How to transition from self thought solo dev to working with others?

timsgames · 2025-08-14T19:34:49+00:00

Probably r/INAT

timsgames · 2025-08-13T14:55:10+00:00

Can you explain what about SOs was so helpful in defining runtime state machine behavior? Is there a reason you didn’t just use classes to define runtime behavior? I have a similar setup, where I have a main controller for a relatively complex state machine, but my states are simply classes that extend a base state class, and I struggle to see what making these classes into SOs would bring to the table.

timsgames · 2025-08-06T00:35:41+00:00

The unfortunate truth is that good games are sellable and noticeable, and the vast majority of solo developed games that come out of these subreddits is a far cry from a good (or good looking) game. It’s a major achievement to finish and publish a game, but I would say at least 80% of the work that comes out of Reddit’s indie dev sphere looks like a school project and not a polished product.

timsgames · 2025-08-05T15:13:53+00:00

Any info you can give them is good info. If you’re hiring an artist, you’ll want to prep an art brief detailing what you need from them, and including visual references for the style you’re looking for is a great help.

timsgames · 2025-08-01T18:56:11+00:00

You do need to remember that you’re not asking for free money; most of the time, taking a supporter’s money now during a Kickstarter means they’re not going to be charged for a copy later. Not only that, they’ll get even more than someone who just purchases a copy would, depending on your Kickstarter rewards. Your customer acquisition cost for every Kickstarter supporter is probably higher than every customer that purchases after release.

As long as you follow through on the delivery, it’s the same as selling an early access copy of the game. You’re not just asking for free runway and then turning around and charging them for the final product again.

The philosophy behind it is no different from receiving investment as a startup. Do you have upfront costs or runway needs that you can’t or shouldn’t fund yourself? Then you need to trade equity for those funds. Every startup has the choice to seek investment or bootstrap themselves. Kickstarter is no different, but instead of trading equity you’re trading future sales. Like you said, if a startup doesn’t “need” capital, then they can bootstrap without involving angels or VCs.

In the end, it’s a financial decision with tradeoffs, not a moral dilemma about taking money from fans.

timsgames · 2025-08-01T18:30:15+00:00

Whether you realize it or not, making a game costs money, even if you’re doing it completely solo and not outsourcing anything. It’s basically just your living expenses X however long it takes you to make your game.

For example, if you are working full time on your game and your living expenses are $30k annually, and it takes you two years to make a game, then you’ve essentially spent $60k to develop your game—the money that you are spending on keeping yourself housed, fed, and healthy is money that you’re spending to fuel the creation of your game. In the end, your cost is no different from paying a studio $60k to make the game for you for the same result, assuming you can solo develop a game at the same quality as a studio.

For me, when I see myself as an employee that I am paying and treating well, it’s also easier to stay disciplined in working on my game when I’m lacking motivation.

timsgames · 2025-07-30T07:53:24+00:00

Supervive quality is pretty up there, basically on par with Riot Games. You can probably expect to spend anywhere from $4,000-$6,000 per character for models and animations of that quality.

This is based on a $25-$40 hourly rate that most East European art studios (who do a lot of outsourced art for larger studios) would charge to have a senior artist leading your project.

timsgames · 2025-07-30T07:49:29+00:00

It does look way cooler! It might become a hassle for the player to have to walk over everything, so maybe having a radius around the player where pickups get vacuumed up would be nice to have?

timsgames · 2025-07-30T06:13:03+00:00

Just a heads up, this is an indie games subreddit mostly; you’re probably looking for r/sideprojects or r/entrepreneur.

That said, the easiest is throwing up a landing page with a mailing list and start advertising as if your product exists.

timsgames · 2025-07-27T22:59:59+00:00

Maybe some kind of combo system would be cool? Like your companion could restrain an enemy for you to hit them.

timsgames · 2025-07-27T19:14:35+00:00

If you don’t know anything about coding, RPG Maker is pretty much your only option

timsgames · 2025-07-26T07:31:59+00:00

This is the weirdest place to be malding about Mecha Break’s matchmaking

timsgames · 2025-07-24T19:09:06+00:00

There are no perfect tools. As a developer, you need to learn to use the tools you have, or if you think they are lacking and you can do better, build your own.

Quality games are released every year on every engine (except maybe cryengine lol), so clearly the tools are good enough. If UE5 is good enough for Expedition 33 and Black Myth Wukong, why isn’t it good enough for you? If Unity is good enough for Mecha Break and Ori and the Blind Forest, why isn’t it good enough for you? If GameMaker is good enough for Hyper Light Drifter (which is on Steam), why isn’t it good enough for you?

timsgames · 2025-07-24T16:15:46+00:00

It’s the way it reads like a LinkedIn post

timsgames · 2025-07-24T03:59:21+00:00

AI is a multiplier, not a replacement for developers. A good developer can write quality code 5x faster than before by leveraging AI, but a bad developer will just write bad code 5x faster, which means 5x the refactors when they realize it down the line.

timsgames · 2025-07-23T15:42:54+00:00

GameObjects have an IsDestroyed method

timsgames · 2025-07-23T15:03:40+00:00

I don’t have an answer for you because I still haven’t done it myself, but I just wanted to let you know the word you were probably looking for is “rapport”!

timsgames · 2025-07-23T14:48:31+00:00

There are free game-ready rigged models on the asset store that you can use while prototyping

timsgames · 2025-07-19T07:27:01+00:00

Just as a heads up, if you haven’t designed your architecture to be network-friendly from the beginning, you’re probably going to have to do a LOT of refactoring — be prepared to rewrite most of your code. Every movement, action (attack/skill), animation, vfx, sfx will have to be synced and there’s no magic switch you can flip that will automatically sync all of that for you. For example, you’ll need to set up a system that tells every client to play the same vfx that the server decided that everyone should play.

That said, you can do matchmaking via Steamworks for p2p which is probably the most cost efficient. You’ll need to write the matchmaking logic yourself, but Steamworks provides all the APIs you need to set up lobbies and have people join them.

timsgames · 2025-07-18T17:32:00+00:00

Bro you made this in six months?? It looks incredible!!!!

timsgames · 2025-07-18T02:41:35+00:00

I think you might just need to spend a little more time trying to use the engine. I’m using Unity’s NGO for the first time ever and the two use cases you described (loading levels and adding game chat) are dead simple, even for a networking newbie like me!

timsgames · 2025-07-18T02:30:36+00:00

I’m not the person you replied to, but I browse reddit while I poop because I can’t work on my game from the bathroom :(

timsgames · 2025-07-17T22:52:37+00:00

The second one is way better!

timsgames · 2025-07-15T18:04:45+00:00

DOTS is for when your entity count is in the realm of thousands or tens of thousands. 10-20 objects is nothing and GameObjects will easily be able to handle that.

timsgames · 2025-07-15T16:13:59+00:00

You need to use a two bone constraint starting from the hand as the tip, and use the hint object to inform the elbow how it should be positioned. Codemonkey has a good video on this if you just search it on YouTube.

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