Game Dev phase 1

Tim Tillotson — 2007-02-20T21:50:34+00:00

I thought I would take the time to make my first GG blog post on Indie game development.

First, the hardest thing you can do is work as a lone wolf as an Indie developer. As many have pointed out, bootstrapping is very tough, especially on your first Indie project. A commercial game is soooo much easier. Why? #1 You can spend 80+ hours a week on it and still make enough money to pay the rent.

The second hardest thing can be building a team, as I've found out the hard way as my artists, co-programmers and others have dropped out just when I started producing real work. If you want to know if someone is in for the long haul, just ask "Here's my work, where's yours?" After several weeks of humms and hawws they just seem to disappear.

It's amazing how many Indie game developer wannabees suddenly disappear, even if they are professionals at what they do.

Given that, I've decided to take the slow approach instead of focusing on making my 'dream game' right off the bat, I decided to learn the engines, some 3D modeling, and how to write shaders. (Since I'm a programmer) In the meantime, the engines have continued to evolve to do some of the things I would have had to code myself a year ago. It's been interesting to watch how the GG engines have evolved over the last year. They've done some amazing work, and continue to roll out pieces of a great tool set.

What I've learned so far is that I want to wait for the GG guys to add the features I want rather then develop it myself, especially when they will likely add a lot of what I want in the near future.

Until then, I'm waiting on the GG team for 3 things in particular.
1. L3DT TGEA plugin.
2. Constructor.
3. TorqueX 3D, Atlas, & Shader support that's in TGEA.(If they ever go this route.)

As the first 2 items on my wish list are soon to be completed, I'll need to re-evaluate as soon as I get a chance to play with them. (Hopefully very soon.)

Blog for Tim Tillotson at GarageGames.com

Game Dev phase 1