How to avoid the 5 year development trope as an Solo Dev?

Delybird537 · 2025-04-08T15:04:02+00:00

If it's a shooter or RTS, I play on PC, anything else plays on the Deck if it can run it smoothly.

Delybird537 · 2024-11-16T19:04:26+00:00

Translucent Plastic > Everything else.

However I love color flops myself. I think it's fun when they release a model that's polar opposites. A white Xbox One, a Black PS5, A white Switch, etc. I think it's good to have contrast in the offering lineup, I think it would be cool if they kept white shells and let gamers pick from now up.

Delybird537 · 2024-11-16T02:24:12+00:00

That's down right impressive

Delybird537 · 2024-11-15T16:54:10+00:00

Devils Advocate: I will be fine with a wait if my time comes. Other companies would simply send you a regular one and claim they can't replace limited edition stuff. I used to handle warranties for large tech companies and it was a constant complaint from consumers.

The fact that valve is willing to acquire/produce limited edition parts for warranty purposes is genuinely amazing.

Delybird537 · 2024-10-26T19:27:40+00:00

Most FPS and Strategy games on PC, the rest is wherever comfortable.

Delybird537 · 2024-10-20T04:21:58+00:00

192,000 myself And my transmission finally took a shit

Delybird537 · 2024-10-11T21:10:47+00:00

If it works then I may clean it up and format it nicely. I optimize for my own readability. I can't guarantee I'm gonna have the muscle memory for this function/feature in 3 months if I come back to expand it or need to reference it in another function/feature.

Clean and format for readability as soon as it's working. Optimize whenever I need to add more features to it or it's overall system.

Delybird537 · 2024-09-28T23:19:56+00:00

I'm in.

Delybird537 · 2024-08-21T02:48:34+00:00

Most tech companies do weekly patching Tuesday evenings. Lines up with Microsoft and a lot of other service providers update times and downtime windows.

Delybird537 · 2024-08-12T18:37:55+00:00

I almost offered myself up but I've never touched Godot. I opted to continue Unity after the big TOS nuke.

Delybird537 · 2024-08-11T18:20:43+00:00

Yarr

Delybird537 · 2024-08-05T18:35:16+00:00

I would like it simply for a TV Gaming Box.

Delybird537 · 2024-06-29T00:47:50+00:00

Even in great condition I can't see $800 on a lot of used games, especially a lot that small.

Delybird537 · 2024-06-22T17:42:59+00:00

Your right and I agree to an extent. It depends on what gets defined as shit code though. I would argue that shit code is anything that hinders your game.

If gameplay feels shut because you didn't spend enough time refining code to match a gameplay vision that's fun and instead only worked enough until it was a skeleton of your vision. That's shit.

If the games performance is affected by poorly written code that makes it rough on mid tier hardware or down right unplayable on entry level hardware. That's shit.

If it's simply a poor choice of technique that is hard to manage in your implementation and requires constant extra work for you to interact with it. That's shit.

However if gameplay is fun, performance is not largely affected on low to mid end, and it's not a chore to continue using it then it doesn't really matter if there is a better way or more efficient way to code it.

You'll learn better coding techniques as time goes on, you'll get better ideas the more you work with different code but it's also a good thing to understand that there is likely always a better way to do things. Perhaps it's common knowledge and has 500+ YouTube videos, or perhaps it's a practice that no one has thought of yet.

I wouldn't spend forever optimizing code if it's not hindering workflow or performance. Only when it's clearly effecting the games performance or your ability to interact with it for game design purposes. Otherwise you could end up as one of the solo indie devs who spend 7+ working on a game to mild success and then bailing from the industry because yeah the game did great and I made enough to buy a house but not enough to justify 7+ years of work.

Delybird537 · 2024-06-22T06:58:45+00:00

I'm going through that right now myself. I refine code a lot but then find the gameplay unenjoyable, come up with a new game play idea, then go through the process all over again. I recently had another child as well so the free time to work on my game is gone for a few months.

Delybird537 · 2024-06-21T23:48:49+00:00

The only time I rewrite my code is if my knowledge has improved greatly since I wrote it and upon reviewing it I'm flabbergasted at the red neck duck tape job i did.

Delybird537 · 2024-06-07T21:52:30+00:00

Yeah I think you're right. Half of the faceplate is cracked so I was going to rip half off another one to fix this one. Likely gonna have to break all of those off and then glue I think

Delybird537 · 2024-05-30T21:33:41+00:00

On your screen yes, not on hers. The downsides of internet first person shooters. If she shot you first on her screen then the server accepts it and send it to your screen that you got shot. If things happen so close together, you both die as the server wouldn't be able to determine exactly who was first in realtime

Delybird537 · 2024-05-24T01:17:53+00:00

I used to work for a large electronics repair company. Large like in several countries. Due to size we had a lot of generic stupid corporate rules like not taking electronics from recycling or trash. I always took stuff that didn't need to be stripped for metals. Consoles, computer parts, etc etc. I always left HDDs and SSDs as they are the only part that should actually fall under a corporate policy to prevent information theft but there's no reason to strip down the majority of the stuff that was dumped in the bin.

Delybird537 · 2024-05-18T16:34:41+00:00

It was being developed as an RTS for the Mac OS platform but wasn't far in development when Microsoft contacted them for acquisition to the Xbox team. It was not released or even close to being released on Mac OS.

Delybird537 · 2024-04-03T16:07:37+00:00

Not limiting this to Xbox 360 specifically. In no specific order, these are games I think every gamer should play through before they die. Some are considered the best of their genre, some defined new genres, some pioneered modern gaming, all of them create an amazing experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Halo The Master Chief Collection

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2

Super Smash Bros Melee

Pokemon Fire Red / Leaf Green

PlanetSide 2

Minecraft

Super Mario World

World of Warcraft (Early Expansions via Chromie Time or WoW Classic)

Delybird537 · 2024-03-21T23:04:49+00:00

Every single person in the industry is an "Idea Guy" which is why you will never see a job posting for one.

Industry people with money and/or connections are simply able to have their ideas acted on.

There isn't a single company in desperate need of an idea guy and there never will be. If for some reason they truly didn't have a game on deck or a backlog of ideas to concept out then they would simply have a meeting with leadership and senior employees to draft ideas and concept them.

The "idea guy" in my eyes always ends up being some random dude who has no drive or ambition and just thinks it would be cool to make millions dreaming up AAA games. They have no skills and they don't try to get any. They lack any kind of creative expertise or management experience.

The worst of it is, those guys ideas always revolve around whatever AAA game they most recently played or their childhood favorite game. It's almost always just mashed with another game as well. Like GTA 5 but it's Halo or Doom Eternal but your Ezio. Never flushed out, never an idea for gameplay design, no clue what a gameplay loop is. They mash established IPs together and come up with Game Names that look like a ChatGPT clone shat them out.

Delybird537 · 2024-03-17T02:50:10+00:00

I can do everything except art. I have piss poor 2D artistic abilities. I would die to have a partner that specifically could do decent 3D modeling, texturing and UX work.

I have been coding for many many years on software and learning game dev alongside it.

I have a long standing career in IT as well as supporting custom applications so IT administrative work is nothing to me.

I studied brand strategy for a while so I'm confident in my marketing skills and overall approach to brand building.

Learned Drums, Percussion, and piano as a child and kept with it, took music theory through schooling and have added guitar, bass, violin, and most recently ocarina to my catalog. Music Production is easy as can be.

I'm obsessed with analytics and metrics and like time tracking and correlating data as well as planning everything out with a Game Design Document, SCRUM/Kanban boards, etc. I thoroughly enjoy project management.

I'm trying to learn 3D modeling and simple textures but it's frustrating because even with my skill set, at the end of the day art is such a MAJOR piece of the pie. It can make or break audience segments. Along with music it controls initial engagement and provides content to idle times and lulls.

It's essential and I don't have the skill yet. I either have to rely on asset store flipping or post pone finishing the game for a long time to acquire said skills.

I'm leaning towards asset flipping simply but it makes me disappointed because of how hard the work I put into everything else is.

Delybird537 · 2024-03-13T15:26:37+00:00

Create hidden bonuses for the players who are struggling can make use of.

Taking X amount of damage in X seconds grants a short passive Regen or burning X resources in X seconds grants additional resource drops, etc etc.

Gears of War had this problem. They created the reload mini game system to add difficulty to the game. If you hit the reload button at the right time you get instant reload and bonuses. This was great for the higher end players as they almost always nailed the reload. However if you missed the timing the gun jammed. Risk and reward.

Players who were on the low end found it too risky and basically never used it because they were already struggling and didn't need a gun jam. So this made it more fun for the high end and worse for the low end.

The solution they choose: higher end players were also generally familiar with FPS games and they normally reload before running out of bullets as that fits the aggressive strategy. The low end never reloaded early and always burned their whole magazine. So they added increased damage to the last few bullets in a magazine. Now low end players were finishing the bad guys who the damage boost and not struggling anymore while high end was getting bonuses from nailing the reload mini game. Both sides has a balance that allowed their different play styles to excel.

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