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Finishing my first game while working full-time

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Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#51

Post by ajuc »

pizza234 wrote: post #47
ca6d8815 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just out of curiosity, when you spent 9 hours at work, was that in a software field? Yes, however the day job and night project were _completely_ different disciplines. Someone wrote that gamedev isn't really software engineering... I'd agree with that (not putting it down, but its not like anything I've done). > If so, why would you choose to do the same thing 18 hours a day for 5 years? Those long days came in th…

> Someone wrote that gamedev isn't really software engineering Could you elaborate on that? I find this perspective very interesting. I had a brief experience with gamedev, and I've actually found that even the smallest bit of game engineering is significantly more challenging than (I suppose) "x%" of web development. However, on the other hand, the engine is only a part of game development (and can also be underengi…

Normal software engineering is 95% glueing libraries together.

Gamedev is mostly about iteratively changing some equations to make the thing behave like you want it to behave.

Disclaimer: I never worked commercially in gamedev, but I wrote a lot of games as a hobby. Most of them unfinished of course.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#52

Post by klik99 »

boplicity wrote: post #34

Not discussed in the article: You have to have the support of the people in your life this will impact. For example, the 7-9am timeslot for working, as listed in the article, will impact my family, as that is when I'm getting the kids up and off to school. OK, so I could move it to 5am to 7am, but that would mean I'd need to go to bed earlier, which eliminates important evening time with my wife. Similarly, I could d…

Yeah, something has to give, I have the exact problem you have. Currently my weekday sleep suffers. There is no right way to do it, but you have to acknowledge the trade offs and make your decision knowing the impacts. So many people want to have their cake abs eat it, and usually get the worst outcome.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#53

Post by jdbartee »

A lot of my side projects end up being:

“I want to learn how to do X, but I have no idea what that’s going to take.”

And I end up just coding a logical step and if I don’t know what to do go research it, realize I did something wrong 3 steps ago and then either revert or abandon depending on my current motivation.

I’ve tried before to create a “game plan” before but most of the time there’s so much that I don’t know that I don’t know that it’s either impossible to make that plan or once I do, that plan ends up being wrong anyways.

As such it always feels like I’m doing side projects wrong. But since they’re more learning endeavors more than actually trying to launch a product maybe that’s fine?

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#54

Post by Zababa »

the_only_law wrote: post #36
capableweb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better? The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing y…

This has been my line of thought for a while. You spend a minimum of 8 hours working, and ideally you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Let’s say you have a couple more daily responsibilities that take 2-4 (could be commute, cleaning, some other maintenance). There’s almost no time to do anything, and some of the hours you have left may be at non-prime times of the day. > The true optimization for becoming a more efficient per…

I've heard this called before the "4 hour life", you have 4 hours every day for yourself: https://medium.com/@pskallas/4-hour-life-glossary-4740bca641...

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#55

Post by ca6d8815 »

pizza234 wrote: post #47
ca6d8815 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just out of curiosity, when you spent 9 hours at work, was that in a software field? Yes, however the day job and night project were _completely_ different disciplines. Someone wrote that gamedev isn't really software engineering... I'd agree with that (not putting it down, but its not like anything I've done). > If so, why would you choose to do the same thing 18 hours a day for 5 years? Those long days came in th…

> Someone wrote that gamedev isn't really software engineering Could you elaborate on that? I find this perspective very interesting. I had a brief experience with gamedev, and I've actually found that even the smallest bit of game engineering is significantly more challenging than (I suppose) "x%" of web development. However, on the other hand, the engine is only a part of game development (and can also be underengi…

> Could you elaborate on that?

I can try, but I may not do the idea justice.

When I was working on the game, the only thing that mattered was the _game_. Was it fun? Intriguing (we are a story based walking simulator)? Original? In line with our story structure (we wrote the story side by side of making the game because sometimes the best words on paper just couldn't be translated by us to a player experience)?

You make changes non-stop to iterate and tweak and perfect. You learn quickly that someone's gut feeling can kill an entire chapter of the game, or change the ending completely.

At some point, my code was just a tool in making the game. I didn't see myself carrying this codebase further to other projects (we built the game on Unity so already writing an engine was "solved"), so it just turned into working prototype after working prototype.

Your code doesn't have to solve for all the corner cases you may miss in QA, because in our game the state was almost guaranteed at different parts of the play through. You need to remain extremely flexible with your design and code because its possible the game shifts drastically under your hands, more so than I've ever experienced at an already-chaotic "big" company.

So it just stops mattering that much. At least for us. We didn't have a team for code (just me), or a separate art team, or a separate story team, or even a single game designer throughout the project. Everyone wore almost every hat, and you lose the grace of planning and process.

It's more a feeling than something I could quantify exactly. An interesting reflection is that I became more rigorous and detail oriented at the day job after the wild west of my game code.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#56

Post by marcodiego »

How to finish your first game?

Do it in one weekend!

How to do it in one weekend?

Use simple game mechanics: a spaceshooter!

Aren't you a good artist?

No problem! Use processing and art from https://opengameart.org/ .

I've done it once just to have fun with my girlfriend. We built a very simple and fun space shooter in one weekend. I didn't keep the license or links of the resources, so I didn't publish it.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#57

Post by DizzyDoo »

pbourke wrote: post #37
DizzyDoo wrote: post #16

I did this for my first Steam game, which let me go full-time back in 2015 as an indie game developer and where I still am today. [1] I'd get up early and get a few hours in before my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer at a fintech startup. And then on Saturdays I'd get something more like a normal days work done on the project. It worked, and I'm glad I did it, but it definitely was a tempo…

> my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer Did you use Python for your game as well? This looks really cool - congratulations on making the leap to full time.

No, though I wrote the level/puzzle editor in Python, which would generate json that was read by the game, which was written with the Unity engine and lots of C#.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#59

Post by jordanmorgan10 »

Working full time, married with three kids. I know this well. I've had a business acquired, write blog posts, writing a book series, have taught courses and more....by far the most common question is "How do you do that?"

For me, it really is as simple as....I just go to work hours early to work on those things, because I enjoy them. When I get home, I'm just a dad and a husband.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#60

Post by toyg »

OJFord wrote: post #45

I should first disclose that I'm terrible at 'finishing' things (I don't make games, so generally not such finishable 'done and shipped' things, but by 'finishing' I mean a sort of 'version 1.0' I suppose, something I'm happy with, think others might want to use and now it's just maintenance and improvements) so maybe don't listen to me at all..! But I think there's something key here that's left implicit - do your o…

I reckon "my project first" is a great habit, but it requires something else: the willpower to start. It's very easy to spend those extra couple of hours in the morning just sipping a coffee, reading HN, catching up with social media. Work is work and it starts because other people will ping you, you'll have to be online on a certain computer, etc etc; but if you are your own boss, it's very easy to let employee #1 (yourself) slack off.

Also, this works only if you are a remote worker. Most commuting will nuke those two hours away (yeah you can work on the bus/train, but probably not well - spotty connections, uncomfortable, no extra monitor, no mouse, etc; and if you have motion sickness like me, it's a non-starter), and in the evening you'll be even more shattered.

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