The worst part of being an indie game dev
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2024
- I've been working on an indie game for the past year and I hit rock bottom. I had come up with a dope idea for a game: running a medieval tavern with your friends. I fleshed out a lot of the components, built a fun environment, set up customers, added serving mechanics, decorations, lighting, npcs. I even had the room temperature IQ idea to add multiplayer, but hey, people said it looked great. There was a lot of excitement, constant discord pings asking when I was releasing it, but I became really bored with the project, and lost all interest.
Come hang out on Discord: / discord
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Twitter: / tjgamedev
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Simon Bichbihler - In the 1980s : • Video
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About me -
Hi I'm TJ, a developer who is passionate about learning gamedev. I primarily develop games on the unity platform using C# but any code is fair game. I’m still learning a lot but hope you’ll enjoy my
Software Used -
Unity Version: 2021.1.22f1
Visual Studio Code: code.visualstudio.com/
Adobe Premiere Pro: www.adobe.com/products/premier
Adobe Photoshop: www.adobe.com/products/photoshop
PC Specs -
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
AMD Ryzen 7 2700x
32GB RAM
Way too much caffeine
#unity3d #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #gamedevelopment #devlog #madewithunity
#indiedev - Věda a technologie
One thing that really helps me is what I call the 1% rule. If you have a 0% day you will never ever finish. If you can convince yourself to have a 0.1% day you will finish eventually. I can almost always convince myself to start by telling myself "I'll just spend 15 min and see what I can do" and then I end up working on it for hours. Sometimes I just make a minor change and I am done for the day but more often than not it gets me going.
Love this. I’ll definitely try it
@@TJGameDev Burnout is super brutal but you'll make it man, you have a lot of talent and the hard work is paying off. Looking forward to playing!
One tip to everyone about the 1% rule, don't listen to your inner monologue that eventually says "What can we even get done in 15 min? I'm not gonna do anything but adjust the lighting nodes and I might not even keep the change. It's pointless."
Ignore that, Just start.
I wanna remember this but I feel like I won’t so can someone just reply to my comment
dealing with coder’s block is really hard. motivation is something that’s very difficult to fully pin down, i’m happy to know you figured it out and i’m excited to see progress on the game in the future. good luck! ❤
Thanks man!
@@TJGameDev in my experience working in a small team helps a lot with motivation. Especially having a codeveloper for pair coding.
Sometimes you can't get the motivation needed. Im in such a position myself, i've made a design document for my game, but i just can't get myself to sit down and work on it.
That’s a pretty good idea, I’ll have to give it a shot
@@TJGameDev What idea? I was bemoaning the fact that i've got the ideas written down, but can't get the motivation to actually code the game.
@@TheMonyarm he might be writing about the design document or a copy paste error ? btw just starting helps a lot.
@@TheMonyarm Try doing a prototype don't take it so serious the pressure will get to you but if you prototype it then it will be less stress. Before you know it you will have the foundation you need to make the project. Getting started is the hardest part.
@@TheMonyarm Don't know if this is any help, but from experience - one of the best ways to get started is to start prototyping your fav mechanic - the things thta made you fall in-love with your game's idea. if it's anything different, you'd have had a movemnet system, interaction system etc... by the time you're ready to start your fav mechanic, and by then you'd have had a functioning character prototype
Breaks are really important in the development process. Not only can it help clear your mind, but you might even come up with a new approach to problems you've been encountering. Happy to hear you found your inspiration again! you're inspiring a lot of other people with your work. keep the content coming and good luck finding that right balance!
So happy you're continuing, breaks are really important and difficult to force yourself to take. Cheers
Great video man. I feel you on the motivation thing. There's so many project ideas I want to give my attention to, but refuse to do so. Sticking with something to the end, is undoubtedly the hardest challenge for most game devs.
Absolutely, thanks man
Nice tip about refactoring! I hadn't considered that as a way to combat burnout. It's a win win win. Good stuff
Excellent video once again bro, so looking forward to where this game is headed!
Thanks
4:50 Love the little muaahhh. It was a nice touch.
This was a great video! I hoped to see some funny commentary on the
Spoilers:
Funny bar fights, but knowing that you’ll continue the project is far more important
Thanks man
I think dwarves and elves should have certain pros and cons for their gameplay.
Nice to see you back with this project, keep up the good work (and motivation) 💪
Thanks man
+1 for the wave function collapse tutorial! I've seen Oskar Stalberg's talk and I think I understand the concept, and I admire your dedication to try it out - which is probably the best way to learn, but it would be great to see a complete guide on how a simple version of it works end-to-end.
It’s on my to do list now
As this video came out i started to make a new project. Time to see if i can make it past the mental block lol. Games looking great i cant wait to be able to test it! Keep it up! We all love the work!
Thank you!
Your game dev videos have been a huge inspiration for me to get into game dev finally. Been wanting to for a long time just never did.
Thanks man, best of luck!
Refactoring barrel logic gone wild = instant click, at least for me
great insights, sometimes breaking down what the core gameplay is all about, helps getting back to the core features required
Thanks 😊
I get finishing games is hard but 7 projects sounds like a buncha nothin', I had at least like 40 ideas for games but I never finished even one, though I'm doing it in RPG Maker so the idea is to really utilize what the engine is good at and making them unique that makes that game, that game, if you kinda get what I'm talking about, and making a bad RPG Maker game is really easy, making a good one takes some real frigging time
one real important thing is to NEVER GIVE UP breaks definitely when things get foggy but NEVER EVER GIVE UP A GOOD IDEA.
Something that could cause the player to lose progress creating replayability, might be bar fights/security. Lots of broken furniture and stuff.
Remember where you started and realise the progress you've made. I'm stuck doing a simple character controller for weeks now 😅
don't ever give up
Thanks man, I will
Dude, I loved your video! Have a question for you: where have you bought that dope t-shirt?
The unity one? I got it at Unite 2022 a month ago in Austin
Your stuff is really inspiring as someone that's recently gotten into Unity myself, and your humour is on point 👌
Thanks man! I really appreciate it!
hype that you're back and excited for the future
Thanks man
When you refactor your hot mess into something clean and scalable. **Chef's kiss**
so glad to see ralphie grew up to be a CS major, the friz would be proud
Lmao
as a Indie game dev I know the pain of motivation and the pain or coming up with ideas(or the pain of coming up with ideas in my situation)I am still learning unity to improve and well its the motivation that is a pain sooo I can really relate😅🥲(I am also learning unity to hopfully start a dev team because hey 2 or more is better than 1 right?) Yea but my dream will take a while but hope I will get there one day.
Same dude, glad I’m not the only one
I'm glad the project is still in the works, and I appreciate you talking about this. As a non programmer I relate to the coder's block nonetheless and maybe this will be enough to get my A into G.
Thanks man, I appreciate it
You know what would be interesting is as you progress some NPC's try to leave without paying the tab so you have to confront them. So you don't lose money.
Good idea
The number one hardest thing to do as an Indie Dev is finish a game and publish it. Your code will never be seen by anyone else. Only refactor if you really truly gain something. I have published 8 games and without doubt the last few months are the toughest and resisting refactoring and starting on new ideas is hard to overcome.
Thanks for the tips man
we also used wave function collapse in our game! btw after watching one of your videos we also made the game with multiplayer.
There is a video about it in my YT channel. what do you think ?
I’ll give it a look
@@TJGameDev thanks
Local council propose regulations effecting the bar, if you're too rowdy they will restrict opening hours. You can bribe council members. Council members will attend bar and higher service will increase your reputation within council to prevent adverse laws.
This happens dude, sorry to hear. I build mobile apps and get through large chunks of it and suddenly lose motivation, even when friends and family are excited about using it and asking me about it.
TJ listen, the world needs this game. IT MUST HAPPEN!
Thanks man
10/10 will wish-list your game when it's added to Steam :)
Thanks 🙏
I'm guilty of perpetuating cool but pointless features, but I'm glad you took the time to work on the main loop. I'm really liking that there's an outside and different tiers of taverns. Keep it up
Thanks man
If customers get drunk they will make more reckless purchasing decisons (more beer, more expensive, more food) but if they get too drunk they will damage the bar (fights) dirty the bar (vomiting etc...). Runners will try and avoid paying the bill, guards might stop them, but if community is happy with your tavern they have a high chance of paying and stopping runners.
I'd love to see a tutorial on that wave fuction collapse
A few people have asked so I probably will in the future
P l e a s e do a tutorial for wave function collapse. I would love to know how you learned to do it and apply it within Unity.
I think I will. Need to optimize it but maybe in a few months
8:50 can you modify the walk animation to make it so they hold their mugs properly while walking?
czcams.com/video/1dMoRECcstQ/video.html
You can blend animations with an animation mask or an avatar mask. This allows you to select which bones are affected by an animation. In this situation the walk animation currently affects all bones so the right arm swings as normal. But if you were to place an avatar mask that only affects the right arm on this animation when the customer is holding a mug. you can either apply the same animation used for when they are sitting at a table, or create an animation of just the right arm holding a mug while walking. You should be able to just toggle this avatar mask on when the customer grabs the mug. A lot can be done with this technique.
P. S. Don't do this right away, just put this conversation comment in your version control's issue tracker and get back to more important things.
Yup, that actually used to work as you can see in some of the older vids, looks like it broke at some point. Thanks for the tips!
Where did you get the median graph?
Bro, you're a motivation for people
Keep going.
Thank you, I will!
Wave function collapse video would be awesome!
Well I’ve got good news for you! Code is public on newer vid
If it makes ya feel better, even big games companies with hundreds of people working for them can still get stuck making cool little features to show off to the stakeholders, and don't actually get around to solidifying that core loop until 3 years and many millions of dollars down the line... 😬
That’s a great point, thanks
Can you elaborate what you meant by “vector projection”?
Yeah, checks the magnitude of the vector between where the character starts and where it is going, if it changes dramatically it means that you’ve gone past the point. I hate to say “gOoGle iT bRo” but actually google it so you can see an image of the arrows haha.
Well done my man, loads of work indeed.
Thanks
Very relatable, loved the video!
Thanks man
you should add when the ai drops trash on the flor if the trahs is not washed customers will have a chance of not coming due tothe smell
Ngl i would watch refactoring barrel logic, GONE WRONGE lol
Very cool!
Thanks man!
@4:09 i paused it to say yes. yes please.
I think I will in a bit when it’s better optimized
Can't believe whats the highest genre is played...BROTHERS WHAT THE HELL???
That comment about being hardstuck gold hit different 😭
Too many of us are stuck playing that trash game
@@TJGameDev But how do we stop? XD If I could just figure that out...the dopamine hits are just too stronk.
With "Remote Life 2" im stuck ...im not inspired...:(
It happens, just gotta keep grinding man
As a game dev myself, I find it neat I have the exact same solutions. The refactoring thing especially. It's cool to see my thoughts be said out loud in an organized manor as well as this video does.
Release it then update it later thats how I released my first game.
its great but the animations is really wonky so i have a little additon i would make when you serve the beer the animation should be put it or take it from the counter
Hmm yeah, might help if I rotate the npc to grab directly at the character
Wow
When you first start making games there is a reason you should start with gamejams or small projects, you're learning and you probably don't have the discipline to create an entire game yet, you have to learn and get better and if you start making your dream game right out the bat you're doomed to fail
Was master in league 🤨
Work with a team. Its way more difficult to give up because you'll have their support. Working alone in a game is a suicidal mission
PS: I've been working on a crypto mmorpg for over 1 yrs. Sometimes I want to punch the monitors because of the complexity involved lol. I'd gave already 100% given up if it wasnt for my team
im stealing dev tools idea lol
My name is same as your content 🥲
lol so many things you wont need to bother about using Unreal. Actually its better to start your first game there for a fast prototype. But good luck coding and making all the systems first before you even start making your game idea :)
Im pretty sure most are gonna hate me for this comment, but what can I say, its the truth, Ive used both engines and have a clearer few than who used barebone systems and wonder why they dont come far. It just makes it easier, and you want to reduce the difficulty when starting, so absolutely nothing speaks against actually if your goal is to make your first game.
Both engines have their pro's and con's obviously, but be honest, do you want to see your game idea come to live asap or you'd rather struggle for years (learning everything is years, not months), before even anything playable is achieved, just to get demotivated because your idea sucks? The goal should be making somethng playable FAST so you can iterate if your idea works in the first place, you can still make the actual game in unity once you know it works before wasting 99 years.
Also you get to learn some general systems which you can replicate in unity later too if you still want to make the game there later.
Thanks for the detailed feedback, I don’t hate you for it haha. I’ll consider it
@@TJGameDev Nah no hate, I dont hate Unity, I tried and while at it, I constantly missed the features Unreal provided. Its like deliberately taking the worse route.
Maybe its cause Im an artist an not a programmer, I can image that this might be a reason due to the fact that UE has highly visualized everything.
Well at least try it, its nice to know both engines for sure, good luck!
I am a novice game developer
Good advice. I refactored my custom made engine for my game 3 times. xD But now it is ridiciously fast and the code is nice, easy to add new features.
Hell yeah congrats man
Could you also introduce wall running???
No lol, why would I add that
if (motivation