I find myself in a new situation and I'd love to hear advice from people on it. After six years in web development, despite being well-paid, I decided I was tired of working for Corporate America and wanted to return to my hobby from the early 90s and see if I can make a go of it: Game development. I found Steve's articles very interesting and decided I would aim at smaller, self-funded games. I set aside a 7 month plan that would get me both a house and enough savings to live for a year given a reasonable burn rate. I read a lot of books, I wrote down and planned out my 5-year, 1-year, and 3-month goals, and created a new budget. Great! Well, three weeks ago I walked into work, spontaneously decided I had enough of this, wished my boss well, packed up my stuff and left.

So now I'm on a new plan. :-)

I took a week off to gather my thoughts and rework my goals, particularly the yearly ones which had to change. The next week was spent cleaning up my apartment, getting organized, and doing market research. Last week I spent updating my web site (primary a ReplayTV vs TiVo comparison chart), and added some affiliate links just to get the feel of it and perhaps drive a little extra cash. This week I'm working on my business plan and drafting some game designs. I'm also apartment hunting, as I can't reasonably afford to keep living where I am now. I have a license for the Torque engine (www.garagegames.com) and will spend some time evaluating if it fits within my goals. I'm also updating my tools, perplexing over the .NET vs 6.0 issue and will come to some decisions on that. So far, so good.

I'm very interested in publishing through Dexterity, but I am totally prepared to market my own works if it does not come to pass. I'm focusing on the puzzle game market, simply because they're quicker and easier to produce, and I need to get some cash flow before next September, and positive cash flow not far after that.

Any tips? Well wishes? Suggestions? Insults?

This must be an exciting time for you. I went through a similar experience in late 1998 when I decided I'd had enough of dealing with flaky retail publishers. I was under tremendous financial pressure, but I was finally able to write a game exactly the way I wanted it to be (Dweep), and that made all the difference. I did some consulting and C++ tutoring on the side until the cashflow from Dweep was high enough.

My first suggestion would be to grab a copy of the book
Self Matters by Dr. Phil McGraw. It's a very popular book, and plus Dr. Phil just started his own talk show on TV this week, so it will be easy to find anywhere. The book is exactly about the kind of life-wrenching change you're going through, where you're leaving behind one career to start a whole new one. I think if you just read the first chapter of the book, you may find that it reads as if he's writing directly to you. This is definitely not a pep-talk motivational book. It contains a lot of really tough exercises that will raise your awareness about what you really should be doing with your life, and it will help you avoid some major pitfalls. It will also help you understand exactly how and why you got yourself stuck in a job you disliked in the first place. You're lucky you got out -- many people never do.

There seems to be something of a magical force at work when you just give in and do what you love. Planning is helpful, but there are still many things out of our control. This may sound a bit new agey, but I've always found that when I do what I most love, everything else seems to flow really well, including financial abundance.

Regarding the .NET vs 6.0 issue (I assume you're referring to Visual C++), stick with 6.0 for games. You don't want to require the .NET framework, which is a 20+MB download. That will kill your sales right there. There have been some long discussions about this in other newsgroups, and I've always seen the consensus that .NET should be avoided for games at least until everyone has it pre-installed. It's also risky because the object code can apparently be decompiled. I think even for Windows XP, the .NET framework is an optional download -- i.e. not included among the automatic updates.

As far as your next game is concerned, keep the technology simple. Our 2D games outsell our 3D ones, so I'd stick with 2D. It will also keep the sys requirements down. Focus on innovating in the area of design, not technology. Don't create a me-too clone of another game, especially Bejeweled/Diamond Mine or Tetris, since you'll have a very hard time selling those. I'd recommend doing a character-based game rather than a purely abstract one, since the character gives you a better marketing hook. Most of all, make sure the game is easy to learn -- players should be able to start having fun in the first 5 minutes. If not, they'll move onto something else.

Good luck!

Best of luck, Eric!

As I just posted over in the roll call item, I'm on my third game-related startup now (sold the first two). It's always a challenge, and sometimes downright terrifying. Having enough money to sustain you for 6-12 months will help a lot.

I'm not sure what other specifics I can add right now beyond what Steve has said. Definitely network with others locally and online -- you probably are not going to be able to produce a professional-quality game by yourself. And remember that simple games are often more difficult to design (well) than more complex ones!

Get outside every day. Exercise. Sleep regular hours. These kinds of things may seem simple, but they'll greatly increase your staying power over the long haul. And if you're serious about this, it's going to be a long haul.

Again, best of luck!

I just wanted to chime in on what steve was saying. I don't think it's actually a 20 mb download but it's substantially large. I know it takes up 20mb of memory when it's running on your customers machine. It's an excelent system for server side appliations, but it's just too heavy for client side, especially if you want to support older machines. Even if you use .NET and complie to native binaries any .NET application requires that the framework be present and running on the machine so dont think native binaries are going to save you. ;)

You can still get VS 7.0 and compile non .NET applications. You even get a few cool new features added to the C++ language as well as full support for WTL and some other cool tecnologies. Best of luck I respect someone who knows what they wan't and isn't afraid of taking risks to accomplish them.

Dan is right. You canuse Visual C++.net (Visual C++ 7.0) to compile non .NET apps.

The main advantage of using VC.net is the new IDE (i love it) and full (ok, not full but currently the most) compatibility with ANSI/ISO C++.

The compiler also has a few new features, mostly on template code that rocks :) (it even allows you to implement templates in source files).

There is also comment parsing for task list which saves me a lot of trouble (I used to use pragma messages to put TODOs and NOTEs in the code, not anymore).

In general, its VC6 on steroids :)

Ohhh also, good luck elund.

Steve, this is pretty exciting, but it's also daunting. I'm at the point where the initial giddiness has been muted enough that when I look at my timesheets and see what I did for the day I may yelp if I don't see sufficient progress. I bought Self Matters today, actually, thank you. I've already read quite a number of the books you and others recommended on the ASP forums. As for pep-talk motivational, my last book was a Tony Robbins book, so I can definitely use a break from that.

Mike, I appreciate your "simple" advice. Part of my regimen is reminding myself of these things. Sleep is a major issue that I think won't fix itself until I see some more solid results (read: "cashflow"). Networking I'm working on -- joining ASP was probably one of my better moves. I haven't piped up much there, but it's answered a number of questions already. I read gamedev.net and garagegames.com, are there any other sites worth frequenting?

Thanks everyone for the .NET vs 6.0 advice. I have been leaning towards the 6.0 route, but it is very hard to find; Microsoft certainly doesn't make it easy to deviate from their plans for you.

I have no problem focusing on 2D, that's where most of my experience is; I'm just glad there's a market for it. My next learning curve is DirectX. Long time ago I did a lot using the Fastgraph engine for DOS, and continued to use the Windows version for a few years after ... but after a half-decade hiatus I'm thinking maybe it's about time I actually learned DirectX. Can anyone recommend any good books on 2D using DirectX, that focuses more on the DirectX interface and how to achieve effects with it and less on how Windows works or what's a compiler. :) I already have Pazera's Focus on 2D in Direct3D, but it's all about faking 2D in version 8.x to compensate for the removal of DirectDraw.

Thanks!

You might want to look into SDL. Direct Draw is a real pain to learn and I don't think you have the time to waste. I found SDL's sound system quite useless though. Try using FMod for sound. Its free to use until you publish and then its about $1000. You couldn't wite anything of its quality for that price.

Originally posted by elund

Thanks everyone for the .NET vs 6.0 advice. I have been leaning towards the 6.0 route, but it is very hard to find; Microsoft certainly doesn't make it easy to deviate from their plans for you.


Try looking on eBay, you should be able to find it there. Like Davaris, I'd also recommend SDL (www.libsdl.org). However, I'm using OpenGL with it for the "fake 2D" graphics. Since most people have some sort of 3D acceleration (especially OpenGL) it makes sense to do that for the various effects like alpha blending. If there's enough interest I could consider licensing the engine, which my friend and I are currently working on. It contains almost everything ranging from Graphics to Sound to a Tile Engine, Animation, Particles, etc. and soon a full featured GUI.

Also, SDL/OpenGL are portable so your games could be easily ported to Linux and MAC. We've been successful in porting our engine to Linux so far, but neither of us has a MAC. :(

It can seem to be a daunting road as you start out from scratch and head towards indie success. I suppose in part it depends on your definition of success. I believe I was successful when I was dead broke, just starting to work on Dweep at the end of 1998. I knew very what I wanted, and getting it was only a matter of time. Back then my total shareware income was about $300 per month. And usually I squeaked by with less than $100 in my bank account at the end of the month. With my skills I knew at any time I could end the financial hardship simply by getting a job. I got offers frequently, but I was never tempted to take them.

The road to succeeding as an indie lies more within than without. It's not so much about technology and money as it is about choosing to be happy... to start working on your own goals instead of someone else's. I know many shareware authors who left the corporate world to run their own businesses full-time. Many make less money initially, but I never met anyone who regretted the decision. You see a lot of smiles and enthusiasm when you go to the the Shareware Industry Conference (http://www.sic.org).

One of the reasons so many of the articles I've written are more psychological than technical is that commonly the psychological factors as the ones that hold people back. Many developers have the technical skills to achieve all their goals and know they could ultimately master just about anything of a technical nature, given enough time. But it's things like fear, hesitation, doubt, uncertainty, and lack of motivation and commitment that hold people back. Just ask what you'd be able to do if you had an unlimited supply of motivation, enthusiasm, courage, and commitment. The technical challenges suddenly become a non-issue.

The indies that thrive have learned to enjoy the journey, not just the destination. If you're starting from scratch, you might have a long way to go, and it may require a great deal of patience. Everyone wants to be an overnight success, but the public doesn't see the years of hard work and struggle that lead to so-called overnight success. The price is high, but you have no other option but to pay it.

Things like money and making a name for yourself do not provide sustainable motivation. People who try to motivate themselves this way often seem to create a lot of half-finished projects that never see the light of day. What I find most motivating to ask is, "What's the best part of me that I want to put into a game for others to enjoy?" You have to focus on what you can give, on what you can contribute... not on what you'll get. If you focus on the players of your game and how playing that game will benefit them, you're likely to find that you feel very motivated and committed, and your game will get finished. If you feel that customers are people you have to sucker into buying and that your game really isn't worth owning, you'll be lucky if you finish at all. And even if you do finish, you won't really feel good about your creation.

Really great games, especially those developed by indies, have a certain soulfulness to them. When you play those games, you feel something of an emotional connection to the designer, as if you can see part of that person coming through their work. When I look at a new game submission, I can tell if the developers really put the best part of themselves into the game vs. if they designed the game just to make money.

Your project's scope doesn't have to be enormous and require a team of 10+ people to put the best of yourself into it. If you come up with an idea like that, just put it aside -- someday down the road you may still create it. Look at how long it's been taking George Lucas to get all the Star Wars movies made. The reason to stick with a project and finish it is not because you need the money -- it's because you want the players to benefit from the experience you've created.

When you really put the best of yourself into your project, the real benefits you create will go far beyond fun and entertainment. Indie games have formed friendships and marriages, brought families closer together, and cheered up hospital patients. I know because I've heard these stories personally. Making a sale is not nearly so motivating as hearing from a teacher that her class of autistic children have improved markedly by playing one of our games.

The reason I say "burn the ships," is that I think these benefits only come from 100% commitment. In order to really go indie and be happy, you have to go all the way. Don't keep one foot in the corporate world if you can avoid it. Just dive in and don't look back. Anyone that has done this knows that you'll feel a mixture of exhilaration and sheer terror. :eek: But most of all, you finally feel like the real you -- alive.

just wanted to add real quick... You can still do regular C++ projects with Visual Studio .NET; you don't have to compile into a .NET executable which requires the .NET Framework download. There are actually some nice speed increases in the compiler for straight VC++ in VS.NET, and the user interface is *much* better once you get used to it, in my opinion (finally, blinking braces when you close a block!). However, it is more expensive than VC6, so I don't think it's worth upgrading if all you're going to do with it is VC++. If you plan on making some quick tools to help you out during your game programming though, C# and the .NET library can be a real help.

-tom

The only problem is the price of .NET. I don't know if I read it right but it was $3500 Aus (1700 US ?) vs 350 for VC++ 6.0. That seems a bit steep to me.

Visual C++ .NET standard is $110 US. Of course, the entire Visual Studio Enterprise edition will cost you a lot more. :) I would personally stick with VC++ 6 though.

.NET vs 6.0: I appreciate everyone's suggestions. If they made a .NET C++ Pro, I would have considered it, but alas you have to go all the way to Studio .NET for the equivalent. I decided to go with Visual C++ 6.0 Pro, which I found on Ebay for about $250. Thanks to Fenix for that suggestion.

SDL (http://www.libsdl.org): Fenix and Davaris both recommended I look into the SDL, which I did. There are many nice things about it that brings me back to the old days of DOS programming. The abstraction of WinMain and Windows messaging is both a relief and a concern. For instance, I'd have to dig into the SDL source in order to write a function for setting the coordinates of main window or putting up a complex dialog box (with the Windows GUI) before running the game. However, I like having the option for Linux and MacOS ports later. The file support is lacking but -- and this leads to another benefit -- there are some add-on libraries to support that. And it's free, which fits my budget. In some ways I think I'd be better off moving back to Fastgraph (http://www.fastgraph.com/), but for now I'm going to give this a shot.

FMod (http://www.fmod.org/): Simple, nice. The fee for shareware publishing is actually only $100, or $250 for a multiple product license. ("The licensee must be an individual/hobbyist and not a registered business or company with more than 1 employee or director. ") The $1250/$3200 fee is for larger companies. I'll have to write him to make sure, but I think I'm covered. I put together a demo, played an MP3 in the background with some animation and a looped sfx, which ran well on both my desktop and laptop. I'll probably take a closer look at the sfx functions in SDL before committing to Fmod though, in the name of frugality. ;-)

Steve: Thanks again for the motivation. Before I jumped ship, the scary part was thinking the money's not coming in and I'm blowing my savings. After I accepted that and quit anyway, it was exhilerating. This muted somewhat to a mild panic :D as I saw what I need to accomplish in the road ahead before my bank account runs dry. However, I think the daunting part for me at this stage is I only have a couple shots here. If the first game I make falls flat and is unsaleable, I have time for just one more try. I'm still excited, but the sooner I get positive cashflow, the happier I'll be. I think it's rooted in a general disbelief that I can make money doing what I enjoy if I apply myself properly. I need to see proof, or hear a bell ring and see Clarence get some wings...

There were two problems I had with the SDL sound system:

The music streaming didn't work on my machine. My machine is a P200.

For sounds it doesn't have volume control that depends on distance. FMod does all of this for you.


Don't forget about the event handling in SDL. I was never able to get this working properly under Direct X (too dumb I guess). Now I have no problems.

Good luck with your games and if the first one doesn't work out you can always go back to work and write them in your spare time. I think the hardest part of puzzle games would be the design. The programming would be easy compared to other games.

Elund: there is a wrapper for SDL called SGE which you can find here http://www.etek.chalmers.se/~e8cal1/sge/

It makes it easier to do various graphics stuff like alpha blending, image rotation, fonts, etc. Also has some other features. And for SDL sound you can use SDL_Mixer http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/

There are also lots of other addons to SDL at http://www.libsdl.org/libraries.php

Good luck!

Actually it was SDL mixer that didn't work on my machine. :)

Oh really. Works for me. :)

Out of all the parts of SDL, I read that the sound was pretty low level. SDL_Mixer is supposed to be good.

In any case, check out "Focus on SDL" as a nice primer. I think you can find it for under $30.

Hey, there's some quotes in here that I could have used in the discussion of shareware quality etc, a few days ago... like...


I'm focusing on the puzzle game market, simply because they're quicker and easier to produce

A-hah! ;)

But especially this:

Really great games, especially those developed by indies, have a certain soulfulness to them. When you play those games, you feel something of an emotional connection to the designer, as if you can see part of that person coming through their work. When I look at a new game submission, I can tell if the developers really put the best part of themselves into the game vs. if they designed the game just to make money

Couldn't have said it better. That is the crucial factor for me.

Also, and most importantly, I want to say best of luck Elund, good for you for going for it - succeed or fail, I'm sure you won't regret it. (here's hoping for succeed though!)

I suppose we could ask him if he regrets it, since this thread was started on 09-19-2002 :D

I'll just add one thing, based on my personal experience. I know many ppl think the opposite, but hey, it's just my personal opinion, not the Truth :D

Don't do your BEST game as the first game. In other word, first aim low and make a small game to test this new world.

Looking back now I can see several mistakes I made with my first product (USM), like rushing it out before got some features, the problem of updates, some marketing tricks, and so on.

If you're spending 6-7 month for something, better be sure you know everything to make it succeed: that's why I suggest you to do a smaller game. That will be your "test".
Then you'll learn the tricks and you'll be ready to release your BIG success :)

First of all, congratulations Eric with your decision to commit to indie development. Best of luck!

Just a note - I was trying to decide between using Visual Studio .Net or 6.0. Then I found out that the .NET Standard Version (~$150) does not have an optimizing compiler. I'm trying to write a game that works with Pentium IIs and the optimizer does make a diference with the frame rate. The only way to get an optimizing compiler is to buy the professional version (~$3500).

If you're looking for sound libraries, I'd also recommend BASE (http://www.un4seen.com/). I've been trying to decide between FMod and BASE, but I'm currently leaning towards BASE.

Cheers!

Graeme

:)

Don't forget openAL for sound. Better than SDL in this area.

Audiere is quite good. Free for commercial use too.

I keep wondering why elund hasn't replied to this post and told us how it's going! :)

For anyone who has been looking for Visual Studio with an optimizer, have you looked into something that is not Visual Studio?

I know gcc or something like it exists for Win32. As I understand it, anjuta can also run on Win32, so you have the nice IDE too.

I have no experience with either of those on Win32 myself, but perhaps others have? I think I read on the *nix forums on Gamedev that someone was having trouble with anjuta on Windows, but I could be wrong.

dev c++ is good too.

Way to resurrect an old thread, guys. :)

Since the time I posted this, I completed and released a puzzle game called Big Head Zed (http://www.bigheadzed.com), under my company Gearhand Studios (http://www.gearhand.com). It was entirely a one man job, I wrote the code, built the game engine, created (or in some cases procured) the graphics, composed the music from licensed loops, built the website (PHP + MySQL rocks), and performed the marketing. Plus I did a lot of research. About the only thing I didn't do was the press release, which I farmed out to Al Harberg (http://www.dpdirectory.com). Creation of the game and website took a solid year; I completely underestimated the time that would take. While I did decide on a puzzle game because it would be "quicker and easier" (yikes, imagine if I did something slower and harder) I didn't base the game on any existing design, so I feel the core gameplay is fairly original. I'm happy with the results.

Marketing has been a pain in the buttocks. I've made some sales, not a lot. Many of the steps I've taken forward have resulted in a step backwards (e.g., a few weeks performing SEO, then the Florida update, now gearhand.com gets no google traffic). There are still other marketing areas I haven't ventured into, so I'm not down and out, just gaining my bearings. I fully believe that a lot of little improvements will result in giant gains, but sometimes that's hard to see when you're in the thick of it. One thing that I underestimated was the learning curves. There's a lot to know to run your own one-man indie shop, because you're wearing so many hats. Staying motivated and positive is important, but that can't eliminate time from the equation. Some stuff just takes time, especially when you've never done it before. The best you can do is prepare to spend that time, and be as productive as you can.

I have few regrets. I'm very glad I decided to take a the past year and a half to do this. Things I should have done differently include getting an artist, getting testers earlier and more of them, and taking some classes in market research as it's fairly apparent I don't understand the subject. :) I took a break from everything over the holidays, and now I'm back in the saddle. I'm working on a proof of concept for another game, and planning some changes to BHZ. I'm also out of money. :) So after making a minor stab at consulting that was too little too late, I'm now talking to recruiters. The plan is to work for year while creating a second game in my spare time, and save up enough money to live for a year, after which I hope to have put out two more games. Maybe by then I'll have figured out how to build a sustainable business full-time.

It's been fun. It would have been a lot harder without these forums. I met (or in one case re-met <grin>) several people here whom I've shared experiences with. Networking is so important, if not for your business then for your sanity. Don't give up!

Glad to hear you're still working at it! Actually completing the web site and game inside of a year is a pretty good accomplishment I would say. At least compared to me. :) I'm working full time for someone else again, and kicking myself for spending too much time NOT working on my games when I had the chance. C'est la vie!

Yes, my own laziness comes back to haunt me too. If only if only if only. The best I can do, though, is not to dwell on it and try to do better.