Well I guess it can be a bit easier depending on the scale of your project, but I like to do things BIG!! lol. How’s your experience been so far?, and even if your not making your own game do you have any thoughts on it? feel free to post anything you like.
As for me atm it feels like i’m trying chew more than I can swallow (probably temporary)… but so far so good actually, I just released a Pre-Alpha demo of my game to world 2 days ago and so far its had 132 downloads, its not much but without any marketing I’m surprised it got that many, don’t know how many of those actually played it though. I got feedback from 7 people which were mostly positive and of course telling me what I should work on more like, the game is too easy, make it harder, you need more sfx and she’s not a soldier don’t just throw a girl with a booty in there (haha I’m not much of a character designer). All of it is actually very useful feedback which I will be referring to in the future. And now I guess it’s back to sleepless nights, bad eating patterns and not paying the internet bill.
My download statistics so far in case your interested +40 from my website.
agreed,being a solo dev requires knowledge of many areas.i came to udk as a modeller and had to learn many things.
I started with kismet for almost everything and carried on for years,but as familiarity with uscript set in I have reduced my kismet to virtually nothing.i know kismet I meant for prototyping,but 5 years is a long time.
I use side projects to help me from getting bored and to learn new things to incorporate into my main project.
I create art: great video and the game looks promising.well done.
Heres something that i encountered that i underrestemited.
Marketing.
If you have a big project but a small crowd… then you should make your community and that fast.
Having a great game, great art and a realy good game overall will not make you win. Sadly.
I’ve run into the perfectionist problem as well, it does help better your work but when you over do it you may never finish. In the past I tried to make an animation and never completed it because of that. For this game I gave myself 5 months to get to the Pre-Alpha stage and upload it, I only managed because for the first time I ignored the perfectionist in me.
Yes I’m making it alone. I’ve been developing since January this year but I’ve been learning and planning for years.
: I’m not sure exactly how the data is collected, but it’s from a google link that leads to the download file (2.1GB), it just says how many times the download was clicked. How many of those actually finished downloading and played the game is what I’m not sure about, except for the ones who left feedback. As for the downloads in Africa they are from Zambia and that’s where I live, a couple of friends have downloaded it. As for marketing I get an okay number of views on my youtube channel so I uploaded a trailer video that links to the download thread on Unreal Engine forums.
Filly_the_owl: I totally agree on the marketing side, a good game won’t make you win, that’s just a myth that was busted a long time ago. But Apparently a lot people still believe in myths.
I codevelop with second coder, We also have great character artist but he is losing his motivation.
Biggest trap for us so far is perfectionism. We restarted code 4 times so far. First time it was because some circular function dependency that ruined half of code and we were not that far in. Then we realized that multiplayer needs whole new design of code, and we developed game as singleplayer thinking it will be not that hard to add multiplayer later, we were quite wrong. And last was second restart because of multiplayer, our first try was quite messed up (we were learning all quirks of MP). I think that in bigger team (4 restarts) would be quite hard to do.
Second deadliest trap is going for too big projects. We tried to make as small as possible project that we still want to develop, and it turned out to be huge task. Now we are thinkng about some tiny puzzle game to get some funding so we can pay artists. Because without artists we will never make decent game (our game is top down coop shooter in scifi setting), something very simple, that turned out to be not so small project as we thought. What can be hard in project that needs some multiplayer GUI, and 4 guys shooting hordes of aliens? That looked almost like weekend project. Few tweaks to tpp template, few marketplace assets and we have game. That was dead wrong, for eg. making session manager plus some chat, level travel etc took whole weekend to do but after 2 weeks of following tuts digging into any information we could find etc.
Multiplayer is stable, and when you finally understand how it works its quite easy also. But while learning it you will probably fall into one of many multiplayer design traps.
For eg if you want some autofire gun, which is very common. First thought is to send event over to server when player pulls trigger and when player releases it. But what if player laggs or disconnect when releasing trigger. That event may get lost somewhere. So you need to design autofire around it (we send event of “fire” every 0.2 seconds) servers assumes that player disconnected or stopped firing if that event did not happened for last 0.5 seconds.
Then another major problem with multiplayer is that you cannot be certain of blueprint creation order, thus get all actors of class on server and client will return arrays with correct pointers (locally correct) but order of objects will be probably different. Now squad leader gives order to attack 3rd enemy on list, which enemy it is for clients a and b? You basically need to manually index all such actors.
So my point about multiplayer is, that if you do not know those quirks beforehand, you will make great firing system to just discover later that disconnected player keeps shooting forever. Or that when you give all bots order to shoot first enemy they all happily run trough whole map to shoot second enemy on the list, because their list is differently ordered, and they run on server.
But this is kind of derailing thread. Perfectionism in my case is biggest time sponge, but it will pay off because at some point i will just know what to do and what are traps ahead of me. Maybe not while doing first or second game, but hopefully when i am at 3rd project.
Sounds similar to my experience. Multiplayer blueprints are far more difficult and confusing than singleplayer. I was following a tutorial which fit my project perfectly, and then found out that the author stopped completely a few months ago. So I had to strip out all of the work I did prior to that point and start from my basic system. Like you, I’m trying to stay away from overly ambitious but didn’t realize that also meant what I perceived to be a simple multiplayer coop horde mode. I’ve since had to adjust the overall plan to fit something a little more attainable for one person.
Well when it comes to game development, there certainly isn’t any shortage of ideas. We all have plenty of them. It’s just a matter of selecting one that fits a certain attainable criteria for the time being.
All post so similar to my experiences, I am also having similar issues, seems to be a theme with new developers, specially ones who are skilled in only one area and are trying to make a game on their own or with a small group. I have already abandoned one game as I am useless in C++ and blueprints is beyond me if I’m trying to do something new. Then there is the problem of outsourcing to others to help develop your game, but if you cant pay them for this work before the game is finished then they either drag their feet or leave to secure paid work, this has happened to me like 5 times already, its quite frustrating. I have also tried looking into buying other UE4 templates that incorporate things that my game will need, only to find out later that that doesn’t work with the way I’ve implemented my game, or its not how I thought it was gonna be and just get stuck with a ton of templates I cant use yet.
So after abandoning my 2D side scroller game, [which I first started as I thought it would be something simple to do] the perfectionist in me turned it into something that will not be finished until I have learn to program and animate or I win the lottery and have the money to outsource talent to help me lol.
So now I’m making a 1st/3rd person sci-fi shooter game and have fallen in the trap of needing AI, gameplay mechanics, which are beyond me, so my project started last september, concepted last march, to still in development today.
Its so frustrating sometimes that so far Ive kicked my PC and blew the fuse box [short circuited my house] the dent on my PC remind me of the struggle
took time off 2-3 weeks because I just could look at it any more, and the story goes on and on,
My main problem is that there is never enough time in the day, it takes me literally all day just to do one thing, and when a problem arises, it takes me the whole day if not longer to sort it, and then of course 2 to 10 other problems crop up from that.
So for me so far there is no light at the end of the tunnel and its depressing to see, that I’ve put so much work into my game and I still have nothing to show for it,
still waiting for some people on UE4 forums to finish templates to put on the market place for me to see if I can use them… in the meantime I just carry on building my level, doing what I can trying to perfect - reiterate on things I can control until I see a light at the end of that F*** tunnel.
Anyway sorry to bore you all, I just wanted to put in my experience…
Totally agree with that, Yesterday I completed the first enemy A.I I actually have fun playing against and was really happy and excited about it, today the thought of working on the project made me feel sick. Its a bitter sweet symphony.
If you don’t like BP or C++ try learning Skookum script, but maybe wait until it is out of beta. Everyone gets frustrated. The ones that make it push through. Maybe start out on a simple a game as possible. When you finish that, make something more difficult.
First of all your game looks amazing
Then I can fully see your point, there is soo much work that goes into making a game and soo many skillsets like 3d moddeling, programming, game idea creation etc. 3D moddeling is my main reason why I joined a team
Yes and if your really weak in a certain area it could bring the whole thing down. I’ve had many offers from people online to help out with the project, I once accepted from a programmer, but he never even got started though he offered himself. But I have been working with 1 american voice actress, its hard over the internet but so far its been really helpful. But frankly I avoid working with other people as much as possible because I fear they could abandon the project any time and leave me jammed. So whatever I can do on my own I do on my own until I’m able to pay people.
You are able to pay people… you have it easy.
I dont have money to buy a new PC to have my project have the quality i want… Having huge issues with framerates and a slow workflow.
I mean if you have money then you realy currently have a huge chance.
but maybe what you lack is time. it’s the alltime time vs. money predicament
to the OP: I feel you. I too work on a project by myself. I’ve been working on it for 4+ years, and I should be finished with it sometime this year
the perfectionist problem - you can learn to control it
marketing - I’ll face that demon soon enough. but I still think good marketing will give you a very good initial boost, but only a good game can give you spreading via word of mouth
motivation - if being a dev is really your hobby and you truly like the project you’re making motivation comes easy, and making progress on the project creates a positive motivation loop.
other projects - it takes discipline to not go astray into side projects, working on multiple projects, mutating your project, or increasing the scope of your project. when starting a fresh new project make completely sure it’s what you want to do and define a scope that works in a self-contained way (without needing more expansive features later). and after that, endure!
scope - cannot stress this enough: keep a realistic scope. it’s common to think that features X Y and Z will take a few weeks to make and for prototyping it will be true in most cases, but the dangerous part is thinking “the game is pretty much done” after that. making features X Y and Z work together and making them scale properly, make the game appealing and not harsh, adding enough signs and feedback for the player, making it all a smooth experience and a good amount of polish, will all take 90% of your time
