211–220 of 375 posts
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Unreal Engine's been free for just over 11 years now: https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free
If you think about how much time a single developer has to invest to create all the assets for such a massive game, 11 years doesn't sound like a lot of time... (assuming he did all the assets himself and didn't use AI, which might be a bit naive)
The dev is a person from Indonesia (Rizky Nova) who's device has 16GB of ram. Being able to use the Unreal Engine for free to develop this is awesome. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago.
> This couldn't have happened 10 years ago. I agree. Something similar could have happened 30 years ago, and it did, see Transport Tycoon (or a lot of early games). But from 2000 to 2020?
I always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?
Almost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software. I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand ho…
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Solo developer just means they developed the game themselves, not made it all themselves. I'm not sure how you could write what you wrote without that occurring to you.
In that case, please, define "developed the game" for us. Is doing all the programming "developing" the game? Is coming up with the game design and hiring programmers "developing" the game? sits back with popcorn
Yes, if you're also doing game design.
> Is coming up with the game design and hiring programmers "developing" the game?
Yes, so is using LLMs to do the programming.
I never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2. But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?
Similar to you, I don't see the attraction of these sims. I have a theory it is a mindfulness thing like many hobbies. Think knitting or crochet or even building and running a model train set in the garage. These things aren't terribly hard once you learn the basics but you have to pay attention to various details over time and it allows you to tune out from the rest of the world when you want to. But I really don't…
At least, that's my working model of it.
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Yep, and then we always get those regular posts "project XYZ is no longer", yeah people not paying. Unreal is free to the extent it contributes to bringing even more people into the ecosystem, eventually becoming paying customers, Epic doesn't make it available out of their kindness, rather also taking into account there are other competing alternatives.
It's important to keep development going but commercial projects is not the only way. Godot Foundation exists and there are plenty of others in open-source space. A nonprofit means actual reports about how money is used, and it's not as if commercial projects are somehow better because they don't fold or get sold or canceled. And even between commercial ways, charging royalties is one of the worst. It doesn't cost Ep…
> Sell additional services which actually do cost you money to keep up
After a game has been released a solo dev often has very little work to do, since they've already invested all of the development time ahead of release. So, by this logic they shouldn't really be allowed to charge anything for the game, except to cover potential work on updates.
Perhaps game projects don't need to operate like nonprofits, but then why do game engine projects?
The dev is a person from Indonesia (Rizky Nova) who's device has 16GB of ram. Being able to use the Unreal Engine for free to develop this is awesome. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago.
I think this is incredible, and I am so happy for him, he deserves all the praise he gets (and maybe more). I will sin and make this about me, briefly, but just to say that when I was a kid/teenager with a really slow computer, a) I enjoyed coding much more, b) I think I was a way better programmer. Constraints make you better, you have to be smarter. I miss those times.
Game looks amazing from a solo dev but this article is terrible, like the journo didn't even play the game they just watched the game.
All journalism is terrible these days. They just want a catchy headline for the ad view and nothing else matters, including whether the headline is true or not.
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> This couldn't have happened 10 years ago. I agree. Something similar could have happened 30 years ago, and it did, see Transport Tycoon (or a lot of early games). But from 2000 to 2020?
The difference between today and 30 years ago is that if you are an individual developer, you are at the complete mercy of a single company (Valve), who can force you to do essentially anything they want for the privilege of publishing on their platform, with no meaningful alternative, and zero recourse if they say “no”.
Steam (which I'm guessing you're talking about) is nowhere close of being a monopoly. There are loads of alternatives out there, in wide use by people already. World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, Roblox and more are all examples of big time successful games that never been available on Steam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This couldn't have happened 10 years ago. I agree. Something similar could have happened 30 years ago, and it did, see Transport Tycoon (or a lot of early games). But from 2000 to 2020?
The difference between today and 30 years ago is that if you are an individual developer, you are at the complete mercy of a single company (Valve), who can force you to do essentially anything they want for the privilege of publishing on their platform, with no meaningful alternative, and zero recourse if they say “no”.