My big ass list of shit to do before launch |
- My big ass list of shit to do before launch
- Too old for game dev?
- A year full-time indie also with self-investment. Lessons learned
- Totally legit way to test impact direction
- How is music of this quality made?
- How to Write a Game Design Document Your Team Can Actually Use
- Unity Animation Statemachine and Single Source of truth
- How to export a 3ds Max CAT rig to Unity (my first tutorial)
- Issue 1 of Wireframe is now available to download as a free PDF.
- Unreal Engine 4.21 Released
- What Makes Game Design Hard?
- Demo as a means of marketing
- Modding to Developing
- Unity Job System: Safe and Easy Multithreading in Unity
- Item and Inventory System - Unity Tutorial - Refactoring (Long Video)
- Podcast about Blizzcon from a game devs point of view
- What are your personal methods for making your code Less Janky?
- Hey guys, I'm doing user research for a small stealth game. If you have a spare minute, taking this short 9 question survey would be a huge help to my team and I! Also, if you have any thoughts on stealth games you'd like to share, I'd love to hear and discuss your thoughts in the comments.
- Working for a Company vs Yourself
- What are you guys frustrated about?
- I'm having trouble deciding on what form of this Golem Sword I want to use for my game. Based on the little Golem in the first picture. This will be the level one version of the sword.
- Examples of XBOX/PS games that were in high in quality and decent in sales and cost under 10 million?
- Ideas on how to bring depth to an open world game and make it feel more organic.
- 5 Useful Tips for Promoting Paid Mobile Games
- Our new game Down to Hell will be available on November 30th in Early Access. What do you guys think about it?
| My big ass list of shit to do before launch Posted: 08 Nov 2018 05:06 AM PST A week ago some people asked about my list of stuff to do before launch in this thread. Sorry about the delay, been busy, but here it is. This is just my list, it may be wrong, i know jack shit about releasing, but its what ive been collecting. Feel free to add anything that you have collected over the years if you think its important :) MAKE A GOOD GAME Dont half ass it, do your best! Obligatory self promotion Get yourself a website Create a newsletter/email signup list, im using sender mailchimp is good too, but it doesnt allow as many free subscribers and starts costing a lot Make a presskit This one by vlambeer is good Make a good trailer, Guide for Trailers When talking about your game, everyone talks about the elevator pitch, but i think The parking lot pitch is more relevant today Contact press The IndieGamesPlus Guide to Contacting Games Press Big List of Indie Video Game Sites Big List of Video Game Sites Big List of genre specific Video Game Sites Contact Youtubers Start here on How to Email YouTubers About Your Game Big List of YouTubers Another list of Youtubers Social media Schedule messages to your social networks via Twittimer to save yourself time posting all hours of the day Marketing size guide for social media presence Use Google Alerts to know when people are talking about your stuff Marketing tool to create a buzz for launch day, one of them is Nouncy There have been some success in using discord to market your game, check out this video to learn more Use Twitch to stream your game/game development Mixer is a great alternative to twitch with far lower barrier to entry to get noticed streaming your game Reddit is your friend... Use reddit advertising and post ads to specific subs related to your game, if you have a space game, post to r/space r/scifi etc as well as gaming subreddits Dont have money? How to post about your game to reddit without being flamed or deleted GIFs are the key to success Imgur/gfycat marketing tips Dont just advertise, get involved with reddit and make sure you hit the all important 90/10 ratio. places to post r/gamedev screenshot saturday r/indiegaming r/indiegames r/games r/gaming r/pcgaming r/pcmasterrace r/gamephysics Dont forget Good post on color blind accessibility Good post on localising Good post on why Steam tags are important If you are releasing this year, avoid some big game releases If your game isnt feeling 100% check out this video on juicing up your gameplay The reason for this big ass list is so that all your stars align and you get enough eyes on your game to hit new and trending on steam. If you want to know why that is important, check out... More than Luck: Strategies for Success on Steam which talks about the all important new and trending list that you have to hit on your first day or else die a slow death Edit: Excuse the vulgarity of the title, part of being Australian :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 04:31 AM PST I am 45 years old and, after a 15 year career in more general software development (C#, java, javascript etc.), I wish to get into game development - am I too old? I don't feel too old, and I think I have enough experience and transferable knowledge to climb the rungs of the game dev ladder quickly, however everywhere I look gives the impression is it a young person's game (job adverts tend to stress the "youthful work environment", or they are looking for freshly graduated interns). I could, of course, try to go it alone but this seems very high-risk and, besides, having a team to bounce things off makes the learning curve much easier. Is this a pipe dream? Does anyone have any experience of transitioning into game dev late in their career? [link] [comments]  |
| A year full-time indie also with self-investment. Lessons learned Posted: 08 Nov 2018 03:31 AM PST Hi all, I saw a couple of posts here talking about the indie adventures of others and I would like to share mine too. Before anything I'd like to say that this is not a sad story, I think I didn't fail (or not very bad yet) and I'd like to share some advice with other people wanting to do the same. I saw a lot of common mistakes that are done by indies (me included) and I'd like to advice you about those before you make them too. Warning! This is going to be a long post! My story I am a 33 year old developer, with about 15 years of professional experience. I have been doing web (backend and frontend long time ago), games in a small studio (like 10 years ago), and finally since 2009 mobile development (native iOS, Android and Windows Phone). I always did games on the side as hobby projects, participated in game jams, etc. My big passion is videogames. For me the biggest event of the year is the E3 and I've always been interested in the strategies that companies followed, so the E3 was not only to see new games but also to see what their strategy is for next year. I say this because I think I have a good understanding on how the industry works, which I think it helps also in running your company. I'm also a game collector since forever. I have my games and consoles since I was 5 years old, a room of my house dedicated to my collection + some more games in the living room. So with all this background, in October 2017 my contract with the company I was working on was ending and I decided to not renew it. I was working in fintech so that allowed me to save a fair amount of money and decided to try to go full indie on my own. This is not the first time I make my own company, in 2009 I decided to do the same with mobile apps and I didn't succeed big time but I managed to live out of it for 3 years and landed a great job abroad afterwards thanks to that experience. What is my company doing? When I saw the Switch I knew I wanted to do something for it. So my target was doing a game that would sell well in Switch. And then I came out with a local-multiplayer arcade puzzle game called Pushy & Pully in Blockland. The main target is also families and casual players. It is still in development and we aim to have it released by Q2 2019. We are 4 people in the team: me as the business person and developer, a musician, a game designer and a graphic designer. Since I am located in Europe, I decided to go to Gamescom to the business area (not the showcase area, that was not interesting for me at that stage) and managed to pitch to a lot of people there as well as doing contacts in the industry. We came with 7 publishers interested in the game and we are closing the deal with one right now. Not a single publisher said no to our pitch in there. In fact we managed to get a lot of interest and several of them came to us instead of the other way around. How is my typical day? In an attempt to minimize expenses we don't have an office. In fact we all work in different regions so we work remote. I personally work from home. I am very strict with working hours. I also am lucky enough to have a room where I have my computer and I don't use that room for other than work. I do not use that computer for anything else either, or try not to. I work from 9 to 6 usually and I like to take 1h for lunch and if it's good weather I go for a walk to get fresh air and stretch my legs a bit. I also try to do sports twice per week. I personally hate this, but I found that it is important to get your mind and body healthy. I never ever ever crunch unless is totally necessary. I had a big issue just before Gamescom and had to work on the weekend before going. But that is the only time I can remember I did it. Normally I work 40h per week. And I don't want anybody to work extra either, if somebody has to crunch it will be me. I use Scrum metodology for work. So I plan for 2 weeks, divide in tasks, set goals and work from there. I have been doing that for a lot of years and it is the way it works for me. Otherwise I get overwelmed and panic and don't do anything. So I like to set long time goals (like have a release with X and Y features for whatever trade show) and then divide in 2-week goals, and those into smaller tasks. I also like to iterate and change things if they don't work. Having this 2-week release cycles allows me also to do so. I also like to playtest as much as I can, because that is always super super super helpful in seing that the game balancing is right or things that we intruduce (new monsters) are understood correctly and such. In general we like to try stuff and iterate to polish it as much as possible. My advice Before I started doing this I did a business plan and financial plan for the next 3 years. I had somebody review it and I tried to exagerate as much as possible in the financial expenses part to try to cover the worse case scenario. I too have a mortgage o pay so I needed to really know how long will my savings last and if this will be viable at all. I also planned in case I need to do some contractor work on the side. So I have 2 scenarios one with me full time in this, another one with part time contractor work. So far I didn't need to do the second. So really, PLAN AHEAD! And don't count on your first game being a huge success and from then on everything will be easy. My plan is for 3 years and I planned to do 1 game per year or so. I am a bit behind schedule but I still think it's possible to follow my plan. Think also that the Candy Crush people succeeded after their game number 27 and a huge amount of luck. So again: plan for the long run and try to cover the worse case scenario. After doing that next thing I did was contacting a lawyer. Yes, this costs money (again that is why you need the business and financial plan!) but saves you so many headaches in the future it is priceless. The other members of the team are friends of mine but still we all signed a contract and it is all legally correct. We later had a problem with one member of the team and the contract saved me from a very ugly situation. My lawyer is specialised in intelectual property and videogames. He's a very nice guy and he's paid by request. So that means if I need an NDA I contact him and he writes it for me, he'll charge me for that a fixed price. He doesn't charge me every month a fee and I get free consultations for small stuff (questions that I could have, etc). He is part of a big lawyer firm where I am but they also work with small companies like mine, so they have nice prices for us. They believe in long term relationships :) So search for somebody like that, I'm sure you'll find it. Another thing I did was hiring an accountant. I think this is less important but I do not want headaches with the tax deppartment. Specially because I'm living abroad and I don't know all the laws for taxes propperly. This is a expense of some money per month. I also asked them on business stuff like what was the best company form for me, if there were some subsidies, etc. Not 100% needed but I though I rather have somebody worrying about this than me. About the game to do, my strategy is first study the market and find out what can potentially sell in there. In my case it has been the Nintendo Switch (although we'll launch also on the other consoles) and the casual/family market. I say this because I see a lot of indies trying to do a game that they would love to play or make and that is wrong if there is no market for it. If you really want to live out of making games you have to do a game that will sell! I personally like other kinds of games than the one I'm doing, but it doesn't matter. It is still fun working on it and there is market for it. Also testing is very important. If you want to launch in consoles there is a certification process to pass. For that, if you want to avoid a nightmare it may not be a bad idea to hire a testing company. For the moment I am testing myself but in contact with a QA company specialiced in console testing and certification processes that will start working with next month. We found out a lot of bugs in the playtesting, and unfortunately I am not a profesional tester. So I rather have a polished product and invest money on that. Also, very important, don't forget to test localization! Just so you know, some companies work also based on revenue share or pay later options. The publisher can help with this too. I mean there are options if you want to search for them to minimize your expense on that. If you look profesional, you need to be profesional. No, a trailer which is a video capture from unity may not be good enough. This comes to my second hurtful discovery in this adventure: to make money you need to invest money first. With the trailer example: if you want to catch the attention of buyers you need to have a nice trailer in place. Making a trailer costs money. You need to think about this kind of expense as a future investment. Now you pay X but that'll generate Y in revenue later. And think if that Y > X. In that case it is a worthy investment to do. Also, if you go with a publisher they can help you with this expenses and there are also companies that work with indies and do revenue share payments and the such. Same as with testing, there are options. And finally the most important: marketing. Yes you DO need marketing. And you need somebody also specialised on that. So many people I see just launch the game and expect that people will magically buy it! No, that is not going to happen. Also just a bunch of twitts or posts in Facebook/Reddit/etc won't help enough. This is why we decided to go with a company that will help us with this. In our case it's not a publisher but a producer, but his roleon this topic is the same: they will handle profesionally marketing. I hope I didn't bore you with my post and I also hope this can help somebody with this. So far I'm happy with what I do even though I face a lot of challenges on a weekly basis and I have to learn fast from there. I would like to also recommend you a book that I read at the very beginning and helped me a lot: The GameDev Business Handbook. Also thanks to his author, Mike Futter, for helping me personally at the beginning making my pitch and advicing me on budgeting and such :) I don't have any afiliation to him, but this book has really really helped me a lot to understand the business side of the IndieDev company. So I have to recommend it to everybody who wants to start in the business. I would like to do a postmorten from my game once it is released and we have some sales data to see if our expectations are met or how is it going. Until then if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them! :) EDIT: I would like to clarify that the video I posted is not a trailer. It is just a gameplay video of a beta of the game. I don't have any marketing videos right now because a company is still making them. It will have a proper trailer once it is finished :) Thanks to the user that gave feedback about this. You didn't need to delete the comment! All the feedback can be valid (and in your case it was) [link] [comments]  |
| Totally legit way to test impact direction Posted: 08 Nov 2018 06:32 AM PST |
| How is music of this quality made? Posted: 07 Nov 2018 06:30 PM PST Odd question, just curious. How is music of this quality made? The drums at the very start sound so clean, like you're actually "there". See if you can feel what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NujlXgBmUoU Obviously it's unreasonable for an indie developer to be able to produce music like this, but I'm just curious. The music obviously isn't purely digital, but it seems like a much higher quality than other recorded music you can find. What makes this quality of music so difficult to make? (I'm still talking about the drums in the first 30 seconds, the whole song is a different story) [link] [comments]  |
| How to Write a Game Design Document Your Team Can Actually Use Posted: 08 Nov 2018 09:10 AM PST |
| Unity Animation Statemachine and Single Source of truth Posted: 08 Nov 2018 12:08 PM PST In unity the animator creates a statemachine. I have a character where, the actions that are available to them should be dependent on the animation state... or not so much the animation state... but "Entity state". Is it better to allow the animation system to maintain 'state' and update the entity... or for the entity to maintain state and update the animation system? For example, I could have an Idle state that when a speed parameter comes in, changes to a walking state. Then when the speed gets larger then some value N transitions to the running state. I could do this in the animator. Give the indle state a conditional transition to the walking state and the walking state a conditional transition to the running and idle states. Then, I could use OnEnterState to update the entity to know which state it is in so that the update logic can know which inputs are valid. Or... I could maintain state on entity and just put a bunch of flag parameters on the animator.. "IsWalking", "IsRunning", etc. then let those flags transition states. In my update function it would check if I was moving fast enough to be running rather then the animator checking that... How do you ensure that the logic state of the entity and the animation state are in sync? Especially when there might be a situation where... If I press attack, I don't want another attack to intterupt the attack for the first quarter of the animation... but I don't mind if the user wants to jump back to the start of an attack after the first 25% of the animation plays. [link] [comments]  |
| How to export a 3ds Max CAT rig to Unity (my first tutorial) Posted: 08 Nov 2018 06:38 AM PST |
| Issue 1 of Wireframe is now available to download as a free PDF. Posted: 08 Nov 2018 02:04 AM PST |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 07:58 AM PST |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 12:23 PM PST |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 08:34 AM PST While the demo of Deltarune has been under the name of the Undertale series which had an effect on how much it spread. I wonder if its more benefitial (and easier) to advertise a game with a demo available right from the start like it was done with this game. So people can try it out and look forward to more and help the word spread about the project, instead of advertising at some arbitrary point in development without knowing any feedback of your consumers. What are you guys thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 12:05 PM PST Hello, I have lurked here for a while as I am interested in starting on the path of indie games. I've made mods for several games and I absolutely love designing levels, but am realizing just how much I have to learn about the development process. What would be a good coding language to learn, say for a basic platformer or visual novel? Thanks for the advice! [link] [comments]  |
| Unity Job System: Safe and Easy Multithreading in Unity Posted: 08 Nov 2018 11:14 AM PST |
| Item and Inventory System - Unity Tutorial - Refactoring (Long Video) Posted: 08 Nov 2018 11:06 AM PST |
| Podcast about Blizzcon from a game devs point of view Posted: 08 Nov 2018 11:03 AM PST Released a new episode of my game dev podcast this time focused on Blizzcon. We have discussion about all the drama that went down but from the point of view of a game developer not a gamer. We try and break down why everything happen and what could have been done better. We also just talk a lot about how Blizzard designs it's games and how they make their games. [Click here for podcast](https://soundcloud.com/the-game-developers-radio/blizzcon-2018-discussion) Would love some feedback and any ideas for games you'd like us to talk about. Or if anyone here is working on a game you'd like us to discuss or maybe even interview you :-) [link] [comments]  |
| What are your personal methods for making your code Less Janky? Posted: 08 Nov 2018 10:55 AM PST I would put my own If wasn't still learning how to be a decent programmer. NOTE: I'm a Game Maker Studio 2 user. Just putting that out there. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 10:52 AM PST |
| Working for a Company vs Yourself Posted: 08 Nov 2018 10:43 AM PST |
| What are you guys frustrated about? Posted: 07 Nov 2018 07:37 PM PST I think some of us are long overdue for a vent about what is really angering you about gamedev. What's got you pissed off? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 10:18 AM PST |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 10:08 AM PST Examples of XBOX/PS games that were in high in quality and decent in sales and cost under 10 million? Tough question but just curious [link] [comments]  |
| Ideas on how to bring depth to an open world game and make it feel more organic. Posted: 08 Nov 2018 10:01 AM PST It seems strange to me that games of prior years can have features that new ones lose. There are some foundations that even a relatively simple game like GTA had which developers neglected to explore. So what got me thinking about this is memories of GTA 2 where you have multiple gangs and each one has a respect meter and if you kill one gang another one will like you and if you help a gang another one will start not to like you to the point where they will hunt you down. This is such a cool mechanic and creates a very dynamic world. This is just one of many features that have seem to be lost to the sands of time. Here's my thought's on a way to expand this idea and make a more dynamic world after reflecting on the respect mechanic.
(benefits that could transcend gaming) 7. Teaching moral lessons and the pursuit of happiness organically. Although these game's are not made for children the reality is they are the majority of the players. Thing's are better understood from experience and learning from mistakes is the only way some people will learn. Players wouldn't just be told to do something because it's "the right thing to do", they will experience why they should do it. This probably wouldn't have an effect on a mature brain but a developing one is a very strange thing and tend to pick up on things without consciously trying to. They would have to learn to be empathetic and how to pick up on social ques to benefit from the respect system or at the very least learn if you act like a butthole people will not like you and the consequences of that. If all else fails and they completely ignore the respect system they will realize it's a lonely world just paying attention to themselves and once they have completed their ambitions and take a look around they will feel the emptiness. I could keep brain storming all day but you can see how far you can take this basic idea and totally change our linear stories and open world experience. At the same time this has nothing to do with gameplay so you don't have to pay attention to it and you could just grind your way to the top not caring what people think of you. If you actually read this whole thing you are crazy, but I'd like to hear your thought's. [link] [comments]  |
| 5 Useful Tips for Promoting Paid Mobile Games Posted: 08 Nov 2018 09:44 AM PST |
| Posted: 08 Nov 2018 05:42 AM PST |
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/hk0cc1mcm3x11.jpg){kind=link}
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/698870p024x11.gif){kind=link}
| You are subscribed to email updates from gamedev - game development, programming, design, writing, math, art, jams, postmortems, marketing. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment