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Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

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51–60 of 94 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#51

I might be interested, but this group sounds too "serious" for me. Ie i'm serious, but i have a full time job, and i'm obsessive so i'm yakshaving the foundations of my projects. I'm less concerned with the final game, and more concerned with building a platform that helps me efficiently create. While the game is my goal, i focus on the platform because i feel solo devs have a ton of overhead. I figure if i can optim…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#52

I might be interested, but this group sounds too "serious" for me. Ie i'm serious, but i have a full time job, and i'm obsessive so i'm yakshaving the foundations of my projects. I'm less concerned with the final game, and more concerned with building a platform that helps me efficiently create. While the game is my goal, i focus on the platform because i feel solo devs have a ton of overhead. I figure if i can optim…

That's exactly what I do, don't mind hanging out once a week if you're up for it

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#53
Been working on various unreal engine projects since ~2016, but always as hobby (already full time @ own company). Managed to get a multiplayer alpha up and running of a prop hunt inspired game, mainly to play with friends (which was a huge blast for a little while).

Tried to convince some fellow colleagues and friends to dive in to indie game dev and make something together, but so far with little success ;)

Would love to meetup with fellow hobbyist's!

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#54
post #3

Half-OT: Anyone got pointers to game engines for solo devs? Something to get 2D multiplayer games out of the door quickly.

If you're looking for something where you don't need to worry about licensing fees and is good for 2D, checkout Godot. The language used is also very close to python syntax which is nice

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#55
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much exactly why I (as a complete hobbyist) ended up with Godot. I spent two years writing things from scratch in various languages and lots of time Yak-shaving. The experience itself was worth something, but I don't really have a lot to show for it. I don't love godot - but it's far beyond anything I'll be able to accomplish on my own as a hobbyist. I find art to be the most limiting factor at this po…

Have you tried Upwork/Fiverr/Behance/Dribbble? In my experience you can get decent art for quite cheap.

Depending on what kind of art you need, Midjourney or similar models are becoming a more visible option for solo gamedevs to make decent art cheaply.

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#56
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's set up some expectations first. Games almost never "get out of the door quickly", with very few exceptions. That goes multiple for multiplayer games. What you might be able to produce quickly is prototypes . "A moving rectangle which shoots circles" - kind of thing. That is a super power, don't underestimate it. LÖVE is a nice game engine, I used it a lot in the past, mostly for personal stuff. And released som…

LÖVE is great - but are there any good engines / libraries built on-top of LÖVE that make it easier to create certain 2D games? I.E. A top-down tile-based extension? Ideally just an integration with some existing 2D tile map editor. Or an isometric extension? Or a side-scrolling extension with gravity and parallax and a tile map, etc? When I tried LÖVE years ago, it seemed like there was a little bit of engine-buildi…

See my post in this thread regarding Planimeter Game Engine 2D. Planimeter ships the largest pure-Lua 2D game engine on GitHub.

Features: https://github.com/Planimeter/game-engine-2d#features

We integrate with Tiled, and feature multiplayer with client-side prediction out of the box.

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#57
post #43

I own Planimeter. We publish Planimeter Game Engine 2D, which was previously called Grid Engine 9.[1] I spend a lot of time thinking about how independent developers can better spend their time. A lot of developers get caught up in design documents, or thinking about how they want to make a game, but not seriously understanding how many hours a week you need to commit to a project and over how many years. As a rule o…

Links on your README to getting started and docs are 404

Thanks, we're moving to a new documentation site. So the GitHub wiki, where the documentation pages are stored and read from is our fallback at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#58
post #31
post #4

I took 3 months off last year to get a game project finished up and released to Steam! Glad to see other indie developers here on Hacker News. I can't commit to weekly meetups, since I'm back at my job full-time, but I wish you the best of luck on your game!

What's your game? I spent a similar amount of time to port one of my Roblox cat games to Steam to see how it would do. Just released it a week ago: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1652120/Find_the_Cats/

How did the porting process go? For scripts, models, etc -- were you able to use any automation? What platform did you use for the Steam release?

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#59
post #3

Half-OT: Anyone got pointers to game engines for solo devs? Something to get 2D multiplayer games out of the door quickly.

Maybe consider https://github.com/Planimeter/game-engine-2d? We have multiplayer with client-side prediction out of the box. Example code is included to demonstrate the ease of networking entity fields, and there is an included payload abstraction for creating networked events.

You can set the tick rate for your game based on your needs as well. And prediction is robust, supporting exceptional packet loss and smoothing over latency concerns for player movement.

Even Godot doesn't support multiplayer networking out of the box: you have to write it yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?

#60

Not a full-time developer, but I have been struggling with developing my first game a lot as a side project next to a regular day-job. It's already in a kind-of beta state ( https://yare.io ), but still far from finished and would love to be part of such group!

Hey, I've had my eye on your game for awhile! To be honest it's really similar to ideas I've had in the past. I've always like the idea of programming based games, but I've found I no longer have the energy for them outside of work.
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