Anyone into doing indie games?

[abrakamowse]

I always wanted to create some simple video game. I am investigating Godot Engine and it seems very interesting.

Just curious to know if there are others who like doing video games as a hobby or as a way of living. And sharing experiences about game engines and such!

:-)

[abrakamowse]

I forgot to mention, I also tried GDevelop and it's amazingly simple to create a game with it. But I really wanted to try Godot.

But GDevelop for simple games seems really good.

[Chosendeer]

Hi

I would be interested to know about your expiriences and what you are exactly doing.

My Dream is to create a gaming company for indie games and maybe more one day.

I am not a programmer myself but a storywriter and i am starting to learn musiccomposing by next wednesday with a friend who is a professional classical musician and great artist (drawing). Would you be so kind and share with me what you have learned so far?

maybe we could do a project togheter?

EDIT: or you could teach me the basics you have learned so far. maybe getting into the programming itself would be also a good start

Edited February 13, 2021 by Chosendeer

[abrakamowse]

Quote

> Hi
> I would be interested to know about your expiriences and what you are exactly doing.
> My Dream is to create a gaming company for indie games and maybe more one day.
> I am not a programmer myself but a storywriter and i am starting to learn music composing by next Wednesday with a friend > who is a professional classical musician and great artist (drawing). Would you be so kind and share with me what you have > learned so far?

Hi Chosendeer,

Nice to know that you also want to make video games. It's also a dream of mine, I always admired the people who create those games, and making them is like magic in a sense hehehe... When I was a kid I fell in love with Space Invaders, there were no internet so I had to go to play in places where they had pinballs and arcade video games, I even didn't have a home console. A friend of mine had Atari and I went to his home to play with it. hehehe... yes I am old.

:-P

But now things have changed. My experience is very basic, I am also not a programmer. I studied graphic design and that's how I become used to work with computers. Because I began to do web design I began to learn some PHP, and other web programming languages.

And one thing that I can tell you is that once you learn one programming language all the others work similarly, the only thing is you have to learn the sintaxis. How it is written it varies from different programming languages.

I always had problems with programming, it was like I couldn't understand it. But, because it was something that I wanted to do I was in my free time always investigating. I learned (very basic things) in Python, Javascript, PHP, Actionscript (from Flash) and now I decided to try Godot.

Godot is an engine to create games, you can do simple 2D games or more complex 3D games.

You can download it from here: 

https://godotengine.org

I began first investigating as I mentioned before GDevelop (a different game engine), because it is done in a way that you don't need too much programming, the problem that I see is that is more limited to what you can do, so I decided after doing some simple things with it, I decided to try Godot. And I must say that is not as complicated as I thought.

If you are interested in try something with GDevelop here is the link:

https://gdevelop-app.com

 

But Godot has some advantages, I think...  Godot works in Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, so in theory is possible to create games Multiplatform. Besides that it works on Web and Android and Iphones. But what I see is that GDevelop is more to do only 2D games and Godot you can also create 3D games. I am planning to begin only with 2D games, but once I learn more about game making, my idea is to try some 3D games. So if I learn Godot, I will have that covered too.

What I am doing right now is learning from books and from youtube videos like this

https://youtu.be/wETY5_9kFtA

If you follow that video you will be able to create a character, make it move on the screen to right left and make it walk over a platform. And seems pretty good. But really my knowledge is really basic, I want to do some simple games to get the knack of it and from there begin to make more complicated games. I always liked to do a point and click adventure like The Curse of the Monkey Island by Lucas Arts or things like that.

If you are a writer it could be great to have someone who can do the script or the idea for the game! And sounds are always needed so that's good to know that you are studying music. Cool.

Quote

> maybe we could do a project togheter?

Yes, why not?

Quote

> EDIT: or you could teach me the basics you have learned so far. maybe getting into the programming itself would be also a good start

Yes, I think that learning some programming would be good. If you investigate Godot you will see that it works with a programming language that is called "GScript". And there's a version that  is still in Beta where you will be able to work with C# inside Godot, but is still in process, there's no complete support yet. But C# is a very popular language and is used to create other applications, not only for video games.

I will continue sharing here my advances! Keep in touch and tell us if you begin to do something, we can share our experiences here and we see where all this take us to.

Maybe we can do a game as you suggested! 
:-)

Right now making games is like something I do as a side hobby, my main focus now is in creating comics and illustrations, but once I learn more about making videos I will definitely work more on that. I will post any new thing I discover here in this thread.
 

Edited February 14, 2021 by abrakamowse

[BlackMaze]

Hey! Just a beginner here trying to learn everything. It sure is overwhelming.. Engine of choice is unreal. I might as well post a very useful resource i found. Check out devga.me for a big list of programs you could use for different things. 

[abrakamowse]

4 minutes ago, BlackMaze said:

Hey! Just a beginner here trying to learn everything. It sure is overwhelming.. Engine of choice is unreal. I might as well post a very useful resource i found. Check out devga.me for a big list of programs you could use for different things. 

Cool BlackMaze! I will check that out! Unreal is awesome too!

[Leo Gura]

On 2/12/2021 at 7:58 AM, abrakamowse said:

I am investigating Godot Engine

Unity

[mikelyons]

@Leo Gura What makes you prefer Unity, just it's tenure and marketplace? Widely used, big development team?

[Leo Gura]

@mikelyons What more do you need than Unity? The only thing better is Unreal for AAA style games.

Don't make life difficult on yourself. Use an industry standard engine. For Indie games Unity is perfect.

[martins name]

I agree on unity. I worked in it as a programmer on a 25 person team. What's not to love about it? Other developers know it so it's good for collaboration. It's easy to work with in 2d and 3d. Big marketplace. Joe Biden likes it Big stack exchange. You can't go wrong. Never gotten into unreal. Maybe it's good for non programmers for its blueprint system. Idk.

[Leo Gura]

Unreal is terrible for non-programmers.

[martins name]

@Leo Gura oh ok. I take your word for it

Edited February 15, 2021 by martins name

[Leo Gura]

@martins name Don't take my word for anything. Verify everything for yourself.

[martins name]

@Leo Gura I know but if I had to find everything out for myself I'd have to reinvent everything humanity ever created. I prefer delegation.

[p1xelm0nk]

9 hours ago, abrakamowse said:

I am investigating Godot Engine.

I'm also looking into godot for my next project and would also say it has several possible advantages over unity if you're just doing 2D game development. It's node system is super intuitive and I like the look of it a lot. Unity of course is a great industry standard and it has been progressing in its 2D support but it's also sort of a pseudo-2d system that's made to work with the rest of the engine. I think I've got a pretty nifty idea down but am just a programmer, with game design you'll also have your artwork, sound design, game/level design which is a field unto itself... could be neat if anyone's seriously interested in collaborating. Always thought it'd be fun to break into the field.

Edited February 15, 2021 by p1xelm0nk

[BlackMaze]

Learning blueprints is not so bad. There are alot of tutorials and courses. You have to think like a programmer to use them though and i am not one. To learn c++ as a first language will be hard but once i have those 2 skills down i believe it's gonna be fun. There is also a huge collection of quality free assets that keeps growing. 

[dharm4]

I have released games on the App Store and Steam. If you want to make a living with indie games, it is possibly the hardest thing in the world. You don't just need to be (or pay) a decent programmer, but you also need to be a master marketer and have a deep understanding of the visual and audio arts. Also don't forget about game design.

Current statistics say that only 5% of indie developers make a profit from their games. You can increase this number if you are good in the above mentioned points. If you don't give up and build up many games, a fanbase and are able to handle your early failures, you can have success. But it takes time. I'm not there yet (after 5 years of doing games and currently working part time as a software engineer in a different industry - game industry jobs are usually badly paid for programmers and you can't do them part time)

Edited February 15, 2021 by dharm4

[abrakamowse]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Unity

I will definitely be checking Unity, thanks Leo! I knew about Unity but I as @p1xelm0nk just said I also heard that Unity was mostly aimed to 3D games and for a 2D games it maybe be using a lot of power on a computer, and Godot is a bit more "light" in that sense, but I know Unity is great. So I will be investigating that option too... Thanks Leo.

Maybe someday you can do a video about your experiences in the game industry... hehehe... I never knew exactly what were you doing in the game industry? Are you a programmer?

10 hours ago, p1xelm0nk said:

could be neat if anyone's seriously interested in collaborating.

I am a graphic artist, I have done some characters for a guy who made a game for android, I think it is still in google play. I created the backgrounds, characters and all the elements in the game. I don't know if he continued doing upgrades to the game, it was in Beta when I made the assets for him.

I just checked and he just took it out from Google, not sure why. Here he has it in his website, you can see the art I did in there. It was a kind of Tapper game ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapper_(video_game) )

but in a marijuana dispensary hehe...

https://passajoint.com/budtender/

5 hours ago, dharm4 said:

I have released games on the App Store and Steam. If you want to make a living with indie games, it is possibly the hardest thing in the world.

Yeah, I heard about that too...  but I will try anyway.

(Edit: I will do! Not try... @dharm4 made me remember what Yoda said!  )

 

Thanks everyone for your comments and ideas! They were really helpful!!!

Edited February 15, 2021 by abrakamowse

[dharm4]

1 hour ago, abrakamowse said:

Yeah, I heard about too...  but I will try anyway.

anyways,...good luck!

[abrakamowse]

@dharm4

Will do!!!

 

hehehehe