Daniel Fedor
LightNews LightNews
banner
dcfedor.bsky.social
Daniel Fedor
@dcfedor.bsky.social
490 followers 220 following 280 posts
Developer of Ostranauts and NEO Scavenger. Founder of Blue Bottle Games studio.
Posts Replies Media Videos
dcfedor.bsky.social
Bringing this energy to spaceship sims
The cover of Trash to Treasure: The Recycler's Guide to Creative Crafts. It depicts a woman in a pink polo shift, surrounded by household crafting elements like tartan ribbon, loose buttons, and an assortment of coffee cans painted in pastel polka dots, and bedazzled with cartoonish Easter bunnies and eggs, and that wavy ribbon stuff you can only find at Michael's. A dim, gray, ominous 4-panel door looms behind her. Naiba has superimposed the power drill and angle grinder from Ostranauts into her hands, a pressure suit helmet over her head, and a broken laser torch onto the table in front of her.
November 23, 2025 at 11:49 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Lol. "Should" means *this* particular cause has been fixed :)

Also, a snapshot from one of the bug threads:
Screenshot of Discord thread, with user stating: "At game time 22 03 31 (almost two hours of game time from the save), the temperature crosses 1200C, the ship explodes in the same manner as KLEG, and a temperature in excess of 1.5M Celsius is recorded. Without setting the coolers, explosion is achieved at 21 54 03, and I observed a temperature in excess of 2.6M Celsius at the moment of rupture." 2 images of temperature readouts in the user's ship, showing temperatures and pressures not achievable outside of stellar objects. "Two in-game seconds later, the game crashed [crossed out] hung long enough that Windows and I both thought it had actually crashed, this result was recorded, and everything went to zero." Twelve quadrillion degrees. Toasty. Image showing temperatures sufficient to create a Kugelblitz. Below it, someone has reacted with the "fire" emoji.
November 19, 2025 at 5:46 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Stumbled upon Olivia in the wild here today. Word must be getting around the NPCs that I'm testing fire, lol.
Image of Ostranauts's paperdoll inventory, showing a woman in a pressure suit, carrying two fire extinguishers. One in each hand. She has a look of worry on her face.
November 7, 2025 at 5:24 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
This bastard right here:
Screenshot of a NAV screen in Ostranauts, where the player's ship (blue triangle named Good Content) is buzzed by an NPC ship (white triangle named Heavy Terrapin). The Heavy Terrapin is targeted, with a reported relative velocity of 47.62 km/s. It's recent position plot comes within mere km of Good Content.
October 16, 2025 at 11:42 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
I don't wanna say it'll be a home-run of a fit, but Ostranauts does try to tick several checkboxes in that vicinity!

store.steampowered.com/app/1022980/...
Screenshot of a top-down, pixel art game, where the main character stands in an airlock between their own, well-lit ship (bottom of screen) and a dark derelict (upper screen). Screenshot of a blue navigation panel for a spaceship, with several buttons, toggles, sliders, and knobs to monitor and control various aspects of space travel. Screenshot of a top-down, pixel art game where the main character is standing near a counter in a warmly-lit bar, talking to an NPC. The NPC has an ! near it, like a quest marker, and there is a context menu of possible things to say near them. Screenshot of a muted gray reactor control panel, showing various LED and 7-segment display readouts, plus a range of sliders, knobs, and buttons to control the reactor.
September 29, 2025 at 2:51 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Maybe that's just how long games take to make?

Like part of me thinks the prevailing industry perception of a healthy gamedev cycle is out of whack.
Screenshot of Bloomberg article about Silksong, asking "Why Silksong Took Seven Years to Make"
August 21, 2025 at 7:04 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Dark, forbidden arts:
Screenshot of Ostranauts with the inventory UI open. The paperdoll has been moved far to the right, partially off-screen. The backpack has its pouch slots nested within its border.
August 11, 2025 at 11:41 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Oh no
A bottle of beer and a bottle of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce and they are both brown with yellow labels and oh no
August 4, 2025 at 3:54 AM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Space is lonely, folks.

#gamedev
Screenshot of Discord post asking: "Is this...intended?" Below it is a snapshot of an Ostranauts message log saying: "Melody Ramirez leans in to kiss the floor. Melody Ramirez leans in to kiss the conduit." Discord: "I assume it might be?" Snapshot of game tooltip: "Scar: Brain Surgery Melody Ramirez has a mostly healed scar from a mostly sterile brain surgery."
July 15, 2025 at 11:07 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
At our company, these are enshrined as emojis:
Emojis in chat, showing two pineapples resting on NEO Scavenger hex tiles, and two bananas near the tops of ladders.
June 6, 2025 at 1:28 AM
dcfedor.bsky.social
How does everyone feel about cutting it close:
Navigation plot showing a large blue circle representing the moon Titan, a gray bracket representing a surface station on the "SE" side of the moon, with a curved yellow intercept plot entering from the "W" side of the map. The yellow plot appears to scrape across the "SW" surface of the moon, before banking hard to the "N" to intercept the station. The data readout on the side of the NAV indicates this incoming trajectory starts 10 au away, with a relative velocity of 49 km/s.
April 11, 2025 at 11:33 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
No cheating. The last saved celebrity pic on your phone is your therapist.
Photo of a blue T-shirt with a wobbly illustration of Garfield, and text that reads "gotta have me a good lasagna"
April 6, 2025 at 5:32 AM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Ostranauts Discord having a normal one 😅
Screenshot of Ostranauts Discord users reacting to a new experimental patch including orbital mechanics and drinking blood. First user posts "ORBITS" and the next user posts "BLOOD".
March 21, 2025 at 8:56 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
That moment when the code you've been struggling with finally works, but you're afraid to test it a second time in case that was a fluke 😅

#gamedev
Screenshot of a spaceship NAV map, showing a course plotted to rendezvous with a derelict ship 1:48 in the future, within a frame of reference orbiting at 25 km/s.
March 12, 2025 at 7:41 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Ostranauts logo, except it reads "ANXIETY" in the wobbly ostraca etching font, and "THE GAME" in the pixel font below it.
February 19, 2025 at 11:03 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Trying to overhaul whether AI should be allowed to open that airlock with a pressure difference:

#gamedev
Spreadsheet of situations dictating whether an Ostranauts AI should be allowed to open an airlock with a pressure difference. Input parameters include: Roster Permission (i.e. company policy) IsAirtight (do we have a space suit on?) IsEmergencyOverride (is this an emergency? E.g. suffocating) AUTOTASK (are we currently set to manual vs. automatic task mode?) Did the player just directly order us to do this? (E.g. was it an order to specifically go outside? Or a task that requires an item outside?) The resulting true/false outcome in this new revision is compared to the current logic in-game as of 0.14. 0.14 cases tend to favor "true," while the overhaul tends to honor the roster permissions and emergencies more.
January 28, 2025 at 11:52 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Chat log of two developers talking about game design. dcfedor - Today at 10:58 AM And an important rule in our game design philosophy is to let the user play/quit when they want, not force them to play more. Joshu - Today at 10:58 AM !1 Oh we killed the bot that did that lol dcfedor - Today at 10:59 AM RIP our commitment to standards. Joshu - Today at 11:00 AM Guess we gotta sell out now dcfedor - Today at 11:01 AM 💵 💵 💰
January 24, 2025 at 7:14 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Spoiler Alert
Image of title and body text from Ostranauts encounter screen that reads: "END The End"
December 31, 2024 at 9:55 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Screenshot from Ostranauts, viewing the docking screen readout through a cracked helmet visor. The docking panel reads "Comms: ---Connection established---" User: "Los Angeles Construction Zone #1 this is More Opus Than Magnum requesting clearance for close approach and docking." Port: "Negative More Opus Than Magnum. You are not cleared for close approach. Docking facilities are offline at this time. Manual override required at loading area service dock."
December 31, 2024 at 9:52 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Positive Steam review of Ostranauts, saying "Awesome! The developers included a space exploration game in their 100-hour Tetris."
December 17, 2024 at 4:20 AM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Also, bonus #gamedev #screenshotsaturday:

Upcoming tweak to the relationships system in Ostranauts to try and recreate Cheers...
Top view of the Mescaform Bar on OKLG station in Ostranauts. The player is standing amidst 3 NPCs with !s above their heads, and the game's message log shows two of them shouting "It's Devine Joycee Gates! Long time no see my friend!" with the player's social stats getting a boost from the attention.
December 7, 2024 at 6:00 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
For #gamedev #screenshotsaturday, I wanted to share some new HUD/UI work we've been doing on Ostranauts!

In this screenshot, clockwise from bottom right, we have:
- new date/time position
- message log centered at bottom
- new (toggleable) "Crew View" to see all crewmembers and their status
December 7, 2024 at 5:52 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Vince McMahon meme, where each of 4 panels shows Vince in a state of increasing interest/shock. The text for each panel reads: 1. Create a UI for a highly-skilled, domain-specific, life-and-death industrial process 2. which can be used by an adversarial and untrained user. 3. This UI must work in realtime, even if the user only has two index fingers. 4. In Unity 5
December 2, 2024 at 11:21 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Four games I've worked on:
Dragon Age Origins cover art, depicting fantasy characters inside a blood-red dragon silhouette on a white field. Dragon Age II cover art, depicting a fantasy warrior framed by a red dragon who's wing trailing edges are formed by silhouettes of humanoids. NEO Scavenger cover art, depicting various inventory items in a grid and paper doll UI, a pixel art Detroit city skyline at dusk, and a hex map with the character standing in a grass tile surrounded by hills, trees, and ruined cities. Ostranauts cover art, depicting a female space captain chilling in her cockpit with her feet on the console, wearing headphones, smoking, and examining something in her hands.
November 19, 2024 at 6:52 PM
dcfedor.bsky.social
Screenshot of Steam game review for Ostranauts, reading "I was AFK experiencing an intrusive awkward memory with game unpaused. When I came back there was a message log that my game character had also experienced an intrusive awkward memory while I was away. 10/10"
November 7, 2024 at 12:29 AM