Solo Indie Gamer Developers Developing games

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#41

I’m currently working on a desktop based game.  It’s taking a while as I also have to deal with a full time job (long hours) and a hectic family life.  Part of my problem is that I’m a perfectionist and if something doesn’t look/feel right, and I can’t get it to look/feel right then I’ll just abandon it and move on.  I have sooo many unfinished projects sat on my computer it’s silly.

I love doing this as a hobby.  I’m not a good programmer by any stretch but I really really enjoy the act of typing code and seeing things come to life on the screen, and if I’m honest that is the main reason I do it.  I did get one game published on the App store not long after I started with Corona.  It sold a few hundred copies and got a few good reviews (thankfully no bad ones) but that was back in 2012 and it’s no longer available.  Earlier this year I completely re-wrote it from scratch but haven’t got around to publishing it yet, mainly because I’m only 99% happy with it.

#42

Appletreeman, your post is interesting in that it touches upon a very essential part of creating a game: finishing it 100%.

I’ve burst into laughter many times at parties when people come to me with ideas for an app or game and propose a 50-50 split in revenue: I’m allowed to develop their idea and do all the work, and they just provide their sheer brilliance and sit back and collect the profits! I then procreed to tell them that I have about 50 great ideas myself, and ask if they are not intested in doing tens of days, weeks or even months of work, for a 50-50 split. :slight_smile:

Finishing a project is, to me, the most challenging part of any game. Whether art, coding or level design, the first 20% of the game is often done in days, then next 75% takes a year, and the last 5% never gets done. It’s keeping up pace when the motivation dies that is the true challenge of coding, especially when it’s a) done solo and b) a hobby, as there is no pressure from others or due to money, to finish the job.

#43

I am highly interested to do some reading on others experiences. I wonder if there is any interesting books out there.

#44

…Nope, you’re not allowed to think that  :rolleyes:

A “bad” programmer is one of the following:

  • Somebody who uses programming to do something malicious.

  • Somebody who just isn’t technically minded enough to grasp the fundamentals and shouldn’t really be in this industry.

  • Somebody who understands the importance of security, optimisation, etc but consciously chooses to not to secure or optimise their code, because time/money/laziness.

It doesn’t sound like you’re any of those things, so you’re a good programmer, end of. Perhaps you’re inexperienced or the experience that you do have is within a specific sector, but that’s not the same thing at all and experience is relative to who you’re comparing yourself to anyway, so is a bit of a flawed measurement really.

#45

Good programmers, bad programmers, it’s all very relative.

I look at things from a very functional perspective: am I able to do achieve what I want to do at a decent level? When the answer is no, I research, study and practice until the answer is yes.

I am know at a point where I can code all the 2D games I want to make. Can I do server-side coding? Nope. C++ for my own plugins? Nope. OpenGL shaders? Nope. But that’s not a problem because I don’t need that stuff. And if I would, I’d learn to do that, at my own pace.

I have achieved a big, big, big milestone in my own mind in learning three things in Lua: proper code architecture, (pseudo-)object oriented programming, and network requests and the subsequent listeners. These three combined allow me to do anything I want to code. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m a damn good coder now!!! :smiley:

And that’s a nice place to be.

#46

@ahmed_shahjada  I’m a solo developer with a strong art background so I’m not desperate for visuals, however, good visuals take a ton of time and testing just like programming so I often just mock everything up with simple geometric shapes and then add visual complexity later.

 

I have several games in various states of completion.  My philosophy has shifted once again and after trying to force all of my project into the freemium IAP model, I’m now switching back to premium.  I figure that there are so many ways to fail, I wouldn’t make the quality of the apps one.  My apps are kind of between genres and quirky and don’t naturally lend themselves to the IAP model.

 

I’ve had a designer kids t-shirt company for years and struggled with counterfeiters so that lesson applied to my apps means I don’t release an app until it is 100% ready to stand on its own and stay ahead of the clone farms.

 

Technically this is a hobby as I’ve only made a couple hundred bucks so far but I’m going for a carrier change here so I need to find my way to the cash trough  :wink:

 

@anaqim let us know when you finish your spotify app.  I’m not completely happy with any of my musicservices.

#47

@thomas6 get coronium core and you can do server-side stuff in lua. it really works that great!

@sporkfin i’ll make a release note once app goes to beta, I hope sometime late this year. Summer has been so hot that programming has been suffering  :slight_smile:

#48

Interesting thread…  Going indie was the best and worst decision in my life.

Best because I could quit the 9-5 and be my own boss, worst because now with three games and a fourth in development it has completely taken over and the hours are considerably longer.  Would I change?  No way.  I don’t “work” anymore, I spent my time doing what I love.

My advice is stay away from easy-to-make arcade games.  If you found it easy then so did a million other people and good luck getting any downloads, let alone sales.  Make something unique or innovate in an established niche.  

#49

@anaqim: thanks for the tip! If i ever needs server-side stuff I’ll look into Coronium. Or, knowing myself, I’ll probably try to “roll my own” :slight_smile:

Thinking of my own game, maybe it’s time to seed a beta version out to you guys for some early feedback. Well, early… I’ve been working on the game for 5 years now…

#50

my first ever game was a arcade game type and I experimented a little with ads before I realized its all hazzle for me, for the users and no money anyway. I removed ads and whats funny is, I release 2 more advanced games (non arcade and quite unique gameplay) where I did make some money from iAP, but my first game scored the highest average user rating of all three, 4.7 :slight_smile:

One of these games was a mathematical craze puzzle game where I had a single user that went far and beyond any highscore I could ever imagined would be possible, and without cheating. I saw him playing constantly over a long time. I wont discolse his username but it indicated that it is likely he is autistic, which probably explains he extreme dedication and fondness of the game.

I intend to re-code these cames in corona and re-release them.

#51

@thomas6 would love to test your beta mate

#52

I don’t know exactly what you mean by “arcade game” type, but I’m constantly doing platform games, and of course there are already thousands of those out there, so there’s stiff competition.

Still, I always found that it’s really hard to find a platform game with nice and “different” esthetics, so that was my goal for my current project: a game that in a sense, designers or people looking for a nice graphic style want to play. Unfortunately that means that you need to spend an insane amount of time creating graphics…

Another thing that I would love to do is create a story-based platform game, with some humour. I’ve found that this type of game really stimulates me, and I think there’s always a market for good story-based games.

#53

@thomas6 count me in for beta testing as well.

#54

I am interested with beta testing too!

#55

Okay, that’s good to know! It’s going to take me some time to refactor my code into something shareable, so don’t expect anything soon, but I’ll keep you posted when it’s available!

#56

nice graphics Thomas, you should be able to put together a great game with that level of graphic quality.

#57

Thanks Greg. The problem is that I have very little time, it takes about a day to model, render and edit a single finished game design object, and I need about 50 more!

And the current rate, I’m working on the game 20 days a year - and I also need to do sound, lots of coding and level design. Aaaaaaaaah! :lol:

#58

Tell me about it!  I decided to go full time Indy a few years ago after my first game did quite well.  I have just finished a 16 month dev cycle for my second game and now have to put my marketing hat on and figure out how to get some publicity going.  I am more of a programmer than an artist, I know my way around a few 3D programs, and photoshop of course - enough to generate decent graphic assets.   I agree with SGS, its a tough way to make it these days, but when you follow your dreams, anything is possible.

#59

@greg brady  What was your breakout game and what are you working on now?

#60

Hi sporkfin, 

My first game was a classic top down sci-fi/arcade game called Stellar Trek… its an alternate star trek universe game where you are the captain of a starship.

My second game Stellar Patrol, follows a similar theme but you fly a space fighter in a persistent universe liberating planets and sectors, trading and mining and completing missions to free the galaxy.