Games My Unity Journey - No more half measures!

I just started with Unity and would like to document my journey, I hope it is okay to put it in this forum. This is not about a single game but rather a blog of my attempt to make better (and bigger) games each time.





The Past:



About a year ago I discovered “Stencyl”, a game engine that caters to the absolute beginner, which I was at that time. I did just about every classic beginner mistake one could make, such as tackling projects that were way too big for me, or assuming my first game would naturally be a great success and the only question is whether to buy a boat or a jetski. It earned about 80 cents. Dreams were crushed and lessons learned, so I made some smaller Idle Games and uploaded them on Kongregate with some moderate success (most of it due to the games being Idle Games, they get high play numbers no matter the game). I was getting very close to finish my first strategy game, but after peeking at Unity several times, I decided to attempt the switch and eventually redo the game here.



Here is one of my games: http://www.kongregate.com/games/BambooHutGames/outsourced-hell







The Present:



While I am amazed by the new possibilities, I am equally frustrated. In Stencyl I can do almost anything I want, but in Unity I feel like my hands are tied and a sock has been stuffed in my mouth. Currently I am trying to just follow along tutorials, copy everything and take some hand written notes on what I've learned (the result being a bit messy but the writing down alone should help).



My art skills are still pretty bad, but given that last year the best I could draw was a smiley, I am somewhat content where I am right now. The goal is to draw really awesome cartoon characters, so that's still a long way to go.







The Future:

Making mind blowing, complex strategy games that people play and afterwards say things like “”I am a better person now”/”So this is what life is all about” etc. But before I get there:



Back to Idle Games... I am not repeating the mistake I did a year ago, this time I will do small, very small projects. Since my goal is to make Strategy and Sim Games, it seems to be a good idea to make Idle Games since those are the stripped versions of Strategy Games - the strategy itself being stripped away as well in most cases).



I know a lot of people hate them, but I think those haters see them as strategy games that have been set on super easy / cheat mode. But for me they do not serve as an alternative to strategy games, instead they can come in very handy when I have something to do that I really don't want to do.







Current goals:



At least one drawing tutorial a day



Things I'd like to understand next:



- scaling/resolution (and why the hell there is no resolution)

- how to get variables from other classes (kinda get it)

- why a class is used as a variable

- change sprites of a button via script









That's it for now, I will try to update this thread at least once a week!

 

Looking forward to hearing of your progress.

 

I've been hitting quite a lot of walls no matter what direction I was going. I had to abort two beginner tutorials, tried a Clicker Game tutorial and had to cancel that as well. That left me no choice but to go back to the roots. When googling for stuff I often ended up at the official beginner scripting series, so I decided to go through those and copy everything in Unity and play around with it. Even though I had already watched a beginner scripting series, the official one was explaining things even better. After some experiments I was able to continue the Clicker Game Tutorial, so this is where I am now. I'm going to mix things up a bit by watching the pure scripting videos mixed with game tutorials, so I can work on my own games as well.



My quest to become good at drawing is going much better, mainly because it isn't very complicated and what counts most is to sit down and practice. I've been copying some of the sketches that Will Terrel presents in one of his videos:

In that video he also talks about how you shouldn't compare yourself to the best work of professional artists, especially when all they ever show you is the best they produced. In that sense, and because I can always use some feedback, I'm going to present you some of my bad stuff. The good stuff will follow in a few years...









This poor fellow had his forearms broken and regrown back together a few times: I drew the face, then the hand with the pizza, and then the arms...



Here I really liked the line work, the coloring is a bit bland though. Since I copied it from a black and white print out I made from the youtube video, I didn't realize that the bottom of his shirt was just a shadow. Since I had drawn the line already, I decided to end his shirt there. The background isn't that purple either, I kinda ended up turning this man gay.



Both drawings were done on random paper with watercolor back from my earlier school days, kinda funny that I was using colors that I had mixed together 20 years ago. I still have quite a lot of those cheap stuff and will go through it while I'm just practicing anyway. Just about every youtube channel and book advises to use the best stuff possible right away, but good art supply is freaking expensive.



Until next week!

 

Can you give a couple examples of the best strategy/sim games you like - and ones - if you have the means and ability you'd like to create?
Can you give a couple examples of some sim/strategy games you'd like to create in the next 2-3 years - the scope of the games you'd like to realistically create?

This is excellent for a beginning artist. Copy all the art styles and techniques you like. And if I may give one bit of advice - after copying a sketch of a particular creation from an artist. Take 15 minutes to an hour afterward and try to use the techniques you copied - on a creation of your own. This can be a life drawing (doesn't have to be nude ) anything you can look up from your paper and look at, a plant, a hanging light, a cat, a cup.
Then on the next day - after copying an artists work and technique - take 15 minutes to an hour afterward and try to use the techniques you copied - on a creation of your own. But instead of a life drawing - try to create something out of your own head. It can be anything you want because it is your own imagination.

These two extra steps - alternating between life drawing and imagination creation will help you improve your art exponentially, and allow you to learn at a faster pace.

 

Games:



I haven't been playing much in the past 15 years, so my list of good games is a bit oldschool. Some of my favorite games are Theme Hospital, Tropico, Rollercoaster Tycoon. Those are the kind of games I want to make, I think they can best be summoned up by “Managing something weird”.

While I also enjoy RTS like Command and Conquer and Age of Empires, I think making them will be too big of a project.

For now I'm going to make some idle games where things are rather symbolic than animated, next I'm going to make 2D games where the player will see a side view of a building. That doesn't sound too hard and the possibilities are endless.

I'd really like to make games like The Sims, but use more interesting settings like post-apocalyptic, or fantasy creatures, or homeless people – anything but ordinary people in today's world. Or like the game I almost finished: Cannibals trying to survive while the island is turned into a tourist resort.







Art:



That is some very good advice, I will try that out. So far I'm incapable of creating faces out of imagination that have any kind of character, which is kinda important. Currently I'm trying to carry a sketchbook with me wherever I go and build up a mental library.





Thanks a lot for your input, I truly appreciate it!







PS: I tried to play your game Fantasy Tac Tics Toe, but I can only see half of the screen and can't do anything, I guess the buttons are cut off? I'm using Firefox.

 

Yeah - UI snapping glitch, sorry about that. demo/alpha build.
You can maximize the view and the button will show up, then reduce back down to windowed mode if desired. Optionally you can download the PC version or play it on Newgrounds here.
Thanks for checking out!

 

I had skipped an update because I had nothing but frustration to report and was even considering using Stencyl again and learn Unity on the side. Anyhow, a few fistpumps and a week later that is all past and I finally have enough understanding of Unity that I started to make my first game: It is an idle game about growing and selling vegetables. Mindblowing idea, isn't it?



While so many other (better) ideas keep pilling up, I am glad that I resisted them and kept making this hyper simple game. Quite a lot of sessions in which I just wanted to add something trivial took me hours of searching and experimenting, such as trying to manipulate an array with a foreach loop until I come by a little site comment in a video that this is not possible and I have to use a for loop. At least all those little things are added to my library and one day they will be no-brainers.



For that reason I will try to find a nice balance of working on my own game and watching tutorials, I think I should watch at least half an hour every day and copy it. I came across a channel on youtube that is superb for beginners like me because the teacher explains everything in great detail, stops for some examples etc.:



https://www.youtube.com/user/KnnthRA



On the technical site I wanted to use strings to access variables of other scripts, something that was rather easy to do in Stencyl and incredibly helpful. I could just set a string of an instance of a prefab like

string colour = blue, green or red and then have a bunch of arrays with those colour names in it but use the string variable to call them. I looked quiet hard for it and every time I ended up at something called Reflection, almost always accompanied by the warning that this is not something for beginners, so I left it out for now.



Next week I will present the first screenshots of my game.

 

This week I've been working mostly on my own game, which is a bit of a double edged sword. While it is very motivating to finally create things on my own, watching tutorials would be better in the long run. I even had a little rage attack when I tried to get some layout ordering done and ran in a circle for quite a while, but I was loaded up because I had played some online poker before, which is always frustrating. Still, had I watched a tutorial all that might have been a lot easier.



Furthermore I have decided I need to change the speed I'm learning how to draw: When I think about the games I want to make one day, I usually have a pretty clear idea about the visuals. The problem is that those are based on art I've seen, not art I've produced or could produce. Two weeks ago I had challenged myself to make one colored drawing a day for 30 days and reward myself with a book. I failed after one day, failed the second attempt after two days, took a brake, failed after one day again, and then kinda forgot about it. I am now resuming that challenge. I also try to make it a habit to do a drawing tutorial first thing in the morning.



Finally, a bit about my current game: The theme is going to be “Space Vegetables”, which have to be grown and sold as various products. As mentioned before, not a super creative idea, but I'm slowly going from my worse to better ideas, as to not waste the good ones to incompetence in coding/design/art. I am kinda rushing through on this one doing very little editing on the coding and art side. Nevertheless, FEEDBACK IS ALWAYS APPRECIATED! Even though I'm trying to do things fast, I'd be lying if I said that I could do much better....

 

The past month things have been a bit slow, mostly due to some family visits and blueberry/mushroom picking season being in full swing. Anyhow, I managed to finish my first Unity Game! As mentioned before, it is an idle game in which the player has to grow veggies in space and sell them on earth. I was really close to just wrap it up last week and call it done, but I managed to add a few things.

I do not expect success on this game in terms of a high rating or play numbers, the success is that I BUILD A GAME IN UNITY!!! I'm very proud of that since not too long ago I had a hard time following beginner tutorials. It would be nice though to get enough players to get (helpful) feedback.


Though I didn't work much on my game the past few weeks, I have been drawing a lot. While I enjoy coding and learning new things about it, I will never reach a level where people, especially other coders, will compliment me on what a great thing I put together. In drawing I can kinda see that happening. So this is where I will try to focus on from now on.


Soon I will work on my next project, a satirical fantasy strategy game. But before I start I have promised myself to watch tutorials until I have a good understanding of inheritance, something that seems vital to making games in Unity. Another thing on my to do list is making an android version, because I have no clue about scaling/resolutions/controls and maybe that's something to keep in mind from the beginning? Ill find out with this one.


I would be very grateful for any constructive criticism on my game! Thank you!

http://www.kongregate.com/games/BambooHutGames/idle-space-farms

 

I tried it. I'm really not a clicker game person - but hey glad you could get into Unity enough to finish this, that is cool!

 

Tried it. The problem I had was there were texts about products, but only pictures and I didn't know what anything was. And there just wasn't enough going on to really make it a challenge. I just kept clicking things with no understanding. I would think the ticker tape would have to be giving more clues and it should be more obvious about the price going up or down, and more failures where you lose money and lose the game. I can see where it was a good experience writing it.

 

Thanks guys for checking out the game! About the non-challenging part, that is kinda what idle games are about. Not that much my cup of tea either, but great for making a first game . The thing about not knowing what to do is a mistake I keep making over and over. I think next time I'll give the game to someone who doesn't even play games and see if they understand the tutorial/explanations.

Unfortunately, the game is doing even worse than expected, which is strange because I sure have made game worse than this one lol. Android export fails, a purchased Kongregate API asset fails, updating fails (save is lost), my printer fails and still does after a long nightly battle and on top of that I hurt my back when doing some old school scything so I didn't get any sleep. Therefore I've decided to walk away and watch the fire from a nice cozy place. Weather is nice so I'll enjoy that and do some drawings. Afterwards I'll approach the problems one by one. Instead of using this game to test out stuff, I'll just upload testgames without publishing them.

 

@BambooHutGames I'm curious why you think switching to Unity made sense? Maybe I missed it and you want to get into 3D game dev. I only ask this because you mentioned in Stencyl you could do anything you want or make anything you want and Unity was quite a struggle.

So I guess I see it like why even do it then? If you want to make games and can probably make better games faster in Stencyl other than a personal satisfaction of learning a big game engine what are you getting out it?

 

Maybe my wording wasn't the best, I meant to say that whatever game mechanic I have in mind, I can sit down and go at it in Stencyl, but I will still hit some walls with no solutions.


tl;dr: Stencyl is easy, but Unity has a lot more things to offer.


Stencyl is easier to get started, but that's about it. I had paid 200$ for the subscription and was an active community member with a decent amount of posts helping others, but when I needed support from the officials I didn't even get a reply, so I looked for alternatives. Afaik the software is only being developed by one person, there is very little communication and you never know if one day it will simply stop, Unity seems a bit bigger . Since I'm investing a lot of time, I didn't want to take the risk of one day not being able to access any of my games anymore.



Furthermore Unity has the huge bonus of all the resources available, like books and tutorials. I already had a deeper understanding of how game engines work within 2 weeks of learning Unity, and there is so much more to learn. On top of that Unity has so many more functions and things already built in, like the GUI. In Stencyl there is none, you have to make your buttons etc. - I never would have imagined the number of ways a button can behave differently than you want it to).



One function that will be very important for my future is making bone based animations (I hope that is the right term), as opposed to pure sprite animation. I have some ideas for games where different outfits/tools will play an important role, and I don't want to end up making hundreds of sprites since Stencyl doesn't have it.



I think Stencyl is great for total beginners who want to see quick results, but it is not good for making anything larger (another example: the variables are not sorted alphabetically and you can't just type them in with auto complete, so eventually you end up spending quite some time scrolling around).

 

For the first time I managed to truly walk away from my failure and didn't try to hastily fix things and incorporate suggestions in hopes that the game stops sinking. There was one nice comment from someone I knew from the Stencyl forums, but it was down voted until it got censored, the rest was insults, criticism and a horrible rating. And then people demanded things I should implement/change. I figured they can go F*** themselves.



Having moved on, I've had a great and productive week. My printer is working now, my back has healed, I picked a new kind of berries, smoothly landed some jumps on my bicycle and applied for two jobs and got interviewed for both. If no one better applies till next week, I'll get it.



Instead of starting my next game, all I've been doing is watching tutorials and copying everything in Unity. On the drawing side I've been very productive as well, doing tutorials, sketches and even some outside watercolor paintings. So far every game I've made I wanted to use real paintings and then gave up on it somewhere along the road. I think this time I'll just make a game where implementing real paintings will be the focus, just to get my feet wet. Since doing sprite based animations was the main problem when using real paintings, I've started to learn about the bone animation in Unity and will try that out soon.

 

It's been a while... A few months back I started working as a kitchen aid/dish washer, so that took up quite some time. While doing Unity tutorials I slowly switched over to making my own game. After my rough landing with my first Unity game I decided to stop making Idle games. Even though they are very easy to make, it's not where my heart is. And thus I took my almost finished cannibal game (made in Stencyl) and started redoing it in Unity. I'm almost as close as I was before, so hopefully this game will be done in a few months.

I also decided to go with real paintings as graphic, that's where I want to go, so better start now and get some experience. This is the midlayer of the jungle background, I took a photo since my scanner is even worse, I can't get the colors yet to be like the real painting.



Imperfection is all over the place, in some parts you can see how I learned, but I'm quite content with it because it is the closest I've come to what I had imagined. Not sure if I paint that one again, or maybe I'll try to add some stuff to the trees with gouache.



To better structure my approach I've decided to split up my free time into blocks: 1 hour drawing tutorials, 1 hour Unity tutorials, 2 hours working on my game, 30 mins writing. I'd like to call it the '4:20 method' but '4:30 method' works just as fine since a lot of it is done after a joint I'll keep a log to see how many cycles I go through each week.

 

Nice work, keep it up!!!

 

Enjoy following your updates. Keep up the good work, my friend

 

Having gained a bit of a retro perspective, I've decided to change my approach to become an Indie Game Developer. I will shift my focus on learning entirely. Success and money can wait. My plan over the next years is to live cheaply at my mom's or grandparent's during the better half of the year and work some random job, which will allow me to spend the winter in a cheap country while having a lot of free time. Since I enjoy washing dishes/cleaning the kitchen etc. I should always find a job quickly.



My own revolutionary game ideas will have to wait as well. There is no point in working on my games while I'm lacking the programming and drawing (and many other) skills to come close to my expectations. And it isn't a very efficient approach either.

For my new approach I compiled a list of game tutorials I've found in various corners of the web. I will work through them, modify the game, make my own graphics, and publish it for free. Since just about every person who makes Unity tutorials is far better than me, it makes sense to learn from them. The purpose of turning their games into my own versions is to cement the new information into my brain. Hopefully they will be good enough to at least be noticed by some players so I can get some valuable feedback.



As a way to motivate myself, I made a timer to track the time spend learning, with some rewards at certain milestones. Currently they are split in two:



100 hours of drawing will be rewarded with a visit to a special Basquiat exposition, one that features paintings brought together from all over the world.



100 hours of Unity tutorials will be rewarded with buying a game and play it for 5-10(max) hours while being totally high on weed cookies. Until then no weed and no games.



There will probably be a third one soon about re-learning the guitar and keyboard, and a visit of a rock show as a reward. Making my own music is a distant dream, but having a better understanding will be helpful too, after all music is usually present at all times during the player's experience.



So this is it, hopefully I will have interesting and frequent updates in the future!





April 10th timer counts:



Drawing: 16.5/100 (Basquiat expo)

Unity: 0/100 (white widow + prison architect)

Music:0/100 (rock show)

 

I went ahead with my plan and watched a rather quick tutorial by Brackeys and turned it into my own game. Unfortunately I got carried away and instead of spending 3-5 hours I spent about 30-40 hours on it.

So I scratched that challenged and replaced it with a new one: 150 hours of following along Unity tutorials and the reward will be an Ipad, which I want pretty badly. Been having wet dreams about an Ipad pro for ages and they just released the 2018 basic version which for the first time has pencil support.



The Drawing Challenge wasn't a total failure, only a small one. I managed to draw 25 hours, which is less than two hours a day. Pretty sad, especially when it felt like I did it all the time. On at least 4 occasions I fell asleep with the pen still in my hand. I had to go to work and take care of my grandparents, rode a lot on my e-bike too, but there are no excuses for less than two hours a day.

I started to look for time wasters and made some changes: I will only check my e-mails/bitcoin rate/weather etc. once per day, not 20+ times per day. I also spent a lot of time reading news, so I just signed up for the weekly audio version of my favorite newspaper (felt like I should support them financially anyway after having read a few thousand articles for free). At least I can draw now while getting my news fix.



The music challenge isn't worth mentioning, I simply forgot about it.





Last weekend I went to a Virtual Reality Festival. Living at the ass of the world I spent more time on the train/bus than at the festival, but figured I had to go since I want to be a game developer and this is going to be quite important in the future. Was pretty cool, though not as insanely mind blowing as I had expected. That's good because I can stick to 2D games to get the basics of game design and drawing down.

On the way home a fight broke out and for the first time I saw a guy bashing a bus with a child stroller. I had sat down in the front row to enjoy the landscape, and got that on top! Highlight of the trip, reality wins.









Here's my new game, I uploaded it on Newgrounds. Still under judgment but I expect it to pass because so far all my crappy games have done so ;-)



The tutorial was a clone of Doodle Jump, and in the end someone asked (live stream replay) about lightning, so I used that as a theme. It's just 2D sprites with normal maps created from gray scale.



https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/710331



Unfortunately I don't think I'm capable of getting the API to run, but I will upload it on Kongregate as well where I have bought an asset for that. Would be very useful to see how far players get before they quit, how often the good ones and bad ones retry etc.



Feedback is always appreciated!

 

Liked it,reminded me a game i was played when i was a kid.(i cant remember the name) It was similar to your game and you could perform tricks while you jump top for more points.

What i didn't like was the static character image.In my opinion it will be better if you put some animations. If you don't know where to start Anima2d helped me a lot so far. It is easy to setup and work with.

If u prefer easier animations u can always split the character parts in smaller images and just animate those without bones.

 

Thanks for your feedback!
There actually is a sprite based animation when the character jumps, it's just so fast that humans can't really see it

The problem I had was that the animation included the character landing and getting squeezed, so I'll have to delay the jump force. I'm gonna try to add that tomorrow, including more squeezed sprites.

Thanks for the tip with anima2D, I will definitely check it out. I have played around a bit with the default bone animation in Unity and this is definitely the way I want to go. In the jumping game there is only one character but once I make games with a few more bone animation will save an incredible amount of time.

 

So far my relationship with WebGL had been nothing but love, but not anymore. I've desperately tried to find a way to keep player's save data when updating the game, but that bitch won't listen. Playerprefs are overwritten, the streaming assets folder changes paths, and when I at last tried to implement a backend, I eventually realized that identifying a device on WebGL doesn't work either.



This sucks very much because I had planned to use WebGL for the first part of my journey. Games get a decent visibility and thus some feedback. Some solutions might be a player login or save files via text export, but none of those seem very attractive. I'll switch to free windows games on itch.io once my games reach the milestone of “not horrible”.



Since I've been running around in circles I have no new game to show this time, but at least I learned quite a bit about Unity and Playfab.





I tried to step it up with my drawing challenge because time was running out on the Basquiat exposition. I kinda lost interest to go there though, they don't have any of the paintings I wanted to see and getting there is a pain in the ass and rather expensive. Frustrated as I was I shot for the moon and checked if there is a bus going from here (blank patch on the map) to Amsterdam so I could go to the Van Gogh museum...and there is!!!! 22€ and a six hour bus ride to enter a magical world full of art, weed and hookers standing in windows! This will be my new reward.





I've been trying to identify and eliminate more time wasters, and I found a big one: Work. So far I used to bust my ass off in the kitchen trying to be as fast as one could be, the result is that I'm still getting minimum wage, my opinion matters so little that I'm not even asked and I'm doing the exact same S*** every day. I haven't been washing dishes for quite a while now since the chef prefers me doing food, which sucks even more because doing the dishes meant I could listen to audio books.



I'm going to risk being broke when winter comes, in which case I could still head south, find a job and gain some new experiences.

I didn't want to be a total asshole and walk out when the hotel/restaurant is badly understaffed, so I'll work till the end of July. Until then I'll make the best out of it and workout before so I can go crazy on the salmon/omelet/chicken etc... I'm the sucker that has to come before anyone else, so I'm alone for a few hours





Challenges:



Drawing: 77/100 – Reward: Amsterdam trip to Van Gogh/Rembrandt museum

Unity: 18/100 – Reward: Ipad

Music: 3/30- Reward: Streaming Recorder License

 

I finally quit my job at the restaurant, joining the ranks of soon to be homeless indie developers... It was a bit earlier than planned, but I had to work a lot recently taking over for a colleague who went on a month long vacation.



Despite the workload I did okay with my challenges, the 100 hour drawing challenge is actually done. I haven't been to Amsterdam yet since an opportunity for a free ride to Berlin had opened up. There I participated in my first game jam which was a great and valuable experience. Since my skills aren't the greatest I had been worried that I might end up being the fifth wheel but I think I did alright thanks to all the tutorials I recently watched. Together with a professional Unity developer and a highly skilled artist we managed to just about finish a game in 8 hours. Besides the fun I had it was also one big valuable lesson in programming and how to work in a team. This game jam happens every month so I'll try to make it to Berlin as often as possible.



It was also pretty entertaining to see what the other teams had put together. After I had been told at the VR festival a few months ago that using Unity means being unemployed it was reassuring to see that every single team had used Unity.





The 100 hours Unity tutorial challenge is almost done, meaning that I will soon buy an Ipad and start making games. Inspired by the valuable lessons learned at the game jam, I will try to make many small games and try to participate in online game jams to increase my chances of getting feedback.





Unity Challenge: 83/100 (Ipad)

Drawing Challenge II: 35/100 (Calvin and Hobbes Collection)

Music Challenge: 10/30 hours (Streaming Recorder)

 

Always happy to read about your adventures and progress. I signed up Unity just to be able to follow you in this forum. Do you already have a blog of some sort outside of developer's forums? I bet you would attract quite a nice non devs audience who would want to read about you. I think a good combination of frequent posts about progress on Twitter and Instagram might drive many people to your Twitch/YouTube/Patreon/Whatever. I don't really know. I am not able to give a proper marketing advice. Just saying I feel you have a lot of potential for creating a loyal audience, which you are maybe not using to its' full extent at this moment.
Looking forward to your new posts!!

 

Thanks a lot for your kind words! I recently checked the Stencyl forums to see how woodwarf 2 is coming along, but didn't find anything. Since you already signed up for this forum, you should start to use Unity Let me know if you want to switch, I'll coach you for free (pains me to see other developers limiting themselves by using Stencyl...).

I don't have a blog/social media right now, but will start very soon. So far my main focus was to get good and fast at coding/unity and I am quite happy with the results, but about a week ago I switched that focus to drawing. Once I'm a bit better I will start posting on Twitter/Instagram. I think it is very important to get people's attention quickly, since they only give you a second, hence a nice drawing/painting works well.
I'm not sure a blog would interest people too much, my life is too boring right now lol. Maybe it will be more interesting when I'm back on the road and can spice things up by adding some urban sketches throghout the text. Last week I tried to do some urban sketching in Berlin but its so much harder than it looks...

 

Woodwarf 2 is coming along nicely but super slow because free time become a luxury to me. I skipped posting to Stencyl forums to save time. You might find some tweets I made @Dom0Games
Thanks for offering to help around Unity! For now I think I’ll stick with Stencyl, but maybe in a few years I move in as well. Currently Stencyl works for me as a rather quick and simple tool to my means. I too want to improve mostly in art area so learning programming falls into second place.
And one more thing... You are an indie game dev. Your life is anything but boring hehe!

 

Things were going quite well, I finished several challenges and my coding/drawings skills were progressing constantly, fueling the cycle of success and motivation. Being the idiot that I am I figured I didn't need to do timed challenges anymore (mistake number one) and that I should work more on finishing my own game (mistake number two). Add to that the usual almost finishing a game, then starting the next one, almost finishing that etc... Needless to say, my progress came to a full stop.



I wish I could say I pulled myself out of it by realizing I was going down the wrong path, but it was tragedy which struck hard last month. One funeral is bad, two are even worse... I wasn't able to concentrate enough to go anywhere near coding, but at least I started to draw again. Life goes on somehow and after this delay I am finally going to move to Thailand next week. My uncle has moved in a while ago here and will take over looking after my grandparents.



My first base will be Chiang Mai where I will try to stick to a real schedule and sign up at one of the many co-working spaces. I'm not allowed to work in Thailand nor do I have to take care of anyone, therefore I will have a lot of time to work towards my goal of becoming an Indie Dev. Money will be rather tight and I'm not sure how long I can survive. The goal is April so I can move into my mom's garden shack in Berlin. I tested living there last week, crushing all my illusions of living surrounded by and connected to nature. It was rather rough. The shack is right by the train tracks, the mice got in despite closing the holes and taking a shower with a garden hose in mid-october isn't that much fun either. Not to mention the toilet which is basically a glorified bucket. But that nightmare is left for next spring, right now I'll enjoy my time in Thailand.



I just finished reading “The Art of Game Design” by Jesse Shell. It's quite a thick book and thus I powered through so I don't have to schlep it to Thailand. I was a bit skeptical after the beginning, but the book has given me a lot of insight and more importantly a tool to practice game design. Until now I was pretty scared of it being such a large and obscure area. I'm going to examine my own games and some other games, good and bad alike, with the lenses(questions) provided by the book.

I've also purchased “Theory of Fun for Game Design” and “Level Up”, but I'm not sure if I can find the time to read them. I might just print out a guilt-free copy assuming my printer in Thailand still works(probably not)...

 

This imo is one of the most interesting threads that has ever appeared on these forums. I was going to say you are doing the best kind of marketing without even trying to (I think lol) but just up above a bit someone mentioned that.

Still worth mentioning they are very right. A lot of what brings success has little to do with the game itself and everything to do with the developer being an interesting person providing value and consequently more and more people are interested and appreciate them and want them to succeed. Want to "support" them.

Anyway really enjoyed reading through all of these entries this morning.

 

After being stuck in a conservative small town for two years I finally packed my bags and moved away from this place with the speed of sound for about 11 hours. Upon arriving in Thailand I was hit with full force by the heat, the chaos, the noise, the dirt, getting lost in endless side streets and playing Frogger when crossing the road and loving all of it. Life at last, every few steps something to discover, in the city as well as in the jungle, real jungle; created not by man but nature, something you don't take for granted when you live Germany.


I quickly found a decent place for around 280EUR and moved in only to find out that the restaurant across the street features a live band playing exclusively Thai music. In case you never came across a Thai song on the radio, there is a reason for it. Since it was Friday I figured it's a weekend thing, I could deal with that. Music on Sunday nights, including the last half hour 'a capella' accompanied by a choir of drunks, was a bit much though. On Monday night all hope was lost - I will move as soon as my lease is up.


One of the most important reasons to come back to Thailand was my wife. I had kept her locked up in a storage so no one else would touch her:





We married back when I had money, and now she keeps asking for more or she'll be gone. I had to pay the cost for over two years of storage, and the humid climate took it's moldy toll. The bills kept ramping up, but going full throttle on the highway was all it took to leave my financial worries and responsibilities behind like the rest of the traffic. I've been pulled over by the cops three times already (they love setting up road blocks, it's a cash cow for them, tourists have no license, Thais have no helmet) but they never notice my license expired a year ago, leaving a victorious smile on my face when driving off. I am in the process of renewing my driver's license though, which now requires bribing the immigration officers to get the paperwork. My German health insurance won't pay in case of an accident, and treating myself after a crash twice in the past has turned my leg into a scared up mess.



All in all arriving in Thailand was as exciting as it was a financial kick in the balls. Rent, storage, motorbike repairs, buying equipment, several unavoidable visits to all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants etc... Unfortunately I have barely gotten any work done, there are simply too many options to not work. On top of that my shoulder and neck problems escalated making it hard to sit at the desk. I upgraded my equipment though, allowing me to keep good posture. Painkillers help too.

I came up with a daily schedule which I will try to stick to as often as I can:



1 hour drawing tutorial (something intense like schoolism.com)

2 hours Unity tutorials/practicing code

2 hours drawing tutorials/sketching/freestyle etc.

2 hours working on my own game

1 hour Game Design



I am not sure yet if I should just cycle through that or start everyday from scratch and add some items.



I used the plane ride to read about a third of “Clean Code”, telling me a lot of things I've been doing very wrong. I took notes and am using them to go through my latest game. Even though it is nearly finished, the time should still be worth it. For one I always think my games are nearly finished when I'm not even half way there, and second the book mentions that while coding the ratio of reading to writing is 10:1, which is probably where I am at as well. Therefore every minute invested in making the code cleaner should pay off nicely.

 

After a month of involuntary live music I was desperate for a new place, but finding a cheap apartment in Chiang Mai proved difficult for the first time. This was largely due to the flood of digital nomads that has swept over the city in recent years. Add to that the seasonal winter refugees like me and a decent number of retired men who need to supply their gold digging Thai wives (future me) and suddenly the demand for cheap places is quite high. Looking for a place sucked double because I'm broke and thus I wasn't looking for the nicest but for the least worst option.



By chance I came across an unusual offer, a Westerner with an accent as seen on the Sopranos had a room that wasn't on the market, the place seemed rather shady and there would be no paper work mentioning the rent or security deposit, yet I had to verbally agree to three months.



I was trying hard to read that guy but couldn't decide whether he was trying to scam me or not. In the end it was simple math:

(How much do I save living in that place) - ((how much will it cost me if he scams me or I get robbed or my bike gets stolen) * (how likely are those things to happen)) = 50$. I took the offer and was reminded not to tell anyone in this building that I'm paying rent.



I now live in a former hotel that went bankrupt three decades ago. The water sometimes comes out black, I am taller than the ceiling in the hallway, having to duck all the way to my door, but I have a quiet room with a nice view and a kitchen corner with a real gas stove for 200$ a month. It is right by the highway so I can be in the city in less than 10 minutes as long as I don't see rough accidents like last week which make me ride very slowly for a while...



So far I think the odds of getting scammed are decreasing, the owner seems like a nice guy and despite turning my bullshit radar all the way up I haven't caught anything at all. My bike sticks out quite heavily among the fleet of old scooters, but if it gets lifted I could accept that, saving me the money on future inspections and repairs, while greatly decreasing my chances of dying in a crash.



My office, chill out zone, kitchen, bathroom, animation studio (the counter behind the fridge) all in one picture, taken from my bedroom. About half the time some pigeons are chilling out on the AC which is great for sketching on the toilet but not so nice when it comes to clean windows because S*** hits the fan quite literally.






The view is quite nice and if I ever need a new door there are quite a few just lying around...



To increase my productivity and structure my approach I made myself an app. Each section is 45 minutes long after which music starts playing, telling me to get up and step away from the laptop. A chart visualizes my progress in retrospect. 0-6 classes a day show a progression from a shameful red to a pathetic yellow, 6-12 classes turn from yellow to heroic green. "Coding" means learning to code, not trying out my own stuff, that's reserved for "My Game". "Game Design" is analyzing my own and other games via the lenses from The Art of Game Design. "Drawing" should be obvious, the most recent addition, "Thai Media", refers to a mix of practicing Thai and taking care of my social media presence, two things I've neglected nearly completely.

 

I made quite some progress on my latest game, so much indeed that a release is on the horizon. The game is based on a genetic algorithm, something I came across a while ago and found quite fascinating. I dug a little bit deeper and learned about neural networks, but decided to stop right there and focus more on genetic and evolutionary algorithms.


Even though "Neural Network" is quite a buzzword these days, I think that genetic algorithms can be of value as well since the player can grasp the concept on a more practical level. Explaining that a perceptron adjusted it's weight isn't as practical as say a game in which purple aliens become attracted to aliens with a blue skin, for whatever cultural shift is going on there, thus the percentage of blue equals the chance of getting laid. With the offspring having the combined color of their parents, the player can see why eventually all aliens become blue (until purple becomes sexy again...).


Thus I am going to explore evolutionary algorithms in games a lot more, with this game being the first foundational step. Here is a little preview:

The lights move randomly at first and then clone and mutate after each run, while living a bit longer every time. It started as an Idle Game with only a start point and an end point, but after examining the game with Jesse Shell's lenses I figured that adding a movable checkpoint and 2 colors that need to merge the game could be so much more. Maybe now it is "so much more" than a piece of dog S*** and all the time spent was just turning a horrible game into a bad game, but more about my hopes and fears and choice of slipknot later...



The part of life away from my desk is going quite well, I managed to uphold my alcohol and candy ban without a single fail while keeping things interesting.

Last week I did a motorbike trip to Myanmar to get another 60 days on my visa. Avoiding the main roads I got to see quite a bit of this spectacular country.






I still haven't fully recovered from my BJJ injury and thus upped my hiking and kayaking. I recently did the longest hike I ever did alone, spending over 8 hours in the jungle. On the first half I walked on trails that are used by other people and encountered a few. The second part was me alone in the jungle running into spiderwebs about every 10 minutes.




My productivity app is working out great. Even more important than the motivational kick in the butt is the structural approach. I am constantly readjusting the schedule based on reflection and figuring out what is most important in the near future. Sometimes I break down the categories into subcategories and keep track on pen and paper. I have relapsed a couple of times into old habits, wrestling with code and bugs until my brain starts dripping on my keyboard. It is almost surreal how using a few 45 minutes blocks means just as much or even more progress than a 10 hour session.

The app also showed me quite clearly that going to bed at 10 and up at 6 means the day is about 2 hours longer than going to bed at midnight and up at 8, though that is a fact hard to accept at 10 pm. Thus I have updated the app to start playing the song I hate the most at 9:50 pm, Abba's "Dancing Queen".

 

My time in Thailand has come to an end. Mostly because my savings have come to an end, but also because I was tired of the general brainlessness. Just as I was thoughtfully looking out the window and deciding if I should sell my motorbike and leave for good, some guys began to casually unload a pick-up full of trash in the bushes. A few weeks later the entire city was covered in smoke, like every year, causing me constant pain in my eyes and throat. I left and spent a month on an island in the south, where my attempts to find some animals for drawing led me to a variety of animal cruelty. There's something heartbreaking about an elephant in chains squeaking. Before I end up going into a much bigger rant that would make a racist tell me to "slow down there", here's the bright side:



I improved my skills in programming, game design and drawing. I also managed to not have a single drink, no cigarette, no candy, no weed, no coke, no hookers...none of that good stuff that isn't so good anymore the next day... Though I did miss weed, and it's the only thing on that list that isn't bad the next day, I was too worried of getting caught and having to pay a bribe which can end up being several thousand dollars. What a soul crushing experience it would be to have some corrupt assholes take all the money for which I worked my ass off for several hundred hours.



Despite having spent most of the time in front of my laptop, the adventure stuff didn't come too short. Proof to that is my brain which refuses to accept the fact that I was only gone for 5 months, it feels more like a year.





The future looks a bit rougher though. I am utterly broke and have to accept the fact that programming and drawing all day is no longer an option. I was considering making an all-in move, trying to spam out idle games in hopes of making enough to eat, but I decided to get a job that will at least keep me afloat. I am once again living with my grandparents, in an incredibly boring small town. Thus the conditions are perfect to take it one step further than my time in Thailand. I will try to reduce social media to once a month, emails to once a week and almost no movies/shows.



My current schedule is 5 hours of working on my own game mixed in with 2x coding, 2x drawing, 1x making tutorials, 1x music, 1x game design.

 

You have quite a journey behind you! This thread is really interesting to read. Thank you for sharing your stories with us. In my opinion you are a very brave and inspiring person - but also a kinda restless soul!
You really have my respect for all that motivation and your hard work to get better.

 

I finally got my game out the door, and then I locked that door. As always it took way too long, and though I expected the average ratings and play numbers, I still felt pretty blue. If it takes me that long to make something this bad, then this whole Indie Dev Dream just moved further into the foggy distance.

At least I get to work on new stuff now, and learned once again that my games have to be smaller and simpler. I won't be making any games for a while now that have levels, and try to publish a skimmed down idle version first.

Another fail was my attempt to launch my Youtube Channel. I assumed that putting a link in the game to see how the game is actually made would be quite fascinating to people. It isn't. 700 plays on Newgrounds gave me 1 subscriber, which might be a bot or some drunk guy clicking random buttons. I am definitely going to continue though, as teaching is one of the best methods to learn.

I just put the game on Kongregate, so if anyone here would like to play it and give me some feedback (and despite all of it still give me a good rating), I'd really appreciate it. As of now the game isn't out under the ratings yet, but Newgrounds has always been a really good indicator, telling me that this game is landing a bit below the ranks to get a cash price.

https://www.kongregate.com/games/BambooHutGames/the-evolution-of-light

Feedback on my youtube channel would also be very appreciated. I am trying hard to speak clearly, but will have to practice that a lot more. I am not the greatest coder, though I have watched a lot of tutorials and think I can keep up with most.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_TH1gmEFZWIrRuDdfgRewA?view_as=subscriber



Amid all this bullshit a good thing happened. I went to a game jam and Unity Co-learning session in Berlin, met lots of cool people and learned quite a bit. Unfortunately they changed the bus route, it now takes me 12 hours one way, and my mom lives outside the city now, so it took me over 2 hours on a crappy bicycle to get to the jam site. Since I still haven't found a job here I am strongly considering moving to Berlin, get a job that is fun and sign up for Computer Science at the University for free. Berlin is notoriously difficult for finding an apartment, so on my next visit I'll try to find out how hard it is to get one in the worst areas.

 

As expected my game performed about average on Kongregate. At some points the ratings were high enough to land me safely into the cash prizes and I couldn't help but to get my hopes up...like a woman smiling at you before you realize she's a hooker. In my next game I'm focusing more on the actual fun though. It is a game about milking bugs, and if that doesn't sound fun....



After I had spent way too much time on my last game, the bottled up frustration released into a game making marathon, something I was trying to avoid. But I'm slowly getting back on track, mixing in more time to learn new things. At least I was able to resist the urge to start a new game every few days. I think one at a time is much better as long as I am motivated.



I had already checked with my bank what happens when my bank account goes below 0, I have a suckers account, when I landed a job. It's another dish washing gig, only a 5 minute bike ride away and extra pay on Sundays. I asked right away if I were allowed to use head phones and if I could get one week off each month to go to Berlin for the game jams. They were desperate enough for someone with at least half a brain so they agreed to everything.



One of those Berlin trips just ended. I made a Buddhist inspired game with guys from Iraq, Italy and Taiwan. I almost ended up without a team since there was a 3D conspiracy going on, so once I finish my current bug milking game, I will try out some 3D to have it in my arsenal.



Unfortunately my Youtube Channel is going pretty badly, no one watches, no one subscribes. I once again overestimated the average's person desire to create. Almost 3000 plays for the game where I keep showing the link transferred to less than 30 views. But I'll keep making tutorials for quite a while since it is at least good practice for me.

 

Pretty interesting read, I normally don't read the entire thread, kind of skim but yours is very interesting, you need to incorporate some of that writing into your games.

As for what your saying, I can relate to some of it. I started in unity a while back with no experience in coding and very little art skills. Started a project that become to large, released it 2 years later, and it failed, at least financially it failed. Over all it was a success i was able to create a game, sold some copies, and learned a ton.

Anyways, keep at it and you'll get to were ever you want to get.

 

like the tone you are using, may the force be with you! keep up!

 

I'm always about to give up on this thread assuming no one cares, but then someone posts and shows me it's worth it, thanks a lot guys!



Unfortunately I don't have much to report, I am working a lot of overtime at my dish washing gig as my Russian colleague through in the towel (pun intended). It took me a while to get back into it, the first weeks I felt like I was run over by a truck after every shift and I did some classic beginners sponge mistakes splashing some greasy dirt water into my eyes. I fell asleep at my desk so often by now that I don't wake up anymore but just sleep for an hour or two, totally F***ing my neck...at least falling asleep while programming creates very interesting transitions into the dream world that funnily remind me of tripping on shrooms.


But chances are that I can work less soon and spend more time on making games (and trip on shrooms for real ) . Meanwhile I have used the time to listen to a lot of audio books at work, from podcasts to literature classics to non-fiction, I'm loading my brain up with tons of ideas.


Once again I fell into the old "start a game then start another game then start another game" routine. But I think I'm finally set on a game now, it will be my copy of Super Crate Box, a game I analyzed "with" my study group. What ultimately made me shift towards that game was an interview with Tim Shaefer where he talks about how there is often a discrepancy of how much time a team spends on a feature compared to how important it is to the players. He gives the example of the save game system, something super important to the player yet the team is not asking themselves day in and day out if the system is perfect. The same day I listened to another podcast where developers talked about how loosing your save game is the worst that can happen. Which reminded me that I have been neglecting that badly and should learn more about json, creating game states and backends like playfab,

So i asked myself which of my current projects would require the most simple one, so I can do that and make sure it is rock solid. Then on to the next difficult one and so on.







As for my approach I've decided to slow down on learning programming and step up my drawing and painting practice. Though I enjoy it very much, programming is not something I want to master, nor do I have the brains to do that if I wanted to. Despite the sad joke that my current painting skills are, I believe this is something where I can go very far. I just challenged myself to do a daily sketch outside, while working my way through the animator's survival kit.

If all goes well and they find another dish washer, I will take my overtime, put my tent and my bike and start pedaling until I cross a border or two. It would be great if by then I could sketch along the way.

 

Damn, two years is crazy. I couldn't find some recent WIP thread of yours, I hope you're still making games. Would be interesting to read a post mortem on it. I've actually met several people who were working on their first game for more than 3 years (and not finished yet) and I always thought I wish I could tell them this is a bad approach, but then who am I to say that, having had no success yet.

 

Yeah 2 years was long, but to be fair it was in my spare time, I really need to record my time better. You can see my game on Steam "Devoured Time", its not currently for sale, redoing it with all my new skills. I made a good amount of mistakes in the process. I wish it launched better but I learned a great deal from it all. I do know one thing, at least in my experience... no one is going to be a passionate about your game as yourself. That was one major thing that caused my first game to fail, started with a small team, got green lit, they left and I had to scramble with no funds to make the game myself. Outcome was a game not even close to what I wanted. So now I just do it all myself or subcontract help, people work much better when they get paid.

 

Oh side note, I was learning both art and programming and I took the programming path over the drawing, it just comes easier to me then drawing. I'm interested in seeing some of your art now, do you have any before and after your learning. I am not the best artist but I can appreciate it.

 

The stuff that I'm doing now is the before part ;-)

 

A while ago I was kneeling on the floor scrubbing a greenish slimy gutter and thought there has to be a better way to make money. Maybe it was the fumes that came up when attacking the gutter with steam and chemicals that made me visualize a glory comeback at online poker...

The good news is that I didn't loose money, but I did loose a lot of time. And so I got completely off track, still dabbling around with Unity, but getting nowhere near to finish a game.



A new plan was needed, one that gets me closer to my dream and away from the dishwasher. I need to be more efficient, and I need to put out a lot more games. The only way to do that is by making shorter games faster.

And that brings me once again to Idle Games. I have a vague memory that I had this plan before, threw it over board after a while, only to end up here again. But this time I am quite certain it's the best way to go.



They are fast to make and I play them quite a bit. Having to play them more because I'm making them feels like my doctor told me to eat chocolate to loose weight. Small, simple Idle Games will allow me to try out some ideas and mechanics on which I can easily get feedback from players, even if it's just about my counter intuitive controls etc.

When it comes to Idle Games, people even play the ones that would be under the threshold and never to be seen again. Since my games often end up under that threshold, it will be nice to get some feedback regardless.



Another upside to making Idle Games is that the time put into the visuals can be as long as I want it to be. I could add some loading bars and text, and that's it, or I could make complex animations. Putting out more games with simple visuals will be good practice in tying a game together, the mechanics, visuals, music, interface etc.



And so I decided to do a challenge: I will try to make 1000$ with Idle Games by the end of the year. If that fails I will seriously reconsider a new approach to get into that damn industry. Maybe study game design in Europe, or check out the possibility of getting a low level entry job (I guess that's QA?), or maybe I just rob a bank to buy me more time... Anyhow, first the challenge, then the next step.







For now I started with a simple idea, a textbook Idle game. From there on out I will try to change things up from game to game.

I will update on my progress, including the money earned(or not earned).

 

Once again I have to realize that any estimate on how long it will take me to finish a game is brutally wrong. My conservative guess of one month has turned into three. But I have some lame excuses I would like to present here:

Shortly after my last post I traveled to Berlin again and went to several game dev events, showing me a world full of nice people, creativity and artistic discovery, a world I desperately wanted to be part of. But I had to go back to my grand parents, and now I am stuck here. Their situation has turned worse, to a point where they can't live without someone constantly being there. That wouldn't be so bad if they didn't live in a conservative small town where creativity is considered a mental health problem. That led to a lot of frustration, especially when having to go to work and wash dishes all day.

On top of that summer ended rather abruptly and made no attempts to come back. My productivity started to go down, so I tried some gamification, using candy as a reward. That went out of control quickly, I started gaining several pounds a week. Then the junkie in me suggested I should use drugs as a reward, and the idiot in me agreed. That went out of control even quicker. My mood, health and productivity did a Thelma and Louise and jumped off a cliff holding hands.



But in a glorious moment of self respect I flushed my drugs down the toilet, went cold turkey on the candy and started riding my bike no matter the weather. And so my mood, health and productivity started rising again. Instead of bitching about having to live here, I am grateful for it. I don't pay rent, I can go mountainbiking in the woods (and soon snowboarding) every day, and despite only working half time, I can put some money aside.



The other reason for my slow progress is that I started practicing a lot of drawing. Once I appreciated my situation, I felt less pressure to make money with games and focus on my long term goals.

On my most recent trip to Berlin I went to my first "naked guy drawing" , a portrait drawing meet up and a truly fascinating Van Gogh exhibition. I also took part in another game jam, though I noticed that my Unity skills have somewhat stalled.







Anyhow, here's my newest game, an Idle game about running a pest control business. It looks ugly, kinda sucks and I am very proud of it. The goal was to create a game I can easily turn into new ones, and this time I didn't shy away from implementing Kongregate stats, server time and cloud save features. They might even be working correctly.



My 1000$ challenge is impossible to win at this point. I don't think I can finish another game this year and would be surprised if I earn more than 50$ with this one. It's and idle game, so it will be played a bit, but 10-20$ is probably more realistic. So let's just say my last post had a typo, and I'm on my way to crush the epic 10$ challenge!



https://www.kongregate.com/games/TheShackMan/idle-pest-control

 

Though I had originally planned to focus more on drawing this year, and things were going quite well, I decided to change gears once again. Several professional programmers have encouraged me to pursue an actual job, so this is what I'm gonna do. Despite my love for visuals and game design, coding is what I have been doing by far the most since I started my Unity journey, and it's what I'm best at. On top of that it seems the easiest way to get into the industry (I have met several amazing artists struggling to get any job at all, which is pretty scary since I'm far from being amazing).

I hope this doesn't sound like "I'm gonna sell my ass because the money is nice", I love programming and often feel a physical wave of joy going through my body when designing systems. It just hurts a bit to slow down on drawing.



I'm also going to take a leap and quit my dish washing job. I have some savings that should last me at least 3-4 months, and finding another minimum wage/break you're back/touch disgusting things job is always available. If it comes to that I would actually move to Berlin and work part time there while going to as many meet-ups and coding events as I can.



There's also the slim chance I can earn some money with my own games. While my last game performed quite miserably, I once again failed to properly explain people what to do, I surprisingly received 40$ for it. I won't be able to make a living off of it, but it might slow down the drainage. It's a bit like fixing a hole in the bottom of the boat with a napkin, but it might just make the difference to get me ashore.



As part of my refocus on coding, I will give my Youtube channel another shot. Last time I gained 15 subscribers while working nearly as many hours on it, but on the other hand it will never be as hard as in the beginning.

 

What's up? How are you holding? Please check in with some news! To be fair, I'll write what I am up to as well. Family and me are doing fine. Like in some bad movie in midst of pandemic, a strong earthquake stroke our city. It heavily damaged the house we were in so we had to move out. Luckily, no one of us got hurt. There is a lot of daily work to be made around children and jobs so our free time is really limited. Because of that I didn't start any project after releasing the last game, Woodwarf 2. We managed to sell quite good amount of units on Steam, but after sharing profit with our publisher and among ourselves, mathematically we didn't do the best job in the world. I think my work hour ended up bing around 5$. I just started talking with my artistic team mate about possibilities for entering another round, creating the 3rd sequel. He would like us to switch to Unity. I am reluctant, but possibly we might do that.

 

Damn, that’s some crazy coincidence, I was about to contact you in a few days… Last month the theme for Kongregate’s game jam was to take a previous winner and redo it, I chose some farming game, used pixel art and when I was struggling pretty hard with the chopping animations, I remembered Castle Woodwarf where they looked pretty fluid despite very pixels. Made me realize how similar my game is. I didn’t finish in time for the jam, but it should be good to go within a few days. I kinda gave up on the chopping animation though, this game will just serve as a first draft to get some feedback, and when I redo it, I’ll use a somewhat higher resolution.








It's about running a cult, gotta keep people drunk and high so they don't doubt things too much and keep giving you money.



You're situation sounds pretty rough (at least the house that got damaged wasn’t yours?), but hey, you have a financially successful game on Steam, definitely puts you ahead of the curve! I just bought it so it’s a tiny bit more successful now .



And you should totally switch to Unity, it’s just so much faster and versatile, and I could apply as a programmer for your team . I wrote the above game code to be easily adjustable to similar type of games. I’m actually gonna show quite a bit of that code on my Youtube channel. I recently got motivated to give that sunken ship another shot when I listened to a podcast by 6 Blender Youtubers who all said that having to pull through a phase of very few subscribers is part of the game.



Since Unity doesn’t have a steep learning curve, you could just take a few days, do some tutorials etc. (and never turn back….). Let me know if you ever need help or would seriously put me on your team. I’ve been trying to find people to collaborate with but they’re never serious about it. I’ve got enough savings now to take an entire year off to focus on making games and art.

 

WoWW! :-D I am so glad you answered this quickly, I thought man, who knows what have you been up to these days, perhaps even not in the gamedev world any more. But here you are, live and kicking really strong! Thanks a bunch for buying CW2, it is a really kind gesture. I'll share with you all the revenue stats from CW2, but not here since I don't want to spam graphs and numbers to your forum thread. I am long time ago subscribed to your YouTube channel. I didn't check it out much since it is all Unity, but please just keep on posting there, it will grow some more in audience for sure. Your cultist game screenshot looks really cool already! Might be fun to play, I hope you will make it good. I don't know which game you were recreating... The scenary reminds me on that one where on the left side you have your graveyard and on the far right you send your children to school or go to market.. Here I still have it in my favorites on Newgrounds https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/602885
It is great to hear you have successfully reserved the coming many months for gamedev. I am seriously considering getting you to our team. Just yesterday I confirmed with artist we are going to create it even though it might take us more than 3 years to finish. If we go with you, we might make it in 2 years. Both artist and me can take our time and we do not depend on the success. We will finish it, but the income is questionable. Significant probability is that we will end up working 1000 hours each and earnin $1 per hour or less. We can live with that. Perhaps we get $10 or more, but I do not count on that. We will have a great time along the way, that is certain. I'll talk to him about possibility to work all 3 of us together and get back to you.

 

Quick recap of 2020 so far:



In march I quit my dishwasher job, applied for two game dev jobs and got rejected in a way that told me it wasn't even close. Then Corona hit, I'm getting no substitute pay and I can't go to Berlin. Great...



The good news is that I have enough savings to last about a year. I think the safest bet would be to focus on programming as I'm already quite good at it and the chances of getting hired are the best. But safe bets are boring, I'll gamble and try to get good at drawing. I like coding, but drawing is my true passion. I'm now challenging myself to spend everyday at least 4 hours on working on my drawing skills, no exceptions and I'll have to pay a friend some money if I fail.



I will also give my Youtube channel another shot. I've been listening to the Blender Podcast "BlenderNest", in which they encouraged anyone to start a channel even if it is just for self improvement, and that having to go through a long 'no subs no views phase' is part of the game the youtube algorithm forces on you. Since I'm not an attractive woman, there are no shortcuts.



As for why there are no games... I made a tycoon type game and decided to pull the plug. I tried some weird combination of UI/world that just didn't work out. So I moved on to a game about an eco system, only to realize that I am running into heavy performance issues when aiming for webGL. This has happened way too often now, so from now on whenever I choose which game to do next I will ask myself “Is there a some small chance that I run into performance issues?” and if the answer is yes I do something else.





As mentioned in the post above, I tried to make a game for the Game in Ten Days jam, and after only 40 days I am done....



The game is about running a cult, where you have to keep people high on weed and drunk on wine to not make them doubt too much why they are praying to a sock. It is just a prototype at this moment, but I've written the code so it can easily be reused for similar games.



If you want to check it out, I just uploaded it to Newgrounds:



https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/753397