Why I decided to stop making my game. |
- Why I decided to stop making my game.
- How to code a system where “everything can interact with everything”?
- A week ago, I released the game I worked on for six years, and put it on E3 showcase. Here's how it went:
- Solo Game DEV is Hard, but Rewarding Here Are Some Of My Thoughts As I Continue My Own Journey
- I tried to answer the classic beginner question: "What math do I need to learn to make games?" - a bunch of examples and links to detailed learning resources for each topic
- How does Skyirm load it's overworld?
- Man pooling can get hard!
- BLENDER 3D - Using only the default cube | Low poly Style / Flat Shaded environment
- Do developers still get enough support from Humble Bundles?
- How do you balance your life/work?
- Making a video showing off indie game projects! I want to show off your game!
- Why are most game engines made with C++?
- How do I avoid this if statement in game loop?
- New and Lost
- places like e3 for small developers
- Game Jams without time constraints.
- How does indirect rendering work?
- MetaHumans Head Not Getting Retargeted
- Gamedev and the home. Can you own a family home and still be an efficent gamedev?
- I have a question regarding prototyping a game!
- Game Developer Reacts to Insane Graphics E3 2021
- Ad Mediation - How many eCPM floors is good to have, how to set a right eCPM level for each floor
- I found some inspiration for you, my fellow game devs! (not oc)
| Why I decided to stop making my game. Posted: 15 Jun 2021 10:21 AM PDT Making a game is hard. Everyone told me so. I listened but in the back of my mind I was thinking, "yeah well if you really love making games then you'll keep doing it and eventually you'll release something great!" That's sort of true... but oh boy is it naïve. I started making a game over 2 years ago and at the time of writing this post I haven't worked on it in months. What gives? Why did I decide to put it down? It's a question I've been asking myself a lot lately, and while there are a lot of reasons, I think the simplest explanation is that I wasn't having fun anymore. The impossible had happened and I was no longer star eyed about making a game. For the rest of this post I'll attempt to describe where things went wrong. If you're struggling to make a game you might find some insight here, but this is all very personal to my experience. Here's what I did wrong. A lot of the major pitfalls I experienced are things people talk about all the time and I just wasn't listening. Maybe you've heard these things too and also weren't listening. It's worth it to stop right now and ask yourself why you ignore good advice. You might surprise yourself and realize a lot of what you're doing is counterproductive.
To be fair I was really unhappy at my current gig and just needed a way out. Doing anything else seems a better idea but that added pressure to make my once hobby a successful, commercial enterprise. I needed a serious adjustment period and I just didn't give myself the time to think things through.
In retrospect I was doing a couple bad things here: (1) I was spending more time on art and polish because that's the part of game dev I'm most excited about and (2) I was afraid to explore ideas because I felt like I didn't have enough time. That second one is a killer. It's not fun failing while watching your savings account drain away to nothing.
Oh man, all those hours. I'd like to say that I was at least getting the full benefit of honing my craft but I don't think that's true. I was able to grind away the hours because I had tunnel vision and wasn't thinking critically about what I was making and why. I learned that adding more hours to my project wasn't making it better.
This is a tough one. I find it hard to get excited about making Pong but that's what everyone tells me to do. "Hey just make some generic platformer first!". For me, there's just not enough to get excited about so I find it hard to even stay motivated to finish small projects even though that's absolutely what I should be doing.
I sort of did, but not in the way that matters. I found a good community to ask your feedback but I was ignoring my gut when it told me something was wrong. Am I really asking for advice feedback or am I just wanting to be praised for working hard? I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with the latter but all the advice in world didn't help because I wasn't listening to that voice telling me I was working on the wrong stuff. That voice was saying "hey you don't know what you're doing and you should ask people for help". Instead I made stuff and asked for feedback hoping someone would call me out for "doing it wrong". I bet some people had this thought and didn't share it. That's really tough feedback to give and I find most people won't give it unless I pry it out of them. I think the lesson here is that if I'm so convinced it's not right then I need to just say so and change the landscape of the conversation. Why did I do these things? Why did I make these mistakes even though so many people gave me a heads up? I honestly think some mistakes have to be experienced first hand. It's unfortunate but that's the reality for a lot of people. Someone says "hey I think that's a bad idea" and some part of me wants to prove them wrong. I convince myself that it didn't work for them because they aren't me. It's a bit of hubris really. That being said I think the main reason I made a lot of the classic mistakes is because I was trying to achieve my goals in an unrealistic timeframe. Things that I thought would take a week took a month. Things I didn't even know I needed to do seemed to appear out of nowhere. The goal post just kept getting further and further away until I burned myself out completely. I hear people say "game dev is a marathon, not a race" and I think I finally understand what that means. It's fairly obvious to me know that I have pacing issues and I prioritize big progress gains over real learning. Moving at a slow, measured pace means I'm always getting closer to the goal of releasing a commercial game. If I burn out it's game over. I can't work though it. No amount of hours will matter. I'm just done. What am I going to do now? It's been almost two months since I stopped working on my game and I'm not picking it back up. There's just too much bad energy associated with it. Instead I plan to spend more time practicing the craft and figuring out what aspects of game development get me excited even if it's not work going towards a commercial release. Hopefully that will help me balance out the progress with the passion, but only time will tell. If you made it this far, I hope you got something out of this. If you disagree with anything I've said I'd love to hear your take. I'm obviously no expert, I'm just a dude who wants to make a good game :) [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to code a system where “everything can interact with everything”? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 02:50 AM PDT I was fascinated by Breath of the Wild and particularly Space Station 13's contextual interaction system. How would you make a system where nearby fire smokes your cigarettes and gum wrappers suffice as wiring if they have metal in them? Potassium explodes in your stomach, soap cleans oil based products? My first guess is items listen for types of output effects like fire or blunt damage, and output types of effects themselves. You would define what items listen for and output based on tags or components. The outcome of listeners catching an output would be defined in a table somehow. The sheer number of unique interactions in space station 13 makes me think they couldn't have possibly written each out. The source code for ss13 stations doesn't make it obvious where the "outcomes" of interactions are defined however, but maybe the broadstrokes are in the engine BYOND. Is this making sense? I feel like I'm missing something that makes this hard to create or hard to manage. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 15 Jun 2021 10:21 AM PDT Hello devs! Hope you are doing well! A week ago I released my first ever game, and also decided to take a leap of faith and put my trailer up on E3 (which was broadcasted yesterday). I wanted to share the sales numbers since release, to give everyone a perspective. The game is called Tunguska: The Visitation, some of you might have heard of it already. It took me six years of spare time to make, and it's a top down tactical/stealth shooter with 8-20 hours of gameplay content depending on how you play it. It comes with a big inventory/item system, rich in story and lore, and a large amount of dialogue with "manly humor" if you know what I mean, lol. So to my fans who love the game, it's a pretty complete package. Based on the amount of content I decided to price it at $24.99 with a 20% launch discount, so for the first week of release it costs $19.99. Prior to release I gathered about 3600 wishlist on Steam, thanks mostly to two major youtubers (Nookrium and Splattercat) who covered my game. On the first day of release I sold about 200 copies, but it tapered down very quickly. At the end of the launch sale, I sold about 430 units in total. Due to half of the customers being outside North America, the actual revenue was only about 7000 USD before Steam takes their cut. The launch was very rough. I thought I fixed all of the bugs, but many more were discovered in the first several days. I took a week off work to just crunch on bug fixing and adding features to make the game more playable for folks not used to the methodical/tactical playstyle. Within a week and eight daily patches I was able to fix most of the bugs, and added some new weapons, new dialogue, and new combat features. So far, my refund rate is about 17.5%. The majority of the refund reason is "not fun". I put a link to a demo in the steam community form, and specified clearly in the game description to try the demo before purchasing, but very few people bothered to download the demo (less than 100 downloads). So I'm kind confused about how players make purchase decisions, and would turn them away at this point after I have fixed most of the problems with the core loop. My fans have told me that since release, the game plays much better now. I paid E3 5000 USD (I think some of us here did the same thing) for the Indie showcase, hoping that it'll catch some eyeballs. I took the original trailer and improved it into this version, replaced some boring scenes and added text. It was pretty much the best I can do without shelling out thousands to hire professionals. When I watched youtube streamer's reactions to my trailer during E3, most of them were not impressed. They mostly acted confused, like "wtf is this?". After the E3 I gained 40 sales (undiscounted) and about 1000 wishlist. I'm now sitting on 8000 wishlist with a 5% conversion rate, with a 76% "Mostly Positive" review. I have yet recouped the $5000 cost for the E3 showcase. I had a very stressful week, lacked sleep, and still very frustrated about the lack of sales. I'm pretty depressed at this point. I'm now suspecting that my lack of sales is due to the following reason:
What this tells me is that just by making a game full of content and having fans who love it, will not generate sales even if you manage to catch a lot of attention. After release, the real battle begins: you now have a lot of people interested in it, so how do you convince them to purchase it? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Solo Game DEV is Hard, but Rewarding Here Are Some Of My Thoughts As I Continue My Own Journey Posted: 15 Jun 2021 05:33 AM PDT
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| How does Skyirm load it's overworld? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 09:58 AM PDT Do they do it chunk at a time like in minecraft? Do they load everything, but set a certain distance where objects can be "active" ? Also, where can I go aside from reddit to answer these questions about specific games i'm studying and curious on? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 15 Jun 2021 11:04 AM PDT 4 months into making my first game Zapballz and it was time to pool a bunch of objects. It took days to find out that I could set particle effects to disable instead of destroy. It took a week to find out how to reset the position of an object that explodes into 130 pieces. And, of course, because the pieces fade away, I had to reset the fadeout as well. I know that I'm a newbie and someone reading this has the answers and could pull all this stuff off in a couple of hours. But whatever, I'm pretty proud of myself and learn't a lot along the way. [link] [comments]  | ||
| BLENDER 3D - Using only the default cube | Low poly Style / Flat Shaded environment Posted: 15 Jun 2021 03:23 AM PDT
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| Do developers still get enough support from Humble Bundles? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 04:31 AM PDT I would assume that it isn't as much support as buying it on steam and giving it a positive review but would you rather consumers to just not buy Humble Bundles completely. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How do you balance your life/work? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 11:45 AM PDT There was a question going around my work, between the designers and the programmers. And I figured I'd ask reddit. Get some insight maybe some tips. How do you balance life with work? A lot of aspiring game devs make projects so they can get jobs. They spend every minute they can coding or designing. But when you do get that game dev job, whether it be for a indie company or Triple AAA. Do you then focus on life? Do you stop coding after work? Do you work on some little side projects 3 days a week to keep learning? Everyone is different. Someone I work with, codes at work, goes home. Keeps coding. Another just at the end of the day. Stops working, and goes to live his life. So what do you do reddit? How do you balance your work/life? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Making a video showing off indie game projects! I want to show off your game! Posted: 15 Jun 2021 02:49 AM PDT So I'm making a video on my youtube channel about showing off indie game projects! Might even do this every month! If you want a chance to get your game on my video, go subscribe to my channel, and drop a link to your project! I make videos about game development, and the stuff behind games! Edit: Just wanted to add, that I want to show off games exclusively from people giving me their link, rather than just browsing stuff and finding the best games, because that gives it a more personal feeling to me! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Why are most game engines made with C++? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 09:57 AM PDT Every game dev tutorial I have seen have all been using C++. Why is that? [link] [comments]  | ||
| How do I avoid this if statement in game loop? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 11:59 AM PDT I trying to figure out this issue. Lets say I have a config file "config.conf" that tells my game if a system should be running or not. Lets say the system lets the player walk. Lets say I check the file in the initialization part of the game and store the result in a bool "moveSystemActivated". When the game goes into the game-loop phase of the game it will every tick check if the move system is activated and enter that part of the loop if (moveSystemActivated == true). But it feels like I should be able to do this without the game needing to check if (moveSystemActivated == true) every time the game loop repeat itself. Is there a solution for this. Or anybody have tips on how to approach this? I'm using c++ but would be interested to hear what people think or how they solved it in other languages. Or if its maybe already solved by some compiler wizardry. tldr; how to avoid that the if statement in this pseudo code does not need to be checked every time while loops? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 15 Jun 2021 11:28 AM PDT Hello, I want a job in the game industry. The thing is I don't really know how to go about that. I understand that I need to have shipped a game and have a portfolio to show that I can do what the job demands. However, I've been told that I need to pick an area and specialize for the job I want to get but I don't really know what the job I want is outside of video games. A little background for myself that might influence how I can go about getting a job in the game industry. I have just an AA in Liberal Studies (meaning I satisfied all requirements for the degree). I have only worked in blue collar, low paying jobs with a huge chunk of which was being a temp and my job history is sporadic. Warehousing and retail is on my resume. I'm not afraid of hard work but sometimes lose hope that I'm spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. So my questions are: Is there a website that lists all the job types in the industry? How do I know what to specialize in if I'm just starting out? Is it really just finish making games then apply? I appreciate anyone reading this post and thank you in advance for any advice and a preemptive alright for any negative comments. Anyway, yeah, I'm a little lost and would appreciate some guidance. Thank you [link] [comments]  | ||
| places like e3 for small developers Posted: 15 Jun 2021 11:13 AM PDT | ||
| Game Jams without time constraints. Posted: 14 Jun 2021 11:20 PM PDT Hey all, I have no experience in game development but want to learn more. For the past 2 months, I've been self teaching by watching tutorials and practicing solo; but I feel this isn't enough. I'm very weak at coding (want to improve) but decent at art. I looked into some game jams but they usually have strict time frames. Because I work 6 days a week, participating in a 48hr game jam is just not feasible. I know that having a deadline is important, but would like to find game jams with no time constraints for folks that have a busy schedule; be able to take our time but still learn invaluable skills. Would anyone have suggestions? Thanks. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How does indirect rendering work? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 10:35 AM PDT I have been reading about indirect rendering and from my understanding, indirect rendering is essentially pushing the entire scene to GPU at once and let GPU do calculations on the scene using compute shaders. This reduces communication between CPU and GPU, which allows rendering scenes better. However, I still do not understand what kind of computations indirect rendering does. Are scene transforms calculated in GPU? If yes, how is it efficient or fast considering the fact that CPU performs a lot of transform related tasks such as Physics, AI, and User input? If no, then what calculations are performed by GPU? [link] [comments]  | ||
| MetaHumans Head Not Getting Retargeted Posted: 15 Jun 2021 10:27 AM PDT So, to make it clear - I am not using MetaHumans from Marketplace. I [link] [comments]  | ||
| Gamedev and the home. Can you own a family home and still be an efficent gamedev? Posted: 15 Jun 2021 06:30 AM PDT This is a question due to personal... ties more than anything. This has made me think. I live in a city that... well, as far as I am aware doesn't really have any form of real presence with any dev-studios. (as far as I am aware, is there some sort of site where you can track nearby studios? XD) Would it be a requirement for me to move if I want to pursue a career inside gamedev? (EDIT: To be clear, there will be quite some time until it becomes an important choice, as I am still studying and it will be a few years before I can buy the family farm from my parents) [link] [comments]  | ||
| I have a question regarding prototyping a game! Posted: 15 Jun 2021 03:20 AM PDT I have an idea of creating an interactive Audio game very similar to Black Mirror: Bandersnatch but for audio! I'm a beginner to Game dev although professionally I'm a web developer who has worked for 3years and I have experience in Javascript,html5,Css3,C# etc I have done some research regarding this and found out Unity and Unreal are few of my options! Now, what do you guys suggest I used to start prototyping? My requirement is Rapid Prototyping I don't mind using No-Code platforms etc. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Game Developer Reacts to Insane Graphics E3 2021 Posted: 15 Jun 2021 12:40 PM PDT
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| Ad Mediation - How many eCPM floors is good to have, how to set a right eCPM level for each floor Posted: 15 Jun 2021 05:02 AM PDT Hi, I would like to ask you for some recommendation and best practises how to setup ads mediation (I'm using Ironsource right now for ads mediation. Ads type in my game is Rewarded Video), how many eCPM floors is good to have, how you set and tweak an eCPM level for each floor? Here is an example of what I have right now: 3 Ads providers:
I've created 3 groups based on countries:
I have 4 floors with minimum eCPM set and 1 floor with no minimum eCPM set for each tier and Ads provider.And now I'm not sure if this number of floors is ok and what eCPM I should set for each floor. Any advice is welcome. Thank you very much. [link] [comments]  | ||
| I found some inspiration for you, my fellow game devs! (not oc) Posted: 15 Jun 2021 08:46 AM PDT
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