Anyone else into game dev?

[BloodyKun108]

Maybe there is a better subforum for this but this is the one that made sense to me, and am just a bit surprised there is not much talk of video games in general. from a young age I've always wanted to make my own games, right next to wanting to be an author and artist, and I guess in some ways each of those has converged a bit in different aspects as I've come to find at least being an indie dev is now more accessible than ever and perhaps even somewhat profitable if you're really serious about it, I suppose not much unlike what we now might consider early days of some startups in their garages and whatnot. For me personally one hurdle is not wanting to give up any ownership and thus not working well with teams, but it's not like that's impossible either anymore, but still I'd imagine for many with trouble in executive function when trying to keep focused on a project. What has helped to really kickstart my own projects is to try joining many game jams within the last year, at least getting practice in making the core of a game really quickly, getting a feel for how long some aspects may take, your own strengths and weaknesses, how you might test for issues, how to be self sufficient or know where to ask for help or seek information, etc. It has been especially fun to challenge myself with new ideas and takes that these jams often find ways to with different themes and such. I've taken to documenting my own games as well as simply experimenting with different ideas and programs, from Game Maker to RPG Maker, GB Studio, Godot even despite 3D being particularly hard for me to wrap my head around. I hope this doesn't come off as advertising, just want to share my experience so far and would love to see what others here might do or have done before.

- YouTube

Despite troubles in Godot and GB Studio being a bit deceptively simple, I think the most trouble I've had has been with just how rigid RPG Maker can feel, and has lead me to doing some research into how some of the more successful and creative titles in that engine work. I think for me that, even despite all the changes over the years to Game Maker, I'm most comfortable with that and the level of freedom there is there even if a lot of it feels like constant trouble shooting with how I tend to logic things out lol. but there is still so much I've got to learn and don't often think about until I run into some major problem.

 

[Outdated]

I dabbled a little bit over the years. I taught myself a bit of C, C++ and Python back in the 90s but not with any goal of getting in to programming. I was just always fascinated by computers and wanted a better understanding of what actually goes on inside, how it all works.

I made very minor contributions to a few different open source projects over many years, even though I've never attempted to write my own program and I admit my familiarity with programming is only on a very basic level, I have a good pattern spotting ability. Or more to the point, errors in patterns stand out to me, so I was good with trouble shooting and bug fixing.

I got heavily involved with one project for about a year before it started burning me out, working with a serious programmer in the US we made a fork of the game MineTest. It's basically an open source MineCraft but has some great features such as being able to connect to other devices via wireless lan. So the kids in a household can play together without going on the net, their laptops just connect directly to each other.

It was purely a bugfix fork, we wound the git right back to early on in development and then slowly added each next commit one by one and bugfixing each one before adding the next. Including a bit of helping out with other people's server problems the two of us put in 2000 hours each in a 6 month period. About 16 hours a day 7 days a week.

We did good though, although I think in functionality and playability and simple practicality it reached a peak in mid 2019. I dropped out and another chap stepped in, it's still only a two man team maintaining this fork:

Downloads - Minetest

The engine is written in C++ and the game itself is just a collection of mods written in LUA. It's a fantastic learning tool for any kids that are interested in programming, LUA is very similar to Python and makes a good simple introduction. They can edit different mods to suit themselves then see the changes they've made in the game, and eventually some will get interested in creating their own mods.

 

[AuAL]

Two of my children are game dev/prog professionals. Dinner table conversation is often … interesting. I haven’t played video games since Myst. My first was “Adventure”. Who else remembers “You're In A Maze Of Twisty Little Passages, All Alike”?

 

[Misery]

I have some experience when it comes to this, though it's always been with indies and such.

Quite a few years ago I was contracted to work on some stuff by an indie studio (Arcen) whose members I'd gotten to know over the years, as I loved their stuff and was always helping with testing.

This is an example of something I had a hand in making:

Most of the boss fights and probably a bit over half of the game's rosters of enemies are my designs. I was brought into this because I know the bullet-hell genre better than most, and they needed someone with enough knowledge about that type of design. I also had a particular love for games like Binding of Isaac, and the game in the video there is very similar to that. A lot of similar elements, because I'm obsessive and the guys in charge actually gave me a lot of control over the project.

That game actually came out on consoles very recently, I can finally say that something I was part of making came out on consoles, which was sort of a childhood dream of mine. Not that it's some huge achievement, anyone can do it these days, but still.

That wasnt my first project either. The first one was a game called The Last Federation, I was brought in to work on the game's first expansion. Same reasons, though the nature of the game is wildly different. I helped with more expansion stuff after that. I also rebalanced all the combat units for some reason. Not sure why. I can be really obsessive about game balance though. I guess that's probably why.

I've never considered myself a coder though. All of my work with these was done in XML. I can handle XML. Making all those spiraling bullet patterns was easy. But I cant make anything outside of XML (and recently I'm learning HTML, which is easy so far because of the similarity in structure).

I've dealt with a lot of other indie teams before as well, always in a testing position (and I dont mean "early access"). A particularly notable one is Unexplored. Golly I love that game.

As a kid I used to mess with Klik & Play a lot, I loved that. Making games was definitely my childhood dream.

I could work with no-code engines, I think. But I'm never sure if they can do what I want to do. Like I have ideas for some projects that would be in 3D, but I've yet to find an engine of that type that is 3D capable. It seems like all of them are 2D only.

I've been wanting to make something of my own... as in, without anyone else... for awhile now, but I've held back. Aside from needing some sort of no-code engine to do anything, I also have zero usable art assets and such, and I cannot make those myself. Frankly I would just use AI art... as I couldnt care less HOW the stupid sprites and such get made... but I know some people would have a series of aneurisms over that, so I wont.

It occurred to me very recently that I could use fractal art... as I *definitely* know how to make that, that's like my whole thing... which could make for a very unique look to anything I make. It also would be like 20 headaches at the same time to do. Animating the stupid things is such a pain... But I might do it anyway. I could design a shmup in my sleep, so I figure if I manage to get enough self-confidence to have a go at designing something, I'd make one that uses fractal art. Probably go mad in the process though.

The other reason though is that the idea of making something, and then that something just getting mostly ignored, would be... just too much. I've seen it happen to so many devs at this point.

and am just a bit surprised there is not much talk of video games in general.

We definitely have some gamers here, just not all that many.

I could probably talk everyone's ear off about the subject, but I find my interests dont mesh with others very well. I pretty much exclusively play indie stuff; I gave up on AAA games many years ago after realizing where that side of the industry was headed. Binding of Isaac and Spelunky showed up, and I jumped ship, swam over to them, and never looked back.

Fighting games have always been the only exception.

I mostly do PC gaming these days, though I do have an Xbox Series X, because a friend abruptly gave me one. I've got a Switch as well but it was never used much, I dont like it very much. Irritating device. It's been used in handheld mode probably less than 5 times.

I play most things with a controller, even if said games dont support controllers. Due to chronic pain issues I cant use a mouse for gaming most of the time (and I use a vertical mouse, which isnt exactly designed for gaming), so I gotta stick with controllers.

Anyway, I've yet to meet anyone else outside of Steam (which is where I'm most active) who shares any interests in indie stuff, so it's very rare that I talk about gaming with anyone. On Steam though, I am a reviewer, been doing that for a long while.


Not sure what else to say here.