Treat it as a hobby, not a means to a payday. It's your free time. If you're not having fun, why do it?
Finishing my first game while working full-time
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Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#72I dont care about finishing side projects. They exist to keep my mind occupied or give it a break from other stuff. Thats it.
That's the right mentality. Thank you!
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#73I have done something similar - building a game while working full-time. But my approach was the complete opposite of this article. No real process, no plan, no scrum method, not even a trello board to track progress and todos. Personally, I enjoyed the "fun" of it being very spontaneous, yet still passionate. I didn't write to-dos and tasks to be done, because there is always something to be done. And intuitively yo…
Your game looks like a lot of fun, and the concept is really cool. Would you mind telling us more about your process and the technical aspects?
There is one last major piece to be done for the game (now I’m no longer working alone on it) after which I want to write something a bit more detailed about the journey.
But on the high-level — my full-time job is interaction design. Throughout my career I used JavaScript a lot for building interactive design prototypes and it’s the only language I know, so when I had the idea for Yare.io (heavily inspired by MIT’s Battle Code), vanilla JavaScript (and Node for server) was the only thing I could use (didn’t know any libraries or frameworks)
The project was really just a “problem” to be solved. Use JavaScript to move basic geometric shapes on a canvas in a 1 versus 1 battle. It needed to have a UI, rendering of a game state, authentication, event queue, basic ruleset, … None of this really required any tracker or rigorous process. I know what needs to be done, because I’m literally sitting in front it, seeing what needs to be done. It didn’t need a “plan”, because it didn’t matter when each piece of the puzzle was made. Just, whatever I was in the mood for that day.
I think the principle of simplicity (as cliche as it sounds) – trying to keep everything (especially the foundations) as basic as possible – was really the main thing that allowed me to finish the game.
I don't think I could enjoy it as much as I did with some scrum method, brainstorming bullshit, or anything reminding me of work.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#74Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for…
Out of curiosity: which game are/were you working on, if you can share that? Thanks!
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#75I 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 (…
> 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.
It's the same when you get back home after work though.
> 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.
I personally have 5 "free" hours after work, which includes time to do shopping, eat, exercise, cleaning, all that sort of stuff. It's not a lot but it's not 0. That's with 1h30 of commute each day.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - In the middle I tried to implement a full scale map editor. I managed to build a simple yet working one, but dropped the project once I realized that it needs a lot of work to write my own GUI (back then I'm using C++ and SDL2). Sharing my slightly unrelated experience, but Tiled2D is a nice piece of software to achieve this. I've used it for one of my personal project, where I wanted to make a digital adaptation…
Thanks, I knew about Tiled at the time. The project was kinda of a learning project so I didn't bother to use an external tool. Now that I look back, that's probably how I approach all projects (not work-related): I just want to learn how it works superficially, and once I do I'd lose motivation and drop the project eventually. Very nasty mindset I have to admit...
It's not a bad mindset at all. "Finishing" can be a goal and so can "learn a new thing in an enjoyable way". Sometimes I write code just because I get the urge to create a nifty data structure. Who cares if no one will ever use it or look at it again? I enjoyed making it.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#77I've done it with a full time job and two kids[0]. Here's my $0.02
For me I had to constantly reign in the scope to be a minimum viable game. I would let my imagination run wild and come up with all these grand ideas for an overarching plot, etc. But the project gets really hard to finish after you've done the fun bits like getting the main gameplay mechanics implemented and there's a big stretch of grunt work ahead ("the last 20% takes 80% of the work"). It's easy to let it languish and never ship/release. That's when you need to re-evaluate what it takes to achieve a minimum viable game and ruthlessly reign in the scope.
Tell yourself "I can implement all my other grand ideas if this minimum viable game proves successful" - and you can. And if it isn't very successful, then you can move onto the next project/idea.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 (…
> 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. It's the same when you get back home after work though. > Also, this works only…
> It's the same when you get back home after work though.
I would argue it's even easier in the evening, for sure. The point of doing it in the morning is that your brain is fresher; I'm just saying that might still not be enough to start.
> I personally have 5 "free" hours after work
Yeah, but it's after work, when you're inevitably more tired. One could push it by going to bed earlier and waking up at 5am, but it risks becoming unsociable.
Also, I expect you (and OP, and a lot of folks in this thread) are 20-somethings with no attachments and no family. Those things tend to suck every bit of spare time you have, for years on end.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#79How did Chrome know that this article belonged to my gamedev bookmarks folder when I bookmarked the page?
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#80Jason, if you're reading this: I loved your post but I can't find an RSS or Atom feed for your blog.