, to upload a Scene or Dream, you must then upload everything linked to it. Sounds not that annoying at first but it will bite you in the butt later. It's very annoying to have, say, a tree that's dependent on 5 other ugly trees that you didn't want to use. In my case I reached the limit of console space because of all these duplicates I remixed like, years ago, which I can't upload without uploading everything else I'm working on, which isn't ready yet. Big pain.
Keep your elements as independent and compact as you can early on. Then you can plug them into a scene later and update them as you go.
You can upload things and keep them private, unlisted...they'll just be your personal work-in-progress, private only to you, but backed-up on the servers, until you're ready to release them
It's dangerous to have your only copy of important work just on your local ps4. If your ps4 dies, save file gets corrupted, etc, you'll lose all your work
Oddly, sometimes people can still find unlisted things. No idea why. But your point about backups is a good one. It's also possible to upload the entire local Dreams save to the cloud, which I do weekly. That requires PS Plus though.
Are you sure you uploaded as Private?
Ah yes, backup the save file. I believe you could also do that to USB stick
Could the save file ever become corrupt upon exiting? Then you'd ruin your backup. Putting the asset Private in the Dreamiverse seems safest
I've had a few times where the local save got corrupted but I was able to download it back from the cloud, worked like a charm. BUT I always keep auto sync turned off and just do it manually for the reason you described, so that it doesn't accidentally upload something broken. Only downside is, I have pretty fast internet so it only takes a minute or so, but I can imagine on a slower connection it could take longer. It's quite a large file once it's hit the limit.
Of course you can always do it both ways, upload to the Dreamiverse and also upload the save. I've procrastinated on my particular situation - I have hundreds of assets I need to upload, all of which are dependent on some other thing, and I can't be bothered to deal with it yet. Lol
If you're learning Dreams creation, or looking for good games, you may find use for this [Dreams Quick Reference](https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4Dreams/comments/bede59/quick_reference_guide/). It's full of learning resources, tips, & recommended games
You can *entirely rid the sky of flecks*. To do this, pop a **Sun/Sky** gadget into your scene, open its tweak menu and on the 2nd page put **Sky Tint Intensity** to 200%, **Horizon Definition** to 0%, and **Fleck Shade Randomness** to 0%. If the sky doesn’t fully clear of flecks, then wiggle the slider of **Sky Saturation** to a different setting for a moment. Unrelated TIP: on the first page of that gadget there’s a slider for **Sun Shadow Scale VS. Detail** that lets you increase how far away you’re able to see shadows of things, but the further away you can see them the lower the quality of *nearby* shadows becomes… So, my tip is not in describing that, but in letting you know that illumination from **Glowing** objects is *ALSO* affected by that slider — so if you make a scene where the glowing effects are important to you, exercise great caution with that shadow slider tweak.
This is awesome thank you ! That sky tip is really gonna come in handy.
Being mindful / efficient with thermo from the beginning will help. Find/make good sculpts and using only a few in different sizes and rotations helps in the long run (ie, use only 1 tree sculpt but rotating it and resizing it to make it look like a woodland). Ps. There's loads of good tutorials on youtube
Solid advice, thank you for the response. I've been watching tutorials on YT and learned a few things that will be helpful down the road but I'm not quite at that point yet. Just looking for some shortcuts or good habbits to get into Personally I learn better from interactions and discussions than I do from watching videos so I figured asking reddit would be the way to go.
Don’t blast through the tutorials. Chill out in the tutorials and just fiddle about. Use that time to get used to the controls, and the way things generally work.
Yeah I figured that out on day one tried to just power through then got burnt out and overwhelmed so I went back on day two and started over but took my time to get a better grasp. Thanks for the response 👍🏼
Seconding this, because this is where I gave in. As a separate piece of advice for creating games: start with the smallest possible version *of the game*. Models, environments, animations etc can all be added later but the game can not. For example, if you were creating a platformer: a rectangle that can jump over one object that's too high for the rectangle to pass without jumping. Then the rectangle becomes your character model, you fill in your backgrounds, set the lighting etc. Writing could be used to justify the simplicity of the game design; a voiceover describing the character's journey to overcome this one obstacle in its life, as the character speed gets faster and slower erratically, until finally... Success! And you could add detail in the voiceover and music to choose a tone: comedy, horror, indie etc. Edit: I realised I am describing the premise of [Thomas was alone](https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tLP1TfIriwpzMgxYPQSKMnIz00sVigH4sSc_LxUAJstCl4&q=thomas+was+alone)
Focus on one small thing at a time when creating. Don't try to do everything at once, you'll get overwhelmed.
Is there any particular thing that you'd recommend focusing on while I get the hang of it ? Should I focus on my strengths and build from there or should I be practicing the things I struggle with ?
I'd say start with the things you're more familier with. What do you want to make btw?
I have like 5 different games buzzing around in my head at once lmao I was thinking I'd try and start by just remaking an old game like conkers bad fur day or something to familiarize myself with things without having to plan everything out while I'm still learning Also thanks for the advice.
Don't start out with the intent of making a whole game immediately. Start with small scenes, learning to optimize them to the best of your ability. You can potentially string them together into a game at a later point. Proper optimization will allow you to have much larger/detailed scenes.
This is a great way to approach the road ahead thank you I'll definitely keep this in mind
Take your time when learning. It's easy (as in tempting) for me to jump in trying to work logic, but I have to take lots of breaks because my brain is running at higher power. Also, I took some classes in school learning about how to use certain programs and coding languages, and they recommend to take notes on how to use tools as you learn, so you can look back on it later. Maybe have a laptop or phone document next to you as you learn? I wish Dreams had a special comment function, but for now I use turned off text displayers set to big gadget to walk myself through my process. I neglected to do that the first time I made a contraption so I kind of have to decode my own work. Name the gadgets you use based on what they're supposed to do or keep track of. You can use keyframes and transmitters/receivers to cut down on the amount of wires going everywhere, but you may want to come up with a method of keeping track of the names you use for the transmitters/receivers and what they're for. I try to get one thing working how I like before working on the next, but maybe that's a me-thing. I can't stand odd controls or annoying bugs. Still, sometimes you can only get to a point where it's eh, good enough, and that's okay. You can use switches and value sliders to mess with numbers during test mode. Handy for tweaking time limits, strength and speed, gravity, etc on the fly. You'll probably want to give them good names. I keep wishing I had a set of logic tools to see certain outputs of my other logic. I'm able to find some of them in the Dreamiverse, but sometimes I get a bit stubborn trying to figure it out on my own. There is a balance. If you want to be precise about sculpts and paintings, turn on the grid before you stamp things down or start sculpting. I'm still learning so it drives me a little crazy. Is there a way to turn off that clicking sound when you move something to another grid position? if you're working on making a doohickey that will be placed in multiple parts of the scene, select and group it together and save it as an element. Then when you want to stamp multiple of them, search for the element in your stuff and stamp them down that way. That way if you need to make tweaks you can work on the element separately, and presumably update all your clones in the scene with the update tool. I haven't gotten that far along yet so I'm not sure if it will work that way exactly, but I have gotten slightly annoyed when I tweak one item in-scene that I haven't saved as its own element and then realize I have to do the same thing to multiple older clones of the item.
Learn to use signal manipulators and variables, they are lifesavers Timers have a "timer finished (signal)" output Start making a super simple 3d platformer or puzzler where you need to press a button or collect a key to open a door. Don't matter how good it looks or if it's not that fun, just try to make it work
The big thing I wish I knew at the beginning is: make your elements separately from your scene, and try to minimize Remixing things if you can. The reason for this is, to upload a Scene or Dream, you must then upload everything linked to it. Sounds not that annoying at first but it will bite you in the butt later. It's very annoying to have, say, a tree that's dependent on 5 other ugly trees that you didn't want to use. In my case I reached the limit of console space because of all these duplicates I remixed like, years ago, which I can't upload without uploading everything else I'm working on, which isn't ready yet. Big pain. Keep your elements as independent and compact as you can early on. Then you can plug them into a scene later and update them as you go.
You can upload things and keep them private, unlisted...they'll just be your personal work-in-progress, private only to you, but backed-up on the servers, until you're ready to release them It's dangerous to have your only copy of important work just on your local ps4. If your ps4 dies, save file gets corrupted, etc, you'll lose all your work
Oddly, sometimes people can still find unlisted things. No idea why. But your point about backups is a good one. It's also possible to upload the entire local Dreams save to the cloud, which I do weekly. That requires PS Plus though.
Are you sure you uploaded as Private? Ah yes, backup the save file. I believe you could also do that to USB stick Could the save file ever become corrupt upon exiting? Then you'd ruin your backup. Putting the asset Private in the Dreamiverse seems safest
I've had a few times where the local save got corrupted but I was able to download it back from the cloud, worked like a charm. BUT I always keep auto sync turned off and just do it manually for the reason you described, so that it doesn't accidentally upload something broken. Only downside is, I have pretty fast internet so it only takes a minute or so, but I can imagine on a slower connection it could take longer. It's quite a large file once it's hit the limit. Of course you can always do it both ways, upload to the Dreamiverse and also upload the save. I've procrastinated on my particular situation - I have hundreds of assets I need to upload, all of which are dependent on some other thing, and I can't be bothered to deal with it yet. Lol
If you're learning Dreams creation, or looking for good games, you may find use for this [Dreams Quick Reference](https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4Dreams/comments/bede59/quick_reference_guide/). It's full of learning resources, tips, & recommended games