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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

#141

Post by c0mptonFP »

meheleventyone wrote: post #101
c0mptonFP wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Polish as you go Best way to end up bikeshedding.

This is why it’s good to intentionally go between the micro and macro and define some design goals or pillars. The latter give you a razor by which to judge the game and the former stops you getting stuck in the weeds. I broadly agree with the Romero quote, getting the game playable as quickly as possible and keeping it playable is easily the most effective way of crafting a game because it enables you to routinely p…

> keeping it playable is easily the most effective way of crafting a game because it enables you to routinely playtest and understand your progress.

Obviously.

> A key element of that is making the game legible and for that you do need to spend some time on “polish” because it’s an intractable element of the whole.

What does "legible" mean? Polishing means making something production-ready. A polished feature contains (ideally) no known bugs, has been thoroughly tested, gone through several UX iterations and brought up to a release standard.

That's not necessary for playtesting and improving the game. Unless you're done with all core game mechanics, you shouldn't be polishing.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#142

Post by [deleted] »

alpaca128 wrote: post #111
Kiro wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experienc…

[deleted]

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#143

Post by dieselgate »

q-big wrote: post #138
dieselgate wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most difficult part about software engineering and IRL engineering is the feeling of “everything’s broken always” and just constantly needing to fix or tweak things. I understand that’s the job description basically but nice to hear it articulated by someone else

> The most difficult part about software engineering and IRL engineering is the feeling of “everything’s broken always” and just constantly needing to fix or tweak things. Who says that this feeling is not entirely correct and most of software development is insanely broken, i.e. software development as of today actually mostly means working around these insane problems such that not already a monkey that was conditi…

Not sure I understand this comment very well but should have added it’s “the thing I personally find most difficult”. I was referring to “putting out fires” at work mostly, even with tests and other checks there are often regressions in a “large codebase” when working with a team of devs

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#144

Post by _def »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #120
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 distribut…

FYI I love playing this

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#145

Post by eps »

unnouinceput wrote: post #130
checkyoursudo wrote: post #124

Have any of you made a game, not just by yourself but only for yourself? I haven't (other than some basic terminal-based games when learning new languages, etc), but I've thought of a few that I know I would like but don't want to put in the time/effort to make them something that someone else would like. I also wonder about what to do when you have an idea that you know is way bigger than yourself, but you're not in…

When I started learning programming 25+ years ago, I started a tetris clone. I was learning Pascal (Borland's TP 7 anyone?) as well as creating the game. Took me 2 months and was a smash hit among my colleagues at Uni. Next I did 5-in-row (Tic-Tac-Toe's more interesting big brother), which was another smash hit among the same colleagues. They were preferring playing those games instead of listening to the undergrad w…

The AI part in 5-in-row is a good challenge.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#146

Post by unnouinceput »

eps wrote: post #145
unnouinceput wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started learning programming 25+ years ago, I started a tetris clone. I was learning Pascal (Borland's TP 7 anyone?) as well as creating the game. Took me 2 months and was a smash hit among my colleagues at Uni. Next I did 5-in-row (Tic-Tac-Toe's more interesting big brother), which was another smash hit among the same colleagues. They were preferring playing those games instead of listening to the undergrad w…

The AI part in 5-in-row is a good challenge.

No AI. Only multiplayer at same keyboard. Hence the popularity, they were paired anyway 2 students at one computer only.

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#147

Post by vicarrion »

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…

Keep going and you'll get there! Your game looks great!

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#148

Post by vicarrion »

Nemrod67 wrote: post #129

The hardest thing is finishing, because everything is ever connected to a "perfect" version of itself... And it's way less fun (for most game dev people) to code the "perfect" version of an input remapping system or leaderboard system :p Obligatory self-promotion: I just released my Space Pew-Pew game on Steam in Early Access, complete with original 16bit-neoclassical OST! https://store.steampowered.com/app/914930/Al…

Yep, you gotta get to release! The first you push all the way through to release is the hardest (at least so I've heard haha)

Re: What it takes to make a game by yourself

#150

Post by intelVISA »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #124

Have any of you made a game, not just by yourself but only for yourself? I haven't (other than some basic terminal-based games when learning new languages, etc), but I've thought of a few that I know I would like but don't want to put in the time/effort to make them something that someone else would like. I also wonder about what to do when you have an idea that you know is way bigger than yourself, but you're not in…

Can't speak for Unity but you can make a pretty complete Unreal game solo in around a month or so if you've done it before.

I'd love to release some of my work (for free ofc) but I'm never truly happy with how limited my 3D art skills are so I always shelf it after finishing all the fun programming bits.

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