Devs who released your game for free on steam, how much has it really helped you in gaining an audience ? |
- Devs who released your game for free on steam, how much has it really helped you in gaining an audience ?
- “Don’t Make Your First Game a Stupidly Big Project” – I went against sound advice and took 4 years to make a game... was it worth it?
- How much money my first game made in its first month on Steam. A lot of stats about the launch.
- Hi, I noticed some design tricks in God of War that attempt to deliver a little more open/less confining linear experience for the players, so I wrote a video article about it. Maybe you'll like this..
- How To Set Up A Dedicated Multiplayer Server - Unity PlayFab
- Ninja Theory's New Project Pushes Video Game Realism To New Heights
- The Second UNIGINE Community Online Hackathon
- Here's some cute lil' ghosts made with Blender and Unity.
- Count points, HIGH SCORE and display UI in your game - Unity tutorial
- Dear Artists, how do you make your models to look unique?
- I was the only one using Godot at a local GameJam and it won Best Design. I made a post-mortem video with tips and thoughts on what I learned from the experience.
- How is it like to work at a game dev studio compared to being a solo/indie game developer?
- How much math to make a simple game?
- Some help for everyone struggling with UE4 Grass Optimization, I hope it comes handy.
- What are the limitations of rotoscoping and character customization?
- How to blend textures in a grid line Oxygen not Included?
- Underrated video - how to market your game with the creator of "Nuclear throne"
- Working conditions in the gaming industry: what's your experience?
- Hi guys I've been making my own game and I decided to document the journey, would mean the world to me if you could go check it out
- This is a little video iv made, for a start of a devlog, this is the start again sayed, and it can only get better. i would apriciate if you could give it a watch even a short one. Anyway have a great day :3
- Game Jam for UK University Students with a prize pool of £5,000 open now!
- Need help creating a roller skating controller in unity
- Any YouTube channels that go over the "tried and true" way to develop various genres? Something that explains the development in the big picture without delving down into the specifics.
- Does anyone know how to make a mobile otome game?
| Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:23 AM PST I see a lot of Devs releasing their games ( hobby projects or actual commercial quality games ) for free on steam and I guess it's primarily for gaining an audience. Though if anyone who's done this could really share how much it really helped them in gaining an audience or if it helped them in any other way, maybe you could share here please ? XD [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:56 AM PST [text is taken from gamasutra and pasted below for convenience. Original article: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnWatmuff/20210119/376232/Dont_Make_Your_First_Game_a_Stupidly_Big_Project__The_Benefits_of_Going_Against_Sound_Advice_and_Making_a_Game_in_4_Years.php] It was a major exhale to see my open-world, galactic survival strategy game Lilith Odyssey finally make it to the Steam store on January 8, after 4.19 years in development. I am part of a two-developer studio called Chaystar Unlimited, and we have been working on our game for about 4.19 years, according to my therapeutic excel spreadsheets. We worked on the game in our spare time while holding two ordinary office jobs. Our game has now been featured in a variety of publications and after so much time in development, the attention has been charming and thrilling! I want to talk about the bright sides of being naïve and stubbornly curious. Now knowing the extensive struggle that was this project, would we do it all over again? It's a complicated time to answer that question without having the hindsight of sales data to determine whether making this game was "worth it." Regardless, in case you are as obsessive/naïve as we were, here's what we learned. We Learned to Relax Effectively and Appreciate Small Progress To give a sense of what 4 years of game development looks like, you can see my source-code commits (on GitHub) — a steady mix of progress and breaks. It may sound counter-intuitive, but I learned to take lots of breaks. Naturally, I'm an obsessive coder that wants to stay up until 3 a.m. to see my vision come to life. Unfortunately, this is not sustainable, and also clouds my judgement. I tend to *not* reflect on my work while in this state. I still think it's great fun to "enter the zone" — this process might even channel some deeper artistic output. But between work, countless weekends of game dev, and even small chunks of progress on weeknights, I begin to simultaneously burn out and become anxious. So to keep moving forward, I generally have to take a step back, focus on "life things," and allow my mind to wander. These relaxation moments are good for mental health, but they also allow me time to think about my work – do I like what I've made so far, would I enjoy this feature? Personally, I found that the key to relaxing effectively is being kind to yourself, allowing your mind and body to recover in a way that is right for you. I did the best/most-focused work when I took time or even weekends off to play golf or invest time in parts of life that make me feel good. Days, weeks, or even months: it's okay to take a break, because it's only a break. Additionally, never begrudge progress. Even if something takes an exceptionally long time, as long as you complete *something*, you are now further along and in a better position than you previously were. Working in a large bureaucracy for most of my professional life has helped me realize this — big changes happen slowly and are often the product of many tiny bits of progress. Take what the world gives you! A Stupidly Large Scope Helped Us Learn Deeply Admittedly, Lilith Odyssey has an enormous scope — a very stupid (hasty) decision made early in the process. There are more than 1000 planets to explore, 16 space ships to customize with various parts, 20 alien creatures, procedural characters, procedural buildings, space stations, galactic monuments, and an in-game radio with original songs, ads and DJ segments. And honestly, perhaps the game didn't *need* all of this. We just felt it would be "cool to have." But to have all that, staying motivated was a big challenge. It wasn't until roughly 1.5 years of dev, amidst several growing pains, where we thought, "Uggh, why did we choose to make this game so unwieldy!?" But we kept working. What helped was recognizing the development of our skills (i.e. better visuals, better game play, better music) and knowing when our growth was enough to hit game quality markers we could live with (not necessarily the best we could do). We were aware of all the advice suggesting that a large 3D game is very difficult to complete — but we went for it anyway! By taking on the challenges of a large scope, we quickly became better learners. I would argue that the ability to learn new things is a skill you can work on, a skill that pays huge dividends in artistic confidence. And part of this skill is recognizing when you've learned enough to achieve a solid version of your vision (not its perfected form). For example, aesthetically, our game features a lowpoly/toon-shaded style that looks more playful than technically advanced. I'm sure that other talented devs can do much more. But for our own purposes, this was a sweet spot between looking good enough and moving forward. Learn, make it work, move on. Instead of minimizing the scope of the game to fit our skills, we challenged ourselves and hit depths of quality that we felt we needed. We deepened our skills in areas of coding, sound design, 3D modeling, animation, world building, and marketing to an extent that a smaller project would not have merited. The pay off? We believe we made an explorable, immersive, open-world galaxy. Low poly, sure, but we hit the scope. We realized an artistic vision, and explored new territory that we otherwise may have avoided until a later time. So, if you find yourself facing a large body of work, my advice would be: give it a shot so long as you are prepared to learn. If you try to minimalize your ideas, you may destroy the uniqueness of your art or miss out on finding the inner voice of your work. It takes time to find good art within yourself! We Overcame Fear of Difficulty By Surrendering Certain Battles When we started our project, I had never programmed a 3D game before. I am an experienced software engineer with more than 10 years of experience in a non-gaming software industry. But prior to this game, working in 3D greatly intimidated me! I had consistently defaulted to making simpler 2D games. In college, I nearly failed a graphics programming course. I overcame this specific fear by reading tons of articles about 3D development online, acquainting myself with the proper tools, and repeatedly failing (more on that below). The grander challenge to overcome, however, is the fear of difficulty (intimidation). As my game dev companion has said, it is the voice of self-doubt in all of our heads that says "this is too hard for you to complete." Early on, my game dev partner motivated me to imagine our game as a 3D game. I was extremely hesitant, and even thought it impossible, but I gave the idea a chance. From there on, the two of us developed an internal culture of fearless problem solving. We were committed to learning anything we needed to learn to complete the project. We were ready to fight any battle — but also willing to tactically surrender battles that were far beyond our skills. The possibility of "falling short" never leaves the mind. Especially in the face of consistent technical hurdles that seem to limit our vision. There were many sobering moments for us where we realized that our technical limitations stood in the way of creating a feature or aesthetic we otherwise would have wanted. Sometimes, we could learn our way through the problem. Other times, we backed down and had to re-concept elements of the game. We Grew Used to Failure Our failures have been frequent and massive. For every one thing that went right, I would say that four things went wrong. We learned to accept the failures, identify a different approach, and move forward with a plan. Not all of our ideas panned out – for example, we had a feature where rescue crafts would pick you up if you were stranded on a planet. We ended up deciding that this feature, while super-cool, was not necessary for the larger game play and its exclusion would not affect game enjoyment. We had to give up on various other concepts, and we had to recreate some content with different styles — until we found something that worked well enough. Perfection was not the goal. Our reasonable satisfaction was. Ultimately, for a small team like ours, game development is an iterative crafting process that requires a balance of rework and acceptance. Link Up With Others It's important to acknowledge that embarking on a years-long project was made easier by having a trusted creative partner. "Frodo didn't get the ring to Mordor alone, after all, even when he insisted on it." — words from my game dev partner. When others are involved, there is more accountability and commitment to see your part of the work through. And when your creative energies are thinning, sometimes all it takes is seeing what your team member has done to stoke your own passion for the project. For solo devs, I'd recommend working with artists – whether that's for cover art, sound tracks, or asset modeling – to keep things exciting. Not only can you rely on skills better than your own in certain development areas, but getting quality input from others raises the bar for your own work. In the best case scenarios, there's a symbiotic cycle of great work inspiring other great work that inspires other great work. Was It Worth Working on a Game for Four Years? Yes (but you have to finish it). We are currently polishing Lilith Odyssey and marketing our title as we look ahead to an early Access launch. By many accounts, we have no idea how successful the game will be from a sales standpoint. So, why was the struggle still worth it? We better understand our capacities to learn. Our weak spots are animation and rigging, which we look forward to addressing in future work. But we are not intimidated by the difficulty or challenge of trying something new and complex.
I'd be happy to address any of the points above or answer any questions about hunkering down on a project for 4 years. I attempted to write an article with genuine perspectives about gamed dev -- the same kinds of discussions and prompts I see in this subreddit that have helped me along my journey so far. Cheers all and best of luck on your work!! [link] [comments] | ||
| How much money my first game made in its first month on Steam. A lot of stats about the launch. Posted: 18 Jan 2021 09:05 PM PST
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| Posted: 19 Jan 2021 06:46 AM PST
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| How To Set Up A Dedicated Multiplayer Server - Unity PlayFab Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:30 AM PST
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| Ninja Theory's New Project Pushes Video Game Realism To New Heights Posted: 19 Jan 2021 11:37 AM PST
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| The Second UNIGINE Community Online Hackathon Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:41 AM PST Create a 3D game (or application) in 72 hours - it's real! On January 28-31, 2021, participate in the Second UNIGINE Community Online Hackathon - create a 3D game (or application), win, and get valuable prizes! If you do not have a complete team yet - it does not matter, after registration, you will be able to join other programmers and 3D-artists. Winning teams are defined in the following categories:
The winners will receive annual UNIGINE 2 Engineering and UNIGINE 2 Community Pro licenses, Steam Wallet Codes and other nice digital gifts. Full hackathon info: https://hackathon.unigine.com/ P.S. How to register?
[link] [comments] | ||
| Here's some cute lil' ghosts made with Blender and Unity. Posted: 19 Jan 2021 09:37 AM PST
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| Count points, HIGH SCORE and display UI in your game - Unity tutorial Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:37 AM PST
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| Dear Artists, how do you make your models to look unique? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:31 AM PST I have been learning modeling and texturing for over a year. I compare my models to other artists and they don't look that good. For example, suppose you need to model a barrel. What are you doing to keep it from looking like many other barrels? Do you sharpen the edges and make the model not look too perfect? Do you use pbr materials? Or are you spending a lot of time in the substance painter by applying a lot of layers? I would like to improve my models that I create in a blender and zbrush. Do you do more than the methods mentioned above? Send me any models of yours and tell me how you do it. Thank you in advance [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 19 Jan 2021 11:14 AM PST
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| How is it like to work at a game dev studio compared to being a solo/indie game developer? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 08:50 AM PST I'm an indie game dev working on my game for close to 3 years now on my free time. So, I obviously don't have the kind of experience and knowledge that one would at a studio. I'm really curious, how is it like to work full time on game development? Do you learn a lot everyday? I believe working with a team you must be learning all sorts of game plays, strategies, designs, UX stuff, target game audience and sorts of things for various category of games How do you spend your day fully dissolved into the world of games? And my favorite question, how is like to work on some of the most successful and loved games like Far Cry Series, GTA series, WOW series, Assassin's Creed etc ? Hoping at least some of the people in this community might have worked on one of these :) [link] [comments] | ||
| How much math to make a simple game? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 12:05 PM PST I apologize for my grammar and punctuation as well as my overall lack of knowledge on this subject so please excuse my ignorance I'm thinking about getting a better pc to start developing games I'm young still in high school and have about 2 more years till I'm out of that hell hole I'm great with marketing in the sixth grade all the way back in middle school I made a presentation that helped one of my teachers friend get his idea pitched but I have one downfall my absolutely abysmal math skills I mean absolutely terrible I can do arithmetic and simple geometry and vectors and that's about it I of course want to improve and will do so but I have to ask how good at math do you have to be to make a game? Of course the process would be longer for someone like me which I'm fine with but can I really succeed like this? [link] [comments] | ||
| Some help for everyone struggling with UE4 Grass Optimization, I hope it comes handy. Posted: 19 Jan 2021 07:03 AM PST
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| What are the limitations of rotoscoping and character customization? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 09:26 AM PST I want to make a 2d top-down game in the style of GTA 2, Darkwood, or Hotline Miami, however I don't know much about drawing, and getting proficient in art can take years, so I investigated and read that rotoscoping animations might be useful to reduce my workload. However, one of the features I have planned for the game is the ability to equip weapons, clothing, or armor that can be seen in the game character's sprite, while keeping detailed animations for walking, reloading guns, peeking around corners, etc. I've come to realize that the way to do this is not self-evident, and probably not simple. The only thing that comes to my mind is spriting animations for the same rotoscoped movements with each possible clothing combination, which would leave me with an unholy amount of work, considering i'd like to be able to add new items to the game without having to adjust every single sprite and animation. The games I've mentioned above don't allow you to change anything in your player sprite, so something tells me that it isn't possible, and I'd need to decide between "customizable" sprites (dependent on whatever loot you find at the moment) and nice looking rotoscoped animations. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I hope I am. -Another question: Could one rotoscope 3D animations and models bought from the asset store and use them in a 2D project? Has anyone done this? PD: I know about skeleton animation but I don't know if I could make that look good in this context. [link] [comments] | ||
| How to blend textures in a grid line Oxygen not Included? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 07:19 AM PST Check this out 90 (760×428) (rockpapershotgun.com) The tiles in the game are dynamically generated and the texture of different elements (dirt, sand, etc) they blend with each other seamlessly, when they are next to each other they can overlap To replicate this behavior (preferably in Godot) how would I approach the problem? Anything would help, thanks. [link] [comments] | ||
| Underrated video - how to market your game with the creator of "Nuclear throne" Posted: 19 Jan 2021 10:47 AM PST
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| Working conditions in the gaming industry: what's your experience? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 05:51 AM PST I am a journalist from germany and I am working on a podcast episode about crunch and working conditions in the gaming industry in general. I need help from you guys:) Are you happy with the working conditions? What has to change? How did overtime influence your physical and mental health? Thank you so much in advance! [link] [comments] | ||
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| Game Jam for UK University Students with a prize pool of £5,000 open now! Posted: 19 Jan 2021 02:26 AM PST Hi everyone! NSE (National Student Esports) & Barclays are hosting the Games Innovation Challenge, a game jam for UK university students. From the 14th January, participants will have nine weeks to create the most innovative game and for those wanting to get competitive, submissions will be judged by a panel of industry experts with a prize pool of £5,000 for the best entries.
Full details & enter here: https://itch.io/jam/games-innovation-challenge [link] [comments] | ||
| Need help creating a roller skating controller in unity Posted: 19 Jan 2021 12:43 PM PST Could anyone teach or give me a well detailed guide on how to create a rigidbody controller for a skating game. [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 19 Jan 2021 12:12 PM PST When starting to develop in a genre I haven't developed before, I'm concerned that while my method may work, there might be a more common method that I'm unaware of. For example, explaining that the most common way to develop a fighting game is (as far as I know) to have colliders attached to a fist or leg that collide with the opponent's colliders and trigger some Damage method. [link] [comments] | ||
| Does anyone know how to make a mobile otome game? Posted: 19 Jan 2021 11:56 AM PST I love otome games. I love dating sims, gacha games and Otome games. These games are always fun and I've always wanted to make my own otome game, but I have no idea how. I'm not going to make the game anytime soon but I'd like to understand how to start making these kinds of games. And the be more specific, the kinds of games that I want to make are mobile otome games like Obey Me, Mystic Messenger, Dangerous Fellows, and even A3(even though it is not an otome game). It's very hard for me to find softwares where I can makes these types of games for phones. Honestly, I don't mind having to make theses games on a computer or something but I would love to make these games mobile. I also have to knowledge of how to code either. So, if anyone has any recommendations of what softwares I can use to make these games, please recommend some and how to use them. And I just want to say one more time that I am just trying to learn how these programs work and understand it a little so I can eventually make these games myself. And to whoever read this far, thank you.✨ [link] [comments] |
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