��No more paychecks for me! Now full-time indie game developer after 20 years trying! |
- ��No more paychecks for me! Now full-time indie game developer after 20 years trying!
- Free music for your games!
- How to make a Quest System in Unity - advanced but easy for everyone. Perfect addition for an RPG
- The Ultimate Indie Game Guide to Influencers
- My Steam Page and Google Analytics disagree A LOT! Is everyone’s Steam page like this?
- What SFX Do You Struggle To Find for Your Games?
- How old were you when you completed your first game and how long did it take?
- Is my dream job achievable?
- what is the best way to learn unity
- An asset manager I created I want to share.
- What aspect of Unity and Unreal a game designer much learn?
- What courses did you find most useful for game programming?
- Contract Developers for High Quality Games
- Have any of you found a good way to handle drawing order in Isometric games?
- Road building (how can i do it)
- Beginner question about sprites
- I posted this on r/lostmedia and was told to post here instead.
- Wondering how to switch action maps with Unity's Input System? In this video I show you how to switch the current action map with the PlayerInput component, and how to enable/disable multiple action maps with the PlayerInput and Generated C# script method.
- How is this method of animating a 3D model called ?
- Can I still use unet?
- how to make dithering render in glsl in less than 1 minute + source code in description (compatible with any engine that uses opengl)
- how do you make satisfying camera control in top down 2d action games and crap?
- Is It Possible To Make A Game With A Cover System AND "LEAN" Mechanic?
| ��No more paychecks for me! Now full-time indie game developer after 20 years trying! Posted: 06 Sep 2021 05:16 AM PDT I've been working to build my own business making racing games for almost 4 years while being a full-time software engineer. Last week I left the world of comfy paying jobs and am now a full-time independent game developer. This is something I've looked forward to and worked at for more than 20 years. Risk MitigationThis is the hardest and scariest thing I've tackled in my life, and that comes after being circled and bluff charged by a bear while hiking 2,178 miles. Success is not certain, but failing to try is even worse.
I live-stream my business efforts daily at twitch.tv/timbeaudet where I share the good and the bad of running a game development business. The Last 4 YearsI woke up at 6:00 am almost every morning to do 3 hours of game development before my day job. Many evenings and weekends were also added to this effort totalling more than 5600 hours! Archer Created from concept to release in 7 weeks and made my first sale! The objective was to get something out into the world to make $1. To date I've made $170!! This was only released on itch.io as it lacks some polish. Rally of Rockets Second project was an online multiplayer freestyle racing game that was planned to be released "as-is" after 4 months of development. I removed the deadline because I wanted a quality product though after 8 months the project was put on hold as the desired quality level would take far too long. Hard decision but a good lesson to learn from. Turbo Boom! This is the first, and so far only, project I pitched to publishers which was a great experience. The project has taken about 1000 hours to create so far but is on hold for logistical reasons. There are a couple months of work left once those get solved. Eggcelerate! I experimented with Unity for a month to see how I could improve the workflow of my own engine. The prototype of Eggcelerate! was created for LudumDare 46 and was ranked 12th in fun. I spent 3 months making it my first product. While it hasn't recouped development costs, it did better than my expectations and I learned a lot about marketing and the release cycle. Engine Development Since 2012 I've been working on my own engine, and each game adds a new feature or improvement. This is not the easy path, nor would I recommend anyone try it without serious consideration, but my dream project benefits from ownership, full-control and understand the details. Lessons learnedOver the last 4 years I've spent my time learning various tasks related to running a game development business. How to target an audience, why doing so is important, content marketing on YouTube, and building a community!
Those are a little vague but I am happy to answer your questions in more detail, stop by my gamedev stream any day this week, 6:00am - 2:00pm eastern. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:46 AM PDT Hi, for years I've written music for a variety of different projects and in a wide array of styles. If you need or want it, you can download any of it from my website. https://chanwalrus.com/music-archive/ there is a link to my license on the site. The basic terms are use the music for free in anything for fun, commercial, whatever, just credit the maker of the track. I collaborate with my youngest brother and one or two other artists. The only thing you can't really do is sell my music as your own or adapt it for personal profit. To check out some of our work: Sci-Fi: https://youtu.be/4N3Z79kICqc Fantasy: https://youtu.be/rW2zKiVdzis Romance: https://youtu.be/IrhyOjlAXDI Horror: https://youtu.be/7uMTQ9kckPE Action: https://youtu.be/NWkitmu45Cs If you have the software, you can just rip and use my entire playlist. Enjoy! Entire Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH9XAe9eLGShuOeQzGDTlSsFjbB1AIQZp I have moved on a lot from music for YouTube, though I still make the odd track and my brother still collaborates with me on projects. Feel free to leave a comment, share if you enjoy tracks or tell me I'm going prematurely bald. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to make a Quest System in Unity - advanced but easy for everyone. Perfect addition for an RPG Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:34 AM PDT
 | ||
| The Ultimate Indie Game Guide to Influencers Posted: 06 Sep 2021 06:22 AM PDT We just published an article that covers everything an indie studio / dev should know before launching and managing an influencer marketing campaign. In brief, we talk bout:
I hope this will be beneficial for your games and studio! Feel free to ask questions. https://empowered.gg/blog/the-ultimate-indie-game-guide-to-influencers/ [link] [comments]  | ||
| My Steam Page and Google Analytics disagree A LOT! Is everyone’s Steam page like this? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 05:30 AM PDT Hey, guys I'm having a trust issue with my Steam page. For a few days, my Steam dashboard made me believe I was the marketing KING since a 98% click-through rate is not for everyone. Maybe I would have created the best capsule mankind has ever seen. Who knows... I was getting ready to change industries and start my 9:5 marketing job but then I remembered it's been forever since I checked my Google Analytics, so I did... and I got a surprise. Turns out that Google heavily disagrees with Steam, and actually I'm not a marketing genius, I've only had 300 hits in the last 3 months. The thing is, at the moment my game has a measly 54 wishlists and I'm thinking of trying to optimize my Steam page using click-through data, impressions, all that, but with this discrepancy between Steam and Google data, I don't know who I should trust. How to go about it? According to Steam, my page had more than 15.000 hits in the last 3 months. According to Google, it had 337 hits. So when I calculate my conversion from visitors to wishlists I have these two options Steam - 54 wishlists / 15685 hits = 0.34% conversion, ie every 290 hits I get 1 new wishlist, and as we know on average the number of copies sold at launch is around 20% of the wishlists, so… my career as an Indie Dev will be pretty problematic. ON THE OTHER HAND and seeing things in a much more positive way Google - 54 wishlists / 337 hits = 16% conversion, that is, every 6 visits to the page I get 1 new wishlist. I mean, I still only have 54 wishlists, but using Google data at least I have some hope of getting more page hits and having a sudden boost of wishlists at some point because 16% conversion looks pretty good… Do you guys have any way to filter this data or even a hunch about what is most likely to be true? [link] [comments]  | ||
| What SFX Do You Struggle To Find for Your Games? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:20 AM PDT Planning to put together some free audio asset packs to help extend my portfolio, what high quality sounds do you developers often struggle to source (UI, Footsteps, Ambience, Action, Horror, Nature) [link] [comments]  | ||
| How old were you when you completed your first game and how long did it take? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 03:30 AM PDT I ask because I just turned 20 and am still working on my first. I have a chronic inability to get any real work done and to procrastinate. I started around 2017 and have gone through a dozen projects before losing interest. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:20 AM PDT Hi r/gamedev! I am JRPGFisher, and I have a dream. It's a dream I've been thinking of on and off for the last 6-7 years as I've been developing my career. Although it's game-related, it's not specifically about development. I'm not really sure of any place more suited than that sub to be asking about it though. What I want to do In short - I want to localize games. And I don't want work as someone localizing whatever the boss tells me they got. I want to be the one deciding what games I localize, either by getting the business of the companies who own them or hearing pitches from companies who need (I'm not sure which is more common, but I suspect the former). So I guess what I'm saying is that I want to run something akin to studio that ports and localizes games. This is because I have a very specific motivation for what I consider my "dream job" in this field: Translating classic Japanese games that never got an international release and bringing them to modern platforms. Take something like Energy Breaker for example, a tactical RPG on the SNES that was never released outside Japan and that has some prequel elements to the cult classic Lufia series. I would love to be in a position one day where I could convince the IP owner to let my hypothetical studio localize and port this game to Switch/Steam/PS4. Ideally we wouldn't just translate, but add some creature comforts and other things that make the game easier for a modern audience to appreciate, similar to the work M2 has done on Sega AGES Phantasy Star release for the Switch. What I need to know Some of the fundamental skills you need to accomplish this kind of venture are obvious: A high level of fluency in Japanese to translate, and programming skills for the porting and enhancing. You're probably not going to have the same person doing both things, but I'm slowly working on learning Japanese and developing my proficiency as a programmer (I'm still absolutely a beginner in both). I think the thing I'm least clear on is how actually to actually secure localization rights and get a copy of the game's source code to work on for any of this, it's a business part of the whole thing that's completely opaque to me. I think part of the challenge is that when this kind of work happens, it seems like it's often privilege to other Japanese-owned companies (See M2) to actually do the porting, who then might contract another company to do localization. Further insight on this process from anyone who knows would be appreciated. As I'm thinking about this, I realize you probably need to decide where you want to specialize in these roles. It's unlikely you could simultaneously be the guy doing translation, development, and licensing for a title. I guess if I had to pick, what interests me most is being in the position to decide "These are kinds of games I want to us to be working on" and doing the work to secure licenses/rights so other groups can do what they do best, with input on how it's handled (Let's market it like this, make sure we have adjustable speed settings, we should reach out to Limited Run games and see if they can do a physical print, etc.). What I'm doing right now Right now I'm a mid-career professional in the tech industry with a modest six-figure salary and lot of perks. There's a lot of project management adjacent to what I do, though I'm not specifically a project manager. As I get free time, I try to study Japanese and work on my python skills (the latter does have some utility at my work, at least). All in all, there's a good deal of growth potential in my current field, I'm good at what I do, and I like the work. But this is about a "dream" job, not just a good one, and my dream job is basically something like what I've described earlier. I'm in my mid (soon to be late) 30s and I guess I need an appreciation for what the opportunity cost of trying to transition into anything approaching my ideal position would be. What could I expect to sacrifice in salary, benefits, stability, and time needed to have a shot of making this happen? I admit I'm pretty attached to all the benefits my current career offers, and since I don't hate what I do I don't know how much extended hardship or dues-paying I'm willing to make for a transition at this point in my life, even for dream. I make enough that it doesn't seem infeasible to me to start saving up money with the aim of providing capital to start my own business trying to accomplish this and go the entrepreneurial route, but this raises other fundamental questions about running a business, hiring people, managing them, and so on. Even if I somehow did it, would focusing only on translating and porting classic games (particularly Japanese RPGs) be a viable business model? Would I need to work on more modern, non-ideal games to pay the bills while occasionally getting the chance to do something I'm more interested in? Any ideas, encouragement, suggestions, or reality checks from people in the know are definitely appreciated at this point. Thanks for taking the time to read if you've gotten this far. [link] [comments]  | ||
| what is the best way to learn unity Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:23 AM PDT im trying to learn unity but i feel like watching tutorials is not a good way to learn and i dont have money for courses so what is a good way to learn how to code in c#? [link] [comments]  | ||
| An asset manager I created I want to share. Posted: 05 Sep 2021 05:52 PM PDT https://github.com/kenshen112/Unity-Rpg/blob/master/Assets/Game/GameAssetManager.cs An asset manager that I created to handle assets for my game. It'll serialize all data handed to it in JSON and deserialize and pool references on engine start. It's meant to allow scriptable objects and prefabs to seamlessly exist alongside each other in cases where you might have a hundred completely different prefab types referenced by a hundred different scriptable object or non-scriptable object entities. Though it can be used to instantiate and serialize anything EDIT: For those asking what the use case is. It's meant to be a totally generic asset manager built around JSON so it has several uses. A. You're working on a game or something along those lines outside of a full engine like Unity Godot etc and you need a quick way to set up an asset database. B. You prefer to use something like JSON or even XML You're having trouble handling assets like in Unity's prefab system that you can't traditionally serialize the whole asset. This can be an easier way to manage references to those assets. [link] [comments]  | ||
| What aspect of Unity and Unreal a game designer much learn? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:01 AM PDT I've been using excel and other software to come up with designs, balancing some stats, and write narrative for many years. But recently, I had a couple of job interviews that ask for hands-on experience with Unity and Unreal. I don't know how to code, but if Unity and Unreal is mandatory, what aspect of these engines are required for a game designer? (I understand that a level designer probably need to learn how to drop in all the assets but what about narrative or system designers? Is there a video that teaches this on YouTube? All the videos I see on YouTube are general stuff about building a first person shooter or a platformer, but the studios I apply to don't do those type of games [link] [comments]  | ||
| What courses did you find most useful for game programming? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:06 PM PDT For those game programmers who studied gamedev as part of their degree or through a specialised program, what courses did you find most useful for your professional work in the industry? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Contract Developers for High Quality Games Posted: 06 Sep 2021 06:58 AM PDT Forgive me for any major misunderstandings, I'm pretty new to all of this so I may say something silly.. Assume you are an individual with some funds to make a mobile game. You want to make a game of similar content and quality to League of Legends/Fortnite/Rocket League. My understanding is these types of games are developed and published by places that only work on in-house ideas. 1) Are there developers or game studios you can hire to make such a game for you? Particularly in Central/Eastern Europe, but anywhere will do? Can you give names of such studios? 2) If you wanted to make something like Rocket League, do you have any idea as to expected cost/time to completion? 3) Are there any other issues that such person must be aware of e.g. difficulty of publishing, marketing, whatever you might think of. Thank you for any responses. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Have any of you found a good way to handle drawing order in Isometric games? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 09:54 AM PDT Im making a 2.5D Isometric TileMap baded game in plain Java, and I found drawing order to be a major pain. Units clipping through buildings and such. It's especially bad with buildings that are larger than one tile. Approaches I've tried: Drawing everything thats on tile 1, then tile 2, etc from the top left to bottom right. This works when buildings are 1 tile in size, but bigger buildings will be clipping with those behind. And units Walking on top of castle walls also are a headache here. 2nd approach: Sort every building and unit by their Y value. This works well for troops of units but is computationally expensive and doesnt solve the big building issues. I've looked arround online but there doesnt seem to be a best solution for handling Isometric drawing. Has anybody here found a good solution for this? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Road building (how can i do it) Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:59 PM PDT Hello, im kinda new to unity but I can make something that doesn't burn your house down :) So I want to make a road builder game but I don't know what way should I go on the road building system any help would be appreciated. Thanks. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Beginner question about sprites Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:59 PM PDT Hey there! I've got a few questions. I want to make a game I have an idea for a 2d platformer nothing too serious just a toy project. C++ with sdl2 is what I'm going to be using. So the questions: Where can I get some nice free sprites? I'm not comfortable with drawing and I dont want to spend more time drawing sprites than writing actual code. How do I manage my sprite animations? Say I have 9 sprites for my player character that I'll use to give the running effect. How do I make sure all the sprites are displayed correctly I dont want them to be displayed too fast. I've seen solutions were people use delays but that doesn't seem like a good way to do it as I'll be wasting processing time. [link] [comments]  | ||
| I posted this on r/lostmedia and was told to post here instead. Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:46 PM PDT Sorry if this is long. I do talk about what I need help with near the end so please bear with me. In 2014, I downloaded a game called Stormglass. It was a full 3D puzzle game that took up practically all of my storage. Throughout the first few levels of the game, you were allowed to get hints on what to do if you spent too long on one puzzle. However, after a while, the hints just started to say things like "My only hope now is Stormglass.com". Stormglass.com was the game's website, and on it, there was a full walkthrough of the game, level by level. The game was apparently made to tie into a children's book series called The Stormglass Protocol. The game was extremely well made. There was obviously a lot of passion put into its development. The game was stellar. It felt more like a console game than something you would find on the iOS App Store. I played the game for several months before it randomly disappeared one day. It was probably my parents trying to free up storage (the app was massive), but I didn't know that. I just assumed that it would turn up another day. Obviously, it didn't come back and I decided to look at my purchases in the app store. I couldn't find Stormglass anywhere, and I eventually forgot about it. Fast forward by around four years, and I randomly get a wave of nostalgia for the games I used to play. I dug up my old iPad 2 and charged it for the first time in five years. After the iPad finally turned on, I saw that most of my old games were still on the home screen. I had fun playing the games again, but just couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. I spent around ten minutes trying to figure out what it was before I remembered Stormglass. Immediately, I go to the App Store and look at purchases again, thinking that I may have overlooked the game last time I searched. I couldn't find it, so I looked at my hidden purchases. There was nothing there either, so as a last ditch effort to at least prove to myself that I didn't make the game up, I looked at my Apple ID transaction history. After a while of scrolling, I found the game. It was called The Stormglass Protocol: Room Escape!, and was sold by StormglassVenturesLLC. There was no re download button anywhere. After a bit of research, I found that the game had likely been taken down by the developers. At this point, I really wanted to re play the game, so I searched for an .ipa backup on the internet. I found tons of screenshots, the trailer for the game, reviews, walkthroughs, a short gameplay video and even a backup of stormglass.com on archive.org. The one thing I couldn't find was the game itself. There was no shortage of download links, but every single one led to a screen in the App Store saying that the game was no longer available. I spent the next two years trying to find the game. While looking for the game, I found several other people looking for the game. Most people were in the YouTube comments of the trailer, but there was also one Reddit post from someone who was searching for the game as well. I mainly talked about the game in the comments of the trailer, and around two months ago, someone who claimed to have been in contact with the developer and still had the game commented. We talked for a few days about the ROM before the user stopped responding. Since I had no other options, I contacted the developer. Within a day, I received a response. Apparently, the game was taken down because an iOS update caused a game breaking glitch that made one of the levels unbeatable. The developer also told me that Stormglass was made in the Unity engine, and that he still had the files. He sent me the files and I downloaded them along with an old version of Unity. There was just one problem: I have next to no idea how to recompile the game. I'm good at reverse engineering and modifying games, but I've never rebuilt one before. Additionally, at some point Apple decided that their simple, advanced technology that does more for less should no longer run32 bit programs. The version of Unity I had to install (which is literally less than 10 years old), no longer worked with my computer. I do have a Windows 7 computer from 2010 that can run Unity, but it takes two minutes just to open Google Chrome. Rebuilding a game on it would be painful. I'm willing to use it if I have to, but want to avoid it if I can. Additionally, the developer of the game sent me the game's compiled .ipa file directly from his device. I was able to install it onto my iPad using Apple Configurator 2, but when I tried to open the app, I am prompted to sign in with the developer's Apple ID. This leaves me with two options. I either need to somehow remove the metadata from the .ipa file, or update and compile the unity project, both of which will be very difficult for me because a have zero experience with programming. I'm looking for all the advice I can get at this point. If anyone here has some experience with Unity, please, tell me what I need to do. I'm a little hesitant to share the files because I have no clue about the legality of sharing a previously paid game for free and don't want to get sued. Thank you in advance. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 12:32 PM PDT
 | ||
| How is this method of animating a 3D model called ? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:56 AM PDT Title basically, and for what i'm referring to, i'm referring the way the animation is handled in game like GrandBlue Fantasy Versus, where the character seems to almost stop in between frames. Here is a video that demonstrate : https://youtu.be/UQXnvVJYlD0?t=37 i would personally refer that to stop motion principle applicated to 3D animation but i'm not sure if that's correct, can someone correct me if i'm wrong ? And, is it easier to animate that way than traditionally smooth animation for someone that is learning 3D animation ? Cheers. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:20 AM PDT There's an open source project that I've been using since 2018, the developer himself stopped updating because of the abandonment of unet. But I would like to continue using this project until the end of 2022 when I intend to release the game. Can I continue using unet commands on unity 2018? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:19 AM PDT
 | ||
| how do you make satisfying camera control in top down 2d action games and crap? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:17 AM PDT luftrausers has the camera focus on the combat rather than the player, but what about for top down games, and how does the camera dictate where to focus itself and when? idk how to do it so my dumbass came here for answers please help [link] [comments]  | ||
| Is It Possible To Make A Game With A Cover System AND "LEAN" Mechanic? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:09 AM PDT I want to be able to get behind cover and blind fire such as the Gears of War games and also lean from left to right such as in rainbow six siege. Is this possible? [link] [comments]  |
| 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