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What it takes to make a game by yourself

dillonshook.com

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Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#111

Post by alpaca128 »

Kiro wrote: post #97
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He failed to complete the game well before that.

And what's the problem with that? I've been working on a game for 15 years, and probably need another 10 to finish it.

The problem is the unmaintainable code. The game doesn't take that long because of its scope, it's not exactly Dwarf Fortress.

If I remember correctly the code got leaked at some point and it wasn't a fun time for the developer. It seems to me the dev was a beginner with a popular idea, leading to random people on the internet giving him money to work for a long time on a codebase that was too large for his experience and should have been thrown away and rewritten years ago.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#112

Post by Stevvo »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #94

Starting game dev is way easier than finishing it. Requires years of commitment with a super uncertain outcome. If you're someone who cannot take financial risks, you absolutely shouldn't be in game development unless you know what you're doing and unless you're fine with failure and an empty bank account at the end of it.

Anyone can get into game development with low risk. Why start with the gargantuan task of a whole game? e.g. you could be making flightsim addons. Paint a few liveries or code a simple plugin and people will find value in it pay for it.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#113

Post by jheriko »

its interesting to see how this differs from my own experience, from a time without game engines, 3d graphics libraries, the internet or even books for reference.

the point about actually finishing things is a great takeaway. the first game i finished /myself/ took a week, then got another week of post-launch attention... but that was after some 10 years of personal work to develop the skills, then another 5 years or so in the industry gaining experience.

i probably could have done this earlier, but i was constantly setting my sights higher than what was realistic.... but actually the lessons from doing that were pretty invaluable. today, i'm more than capable of filling any role in any of the specialised areas of programming required for games to an expert level... and a lot of that knowledge came from trying to build AAA quality features in isolation with little support - finishing features or engines rather than whole games.... so as much as i agree with the conclusion, i'm not sure it would have helped me to learn it sooner :)

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#114

Post by warrenmiller »

MrDresden wrote: post #103
warrenmiller wrote: post #98

I have a game with +10 million installs on the both app stores, the truth of it is making the game is about 25% of the work - the rest is dealing with marketing, screenshots, videos, user reviews, Ad/IAP SDKs, waiting for Unity to switch between platforms, dealing with Unity bugs/upgrades, etc.. When you're making the games it's a joy - the rest of the stuff can be a real grind.

With that kind of insight into each market segment, what monetization model are you seeing working the best on each platform? I've had an idea for a small mobile game in mind now for a while, but I find the idea of potentially having to place ads in it to make back some of the investement not appealing. So I delay starting the project. The dream would be to be able to offer it for a low price (1.5$ - 3$) and reach en…

Freemium: Ads and IAP, i'm afraid.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#115

Post by Tarsul »

piinecone wrote: post #105

I love reading these kinds of posts. Whenever I’m reminded that I’m not alone, I get a little bit more self-compassion and that makes me more excited to release my game and helps me appreciate all the progress and hard work to date. I’ve been working on King of Kalimpong [0] on and off since playtesting a one-week prototype of it in 2014. I had no idea how much work a networked physics vehicle/movement shooter game w…

Damn. That gameplay looks tight. Keep up the good work!

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#116

Post by jheriko »

ivars wrote: post #65
TylerGlaiel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been making video games for a long time and while it's true they can feel unfinished for a long time, they shouldn't ever feel completely broken/disasterous/failed. One of the key things when making a video game is to make sure that it is fun and playable as early as possible into development, and when someone is grinding away working on something that isn't fun that's a pretty huge red flag to me.

"No prototypes. Just make the game. Polish as you go. Don't depend on polish happening later. Always maintain constantly shippable code." - John Romero

sounds believable, i'm not sure its helpful.

i think that also sums up John Romero tbh...

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#117

Post by cpojer »

This is a great post, thank you for writing it. I got into programming 20 years ago because I wanted to make games, and I spent my teenage years in the 2000s building web games. As a high school project I spent a year building a turn-based strategy web game (https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1460221157634830337).

I have recently gotten back into it to explore things I never got a chance to do before like building an AI and fog-of-war. Currently the game is inspired by Advance Wars, and you can see me play against my AI here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bGeEeti22bM

I’m tweeting about the technical details and progress on Twitter:

* Basic explanation and code examples: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1460221157634830337

* Map Editor: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1488510688389566464

* Fog of War: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1547967785015189504

* Testing Infrastructure: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1538299796334686208

* Random Map Generator: https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1537444893580136454

I’m currently working on the game design to make it “inspired by Advance Wars” instead of just a clone.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#118

Post by DaveSapien »

I'm also a solo game dev with a recently released game.

All this is really spot on with my experience. It just not clear if the author hired an artist or he just recommends it...its quite common for Game dev's to claim they made a game by themselves but actually contracted out the music, art, animation, etc.

Somewhat of a bug bearer with me as there are some genuine solo dev's creating great work that get overshadowed with the whole solo dev marking spin.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#119

Post by SyneRyder »

archagon wrote: post #83
gmueckl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the actual game, as in, taking actions obeying a premade set of rules, art? That is the essence of every game. We use various representations, physical or virtual, for representing the game. Yet, the representation is not the game.

Can taking actions that obey a premade set of rules communicate something to the player? I think it can. For example, Jonathan Blow has played around with this notion in Braid and The Witness.

The Witness is absolutely an astonishing work of art, a life-changing experience. So much so that I wonder if it really can be called a game. (I'm over 100 hours in, and that's not counting all the time I've spent on trains looking out the window and thinking about its themes.)

It's frustrating that the reasons The Witness is lifechanging can't be explained to others without preventing them from having that same experience and understanding. But that in itself is a revelation to discover. It can't be told, it must be experienced.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#120

Post by Lambdanaut »

cpojer wrote: post #117

This is a great post, thank you for writing it. I got into programming 20 years ago because I wanted to make games, and I spent my teenage years in the 2000s building web games. As a high school project I spent a year building a turn-based strategy web game ( https://twitter.com/cpojer/status/1460221157634830337 ). I have recently gotten back into it to explore things I never got a chance to do before like building a…

Advance Wars is an absolute dream to clone. I had that itch too, and made a full clone with story mode in PICO-8 a couple years ago.

The challenge there was that PICO-8 has infuriating arbitrary restrictions on code size to limit the developers for fun lol. To get around that, I have code that swaps serialized memory between virtual "cartridges" in order to fit everything in.

Sadly that limits the game from distribution on the official PICO-8 network "Splore", because those games must be single-cartridge only, so I have a stripped down version without a campaign that is uploaded there.

The AI was by far the funnest to implement. Getting enemy ranged units to retreat correctly when they were in range of attack was such an awesome feeling. It really led me down a rabbit hole of making games primarily so that I could code fun AI

You can play in your browser here: https://lambdanaut.itch.io/picowars

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