Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Zed]

Indie game dev is a bit like becoming a musician. It's a fool's errand if you're in it for the money. Do it because it's fun, as a hobby or "side-job" to a regular day-job.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I disagree. Plenty of indie games have been successful enough to have made their creators fairly wealthy. Just not indie games with wireframe walls.

You probably have better odds of being rich as a sports player than making a hit indie videogame.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Indie game dev is a bit like becoming a musician. It's a fool's errand if you're in it for the money. Do it because it's fun, as a hobby or "side-job" to a regular day-job.

I feel like, while partially true, that's vastly underselling music these days. I've heard a lot about how every big company in music is nickel and diming musicians. If streaming services aren't paying a pittance, its getting a pittance from each CD. If it isn't getting paid peanuts for live shows, its the booking company demanding a portion of your merch sales. And I could be wrong, but I think there are more bands/artists than there are indie game developers. But that's not to imply game deving is easy, just that the music business is a complete hellscape.

 

[Zed]

Indie game dev is a bit like becoming a musician. It's a fool's errand if you're in it for the money. Do it because it's fun, as a hobby or "side-job" to a regular day-job.

I feel like, while partially true, that's vastly underselling music these days. I've heard a lot about how every big company in music is nickel and diming musicians. If streaming services aren't paying a pittance, its getting a pittance from each CD. If it isn't getting paid peanuts for live shows, its the booking company demanding a portion of your merch sales. And I could be wrong, but I think there are more bands/artists than there are indie game developers. But that's not to imply game deving is easy, just that the music business is a complete hellscape.

Yeah, musicians have it worse.

The only stable 8-5'er musician's job is music teacher, if you can land it. With a good reputation, you might make it as a gig musician.
To make a career besides that, you must be extremely lucky.

Indie devs have great self-publishing platforms and some great "indie conveniences", but some don't even make it into the development phase and most don't manage to come out of there.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I disagree. Plenty of indie games have been successful enough to have made their creators fairly wealthy. Just not indie games with wireframe walls.

You probably have better odds of being rich as a sports player than making a hit indie videogame.

Maybe there are more rich athletes than rich indie developers in the world. But if I look at just my options, I personally have a better chance of being a rich game developer than a rich athlete.

 

[ProphetSword]

I’m not even sure how the discussion turned to money in the first place, since the text by me that was quoted doesn’t mention anything about money, becoming rich or anything about the plight of indie developers. Saying that people told me they didn’t want to play games with wireframe walls can easily apply to a freeware release as well.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

As a player, I'd prefer simple but stylish wireframe graphics over ugly and cheap-looking textures, and as far as sales are concerned, I'm not the only one with that mindset. If it doesn't click for someone, that's fine in my book.

As a developer -- right now this solution is cheap, stylish and recognizable, and allows me to focus on gameplay and other (no less important) parts of my games while keeping the dev costs manageable given how niche and experimental these games are.

For context, during pre-DGS and early DGS days I've been toying with textured 3D and performing various tests to see how far up I can go with production values while keeping the graphics consistent. After quite a few attempts, which involved many things, from grabbing and editing stuff off OpenGameArt to procedural generation, I wasn't satisfied and decided to switch to vector art (pseudo-wireframes) because it ended up being the most consistent option that I can handle with my current art skills, and it allowed me to stand out from the crowd. I still work on my art skills in my spare time, but any drastic changes to the way I handle graphics in my games will only be possible in the far future, once I accumulate enough funds to grow the Graverobber Foundation into a real studio, rather than keeping it as myself + contractors.

Until then, the wireframes are here to stay.

 

[Hag]

All the discussion around C++ in the other thread made me fetch my old Stroustrup's "The C++ programming language". Hadn't opened it in maybe 15 years, and what a treat. Not a single useful program, only hundred over hundred of useless incomplete pieces of code barely good enough to learn the syntax.
But then my eye got caught near the end, in the chapter about compatibility with C, by some design so awful I realize I was still quite the novice in the art of C. Here it goes, arranged in standalone code :

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
int a, b, c;
a = 6;
b = 2;
c = a //* Stupid comment */ b
;
fprintf(stdout, "%d", c);
}

If you don't get it, compile it with and then without enforcing the C89 standard (-ansi in gcc).
If anyone knows any legit use of this horror, I'd be curious to hear.

 

[Catacombs]

If one's expecting C to be 6, then the problem is here:

c = a //* Stupid comment */ b

c = a / b

 

[Bad Sector]

If anyone knows any legit use of this horror, I'd be curious to hear.

Winning the International Obfuscated C Code Contest?

 

[Tyranicon]

I disagree. Plenty of indie games have been successful enough to have made their creators fairly wealthy. Just not indie games with wireframe walls.

You probably have better odds of being rich as a sports player than making a hit indie videogame.

Maybe there are more rich athletes than rich indie developers in the world. But if I look at just my options, I personally have a better chance of being a rich game developer than a rich athlete.

It's a sobering thought, but if you're making a living wage as a solo gamedev, you're probably already in the top 10% of indie success stories.

This graphic may be a bit outdated (2020), but I think is still relevant.

 

[Butter]

To be fair, a lot of "indie" games on Steam are just asset flips and other low effort shovelware. You can probably put out 10-20 of those a year if you have no soul, and then the total income is fine.

 

[Tyranicon]

To be fair, a lot of "indie" games on Steam are just asset flips and other low effort shovelware. You can probably put out 10-20 of those a year if you have no soul, and then the total income is fine.

I remember a postmoterm by a gamedev who has a strategy of putting out cheap games every two months. Of course, they're not making any money because nobody wants to buy simple/bad games even if they are $3.

 

[The Avatar]

It also says that strategy and RPG tend to be the most successful, and they also command a premium price- especially if you factor out the GameMaker JRPG shovelware. Look at the developers on this forum and ask them how much money they make. There is a big demand in the CRPG market- it's just a matter of making and releasing a finished title. That's the hard part.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

it's just a matter of making and releasing a finished title

Don't forget marketing, or these two points won't mean jack shit unless you're very lucky.

Having at least one dedicated person to handle this is a good idea, since I'm going to bet that by the time the development wraps up, you'll be too tired and burned out to do it yourself.

 

[Tyranicon]

Look at the developers on this forum and ask them how much money they make.

Eh, I don't think you'll get the answers you want. Besides for a few notables (and we mostly know who they are), I'd say most of the developers here don't really make any money (mostly because their games are still in dev), with a few that make maybe between $40k to $100k a year, the lower end of which I would consider the bare minimum for sustainable in solo or small team dev.

If someone wants to make a poll I'll answer honestly. I made very roughly $30k USD last year through gamedev, before taxes and expenses. And there are a LOT of taxes and expenses, so I'm basically working a minimum wage job.

But I'm doing what I love, right?

Edit: This post came off a bit more doom and gloom than I intended. RPG dev can be a money maker, but it's not a cashgrab genre. In fact, it's probably the most work and talent intensive genre in games today. This isn't Survival, or Battle Royal, or any number of genres where a small amount of effort and a large marketing budget will cut it. RPGs will generally not be signal boosted by 'tubers or streamers into a viral monster. Only effort will do that, and time. Anyone who creates and launches a successful RPG can rightfully say they earned that success.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I made very roughly $30k USD last year through gamedev, before taxes and expenses. And there are a LOT of taxes and expenses, so I'm basically working a minimum wage job.

That's not necessarily a bad thing when you consider how many studios fail. You're one of the few that made it always remember that.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Besides for a few notables (and we mostly know who they are), I'd say most of the developers here don't really make any money, with a few that make maybe between $40k to $100k a year, the lower end of which I would consider the bare minimum for sustainable in solo or small team dev.

It depends on a country. I'm not making tons of cash, but it's enough to stay in business and have a decent life, and if things go sour, I can do contract work and random gigs to stay afloat.

It's much better than wasting my life on dead-end jobs, and I had my fair share of those.

 

[Tyranicon]

Besides for a few notables (and we mostly know who they are), I'd say most of the developers here don't really make any money, with a few that make maybe between $40k to $100k a year, the lower end of which I would consider the bare minimum for sustainable in solo or small team dev.

It depends on a country. I'm not making tons of cash, but it's enough to stay in business and have a decent life, and if things go sour, I can do contract work and random gigs to stay afloat.

It's much better than wasting my life on dead-end jobs, and I had my fair share of those.

Much better than the office, that's for sure.

 

[Joonas]

Released the dungeon generator of my roguelike game (Zorbus) as an external Windows tool.

http://dungeon.zorbus.net

It can be used to generate tabletop RPG -style maps.
There's a step-function which adds one area at a time if you're interested in seeing how the algorithm works.
There are several different map coloring themes.
Maps can be exported to PNG-files.
There's also a mass generation function that automatically generates a wanted number of maps and exports them.

There are lots of example maps on the homepage of the tool.

Also, if you're in need of plain ASCII prefab maps, check the page for a link to an archive with over 1300 ASCII-prefabs.

 

[AlexYeCu]

Nice. An idea: an exporter to lua table like in Tiled.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Released the dungeon generator of my roguelike game (Zorbus) as an external Windows tool.

http://dungeon.zorbus.net

It can be used to generate tabletop RPG -style maps.
There's a step-function which adds one area at a time if you're interested in seeing how the algorithm works.
There are several different map coloring themes.
Maps can be exported to PNG-files.
There's also a mass generation function that automatically generates a wanted number of maps and exports them.

There are lots of example maps on the homepage of the tool.

Also, if you're in need of plain ASCII prefab maps, check the page for a link to an archive with over 1300 ASCII-prefabs.

Have you written about the algorithms you use for generating your dungeons? They tend to have very interesting designs.

 

[Joonas]

Released the dungeon generator of my roguelike game (Zorbus) as an external Windows tool.

http://dungeon.zorbus.net

Also, if you're in need of plain ASCII prefab maps, check the page for a link to an archive with over 1300 ASCII-prefabs.

Have you written about the algorithms you use for generating your dungeons? They tend to have very interesting designs.

The basic algorithm is by Mike Anderson:
http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Dungeon-Building_Algorithm

And I've written a bit about it in the generator's help-file (just a few lines):
http://dungeon.zorbus.net/Dungeon_Generator.txt

The algorithm is very simple, easy to implement, and ensures that every area is reachable. Doors are easy to place between areas. The algorithm makes it easy to control the amount of different area types, especially corridors.

I'm surprised that it isn't used more, not even in roguelikes.

After the basic algorithm has done wanted amount of areas, I do some postprocessing: try to eliminate dead ends, try to connect areas with corridors. When doors are placed between areas that both are 3 tiles wide, there's a chance that the entry point is widened and no door is added, to give more continuous flow between hallway-type of areas.

One problem with the algorithm is that it usually creates branches that are not connected to each other, so some postprocessing to ensure connections between areas is needed.

The step-function in the generator visualizes the basic algorithm and "Finalize step-mode" button does the postprocessing.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

I am a brilliant tactician https://youtu.be/L5GZa_gDxSo
I had overwhelming success in this battle.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

I am a brilliant tactician https://youtu.be/L5GZa_gDxSo
I had overwhelming success in this battle.

You have not said that this game development so difficult.
I could not find a playable (for me) strategy game like Medieval 1 Total War.
So I was thinking I program one.
But this game making is a lots of work, time and energy.
At first it seems so easy as pie.
There a strategy map, lands and armies. And there is a battle when 2 armies met.
Why are there so few strategy games?
For example if you want to listen to a death metal band, there are 49210 bands you can choose from.