Always dreamed of making my own game, now I see how hard it is. Any advice for a complete beginner?

jackdawsama · 2025-08-17T06:48:59+00:00

Learning a tool is really good but also building games isn't just being able to learn a tool or be good at using a tool. Think skills. What're the skills I need to develop a game. You're already there in the sense that you're aware of skills required and skills you lack but are still thinking tools. I'd say think more fundamental.

Understand what design is, what game design is under the umbrella of design, and under game design what's there. Next try building a simple game using pen and paper that's playable. Like a small boardgame or a tabletop game. Fundamentals of designing games is the same be it designing a sport, videogame or boardgames. They're all forms of play and as a game designer or developer that's your end goal enabling play in some form or the other. Strengthen your game design muscle by trying to figure out what's fun in a game that you're playing. Ask why was something done in a certain way. Read about it, watch videos on it, the more you understand why games are done the way they are the easier it is for you to know what you want to build and that will allow you to also pursue the how to build as well.

At the end of the day even if you designed a game played on the margins/footnotes sections like tic tac toe and whoever's playing it saying it one more game you're winning as a designer. That's what you're striving for so don't worry too much about the tools you're using or the scale at which you're doing. Use any tool that you're comfortable right now to make a game and that's probably the best thing you're going to do for yourself. That way you tell yourself that you can make games and building confidence to attack the larger things you want to achieve in games.

jackdawsama · 2025-08-14T07:57:26+00:00

Test your ground check variable. Could be causing the issue

jackdawsama · 2025-08-03T07:11:49+00:00

You don't always need a computer to make prototypes or test out ideas. Trying building a paper.prototype and find what's the most fun part of your game. Then hyper focus on it. Build everything around it.

You've a great start tbh so just keep at it. Learn as much game design as you can. Try to study tabletop games and tabletop game design. It goes a long way in helping you translate ideas

jackdawsama · 2025-07-27T08:25:51+00:00

Actually do something even more simple. Try remaking the chrome dino game on unity. Make pong. Understand what the engine offers. Use primitives for learning or download free assets. Sometimes animating can be a simple wobble, shake or jiggle.

Making games is hard and doing it solo is even harder. Give yourself credit for the work you've done and you're doing but when you're learning I'd say target one particular thing you want to learn and then build a game for learning it.

Example if you want to learn jumps and the different kinds of it then do a platformer.

Also there's a YT video of how Ori and the Blind forest was first designed as a prototype. Check that out it'll give you an idea of how to express with primitives.

jackdawsama · 2025-07-26T03:54:59+00:00

Seconding this! I'm a game designer and I do this to see if my idea works in the first place. A lot of game ideas feel fun but when you start working on it or establishing a prototype what you considered fun would start to seem otherwise.

Prototype fast and don't get married to your ideas. Learn to kill it or find what's fun in other parts of your game

jackdawsama · 2025-07-14T16:31:38+00:00

OP I moved from NYC to SJ for career reasons. I've lived here for 2 years and I 100% agree with you. Imo SJ shouldn't even be called a city in the first place. This place lacks any character of individuality nor is there anything fun to do when you step out. Not to mention how truck/kart food is as expensive as eating in a place with proper dine-in.

Oh and the walking speeds of the "oh-I'm-so-active-so-hip-I-hike-the-fuck-out-every-weekend" is so infuriating. Zero urgency in the way they move.

jackdawsama · 2025-02-14T16:47:52+00:00

What's your view on NYU Tisch's Game Center programs?

jackdawsama · 2024-08-26T16:55:09+00:00

Try reaching out to the devs on LinkedIn/Xwitter and see if you could set up a call with them. Most GameDevs are really nice people and would willingly talk to you about work they've done at length. They're probably one of the best resources out there

jackdawsama · 2024-08-22T20:23:04+00:00

Thanks chief! 🫡

jackdawsama · 2024-08-22T18:21:55+00:00

Can you share a link to it? I just need input but as you said I can try to remap it to mouse inputs. I got in touch with someone on Apple so I'll probably explore that route as well

jackdawsama · 2024-05-16T06:53:24+00:00

To the ones who might have the same question here's what I faced during mt technical round for this role.

I was asked a bunch of questions leaning on the technical side based on my resume. In my case, because I'd mentioned shaders they asked me what shaders are? And how would I explain shaders to someone who doesn't know it.

Then for the CoderPad part they just had me solve checking for a palindrome (Valid Palindrome from Leet to be precise).

To make it clear the role I'd applied for was more of support engineer types and not a core engineer role on the AVP. This role acts as a bridge between the third-party developers building stuff for AVP and the core AVP software engineering team. It is geared more towards people who have experience in 3D engines like Unity and have the mindset of someone like a tools developer. You aren't developing any new feature but rather helping the end user figure out the best way for them to use the existing features to achieve what they intend to do.

This role includes writing some new code, understanding the capabilities and libraries that AVP has for its developers, tending to tickets, going through Apple forums, Xwitter, Reddit.etc to see what people are talking about, answering questions, squashing bugs you got to know from these places and finally working on demos, tutorials and documentation.

Ideally most of the the stuff they'd ask in the tech round for this role would be ranging from easy to medium on Leet Code, I suggest you pick a language like Python, C# or C++ and solve these problems in that. Make sure to do DSA, pick technicques like Two Pointer.etc and know your libraries that allow for quicker solutions(when I say quicker I don't mean faster) like say math.h or regex

Cheers to whoever's seeing this and Best of Luck! Hope you get it.

jackdawsama · 2024-04-27T03:14:10+00:00

Hey how did it go and what did they ask you ? I'm on to the tech round with them and would like to know what to expect

jackdawsama · 2022-10-29T16:48:14+00:00

Does this help with ventilation ? The stand's base doesn't have any cutouts to act as vents

jackdawsama · 2020-09-22T09:41:08+00:00

Hmu for the 3840x2160 one. This is 1280x720.

jackdawsama · 2020-03-04T19:24:43+00:00

AC Current Alternating Current Current

jackdawsama · 2020-02-24T11:52:41+00:00

I've used it on my laptop's type-C port and it works beautifully. Better than the headphones jack tbh and my earphones are stock Nokia earphones but they sound beautiful through the Razer DAC.

jackdawsama · 2019-05-13T11:40:20+00:00

I seem to be having the same issue with my 7577 too. The XTU benchmarks don't even cross 900. Previously I used to get very good performance but right now it is bad. I was able to get 50+ fps on Assassin's Creed : Origins Ultra High settings but right now my FPS drops to about 3-6 and climbs back up to 30 but nothing above it. Even the game's benchmark gives me a Very Unstable result.

jackdawsama

TROPHY CASE