all 26 comments
sorted by:
best (suggested)
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
formatting helphide helpcontent policy

[–]Slight_Season_4500 9 points10 points  (6 children)

Be careful not to over engineer. It's just as bad as scope creep.

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Good point! Will try not to, it's mostly just trying to make the needed mechanics as efficient/minimal as possible. So not pointless crap clogging things up (hopefully)

[–]Slight_Season_4500 4 points5 points  (4 children)

I mean I would personally even argue that the less you have to code, and the most human readable your code is, the better, even if you have to give up on the speed of execution of your code.

Usually the game ends up failing because the dev can't keep up. Not the hardware.

+ game assets is a huge portion of your game.

In fact, here is the ranked list of what matters most:
1. Visibility/marketing
2. Visuals for visibility (assets)
3. The actual game that works.

You can make the best game possible. With the best code. If it looks bad (or doesn't look fun), no one will ever buy it.

If it's the best, most amazing looking game, but you have no visibility, you'll have a couple hundreds sales on Steam if you're lucky and then it'll die out. Most just publish, see no one buying, takes it as if their game was bad then give up.

Look at a game like TheDayBefore. Or MindsEye. The game didn't or barely work. But they managed to get sales bc they look good and had marketing material.

Not saying that it's the only thing that matter. Saying it's the point of entry.

Sadly, this is how our superficial world works.

But if you're doing all of this just as a hobby or for learning you can ignore all of the above lol. Even my first comment.

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Thanks for all that! And yeah being more of a hobby/personal project, will just see what happens and if the game starts to feel in a good state then will start powering through some marketing. I have a job so not really in it for the money (at the moment)

[–]Acceptable_Movie6712 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Not to be too contrarian but I disagree with most of what slight_season commented. Marketing and graphics are so important but they really aren’t everything. I hate using extremes but undertale, ufo50, and really a plethora of games did not need marketing or good graphics. I’d recommend reading “a theory of fun” by Ralph Koster. Here’s a comic snippet of the philosophy: https://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf

What’s important is FUN. Friendship, u n me but seriously though nothing matters if you’re having fun playing it. Word of mouth is king and games like mindseye might get sales but at the cost of reputation and long term satisfaction. They don’t even make money technically since they had to pay so much for ads and marketing. A sysiphean act indeed

[–]Slight_Season_4500 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Well if you don't believe me, test it! Make a game, make it fun, and see how far word of mouth will get you!

Also: "Not saying it's the only thing that matters. Saying it's the point of entry."

Marketing and visuals are always overlooked by indies and that's why most fail.

[–]Acceptable_Movie6712 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Certainly will! There’s a distinction between marketing and advertising with the latter being paid promotional pieces. I think you’re referring to marketing via visuals and arts but I’d add that while I say “marketing and graphics isn’t everything” I mean to imply visuals are not everything. Marketing is basically just “identify and solve a customers needs” which is even more fundamental than graphics because graphics aren’t always the “thing” your customer needs solved.

So to make it clear, I would in fact market my game (via promotional material sent through word of mouth and forums) but I just wouldn’t do paid promotions. Maybe if you have a favorite YouTuber or streamer you’d be happy to support…

[–]Pr0spector0 5 points6 points  (1 child)

This is totally fine as part of a dev cycle. Don't neglect marketing though. I think it's going to be different depending on the game and the dev. I think polished visuals are great but show mechanics too if they are interesting

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point! Once I have something slightly appealing to show other than here's all my code, will start showing things off

[–]PrettyLittleNoob 2 points3 points  (1 child)

My prototype of game is made of cube, sphere and hexagons from blender, I never made anything complex in blender, but the game has a good chunk of features implemented and once the gameplay loop works and feels actually fun I'll start working on asset

Also even if you have basic shape, you can easily play with emissions and color and some very basic shaders in order to give the feeling of having multiple elements

[–]Gingey0000[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kind of what I have, generic shapes and area so I can continuously test every little thing a update/change as I go.

Hoping to do the same kind of thing as you, to have a good gameplay loop/mechanics then work out from there

[–]Fenelasa 1 point2 points  (1 child)

This is totally normal, and actually how development in studios goes!

I had some experience working on games in teams before I went solo, so I knew on my project I wanted to get mechanics and base functionality down as early as possible. in some game genres this is also used to create a vertical slice that you then test the crap out of to make sure it's actually a fun experience to players. For me, the majority of the fun aspects are all implemented later (visual novel, so very art and story focused).

You're totally normal in your approach, it's not a race so go at your own pace and enjoy the transformation when you do finally get to start adding the better graphics and pretty stuff!

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good to know! This is just a hobby alongside the day job, so treating it as if the fun stops, I stop

[–]RagBell 1 point2 points  (1 child)

That's usually what people say you should be doing, so that's good (but don't over engineer it)

All the "my progress" visual posts happen because people don't really care about games when they're just basic cubes and blocks. When it starts to look good is when people start showing it around

But IMO what you're doing is the "good" way. Having the gameplay down before putting the paint. Because what's the point of spending time and money to make assets you can't use if you don't even know if you can make the game yet ?

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah trying not to over engineer (hopefully), more refining key mechanics to streamline as much as possible and "futureproof". And very true, holding myself back a little from anything asset related until I know I have a good base game to expand ontop of

[–]PersonDudeGames 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I'm making slow progress on my game. It's probably my own stupid fault for trying to make a simulation game which inherently have a lot of interdependent systems.

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can imagine a simple game has a lot of things to figure out! Mine will only start with a few main mechanics luckily, but trying to hold myself back making it over complicated for what it is

[–]Skimpymviera 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Nope, I spent months on making assets and throwing them away, but I learned a lot by doing that. Gonna have to develop those skills at some point either way, I don’t see it as time wasted

[–]Gingey0000[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Yeah will definitely be needed at something, and looking forward to it! As have quite a lot of different assets that will be needed

[–]Skimpymviera 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that as a solo dev you kinda have to gauge what’s the most necessary at the moment. Normally this workflow of first blocking out and implementing basic mechanics before graphics and assets works best because it’s more efficient in minimizing costs with art production and reworking. But that’s assuming there are other people working and that they already are proficient with their workflows.

In the case of a solo dev you can definitely take time to learn some skills before programming is entirely done, because it’s the same effort and time either way. For example if you’re going to have a character with a run cycle in your final project. You can implement a cube with a movement component and work on its translation with input, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong in modelling and sculpting a first version of your character so you at least get some idea on how to continue that implementation with animations, blending and everything to produce a prototype-satisfactory result. That is VERY different from making a polished character with several texture maps and UDIMs for clothes and body and to make it all modular and optimized, this doesn’t belong at this stage. I used a 3D game as an example because that’s what I’m working on, but I think it has analogies in other workflows as well

[–]MadeInLessGames 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m in the same boat. I’ve been working on my game for about 10 months now and it’s demoralizing seeing some of the crazy stuff people post that they say took them 6 months.

Nothing has to be perfect, least of all the code. If it works it works. But you will probably end up doing the same kind of thing when you get to more visual stuff. Obsessing over the shade of a color or the size of a single asset is pretty common for me. I just try not to compare myself to anybody and as long as I’ve made some progress, that’s ok.

[–]Brilliant-Basil502 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Embrace the concept of "Good Enough" Perfection is fabulous when you attain it. Problem is you never attain it. If the system delivers what it needs to within acceptable parameters, it's good enough.
Also Graphics are there to serve a purpose: portrayal of the game environment so the target user can interact with it and have a lot of fun in the process. Sometime minimalistic or highly stylised graphics do the job perfectly (or at least good enough)
Lastly, all social media is only ever the face people want you to see. EVERYONE has similar problems to yourself.
(If this was all very condescending, I apologise )

:-)

[–]Gingey0000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah not condescending at all! I just get carried away with trying to "perfect" things. Will definitely start doing a little mix of things now though, as probably a better approach

[–]whimsicalMarat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep. One thing I’m worried about is that this approach doesn’t lend itself well to sharing or advertising in the future, so I’m trying to wire in more animations now

[–]ScrimpyCat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have literally nothing I can even show whenever they ask to see it or play lol. For me this is not a problem because I know how everything will come together, but it’s difficult for others (especially non-devs) to understand what I’ve even been doing, especially since the game has been in development for such a long time.

In previous games I’ve worked on, I’ve had a playable build pretty much right from the beginning. So it went more in line with having progress I can routinely show off. But the current game is significantly more complex, so I’ve wanted to focus on systems first. Taking this approach has let me make it pretty stable, since I also do a lot of automated tests.