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From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

kellsgame.com

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Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#41

Post by pjmlp »

Closi wrote: post #25
japhib wrote: post #12

Congrats on the release OP! For anyone reading, if you’re a programmer by training, I’d recommend literally any game engine other than Game Maker Studio for creating your game. Unity is a great choice for beginners that lets you program in C#. Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.

The best choice is the one that you, personally, will complete and build a full game in. Presumably OP knew how to use gamemaker studio, and could either choose between: 1) Starting to build the game straight away in Game Maker Studio and 2) Learning C# / Unity and then starting to build your own engine and plug together tile editors and things which will then let you build the game. In the case above, Option 1 will…

Agreed, one thing I always reply when people ask about what language, middleware to use, I always give the non-answer of using whatever people are confortable with.

Minecraft would probably never have happened, if Notch started by asking in the forums if he should use Java or not.

Likewise many 8 and 16 bit titles started as BASIC, C, Pascal prototypes before being rewritten into Assembly, after their concept was proven, or thrown away before too much was invested into them.

Discussing what languages, middleware, API, whatever, instead of actually designing the game is what slows development down.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#44

Post by rezic »

ajdude wrote: post #40
RobertoG wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a chance to Godot before committing to a close platform! https://godotengine.org/

How well does godot handle exporting to video game consoles these days? While I cannot speak for the other posters, that was certainly factor in my decision to go with gamemaker studio 2.

From what I've seen, you have to use third party porting services. Godot being open source and not a legal entity prevents them from adding porting support in their engine because the console SDKs are secret and protected by NDAs.

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/tutorials/platform/conso...

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#45

Post by MattRix »

202206241203 wrote: post #38
bluescrn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like asking 'how much are musicians/artists making'. Most are making near-zero. A few get lucky and are making many millions. And while success requires a certain level of talent/skill, becoming a mega-hit seems very much about luck and being in the right place at the right time.

I hear this "luck" thing a lot but not sure that's the case. It's probably more originality + quality. So few undiscovered gems out there, thousands of average things though.

In no other industry/medium do you see nearly as much survivorship bias as in discussion around videogames.

I’ve always liked to think of it as a lottery, but where there are a ton of things you can do to buy yourself more tickets.

Doing the bare minimum is unlikely to bring you success, but it does happen… on the other hand sometimes a game will have a lot of things going for it and still perform poorly.

Also of all the things that are likely to bring a game success, originality is quite far down the list. That’s one of those areas where survivorship bias has a huge influence. (source: I’ve been a self-sustaining indie game dev for 12 years)

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#46

Post by nicolas_t »

habibur wrote: post #8

This article doesn't touch it as it's a new game they are developing, but I used to wonder a lot how much are indie game devs making? Is it worth it? Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it?

Some of my favorite game developers live pretty much below poverty level and have to resort to patreon to make ends meet.

I really think that at this point developing games is more of a labor of love and it's very hard to pierce right now as an indie dev. It was most likely quite a bit easier 15 years ago when the indie scene was much smaller (but then there were a lot more barriers of entry back then)

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#47

Post by 202206241203 »

MattRix wrote: post #45
202206241203 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this "luck" thing a lot but not sure that's the case. It's probably more originality + quality. So few undiscovered gems out there, thousands of average things though.

In no other industry/medium do you see nearly as much survivorship bias as in discussion around videogames. I’ve always liked to think of it as a lottery, but where there are a ton of things you can do to buy yourself more tickets. Doing the bare minimum is unlikely to bring you success, but it does happen… on the other hand sometimes a game will have a lot of things going for it and still perform poorly. Also of all…

I don't want to sound dismissive, but saying "a game will have a lot of things going for it" to me sounds like about average. I mean it can still work out, but it does raise a flag.

> I’ve been a self-sustaining indie game dev for 12 years.

You might know better than me, admittedly.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#48

Post by ZiiS »

washbrain wrote: post #17
ZiiS wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPLv3 is a very strange license to apply to artwork. It is specific to software. However I dont belive the is any intent for it to cover the game using the assets.

Sure. But CC-BY-SA 3.0 is a very standard license to apply to art, and has similar expectations for sharing your game with CC-BY-SA.

The standard argument is: dose opening a CC-BY-SA document in a word processor effect the word processor's license? Even if you distributed the documents as a template inside the word processor's installer I don't think you could claim the word processor was a derivative work. The intent of the SA license is that if you also improve the the template you have to share the improvements.

Having said that at least the Switch version will contain technological measures (from Nintendo) to prevent the sharing and adaption of the games assets. So even if the license is not at all viral it may not grant them permission to include the covered artwork.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#49

Post by jasonlotito »

japhib wrote: post #12

Congrats on the release OP! For anyone reading, if you’re a programmer by training, I’d recommend literally any game engine other than Game Maker Studio for creating your game. Unity is a great choice for beginners that lets you program in C#. Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.

> Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.

This is not true in the slightest.

Re: From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

#50

Post by hbn »

trgfdffd wrote: post #35

Great article! Just a thought: if it was that hard for OP to write the logic for the gravity manipulation, he should've taken this as an indication that it'd be hard for players to understand and learn this functionality too. Perhaps one small lesson missed?

Is difficulty of implementation really a reliable indicator for the complexity in players understanding the mechanic?

Jonathan Blow did a talk[1] at GDC a few years ago about implementing the time rewind mechanic in his game, Braid. It ended up being a pretty complex system that required a lot of ingenuity to come up with a design and implement it, but the end result is pretty straightforward and easy to understand for players.

[1] https://youtu.be/8dinUbg2h70

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