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Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

blog.eyas.sh

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#31

if you are an engineer strapped for time, don't disregard using html + canvas + a canvas game library to build your thing. html input layer and javascript glue is a order magnitude more efficient than building a guy in a game engine, so unless you specifically want to push into 3d excellence and require full access to gpu performances and features, it can save a lot of tedious work. I've tried both unity, godot and t…

Did you use a libary or anything like that? Or the API's directly? I love the idea of being able to do more with tools I'm comfortable with :D

I've done two major things, both using a 2d engine because I don't have the resources for 3d modelling:

first one was bootstrap with a custom theme on the user layer, phaser.js on the rendering layer. The interesting part is I was able to use the phaser render to texture function to have dynamic maps integrated in the html layer, and ship preview in the ship theme selector. I can send you source and everything, the game is basically completed in regards of the original idea I had. you can see it here https://parkedbits.com/Increstellar/ - it's not obfuscated or anything, but the prestige/bonus thing at start is not really implemented in this version

second one is using vue.js for the html frontend with a theme inspired from the NES.css style (but reimplemented as I didn't like their input widgets), with a phaser.js backend because I don't have time to learn two things at a time (vue being the first one). this just has the unit editor and there's no gameplay in sight, but the code is likewise available for inspection (it's just html, no node backend or anithyng, just static files)

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#32
Start with: “how will I sell it?” This will frame “how do I start?” If you can’t answer how to sell it, then focus on learning and fun. If you are one of the lucky few that has a vision for both sales and hacking, then hack around that sales funnel, from the very start.

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#33
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a guy who has a wife that's been supporting him for about ten years now. He's still on his first game.

Reminds me of this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/20/late-bloomers-... > Ben Fountain did not make the decision to quit law and become a writer all by himself. He is married and has a family. [...] “When Ben first did this, we talked about the fact that it might not work, and we talked about, generally, ‘When will we know that it really isn’t working?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, give it ten years,’ ” Sharie rec…

> Imagine resisting the pressure to take "a real job" for 5 years so you can work on a game.

Shit like that is generally why I don't. Like most people I'm not privileged enough to just ditch work for a decade to pursue some fanciful dream.

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the best way to learn is by just building. You quickly run into questions, which can then be resolved one by one. But having said that, here's some tips. There's no single "right" way, but depending on your game idea you'll run into your own challenges and issues. Learn what GameObject's and Components are and how they work. In Unity you have MonoBehaviour derived classes, but then you might also want some of…

I am literally replying to this so I can find it later. Thanks for the architectural advice!

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Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#36
Back when I was doing iOS consulting I wrote and published a few games as side projects - almost got sued by Atari for my version of Battlezone.

Doing something polished as a one man band is incredibly difficult unless you are extremely multi-talented. Sound effects, graphics, music, game design are all skills that you probably don't have.

It is an amazingly fascinating world though and you learn a lot doing it. Just don't expect to become rich or famous!

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#37

Derek Yu, the creator of the Spelunky series among other things, has just published a blog post on his experience with developer archetypes: https://www.derekyu.com/makegames/archetypes.html Recommended short read, I'm sure you'll find yourself here and relate to your non-indie-game-developer self too!

Dividing game devs into archetypes is such a game dev thing to do; I love it

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#38

I hate what mobile has done to the web. The text on this blog is huge and sparse, and two of the pictures take up more than 100% of my vertical screen space. When did people forget about desktop browsers????

Sorry to hear that. I write/preview on desktop first and typically like the legibility that comes from the line spacing, etc.

What would you change to make this a better desktop experience for you? Less of the full-width photos? Text that spans wider, or just lest line spacing?

Re: Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer

#39

Hey, this is just the sort of thing I'm interested in. I'm an experienced programmer who has no idea what I'm doing with Unity. Unity's tutorials are surprisingly great, but they tend to start with "okay, so a 'variable' is..." and I have to skip forward a bit and just want to know "okay, but say I already know how to program, what's the right way to program with Unity?" I've found very little on that topic, and unfo…

I'm glad to hear! My series, starting with "Basic Concepts in Unity for Software Engineers" [0] is exactly designed for this and borne out of a frustration in much of the existing content.

Some folks in the replies mention just starting to code and while I totally agree, it was also helpful for me to understand... at least the concepts.

TBH when I started, the main way I did this was my finding a course on Udemy and watching it at 2x speed, still being bored out of my mind for huge chunks of it.

[0]: https://blog.eyas.sh/2020/10/unity-for-engineers-pt1-basic-c...

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