Hi, I’m Rune Storm. Plumber/Actor/Solo Indie Game Dev and creator of Red Colony - Ask me anything!

A couple of my radiator thermostats have stopped working. Is it possible to just replace the top section (the bit that turns and sets the heat level), or will I need to drain the whole system and replace the entire part?

If you have mains-tap you can turn it off and parts of the pipe:ing in your house will shut down, thus you don't have to drain the whole system. But if you're living in a old house you probably have to drain the whole system. The water will be black in the pipes when you drain them, don't worry, its not zombie blood... You can rip of a piece of Marias top and clean up the mess once you're done with replacing the thermostat. <3

Hey Rune,

I played your game and although I didn't think I would like it much in the beginning, it hooked me and I played it till the end, so great job! :)
May I ask how you came up with the idea?

Hi!Thank you for playing it makes me so happy to hear you enjoyed it!Well.. Were to begin.The drama bit comes from, ME watching my wife, glued infront of the TV while watching The Batchelors.The Horror bit comes from my previous game KnifeBoy. Knifeboy is a Metroidvania game ish, but it had some "zoomed in" areas which I really enjoyed making. So when I finished KnifeBoy I though "Next game has to be Zoomed in so I can fill the environments with details"... But then I though; If the Camera is Zoomed in, the player might just rush through the levels and miss all the details I spend so much time making... But wait! What If Its a slow-paste horror game? It would make perfect sense to have a Zoomed in Camera and Fill the enviroment with details. And that's where the Horror idea came from.The 2D clothes Ripping effect idea is a left over idea from KnifeBoy. KnifeBoy was suppose to have that effect but I wasnt able to program that bit.

yeah, it's kinda like Resident Evil mixed with Dead or Alive for me haha.
Tbh the dialogue felt a bit weird at times, since the character is supposed to be a doctor/researcher at a science lab, but she talks like an a-social ghetto bitch xD the inspiration from the Bachelor makes the dialogue have more sense now.

I don't know if spoilers are allowed here, but if they are, can you tell us anything about the mysterious woman from the blue colony?

bh the dialogue felt a bit weird at times, since the character is supposed to be a doctor/researcher at a science lab, but she talks like an a-social ghetto bitch xD the inspiration from the Bachelor makes the d

haha, a-social ghetto bitch, that's a good way to put it.
Yeah, the Bachelor stuff is the reasoning behind the dialogue. However, someone once told me that women are just as bad-mouthed as men when no-one is around :P So who knows, maybe scientists talk like that among friends? :P

Yeah, all I can say is that Nicole is the main character in Red Colony 2 - (There is a tablet you can read in the subway station at the Warehouse, where Maria wakes up, locked behind a LVL5 door) - In this tablet you will learn that Nicole infiltraded the Red Colony in order to save her children... Thats all I can say ^^

Did Mario inspire you to become a plumber or did being a plumber inspire you to become a game dev via Mario?

When I applied to the plumber school, I was inspired by Mario, yes... I thought plumbing was all about jumping around outdoors, eating mushrooms and save hot chicks... 2 years later I was on my knees scoping up some shit from a clogged toilet. Thats when I realized that I was in the wrong field ;)
Joke aside, plumbing was/is a good gig back in Sweden. but Mario did inspire me as a child to work with games!

Did you get made fun of in school for your awesome name before everyone realized how awesome is was? Your parents are visionaries.

Haha! Actually, in Sweden its a fairly common name. However, living in Japan now and having a long name here is a nightmare, so I've recently changed my family name to Storm. ^^ and then got married and we have a dobble family name "Shimotsuji Storm" ^^

So, your original surname wasn't Storm? (I'm married to one)

Nope, but we had a "Storm" in the family so the change was easy to make!

Did you imagine yourself in the position you were say five years ago, or were your plans different?

Well... 5 Years ago I was still living in Tokyo and doing acting and modelling as my main job.. Im still doing that (except that we are in a corona lockdown and there have been almost no work since beginning of 2020...) so my life is pretty much the same... The biggest difference is that I have a son. But if we reverse back 10 years I never thought I would be able to make a games. Back then, game development and astronaut was 2 of those jobs that I could only dream of. Thanks to software improvements (Unreal, Unity etc) it became easier to make games, and I finally found myself in a position where I had a lot of spare time (Modelling/acting is not everyday work in Tokyo) and I decided to use all that spare time to make games instead. So yeah, my plans was waaaay different. I was thinking of starting a pluming firm in the northern parts of sweden..: Now I live in Tokyo and make games ^^ Way different then I expected

You ever play RuneScape?

Nope! Is it any good? (I've played very few games since I got into making them myself.... One of the downsides of making games I guess...)
Everytime I sit down to play games i think to myself: " I should work on my own instead..:"

I want to make games! Where should I start?

Download Unity and watch somones youtube tutorial and just follow along. NOTHING will make sense in the beginning. Maybe for the first 6 months.... Make a few projects just by copying some Youtubers and familiarize yourself with Unity as a Software, (I make games in Unity, but I guess you can use Unreal as well.. These two project are free to use). Its a bit of an undertaking at first and NOTHING make sense, but hang in there!
Eventually you will have a minor understanding in how things work and learn all the "programmer words" that can help you when you need to Google solutions to your own project.

When you have done a few projects (And still dont feel confident to make your own) You can download someone elses Asset pack from the Unity Asset Store and exchange his graphics with your own.. And use this project as a base to your own game. If you keep working on the Free asset Project, one day it will be your original game since you will (hopefully) only use your own assets and codes.

So, Start with youtube tutorials. If you can't handle that / don't have patience to learn by watching others, it will be damn hard to get anywhere. So its a good start point to see if you have what it takes to make games! Cuz its damn hard to learn from scratch! Good luck!

How did you get into game development being from a different field of work? what steps would you suggest someone who is interested in trying out Game Dev but has no idea where to start.

Hmm... I played video games all life but ended up working as a Plumber in Sweden (good money and pretty fun) however, I realized that I should try to chase my dream before I settle down and decided to make a big change in life and I moved to Japan to learn Japanese.

When I ended up in Japan my goal was to learn fluent Japanese and somehow get into translating video games from Japanese to English. I soon learned that Japanese was damn hard, so I gave up on that and ended up doing acting and modelling in Tokyo (random AF). 5 years Later I was "annoyed" with myself that I gave up on the game-dev-dream and realized that I had A LOT of spare time on my hands since I didn't work every day as a model/Actor.... I then sold my PS4 and Vita (No distractions!) and started working on my first game KnifeBoy...

I will copy/paste the rest of the answer since someone else asked where to start:

Download Unity and watch someone's youtube tutorial and just follow along. NOTHING will make sense in the beginning. Maybe for the first 6 months.... Make a few projects just by copying some Youtubers and familiarize yourself with Unity as a Software, (I make games in Unity, but I guess you can use Unreal as well.. These two project are free to use). Its a bit of an undertaking at first and NOTHING make sense, but hang in there!
Eventually you will have a minor understanding in how things work and learn all the "programmer words" that can help you when you need to Google solutions to your own project.

When you have done a few projects (And still dont feel confident to make your own) You can download someone elses Asset pack from the Unity Asset Store and exchange his graphics with your own.. And use this project as a base to your own game. If you keep working on the Free asset Project, one day it will be your original game since you will (hopefully) only use your own assets and codes.

So, Start with youtube tutorials. If you can't handle that / don't have patience to learn by watching others, it will be damn hard to get anywhere. So its a good start point to see if you have what it takes to make games! Cuz its damn hard to learn from scratch! Good luck!

Is that the name you were given at birth?

Rune was given at birth, yes, Storm is a family name that we had in our "family" and I changed to Storm few years back! Shimotsuji is my wifes name, and we now have a double-family-name! (Double-Family-Name = Not sure if thats what you call it in English)

It’s called a “double barrelled” surname in English.

As in, double barrelled shotgun.

That sounds pretty cool ^{^}

This is just what i need. The drain on my sink is clogged and i’m having trouble fixing it.

Some noodles got washed into the drain and clogged up the swan neck syphon thingy because something solid was blocking part of it. At first i tried unclogging it using sodium hydroxide but this did not work. I tried opening the bottom off the syphon and got some noodles out but it was still clogged. I tried snaking it both ways with a simple spring type thing but no luck. I took the top cover off it and dismantled it as far as i could but can’t remove the syphon from the waste pipe.

But a bit of a TL;DR there now seems to be some kind of solid chunk of what feels like concrete in the syphon thing (i even tried drilling it out but that doesn’t seem to work either as the drill hardly seems to dig into it even with a decent amount of pressure). So should i just get a plumber to look at and or replace the syphon or is there anything i can still try?

If you took out the syphon and cleaned it + the swan neck but its still clogged. It might be clogged further down the pipe (there could be a bend hiding under the floor-ish) and something big got stuck there.
You can try to poke with a flexible wire down the pipe and see if you can unclog it, preferable a flexible wire with a hook so you can pull it up instead of pushing it down further.... Worst case you will send the clog-stuff even further down the pipe...
In that case, better call a plumber ;)

Do you feel that the monetization of in-game aesthetics via microtransactions has lead to a massive decline in gameplay investments?

aesthetics

Hi!
I don't know what " aesthetics " means and I googled it and I still don't get it :P
It has something to do with in-game clothes? And you mean: Developers spend more time making downloadable clothing packs instead of spending time on gameplay/the actual game?

How is your day going?

Ha!
6AM: Wake up take my baby out for a walk and play with him.
8AM: Breakfast for Baby.
9AM: Wife wake up and I go to gym.
10.30AM: Wife go to gym and I take baby to Park.
11.45AM: Wife pick us up from park and we go home and eat Lunch
12.30PM: Work on my game.
5.30PM: Cook food or play with Baby, depending on who is cooking. Me or Wife.
8.PM: Put baby to sleep and clean up all the shit the baby pulled out trhoughout the day.
8.30PM: Back to work.
11.30PM: Crash and burn.
Its been like this since March....

How many hours do you think it will take to learn everything necessary to start making simple 2D turn-based games? I have a degree in computer science but never learned game development

Ohh... Well, I don't know what computer science is, but I can imagine you have the "right way of thinking" in terms of coding and you are probably familiar with the keyboard. When I started I didn't even know what a bracket { was or what it was called. So I had to google "How to make that sign that look like a flat chest with a nipple" - In order to find out what it was called or how to make one on my keyboard.

Soo.... If you're a fulltime employed and only have evenings to work on your game (Lets say you have the willpower as well) I bet you can spend 2-3 hours per night while listening to relaxing music and podcasts for 3-4 months straight (Maybe work more in the weekends or days off) - that should be enough to get a hang of it!
After that you should be able to tell if you're ready or not/ if you enjoy it enough to start working on your own game!

I can copy/paste an answer on where to start as well:

Download Unity and watch someone's youtube tutorial and just follow along. NOTHING will make sense in the beginning. Maybe for the first 6 months.... Make a few projects just by copying some Youtubers and familiarize yourself with Unity as a Software, (I make games in Unity, but I guess you can use Unreal as well.. These two project are free to use). Its a bit of an undertaking at first and NOTHING make sense, but hang in there!
Eventually you will have a minor understanding in how things work and learn all the "programmer words" that can help you when you need to Google solutions to your own project.

When you have done a few projects (And still dont feel confident to make your own) You can download someone elses Asset pack from the Unity Asset Store and exchange his graphics with your own.. And use this project as a base to your own game. If you keep working on the Free asset Project, one day it will be your original game since you will (hopefully) only use your own assets and codes.

So, Start with youtube tutorials. If you can't handle that / don't have patience to learn by watching others, it will be damn hard to get anywhere. So its a good start point to see if you have what it takes to make games! Cuz its damn hard to learn from scratch! Good luck!

How did you get into game making?

I will copy/paste this answer since someone else asked!

I played video games all life but ended up working as a Plumber in Sweden (good money and pretty fun) however, I realized that I should try to chase my dream before I settle down and decided to make a big change in life and I moved to Japan to learn Japanese.

When I ended up in Japan my goal was to learn fluent Japanese and somehow get into translating video games from Japanese to English. I soon learned that Japanese was damn hard, so I gave up on that and ended up doing acting and modelling in Tokyo (random AF). 5 years Later I was "annoyed" with myself that I gave up on the game-dev-dream and realized that I had A LOT of spare time on my hands since I didn't work every day as a model/Actor.... I then sold my PS4 and Vita (No distractions!) and started working on my first game KnifeBoy...

Sometimes my sink drains slowly. It has a pop-up style plug. If I push the plug down then pop it up, the sink will start draining properly. What's going on?

Maybe when you push it down it creates pressure down the pipe and push all water away. Then, when you pop it up, the pipe is empty and allow the water to drain properly... :P No idea actually. Sound like it might be a small clogg:age down the pipe somewhere.

I just started to learn gadot and I have no experience, as a solo game dev, where do you even start in making a game?

I dont know what gadot is, sorry... But I can copy/paste an answer on where to start:

Download Unity and watch someone's youtube tutorial and just follow along. NOTHING will make sense in the beginning. Maybe for the first 6 months.... Make a few projects just by copying some Youtubers and familiarize yourself with Unity as a Software, (I make games in Unity, but I guess you can use Unreal as well.. These two project are free to use). Its a bit of an undertaking at first and NOTHING make sense, but hang in there!Eventually you will have a minor understanding in how things work and learn all the "programmer words" that can help you when you need to Google solutions to your own project.

When you have done a few projects (And still dont feel confident to make your own) You can download someone elses Asset pack from the Unity Asset Store and exchange his graphics with your own.. And use this project as a base to your own game. If you keep working on the Free asset Project, one day it will be your original game since you will (hopefully) only use your own assets and codes.

So, Start with youtube tutorials. If you can't handle that / don't have patience to learn by watching others, it will be damn hard to get anywhere. So its a good start point to see if you have what it takes to make games! Cuz its damn hard to learn from scratch! Good luck!

Its bed time in Tokyo...
If there are any further questions, Adam is here to help!

So the main water valve in my townhouse doesn't seem to close all the way.

I can turn it a bunch of times, and the water pressure goes down considerably till its sort of a dribble.

But there's always still a bit of water flowing through, so I can't braze a pipe or anything like that.

What do I do?

Tell the city they need to turn it off and then you replace the valve

Or:

Call a plumber and he can use a machine that FREEZEs the pipe (infront of the valve) and then he can replace the valve and the pipe will eventually defrost and pressure will continue as usual. But now, with your brand new Valve2000, you can shut it completely.

Any relation to the RuneStorm team that made the Ballistic Weapons mod for Unreal Tournament 2004?

Nope! >_<

How are you?

Great! You?

What type of team is needed for the production of a game?

It depends on how big the game is. I did it myself and I honestly think small games should have very small teams (2-3 ppl). Best setup might be 1. Programmer 2. Art/Animation/Sound 3. Director/StoryWriter/Sound.... The key is that each person need to be multi-talented. In my experience, the more people involved the more complicated it gets. I started a project (remotely) with 2 friends in Sweden last year and we got nowhere... Probably because of the time difference between Sweden and Japan. But it became clear from day one that we all wanted to take the game in different directions :P So if you have a group of friends and want to make a game. Make sure you all agree on what you want to make. Then, once of you should act as a "director" and keep that idea going until the game is in a playable state. The problem with creative people is that we come up with new and better ideas all the time. When we do, we abandon the previous idea and nothing ever gets done. Keep logging extra ideas and keep the programmer aware of them so he can implement them in the Code later on. But number one priority should be to make the game playable first. If it has reached (or almost reached) your vision, stick to it until its done!

What would be your dream project?

a AAA SoulsBourne type of game! ^^

So the drain is sluggish, and I suspect it's fat clogging it, but I already emptied out the lock joint. So how you doing?

lock joint

Oh... It must be more slug down the pipe! Poke with a iron-wire thiny and maybe use some chemical stuff and see if you can remove it!
Im doing fine thank you!

Do you have a rune stone ?

Of course i do! I'm gonna be buried under it one day!

do your 'friends' ever shut the fuck up?

I guess they do while sleeping. :S

How much should it cost to snake a 3” drain 100’?

No idea! >_<

Whats your favorite foods ?

Taco - Sushi - Meatballs!