Pixelart Tutorial - Rocks |
- Pixelart Tutorial - Rocks
- What I have learned from five years of hobbyist dev: if you want anything other than fun, you're doing it wrong
- Earnings and Statistics from my 4th Android/WebGL Game - "Mirkowanie"
- Get Feedback and a Bit of Exposure for Your Game.
- Royalty Free Music for your projects
- Screenshot Saturday #366 - Wild Colors
- OpenGL Scene Renderer/Editor Design
- Motivation: Experience of Participating in a Game Dev Competition
- Coin-Op Kingdom - Announcement Trailer! (Our first game)
- Some resource rules I created for strategy games
- How to properly fix out of bounds bugs.
- Whats a calculation you want to do in games that might make it more fun but is too slow?
- How to get started learning game art?
- OH so new
- Determinism in verifying whether someone actually completed the level
- Any 3DS Max user thinking about learning Blender ? I am doing that myself and I am working on a series to teach along the way as well, hope you will find this useful, this is part 1 which I have just finished.
- Musician looking for a project to work on! Soundcloud link to my work:
- Creating Randomize Tiles for Unity 2D Tilemaps
- Program Your Own 2D Game Engine with a Professional Indie Dev
- INTERGALATIC BREAKER (gameplay)
- The Do’s and Don’t’s of Making a Survival Horror Game (1)
- Workaround for VS profiler crash after installing Meltdown/Spectre security patch
Posted: 03 Feb 2018 05:27 AM PST |
Posted: 03 Feb 2018 08:32 AM PST A very, very common attitude towards hobbyist gamedev among us here: I like making games, and I have a steady job, so I'm gonna make game in my spare time but it would be nice to make some money from it too, right? Wrong. I held this mentality for five straight years until I realized that be it money, fame ("I want to make myself known so I can better market my next game"), or maybe just sense of accomplishment ("Look I did this! So proud of myself and you should be too!"), if you are looking for any of these, you might as well put that spare time into your day career development, read some books, get certified, do some work that takes you to the next level, and it'll reward you a lot in terms of money, fame and sense of accomplishment. Headline: most times you are way more likely to be rewarded from day job than from selling games. For me, I'm getting more of those rewards each day from my career and I don't quite need to rely on game dev to get them any more. So we should think about being a hobbyist more carefully. I came to realize that hobby is not just a hobby. It's actually something you put blood and sweat into for a return, and you need to expect the right kind of return or you'll be disappointed. If it's not money fame or accomplishment, what is it then? One word: fun. You are making a game that you really want to play, and be able to continue to play like how you played the same Call of Duty MW2 for almost a decade. Or, maybe you are making a world which you want to escape to, and even after doing all the things you can do in the game you still want to just hang out in the game. For example, I once made a game where I just flew through a network of canyons. At the time I didn't have any other features in it, no working enemies, just fly. I could immerse myself for hours flying around and every time I had to pull myself out of it so I can code more features. I believe that's the best return for a hobbyist. So what about marketing? What if you made a great game and nobody plays it? Believe or not, it's actually ok if not a lot of people play your game (unless, of course, it's a multiplayer game because you need someone to play with). Don't get yourself trapped in the desire for fame and approval from others. What you should be looking forward to is watching others playing your game - it'll be the most rewarding experience during your game making career. So just do that. Stop making websites, posting boring tweets, or spending your precious time writing blogs. Find some people who may enjoy your game and ask them to record gameplay videos. Then watch them, watch how the players yell in surprise, moan in frustration, let out sighs of relief after a tough battle. When you watch them, it's like seeing your child winning a gold medal, all that hard work you put in it was worthwhile. The last point I want to make is that hobbyist game dev is an art. And I'm very serious about it, I would compare a hobby game to the work of renaissance artists. Not that your hobby game is famous like theirs, but think about the times where you are polishing and refining your game. Fixing every little bug. Listening to critiques and finding the best solutions. Some say the polishing stage is the most tedious part of a game's development, and that it takes 90% of time. I say, for hobbyists, the polishing stage is the best part. Did you ever feel that you just can't stop polishing your game? If you did, congratulations, you are an artist just like Da Vinci and Michelangelo. The whole point of art, as opposed to manufacturing, is the process of spending time to iterate and iterate and improve and improve. So if you are dead serious about being a hobbyist game dev, you should be doing it for the sake of art. So to recap, I believe the rewards you should be pursuing as a hobbyist gamedev should be:
And not:
P.S. I know I sound like a loser, like if I actually made 1 million from hobbyist gamedev, I would probably post "What I have learned from five years of hobbyist dev: you can be a millionaire!" [link] [comments] |
Earnings and Statistics from my 4th Android/WebGL Game - "Mirkowanie" Posted: 03 Feb 2018 05:24 AM PST Hello, it's time for statistics and earnings from my 4th Android/WebGL Game, "Mirkowanie" is idle clicker, it's mostly a special game, because it was made for Polish website community (but not only players from Poland play it), it's specific, so I was not looking into a lot of players + earnings (Poland got very low earnings from ads) I'm just 19 year old newbie, I couldn't sleep, I had weak up at 3-4AM and I started to develop "Mirkowanie". It was fun to develop it ;p Just a lot of work in analyzing data (imagine checking website data from 2005-2018 year). Here are statistics: Can't post image here, so there is link to images with statistics: Game got downloaded 3451x (19x Amazon Store and 3432x Google Play), Amazon Store is that low, because downloads was mostly from Poland. Game got 26k game plays (online). Top download (one day) was 1900x times, I got 500x testers in one day. Earnings? $36.82 (Unity Ads, video ads, can't withdraw it). $29.62 (Kongregate, we got payed from game plays, can withdraw it ). $17.56 Chartboost (ads that are shown in-game, sometimes video ads (if Unity ads fail), can't withdraw it ). So my pure "earning" is $29.62 (can withdraw it). So was not worth it, but that's not problem, my games also don't got IAPs + most of the players was from Poland (low cash from ads), but it was still fun to develop it, I mean it was crazy idea ;p I mean from one side I got 1900x downloads in one day, it's big number from me, but to be honest, for gamedev business it's nothing, but wait, for me it's still 1900x players (my first game got 600x Downloads in ~1 year). Also, fun fact, I was top1 new Free casual game in Poland. Also, ~25% downloads comes from Xiaomi devices. So in last week i got 14.3k sessions, max time spend in-game (one day, max, total ) was 13.85M seconds (~160 days). It's 80 minutes for each user, average 2.5 session per user. Game name is "Mirkowanie - Ilde Money Clicker" Also, if any1 wish to check out my other earnings/statistics from other games, there are all on Reddit + I always post them on my Twitter/Facebook (same as my name on Reddit). Also, right now I'm working on space shooter with own story, we get new ships, buy upgrades, we got side and main quests and a lot more. It got story made by me + Original sounds, that's some nice music (not from game), but made by the same person: Images from the game are also on images with statistics. [link] [comments] |
Get Feedback and a Bit of Exposure for Your Game. Posted: 03 Feb 2018 08:46 AM PST I'd like to help you out and contribute to this awesome community. That's why I decided to play your indie games on my YouTube Channel, even if they are still work in progress. It's a pretty small channel and I'm a relatively new and young dev, so you'll have to take my feedback with a grain of salt. Also the exposure you get is absolutely not massive, but enough to get some valuable feedback from me and my community. If you create something awesome, I want you to succeed and I want to be part of it!
In case you're interested... Here is my channel: YT Channel Here are the rules:
At the moment there are so little submissions, that it's almost guaranteed I'll be able to play your game. The first episode went out yesterday and I played Riftwalker by PlanB: Riftwalker - Jonas Plays Your Game #001 Yes, there is obviously a bit of selfish reasoning behind this post. :D Firstly I can use your games as content for my channel and secondly I get to promote my channel here. I still hope I'll be able to help you out, even if it's just a little. As I've said: I really want to be part of your success! Cheers. [link] [comments] |
Royalty Free Music for your projects Posted: 02 Feb 2018 05:25 PM PST Hey everyone! In need of music for that next big project you're working on? Check out some of these royalty free tracks for the perfect background music, free of charge! If you like what you hear, feel free to browse my archives for more royalty free music: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ7Xmyu6eXpJfkEoMtRMv1w?view_as=subscriber [link] [comments] |
Screenshot Saturday #366 - Wild Colors Posted: 02 Feb 2018 08:01 PM PST Share your progress since last time in a form of screenshots, animations and videos. Tell us all about your project and make us interested! The hashtag for Twitter is of course #screenshotsaturday. Note: Using url shorteners is discouraged as it may get you caught by Reddit's spam filter. Bonus question: Give one game (or game series) that you wish was more popular. [link] [comments] |
OpenGL Scene Renderer/Editor Design Posted: 03 Feb 2018 12:09 PM PST |
Motivation: Experience of Participating in a Game Dev Competition Posted: 03 Feb 2018 12:05 PM PST |
Coin-Op Kingdom - Announcement Trailer! (Our first game) Posted: 03 Feb 2018 11:43 AM PST Hey guys! First time posting so hello to you all! I've been on my placement year this year whilst studying games design, and myself and 7 other people have teamed up to bring you Coin-Op Kingdom. We have done absolutely everything from branding, game development, marketing etc and for us all it was the first time taking an idea to full production! So if you're interested please do watch it and I hope you enjoy! [link] [comments] |
Some resource rules I created for strategy games Posted: 03 Feb 2018 11:16 AM PST I was thinking about potential resource rules for strategy games and wanted to share what I thought up. I themed them around "4X" style games, but I think they're easily modifiable for other types of strategy games. I would like to know what others think.
[link] [comments] |
How to properly fix out of bounds bugs. Posted: 03 Feb 2018 08:45 AM PST |
Whats a calculation you want to do in games that might make it more fun but is too slow? Posted: 03 Feb 2018 07:04 AM PST Example: training a neuralnet during gameplay. Aparapi is laggy (not caching the compiling or copying too often) but LWJGL can call opencl hundreds of times per second. Example: raytracing, but probably no good solution for that. [link] [comments] |
How to get started learning game art? Posted: 03 Feb 2018 09:56 AM PST I've been doing game programming for years and I want to try and learn how to make my own game art. I'm thinking of starting with voxel art since it seems the most approachable. My only strategy is to try and recreate voxel versions of normal 3d models, trying my best to pay attention to lighting/color choices, etc. I'm hoping that this will allow me to intuitively learn the basics, but I'm wondering if I should go about this with a more principled way. Anyone have any suggestions on how to approach learning game art before I just go and brute force it by trial and error? Thanks! [link] [comments] |
Posted: 03 Feb 2018 12:40 PM PST With this being my first post to reddit i figured i would introduce myself seeing how i will be spending a lot of time here. Downloading unreal as i am typing this. Building a computer in the next couple of weeks. Read the FAQs and getting started guide. Have semi straight forward idea on what i want my game to be( i.e. time period, tech, story, side mission). Thought for many years that I wanted to turn those idea into a book but as you will come to find out that I fail at the English language in many. I am also rambling on to insure that i reach the min. 40 word limit( i think i am there) Programming experience: html css java and php.....from the year 2005 when i helped my dad with his websites So i will some this up with after reading/skimming through 1 google worth of pages/videos of how to start guides(which most of them say the same thing) is there any advise from the more experienced dev....well more experienced then my....i have about 30 sec of development time under my belt . [link] [comments] |
Determinism in verifying whether someone actually completed the level Posted: 03 Feb 2018 12:36 PM PST Games like Mario Maker or Geometry Dash (most likely) have you send your inputs and some random seed, and their servers run the game with your inputs to verify whether or not you've actually completed the level. But this kind of approach fails when using floating-point numbers, as the calculations might be different on the server and the user's computer, causing drastic desync. Is there some fixed-point physics library for guaranteed determinism or do I have to implement it myself? (Note: I'm using C/C++) [link] [comments] |
Posted: 03 Feb 2018 12:10 PM PST |
Musician looking for a project to work on! Soundcloud link to my work: Posted: 03 Feb 2018 11:47 AM PST |
Creating Randomize Tiles for Unity 2D Tilemaps Posted: 03 Feb 2018 11:42 AM PST |
Program Your Own 2D Game Engine with a Professional Indie Dev Posted: 02 Feb 2018 02:37 PM PST Hey everyone! My name is Michael Hicks. I've been working as a full-time independent game developer for the last eight years. I put out a game called Pillar for PlayStation 4 and Steam that was played by over 320,000 players worldwide, and I'm about to launch a new game called The Path of Motus for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam. I handle all programming, design, music and marketing for my games and my friend Goncalo Antunes creates the art. Last year I started a Youtube channel with the goal of giving back. I'm self-taught so I felt called to contribute to the ecosystem that helped me learn. I started with an Intro To C# Programming course aimed at beginners; the feedback was pretty encouraging so I just released a new series where we make an entire 2D game engine from scratch. We actually recreate the engine I'm using for my game The Path of Motus. At the end you can use the engine to create almost any 2D game you can imagine. Also, thanks to the power of FNA and MonoGame, it can run on a ton of sweet platforms! The code we write can easily run on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, Mac, Linux and more. You can start watching the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3wErD7ZIp_DtsTKoouVCxu81UQkI9VZL I'd say the skill level required for this is somewhat intermediate. If you're an absolute beginner or feel lost during the series, I'd recommend you start with my Intro To C# Programming series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3wErD7ZIp_Ah6d4--3JWQZ_x5lwrBQZi It was designed to perfectly lead up to the engine videos. Finally, if you'd like to hear a non-technical talk about my story as a developer and how I taught myself programming, I made a video about that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p9LftUgi1s Thanks everyone, I hope the videos are useful and you learn a ton! [link] [comments] |
INTERGALATIC BREAKER (gameplay) Posted: 03 Feb 2018 11:06 AM PST |
The Do’s and Don’t’s of Making a Survival Horror Game (1) Posted: 03 Feb 2018 10:49 AM PST |
Workaround for VS profiler crash after installing Meltdown/Spectre security patch Posted: 03 Feb 2018 04:18 AM PST |
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