Yup, this is one of the top things I pay attention to when making arcade games. The game over screen should put you back in the game immediately after a key press.
260 karma · joined June 22, 2009
https://juanuys.com
Anyway, great game. Would happily pay for this sans ads.
...and plenty of subreddits are very active.
I'm intrigued...
We're kinda doing this already with Patreon: give us 5 quid a month, and you get a little game every whenever.
The Futurama meme "I don't want to live on this planet any more" comes to mind way too often these days...
0. https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-mo...
Putting it in the critical path will take a lot of development/testing.
As a web developer who started out in 2001/2002, I watched as custom web design jobs dried up, and more and more people (and ahem artists) started using online tools to create a templatised website on the cheap.
Did I throw a tantrum? Nope! I learned to do backend dev so I could make my own automation tools.
Seriously, just embrace these new superpowers already.
They have a bunch of cancelled/unreleased games [0] because their standards are so high.
I don't think they want to be known as the company who made the best PC gaming platform in the world, but who also released some really crappy games on there.
Games are in their DNA, so I expect we'll see something absolutely amazing from them in the future.
Even Marques Brownlee [0] said he's going to rate gadgets' green/sustainability creds from now on, after reviewing the Fairphone.
Story of my life!
https://abagames.github.io/crisp-game-lib-games/?cywall
He wrote a lot of words on small game development:
https://abagames.github.io/joys-of-small-game-development-en...
(PS I liked cywall so much, I'm made a clone: https://opyate.itch.io/paddles (audio not working yet, sorry))
And hopefully this doesn't suffer from HN hug 'o death, but here's some more of his games, implemented with all sorts (HaXe, Flash, JS, etc):
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/26/resident-evil-4-iphone-...
However, I would also recommend making as many small (tiny) games as you can. There's nothing as motivating as releasing something often. You have to be diligent, though, and not succumb to scope/feature creep. There's nothing like learning by doing.
PS check GDQuest's "recommended" channels at the bottom of their YT channel for more good stuff.
You mention "3D animation" and "game design" as areas of focus.
For the former, there are established learning paths, so perhaps quite easy to estimate when you'll get to a point where you're delivering industry-standard work.
For the latter (game design), perhaps the answer is a bit different. If you study game design at, say, university, the learning path might be a combination of reflective practice (studying games, writing critically/analytically about them), prototyping, making a bunch of games (including the final major project), and doing lots of experimentation (and maybe also going deep into a particular unexplored game mechanic, world building, character design, etc).
Even if you finish university, you'll still have to make plenty of games to hone your craft.
And the, for both of these areas of focus, to actually stand out from the crowd, would require something special. Maybe innate talent, maybe a new way of seeing the world. This is difficult to estimate.
(But perhaps you've been sculpting 3D models and making small games in your spare time anyway, and maybe you're already quite good, so who knows? :)
> charge for my work
You're competing with a lot of other people for gamedev work :-) Most gamedev programming jobs don't pay as well as other programming jobs. You'll be doing it for the love of it!
Someone I know worked at a gym, but made games in Unreal in their spare time, then did a 2-years remote masters in indie game dev, and got a job as a technical artist at a small indie studio. AFAIK he still just uses blueprints. I don't know how long he spent before university working on games in his spare time, but the 2 years of fast-tracking his knowledge really helped.
This seems to go counter to modern practices, which is to not bother with content at all at the start, and to "find the fun" in a gray box level first.
I signed in with Google, clicked on today's target, and already there's mention of "plus membership". Perhaps figure out if I'm enjoying myself first, before mentioning this?
Anyway, I got through to today's challenge [0], and immediately realised I only know the bare minimum about CSS (I usually cheat with SASS and other people's templates). :-D
I gave it a shot, and surprised myself. 605.18 and 100% match (with global average 587.07), so I was quite pleased.
Perhaps there's a niche here for a gamified CSS-leetcode kind of thing.
What makes games so special?
I'm aware of these not-downloadable-but-is-digital services/stores/platforms that do:
- app stores (Apple takes 30%, Google takes 30%)
- content (YouTube keeps 45%, Twitch takes a cut)
- e-commerce (Etsy 5% transaction fee; eBay takes a %)
- music/podcast (Spotify; SoundCloud)
- e-learning (Udemy; Teachable)
- gaming (Steam takes 30%; Epic takes %12)
- rental (AirBNB service fees; Turo commission on each car rental)
- freelancing (Upwork's sliding fee; Fiverr takes 20%)
But Unity is DOWNLOADABLE software, not a platform/app-store/SaaS. So, why revenue share? Surely most devs just make free-standing/downloadable games that don't tie into any platform-y features?
AFAIK, even Unity Enterprise [0] is just source code, support, 3-year LTS bug fixes, and the only real thing that's platform-y is the build server, which seems to cost extra anyway.
Keep an eye out for special offers, e.g. I bought an "ultimate" bundle (which includes everything) back in Feb 2021 which includes future updates.
However, I would also recommend making as many small (tiny) games as you can. There's nothing as motivating as releasing something often. You have to be diligent, though, and not succumb to scope/feature creep. There's nothing like learning by doing.
PS check GDQuest's "recommended" channels at the bottom of their YT channel for more good stuff.
Yeah man, I want "bad graphics" too :)
https://kenney.itch.io/kenney-game-assets
(no affiliation, it's just good stuff)