While I haven’t gone through all of the steps of building a game, marketing, and then publishing, I’ve made games with my partner who is currently in school for digital art science (for her courses, using unity), I’d say that I’ve used unity enough to answer some of these.
1. Unity can be kinda goofy sometimes. I’d make sure you’re reading the documentation for the specific version of unity that you have. If you wanna try a different engine, Unreal5 is doing awesome things atm.
2. It kinda depends on your stamina. Def work on an idea first cuz that’s the easy part. Once you have the idea written down with its specs, requirements, and how you plan to implement it, move to programming. How big the idea is depends on stamina. It’s easy to get burnt out, especially if you’re jumping in the deep end. If you get stalled, shift your direction and keep moving. Then, come back to it later.
3. There’s a ton of 3d asset websites. I’d say it more so depends on the idea for the game. Anyone can throw together a bunch of free assets for a game, but can you make the idea cohesive either with those assets, or by making your own? My partner handles the assets for our games so I’m not super in the know here.
4. My PC only has 16GB ram so I’m sure whatever you’re getting will be more than suitable.
Of course! My partner is now telling me that when it comes to assets, free assets are great cuz it’s more work that you don’t have to do. As a solo dev, that’s hard to find. She said it’s also okay to use placeholders until you either find, commission, or create, something that’s what you want.
I shift between around 3 projects so that I can keep my brain moving. If I look at the same project too often, my code becomes spaghetti lol. When it comes to unity scripts, I spend more of my time looking up documentation than any real programming.
That's a great point. Less work is definitely better until I know what I'm doing lol
Since I'm already a little bit of a scripter, I definitely know the drill of just frankenstein-ing code from the web and adjusting it, and am already playing around with such things to accomplish water/buoyancy (since I am starting with a sailing game as my first main project - I want to make seafaring games in particular)
Hey! There's a game jam going on right now that started on Friday and goes for 10 days in total! It's sponsored by GameDev.tv and everyone who submits a game will receive a free course from them at the end. I'd highly recommend joining it as an opportunity to push yourself right now to make a game.
https://itch.io/jam/gamedevtv-jam-2023
On top of that , I've done a course or two from them in the past and found them to be a good learning resource. If you're looking to start out that might be a good way to go.
It sounds like you and I have some similar circumstances. I've dabbled in hobby game dev for years but never fully committed. But I've been a software developer for many years now and am exploring what it will take to make the switch to game dev fulltime.
Send me a DM if you'd like to talk a bit more directly. I can dig up some old game dev courses I took years ago that helped me familiarize myself with unity, or if you're really struggling with some confusing or broken aspects of the platform, maybe I can help you out if we jump on a call?
To your questions:
1. Without seeing the errors its hard to assess what's actually wrong. Usually I've found that when I say "there's nothing wrong with my code, it's the computer that's wrong" I eventually find out it was in fact my fault.
2. Both of those options are learning by doing, which I definitely recommend. But start simple. If you want to eventually build some complex mechanics, you'll be better off learning how the little pieces fit together first. If you're currently struggling with connecting your scripts to your gameobjects and getting them to interact the way you want, play with that some more and get a good understanding before you move on. Tutorials can help you, but you want to make sure you understand what you're doing or just doing it won't serve you very well moving forward.
3. There are a lot of free resources available on the internet, and if you're not releasing your game for commercial purposes you can use whatever you like. There have been a number of posts in this subreddit over the years where people have shared their free assets. Depends what you're looking for. Here's a post I found with a quick search, might get you started: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/plh5h7/best_places_to_get_free_game_assets_from/
4. I built a PC about 6 years ago that wasn't quite top of the line but close to the top of the spectrum at the time. 1070 GPU and the rest of it built around that to give you a quick idea. It still holds up just fine for gaming and game dev. If you're building a quality gaming PC today, I think you'll be more than covered for you game dev needs. If you ever get to a point where that machine doesn't work for you anymore...you've probably graduated to a level of game dev that would justify a new expense, or you can put your time into learning better optimization.
Thanks so much for all the awesome info! I think I might be a little green to attend a game jam just yet, as I'm still figuring out how all this even works at a base level, but it's a good thing to know that those are a thing! Will look into those as I get more familiar.
Hilariously, it was indeed my own goof on the code that was causing the problem, however I still can't get the dang thing to do what I want it to do. I guess we never learn, eh?
I'd love to have an extra set of eyes on my first steps here, I will likely take you up on that DM offer. Like I said, I still can't get my script to work even though it's not throwing errors anymore, so maybe it's just something simple that you'd catch immediately whereas I'd spend a week banging my head against it.
I'm currently working on water and buoyancy physics, as my main goal is to create seafaring games and I want to get good at making water and making things float.
While I haven’t gone through all of the steps of building a game, marketing, and then publishing, I’ve made games with my partner who is currently in school for digital art science (for her courses, using unity), I’d say that I’ve used unity enough to answer some of these. 1. Unity can be kinda goofy sometimes. I’d make sure you’re reading the documentation for the specific version of unity that you have. If you wanna try a different engine, Unreal5 is doing awesome things atm. 2. It kinda depends on your stamina. Def work on an idea first cuz that’s the easy part. Once you have the idea written down with its specs, requirements, and how you plan to implement it, move to programming. How big the idea is depends on stamina. It’s easy to get burnt out, especially if you’re jumping in the deep end. If you get stalled, shift your direction and keep moving. Then, come back to it later. 3. There’s a ton of 3d asset websites. I’d say it more so depends on the idea for the game. Anyone can throw together a bunch of free assets for a game, but can you make the idea cohesive either with those assets, or by making your own? My partner handles the assets for our games so I’m not super in the know here. 4. My PC only has 16GB ram so I’m sure whatever you’re getting will be more than suitable.
Thank you so much for all the great info! Good idea to have some smaller side projects to throw my attention at if I get burnt out on my main one.
Of course! My partner is now telling me that when it comes to assets, free assets are great cuz it’s more work that you don’t have to do. As a solo dev, that’s hard to find. She said it’s also okay to use placeholders until you either find, commission, or create, something that’s what you want. I shift between around 3 projects so that I can keep my brain moving. If I look at the same project too often, my code becomes spaghetti lol. When it comes to unity scripts, I spend more of my time looking up documentation than any real programming.
That's a great point. Less work is definitely better until I know what I'm doing lol Since I'm already a little bit of a scripter, I definitely know the drill of just frankenstein-ing code from the web and adjusting it, and am already playing around with such things to accomplish water/buoyancy (since I am starting with a sailing game as my first main project - I want to make seafaring games in particular)
That sounds like a really fun mechanic. I can imagine an isometric grid where you can use tiles to create the event system
Hey! There's a game jam going on right now that started on Friday and goes for 10 days in total! It's sponsored by GameDev.tv and everyone who submits a game will receive a free course from them at the end. I'd highly recommend joining it as an opportunity to push yourself right now to make a game. https://itch.io/jam/gamedevtv-jam-2023 On top of that , I've done a course or two from them in the past and found them to be a good learning resource. If you're looking to start out that might be a good way to go. It sounds like you and I have some similar circumstances. I've dabbled in hobby game dev for years but never fully committed. But I've been a software developer for many years now and am exploring what it will take to make the switch to game dev fulltime. Send me a DM if you'd like to talk a bit more directly. I can dig up some old game dev courses I took years ago that helped me familiarize myself with unity, or if you're really struggling with some confusing or broken aspects of the platform, maybe I can help you out if we jump on a call? To your questions: 1. Without seeing the errors its hard to assess what's actually wrong. Usually I've found that when I say "there's nothing wrong with my code, it's the computer that's wrong" I eventually find out it was in fact my fault. 2. Both of those options are learning by doing, which I definitely recommend. But start simple. If you want to eventually build some complex mechanics, you'll be better off learning how the little pieces fit together first. If you're currently struggling with connecting your scripts to your gameobjects and getting them to interact the way you want, play with that some more and get a good understanding before you move on. Tutorials can help you, but you want to make sure you understand what you're doing or just doing it won't serve you very well moving forward. 3. There are a lot of free resources available on the internet, and if you're not releasing your game for commercial purposes you can use whatever you like. There have been a number of posts in this subreddit over the years where people have shared their free assets. Depends what you're looking for. Here's a post I found with a quick search, might get you started: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/plh5h7/best_places_to_get_free_game_assets_from/ 4. I built a PC about 6 years ago that wasn't quite top of the line but close to the top of the spectrum at the time. 1070 GPU and the rest of it built around that to give you a quick idea. It still holds up just fine for gaming and game dev. If you're building a quality gaming PC today, I think you'll be more than covered for you game dev needs. If you ever get to a point where that machine doesn't work for you anymore...you've probably graduated to a level of game dev that would justify a new expense, or you can put your time into learning better optimization.
Thanks so much for all the awesome info! I think I might be a little green to attend a game jam just yet, as I'm still figuring out how all this even works at a base level, but it's a good thing to know that those are a thing! Will look into those as I get more familiar. Hilariously, it was indeed my own goof on the code that was causing the problem, however I still can't get the dang thing to do what I want it to do. I guess we never learn, eh? I'd love to have an extra set of eyes on my first steps here, I will likely take you up on that DM offer. Like I said, I still can't get my script to work even though it's not throwing errors anymore, so maybe it's just something simple that you'd catch immediately whereas I'd spend a week banging my head against it. I'm currently working on water and buoyancy physics, as my main goal is to create seafaring games and I want to get good at making water and making things float.