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Finishing my first game while working full-time

467 points by ntide 5y ago

unobatbayar 5y ago
How did you create your App Icon and Screenshots?
Natsu 5y ago
The hardest thing for me is art. Music too, but in theory you can go without that. And it's not just "ok, then find free art online" because you also have to be able to do art in code to, e.g. let players customize their character, etc. I'm sure there are ways to reduce this, but making a game is a lot of work.
jordanmorgan10 5y ago
Working full time, married with three kids. I know this well. I've had a business acquired, write blog posts, writing a book series, have taught courses and more....by far the most common question is "How do you do that?" For me, it really is as simple as....I just go to work hours early to work on those things, because I enjoy them. When I get home, I'm just a dad and a husband.
- FlyingSnake 5y ago
  I’ll read and upvote your take on this rather than OPs, because your story is closer to the reality for most people. No offence to OP but when you’ve no kids, mortgage and household responsibilities, it’s not that hard to do a side hustle.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Were the parent's activities "side hustles" or were they his main hustle for various intervals? It's a little unclear. In either case, those side-hustles seem pretty lucrative--it's harder IMO when your side-hustle is just for fun.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
Scope! You must define the scope of the game from the beginning, and it'll often be the case that your goals far exceed the practical limits of what you can code. This is OK, as long as you know you're dreaming too big, but then you need MVGs, minimal pieces of the project that are playable games. If you need a giant world just to get started playing, you'll not get started playing.
dncornholio 5y ago
My inability to finish personal projects has nothing to with project management or planning etc. I can't finish a side project because for me it is never 'finished'. I lack the ability to say that this is fine enough for my own projects. I always keep wanting to make things better and never can say it's finished.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
I only really agree with #3. Planning things out actually hurt my productivity as I'd get side tracked or disappointed when things took longer than expected...then I'd look at the backlog and get equally frustrated. I really just went with the flow and it all came together. You have to have passion for it though. It's the common trap I find a lot of people in that fall out of side projects quickly. They're doing it for the wrong reasons and inevitably get tired of it/uninvested and burn out. It's more about the journey than it is reaching the end.
bodge5000 5y ago
For me, after I got one project properly done, it actually became harder to abandon a project partway through than to not finish it. To my detriment even, I've been working on a game for the past 3 years which I'm fairly sure just "doesn't work" in a way I find difficult to explain. But as much as I try, I can't stop working on it. The other thing that plagues me is decision fatigue. I'm working through a decision right now which is tangentially related to my personal projects but is absolutely weighing me down mentally. Edit: Reading another reply, maybe I haven't conquered my problem, and that now my projects just never finish, rather than me abandonding them. Maybe thats the case, but right now its absolutely not finished by any means, so thats a problem for later
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
I'll add to his advice not to quit your day job. Gamedev is unreasonably difficult. It's not software engineering (whatever that might mean). It's a different beast entirely. I've advised several folks who said they want to quit their jobs to make games to do a compo, a game jam, something small and constrained. Ludum Dare has historically been good. Try but expect not to finish. You'll learn about your own weaknesses and limitations. Even if you don't finish the first few times, you'll hopefully understand what it takes, or at least think you do. A good next step is to timebox one or two months, in your free time, to make a game, publish it, _and earn $1_. That's it. Make a buck. If you can pull that off, and make a buck, you've made it. You're a professional game developer.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  I'll also add, it's not the planning that helps, but having goals. If you set out to "make a game" you will never finish. You need a goal in mind. A line that you can cross.
pddpro 5y ago
> You need to focus, scope right, relentlessly break work down into bite-sized tasks, and create a rock-solid habit of getting things done. This is my only takeaway from the article. I think it's well-written but I also found it vague. Finding implicit joy is such an abstract thing that has no set formulae to it. I am glad that the author was able to complete his game.
q_andrew 5y ago
Something surprising I've noticed while developing my own side project game is that I end up being a better marketer than developer. I can only work on the game while I'm at home and 'in the zone', but I can post screenshots on social media at any time of the day. The consequence is that I have a larger-than-anticipated fanbase who are starting to get confused about why the promotional material flows freely while development time appears to slog.
failrate 5y ago
My trick is to spend 15 minutes per day minimum working on the side project.
- chadcmulligan 5y ago
  this is the way I think - a writer writes, always. its many authors recipe for success.
- awkward 5y ago
  Keeping a task board, written documents about the planned goal, and all of the other project ephemera can be a great way to keep up this kind of 15 minute momentum.
toivo 5y ago
havent shipped a side project, but i do keep track of my project so i can say with some certainty what things have helped me to accomplish the most. they are the following 1) the no zero days mantra - 15 minutes a day of progress is fine it helps to keep the momentum going and when you got that free sunday you just find yourself wroking more. 2) i do keep also a lot of trail of notes of ideas and concerns on how to further the project. if I have to keep a break and come back to it after some time it helps to remind my self where i was.
tmountain 5y ago
Bite sized tasks are great. Finding the motivation to start the next task is also important. If you want to read a chapter of a book, start by reading the first sentence. This naturally leads towards getting into flow, and the next thing you know, you've read three chapters. The brain tends to engage readily once you get over the initial hurdle of beginning the task.
ca6d8815 5y ago
Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. Not having "pure energy" for the side project meant that everything suffered. We had to learn-by-trial virtually _everything_, I don't recommend ever doing a big project that way. If you want to finish a game, choose a small game. Start doing game jams. Practice _finishing_. You can do more and more later. Or, go for it, do it our way, all in to win (win is subjective, the pride is real, the monetary result didn't really do anything meaningful for so much investment). I wouldn't do it this way again, but I understand people who do. All that said, the joy of doing something for us by us is not something I've encountered in my 15 year career yet. So... if you've never built something (and truly finished!), but you want to try... go for it.
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Agreed. It's a LOT difficult to finish something, especially something to sell.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better? The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    This has been my line of thought for a while. You spend a minimum of 8 hours working, and ideally you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Let’s say you have a couple more daily responsibilities that take 2-4 (could be commute, cleaning, some other maintenance). There’s almost no time to do anything, and some of the hours you have left may be at non-prime times of the day. > The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of. The problem is this means sleep or work. I’ve opted for the former, and suffer for it. Sacrificing working, at least any notable amount, just means trading time-loss for money-loss which may or may not work depending on person.
leroman 5y ago
Getting that 1 hour of work done every morning is what keeps the ball rolling.. momentum is critical..
_wpya 5y ago
Game jams are a great motivator. I need hard deadlines. I recently did this [1] for a game jam, over one sleepless week. It's pretty unfinished but submitting something felt good. (Source: [2]) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX6AZNWuI5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX6AZNWuI5Q [2] https://github.com/mpersano/generic-rhythm-game/ https://github.com/mpersano/generic-rhythm-game/
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  I also found that hard deadlines work. The closer they are, the better they are. Yesterday I spent just one hour to review my computer architecture mid-term. I totally forgot about the date and thought I'm going to bomb it. Eventually I did a very quick efficient review and felt very good about it. The thing is, as you said, and as my Physics teacher said 20 years ago, that I really need to be pushed HARD to be efficient. That's why I hate assignments with long deadlines.
  - EarthLaunch 5y ago
    I've found this leads to burnout if the deadline is too far out or if the deadline keeps getting pushed forward. The antidote is to have no deadlines, and take the time to enjoy doing things right.
- ArtWomb 5y ago
  Maybe instead of a "jam" format to motivate indies, do a "game race" instead? Points for timeliness. Bias toward micro-games. Organized around theme or asset for creativity constraint ;)
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    Agreed. I'm thinking about attending one of those jams. I like tight or even unreasonable deadlines. Ordinary jobs don't give people this kind of deadlines (or if it is the compensation might be shitty). One thing I need to learn is to create pixel Sprites quickly. Maybe there is even a way to programmatically generate some template Sprites.
markus_zhang 5y ago
I tried to complete a simple 2D RPG that is a Ultima spinoff a few years ago. Nothing is technically impossible as it's just a simple 2D game but eventually I lost interest and broke away. Now that I look back, there are two obstacles: - I'm not really interested in such a game. I probably fancied about the genre as it's classic but I never finished any of the Ultima games. - In the middle I tried to implement a full scale map editor. I managed to build a simple yet working one, but dropped the project once I realized that it needs a lot of work to write my own GUI (back then I'm using C++ and SDL2). I also find out that once I know how to implement something on paper (e.g. if I can draw the process of an algorithm on paper), I usually lost the interest to implement it in code. It takes a huge amount of effort for me to complete assignments for the Data Structure class I'm taking, to the point that I'm thinking about dropping the class.
- Longwelwind 5y ago
  > - In the middle I tried to implement a full scale map editor. I managed to build a simple yet working one, but dropped the project once I realized that it needs a lot of work to write my own GUI (back then I'm using C++ and SDL2). Sharing my slightly unrelated experience, but Tiled2D is a nice piece of software to achieve this. I've used it for one of my personal project, where I wanted to make a digital adaptation of a board game, and I needed to "digitalize" the game board[1]. I don't use the tiles or the tile grid at all, but just the "polygon" feature that allows me to draw the borders of the different regions. It's not at all why the software has been written, as the polygon is supposed to be a small feature to define areas in a tiled game, but it gets the job done. [1] https://github.com/Longwelwind/swords-and-ravens/blob/master/agot-bg-game-server/data/westeros.jpg https://github.com/Longwelwind/swords-and-ravens/blob/master...
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    Thanks, I knew about Tiled at the time. The project was kinda of a learning project so I didn't bother to use an external tool. Now that I look back, that's probably how I approach all projects (not work-related): I just want to learn how it works superficially, and once I do I'd lose motivation and drop the project eventually. Very nasty mindset I have to admit...
DizzyDoo 5y ago
I did this for my first Steam game, which let me go full-time back in 2015 as an indie game developer and where I still am today. [1] I'd get up early and get a few hours in before my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer at a fintech startup. And then on Saturdays I'd get something more like a normal days work done on the project. It worked, and I'm glad I did it, but it definitely was a temporary situation, I don't think it's something you can do long-term without facing burnout or neglecting other important areas of life like family, friends, exercise, reading books, etc. So that last paragraph of the original post - making it sustainable - I'm glad to see it in there. [1] The Cat Machine - https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/
- pbourke 5y ago
  > my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer Did you use Python for your game as well? This looks really cool - congratulations on making the leap to full time.
  - DizzyDoo 5y ago
    No, though I wrote the level/puzzle editor in Python, which would generate json that was read by the game, which was written with the Unity engine and lots of C#.
- dgb23 5y ago
  Your game looks absolutely ridiculous and I love that.
  - DizzyDoo 5y ago
    It is very silly.
trezemanero 5y ago
bruh, i didn't finished the text, how could i finish my project?
andyish 5y ago
Good tips and different things work for different people. I find that I need to find something that I think would take a week to build. Then accept the fact it's going to take 8 weeks to finish given i'm doing about one hour a day rather than 8.
a_c 5y ago
Kudos to launching. This is hard. To me the hardest part is context switching. Meetings, scheduling, resource planning in day job, child care after work, household core, reading, occasion workout, etc. The amount of energy, both intellectually and emotionally, left after all these is... miniscule I'm trying with social contract - commit to somebody that you are showing some progress to them, and have them to help picking what's their desirable next step/topic. Hopefully I can get something started
twodave 5y ago
I don't work on personal projects on my own time, but I do work a part time hourly job alongside my software engineering job. I've found for me this is an essential part of my mental health. My arrangement offers up a little more variety than I'd otherwise have and allows me to work with another group of people in a totally different domain. Also, I've found the best opportunities come through word-of-mouth connections, and having 2 sets of colleagues essentially doubles the chances of that happening.
- doitLP 5y ago
  Interesting. What is the field of the part time job?
- TuringNYC 5y ago
  For many years, I worked at the Park Slope Food Cooperative (https://www.foodcoop.com/ https://www.foodcoop.com/) several hours a month, which was a great orthogonal use of my mind. I started as a box-breaker, got promoted to an olive processor and finally became squad leader for Olives & Cheeses. The whole experience was like using a completely different part of my brain. They tried to get me to join their technology group, which i rejected :-)
tsozz 5y ago
I dont care about finishing side projects. They exist to keep my mind occupied or give it a break from other stuff. Thats it.
- one_off_comment 5y ago
  That's the right mentality. Thank you!
dicroce 5y ago
Here are my side project tips: 1) As the article states, work on your side project first in the morning before your work. You will be too tired after work. Yes, this means your not really giving 100% at work. Hopefully your good enough at your job that this is OK. 2) Create little task lists, with short little tasks... Then knock those tasks out one by one. If you find yourself procrastinating about some task do another little task first, then later make a quick spur of the moment decision to go do the procrastination task. 3) It's OK to dream about the best case scenario, but also have realistic side goals: "worst case scenario, I've built a cool engine for my next project." 4) DO create the right amount of tests (too little and your going to be creating buggy crap code, too many and you're bogged down updating your tests constantly)... get a feel for what your right amount is. 5) Don't type so much, think more... think through designs... use paper, be messy and redraw... all of this is faster than building the wrong thing. 6) I think its OK to be quirky. Make the thing YOU want to make. This is another way to monetize: your mental health is worth a lot and personally I find bringing shit that I want to exist into the world just the way I want them to be is a good trick for staying happy.
- neokya 5y ago
  Creating small task lists seem to be the way to go. Does anyone know what app the author is using to create nested tasks for 'lightweight sprint'?
  - secondstring 5y ago
    Notion https://notion.so/ https://notion.so/
- Sammi 5y ago
  "Create little task lists, with short little tasks" Yeah I tried that. The side coding projects I have are things I'm not good at yet and want to get better at, so they are this big pile of "I have no idea yet until I try", and that does not break down into neat short little tasks to knock off in an hour before work. They need deep concentration and focus in order for me to learn and figure out what the hell I should do.
boplicity 5y ago
Not discussed in the article: You have to have the support of the people in your life this will impact. For example, the 7-9am timeslot for working, as listed in the article, will impact my family, as that is when I'm getting the kids up and off to school. OK, so I could move it to 5am to 7am, but that would mean I'd need to go to bed earlier, which eliminates important evening time with my wife. Similarly, I could do it from 8pm to 10pm, but that also affects my relationship with my wife, and my social life in general. This isn't to say that people with a family can't do these things, but that you need to acknowledge the impact it will have on other people, and plan with them to make it work. For example, I often make the time for my wife to work on her novels between 7pm and 9pm. I get the kids to bed and do some cleaning, while she writes, and we still get to connect before sleep.
- klik99 5y ago
  Yeah, something has to give, I have the exact problem you have. Currently my weekday sleep suffers. There is no right way to do it, but you have to acknowledge the trade offs and make your decision knowing the impacts. So many people want to have their cake abs eat it, and usually get the worst outcome.
- fitzn 5y ago
  I totally agree with your perspective. It reminds of an essay pg wrote (http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html) about having kids, and I think the principles are similar to yours. You can be successful and "do it all", but you might have to modify "all" _a bit_ and you have to be very disciplined and honest about your trade-offs.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  Totally agree with this. I am woken by my kid at 6am, then it is 100% go-go-go with work or family until about 7pm when the kid goes to bed, then it is starting to cook and prepare dinner and do housework etc. There might be 2 hours or so between dinner and bed to spend time with my wife before we collapse into bed at 10pm or so - talk, watch a movie, play scrabble or whatever. I don't want to ignore her and just do my own thing - it is important to nurture these sort of relationships. If I do get some spare time that is entirely mine, the absolute last thing I want to do is more work - one needs to relax! Go for a run, watch a movie, do some coding for fun, play a game, or just waste time on youtube or whatever - I don't want to be "hustling" a side project. I could stay up later after the wife has gone to bed, but that is going to harm me long-term by trading sleep for side-projects that in reality are not going to change my life as much as long-term sleep deprivation is going to change my life. That said I do occasionally from time-to-time stay up late to have a beer and mess around on the computer - I think that is healthy in the long run :)
programmarchy 5y ago
Thanks for the write up and congratulations on publishing the game. Looks great and can't wait to give it a try. One of the keys to your success seemed to be that consistent, early morning routine. I've often find myself trying to hack on side projects in the evening, after much of my energy is already zapped. Even if I do have a highly productive session coding into the wee hours of the night, the next day will be ruined by lack of sleep, and as someone with a family it's too detrimental. But when I am working in the mornings, once I'm awake and at my keyboard, I'm much more productive. Sometimes, it's hard to stop! But, leaving yourself a cliffhanger is also a great way to build excitement to jump back in the next day.
levmiseri 5y ago
I have done something similar - building a game while working full-time. But my approach was the complete opposite of this article. No real process, no plan, no scrum method, not even a trello board to track progress and todos. Personally, I enjoyed the "fun" of it being very spontaneous, yet still passionate. I didn't write to-dos and tasks to be done, because there is always something to be done. And intuitively you feel what's important and what's not. I also didn't want it to "feel" like work. For context - the game took me about 6 months to create: https://yare.io https://yare.io
- kotrunga 5y ago
  Your game looks like a lot of fun, and the concept is really cool. Would you mind telling us more about your process and the technical aspects?
  - levmiseri 5y ago
    There is one last major piece to be done for the game (now I’m no longer working alone on it) after which I want to write something a bit more detailed about the journey. But on the high-level — my full-time job is interaction design. Throughout my career I used JavaScript a lot for building interactive design prototypes and it’s the only language I know, so when I had the idea for Yare.io (heavily inspired by MIT’s Battle Code), vanilla JavaScript (and Node for server) was the only thing I could use (didn’t know any libraries or frameworks) The project was really just a “problem” to be solved. Use JavaScript to move basic geometric shapes on a canvas in a 1 versus 1 battle. It needed to have a UI, rendering of a game state, authentication, event queue, basic ruleset, … None of this really required any tracker or rigorous process. I know what needs to be done, because I’m literally sitting in front it, seeing what needs to be done. It didn’t need a “plan”, because it didn’t matter when each piece of the puzzle was made. Just, whatever I was in the mood for that day. I think the principle of simplicity (as cliche as it sounds) – trying to keep everything (especially the foundations) as basic as possible – was really the main thing that allowed me to finish the game. I don't think I could enjoy it as much as I did with some scrum method, brainstorming bullshit, or anything reminding me of work.
OJFord 5y ago
I should first disclose that I'm terrible at 'finishing' things (I don't make games, so generally not such finishable 'done and shipped' things, but by 'finishing' I mean a sort of 'version 1.0' I suppose, something I'm happy with, think others might want to use and now it's just maintenance and improvements) so maybe don't listen to me at all..! But I think there's something key here that's left implicit - do your own project first in the day. Obviously everyone's different, but I reckon for the most part that means 'don't necessarily start everything at 7am' (or do so even earlier), rather than 'work first and moonlight on the side project'. I have way too many days where I'm less productive on the paid work than I could be because I've got something else on my mind; then come the end of the day when I could finally put some thoughts into action, I'm just too drained and fed up of sitting at a computer to do anything about it.
- toyg 5y ago
  I reckon "my project first" is a great habit, but it requires something else: the willpower to start. It's very easy to spend those extra couple of hours in the morning just sipping a coffee, reading HN, catching up with social media. Work is work and it starts because other people will ping you, you'll have to be online on a certain computer, etc etc; but if you are your own boss, it's very easy to let employee #1 (yourself) slack off. Also, this works only if you are a remote worker. Most commuting will nuke those two hours away (yeah you can work on the bus/train, but probably not well - spotty connections, uncomfortable, no extra monitor, no mouse, etc; and if you have motion sickness like me, it's a non-starter), and in the evening you'll be even more shattered.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Or it works better if you work in an office - you're at home working on your own project and can't be pinged until you go in to the office. Not everyone has an hour long commute, and even if so it's a sunk cost, still better to do your own project first IMO. (It just means being even earlier up, or being able to start work compatibly late in the morning.)
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > It's very easy to spend those extra couple of hours in the morning just sipping a coffee, reading HN, catching up with social media. Work is work and it starts because other people will ping you, you'll have to be online on a certain computer, etc etc; but if you are your own boss, it's very easy to let employee #1 (yourself) slack off. It's the same when you get back home after work though. > Also, this works only if you are a remote worker. Most commuting will nuke those two hours away (yeah you can work on the bus/train, but probably not well - spotty connections, uncomfortable, no extra monitor, no mouse, etc; and if you have motion sickness like me, it's a non-starter), and in the evening you'll be even more shattered. I personally have 5 "free" hours after work, which includes time to do shopping, eat, exercise, cleaning, all that sort of stuff. It's not a lot but it's not 0. That's with 1h30 of commute each day.
klik99 5y ago
“Make it sustainable” was the part it took me a long time to realize - in my 20s I’d pull all nighters to finish things. When I got older, started a family, and worked on projects that take months or years, I’d still approach it like a sprint - I’m talking multiple times going a month of less than 2 hrs of sleep most nights, full nights sleep once a week, 5 years of working Saturday and Sunday. Now I spend time with friends and family, treat weekends as sacred, and though I still don’t get as much sleep as I should, I get way more done than blindly putting in the hours. People warned me of it and I didn’t listen, as I’m sure whoever needs to hear this won’t listen either, but 100%, treat it like a marathon and take care of your life holistically.
racl101 5y ago
Feel like I need a plan to make the plan to do the side project.
jdbartee 5y ago
A lot of my side projects end up being: “I want to learn how to do X, but I have no idea what that’s going to take.” And I end up just coding a logical step and if I don’t know what to do go research it, realize I did something wrong 3 steps ago and then either revert or abandon depending on my current motivation. I’ve tried before to create a “game plan” before but most of the time there’s so much that I don’t know that I don’t know that it’s either impossible to make that plan or once I do, that plan ends up being wrong anyways. As such it always feels like I’m doing side projects wrong. But since they’re more learning endeavors more than actually trying to launch a product maybe that’s fine?
- dgb23 5y ago
  I think it's absolutely fine. You do something you enjoy and you learn new things. I think if you actually _want_ to finish something you finish it.
marcodiego 5y ago
How to finish your first game? Do it in one weekend! How to do it in one weekend? Use simple game mechanics: a spaceshooter! Aren't you a good artist? No problem! Use processing and art from https://opengameart.org/ https://opengameart.org/ . I've done it once just to have fun with my girlfriend. We built a very simple and fun space shooter in one weekend. I didn't keep the license or links of the resources, so I didn't publish it.
- toyg 5y ago
  > I've done it once just to have fun with my girlfriend. This is humblebrag³: "I have a girlfriend" x "my girlfriend is as nerdy as me" x "we coded a game in a weekend".
Zababa 5y ago
Small nitpick but I really don't like how scrum uses the name "sprint". You don't go far by making lots of sprints back to back. You go far by walking with a clear goal in my. "Sprint" carries no notion of direction.
honksillet 5y ago
Don’t forget the opportunity cost of taking on such a project. You could be hiking, exercising, working on relationships, family.
- evancoop 5y ago
  Personal agency requires a sober assessment of priorities. Everything has an opportunity cost. Certainly, a full-time job and a non-trivial side project takes from self-care and family. Certainly, self-care and family (and sleep!) can preclude side-hustles. The important element is making the choice with clear eyes.
one_off_comment 5y ago
Treat it as a hobby, not a means to a payday. It's your free time. If you're not having fun, why do it?
umvi 5y ago
I've done it with a full time job and two kids[0]. Here's my $0.02 For me I had to constantly reign in the scope to be a minimum viable game. I would let my imagination run wild and come up with all these grand ideas for an overarching plot, etc. But the project gets really hard to finish after you've done the fun bits like getting the main gameplay mechanics implemented and there's a big stretch of grunt work ahead ("the last 20% takes 80% of the work"). It's easy to let it languish and never ship/release. That's when you need to re-evaluate what it takes to achieve a minimum viable game and ruthlessly reign in the scope. Tell yourself "I can implement all my other grand ideas if this minimum viable game proves successful" - and you can. And if it isn't very successful, then you can move onto the next project/idea. [0] https://www.bryanpg.com/games/embergram https://www.bryanpg.com/games/embergram
keewee7 5y ago
How did Chrome know that this article belonged to my gamedev bookmarks folder when I bookmarked the page?
- chromanoid 5y ago
  The page you bookmarked before that also was in this folder?
rocky1138 5y ago
Jason, if you're reading this: I loved your post but I can't find an RSS or Atom feed for your blog.
JimWestergren 5y ago
Yeah, I started my game[0] in the summer of 2018. Wife and 3 kids. It is tough. Giving up would be the normal thing to do, but I guess I am not normal. [0] https://thespacewar.com/ https://thespacewar.com/
spywaregorilla 5y ago
I'm in this boat. I think it would be impossible to do with a proper family with kids, so I've got maybe 5 years to pull it off. I've spent several years working on game efforts in parallel and decided to dump them all. It's not the worst thing in the world to give up on a concept. It's a good hobby even if it doesn't pan out. It's decidedly not a side hustle.
kuu 5y ago
How do you spend more hours sitting at your desk after 8 hours of sitting at your desk? I really would like to do more things at my PC, but whenever I finish with my work I'm drained
crhutchins 5y ago
It depends on your productivity after work as there will be a lot of factors that will come into play. It would help if you tried to maintain a work-life balance in which further delays your project. It's better to enjoy what we have right now and enjoy it at the same time.
luizbarroso343 5y ago
Abaixar
parksy 5y ago
The way I did it was I was writing music and doing pixel art since the 90's and learning to write games on the side. One day I decided to take all the assets I'd built up over 30 years and condense them into the simplest game I could complete on the side and that's how I made Space Strafer. I think if I had to start from scratch with all the music, art, and concepts it would have been impossible, what with having kids and all.
thn-gap 5y ago
I feel this also represents my situation quite well. Here's personal experience: What worked the best for me to deal with a full-time job and a side project of gamedev (or programming in general) was to move the side project development time in the morning before my full time job, and just put a bit less effort into work overall (remote work helped here as well). Moreover, while I tried to have a consistent routine for my personal dev time, I tried not to force it when I was really not feeling like it, to avoid burnout. I sometimes did additional gamedev in some evening (or moved the morning one), but otherwise, tried to do non-computer stuff in the afternoons/evenings. Another key insight, is that this also helped me getting an earlier sleeping schedule. Previously I would procrastinate until late, even if tired, because whenever I went to sleep, I would then wake up and have go to work immediately. Instead, now I rather go to sleep early, because I know I'll have more energy to do the things I like in the morning, rather than full-time work.
oneearedrabbit 5y ago
Ah, good memories. My tipping point was when I watched Krystian’s video “We Are All Game Beginners” [0]. It helped me embrace and acknowledge difficulties that one has to overcome to begin and finish a game, no matter how big or small it is. It took me about three months through a turbulence phase to finish my first game [1]. Also, taking this chance, any Pico-8 enthusiasts? Before I wrote the first line of code, I had an honest conversation with myself about why I am starting a project and put it on paper as my true motivation and goal. Over the course, I had to remind myself multiple times to be sincere and forgiving. Working on a side means that even the simplest task could stretch over several days, and it is okay. I particularly enjoyed sharing my work in progress on social media and with my friends. During the darkest moments, I found that a great “hack” is to record a milestone that I am proud of to boost my motivation and push a game a little further. If I may quote Rocky, it goes like:” One step at a time. One punch at a time. One round at a time.” Another “hack” is to cut it out if something takes longer and drains your energy without any significant progress. Make something even just one person to enjoy. It is already a good milestone. Ultimately, I took this journey as a self-exploration to get to know my true self better, slay a few dragons on the way in a reasonably safe environment. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9wztsnmEIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9wztsnmEIw [1]: https://oneearedrabbit.itch.io/the-pixel-maze https://oneearedrabbit.itch.io/the-pixel-maze
ensiferum 5y ago
I was spending anything from 12 to 16h per day (including weekends) for about 10 months working on my game engine after i quit my day job. Now that I'm working again i still try to throw at least 2-3h at it after work. Mostly i enjoy bit but sometimes there are moments when it begins to feel like a grind too. But unfortunately there's no choice but to grind through those boring tedious parts just go get it done. The key i find is to find the balance between doing the "fun stuff" abd the boilerplate "just has to be done" parts. It's on GitHub here http://github.com/ensisoft/gamestudio http://github.com/ensisoft/gamestudio
nonbirithm 5y ago
I've recently realized that I haven't felt comfortable with doing anything for its own sake. This revealed itself as I was working on a game engine reimplementation. For two years I was personally satisfied with myself by being able to return to a hobby and actively enjoy my time programming, and I thought I had managed to find something I was comfortable with doing just for myself. It turned out that I was deceiving myself by saying that I was in it for the personal enjoyment. This was false. I was ultimately working towards a goal that I didn't properly define, which was releasing the engine. This is the goal that everyone talks about when discussing game development, and it is a goal that carries value only because it involves other people - people that learn about and play your game. So in the future I will have to be more perceptive of the goals I'm hesitant to admit exist. From the beginning, I was only ever going to work on such a project with the eventual goal of making a release, as in making my project have an effect on people other than myself. That meant I was only working on my project for other people, and not for myself. The enjoyment I found in working on it was nothing more than a prerequisite to getting to work. It makes you feel virtuous to think otherwise, but it's nothing more than an elaborate lie. I don't understand how one could possibly develop games just for their own sake if shipping the finished game to other people is the point of game development. I guess I would say that if you aren't willing to permanently delete everything that you've worked on the moment you've finished a project, then you're not actually "doing it for yourself". That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you have to be honest or perceptive enough to be able to admit the truth.
- dicroce 5y ago
  Well, you shouldn't deceive yourself about your goals. I don't think a goal that involves other people is inherently bad. Nothing wrong with wanting to impact the world IMHO. Unless you create a game that has infinite replayability and you find playing it fun you're right that game development is ultimately FOR someone else. But there is nothing wrong with that. Ultimately you have to find a project whose goal is worth the effort. Honestly part of why I got out of game development was because I wanted some more reasonable projects.
jimbob45 5y ago
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Making_a_Mod https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Making_a_Mod The "Making a Mod" Valve wiki page is actually fairly useful for devs totally bereft of mentorship. In general, it seems like there is very little opportunity for devs to find mentorship in making games. Rather, you either figure it out or you wash out.
atum47 5y ago
Yeah baby. I'm on my way also. I've been working full time and some days after work (when I have some energy left) and weekends I'm little by little taking a game out of paper. To be honest I don't think of it as work, cause I do have fun implementing game mechanics, but I know it's hard work. Congrats
mayapugai 5y ago
Congratulations! It's always refreshing to see someone use simple, readily available tools to level-up. I don't know how many people will relate to this, but while I've known that scheduling time will help me get things done, I keep avoiding actually getting around to it. It's as though I am afraid to face my own impending success. You've motivated me to try and get things done though - thank you and congrats once again!.
jjcm 5y ago
The most important message here is "take care of yourself" near the bottom. I want to share a story about how I did a moonlight effort the wrong way. I treated it like a second job. When my day job was finished, I started my second job working on a game with a team of coworkers and friends. We were working crazy hours, but we were crushing it. Before long we got the attention of Amazon who wanted to acquire our game as part of their Fire phone launch. Our game focused heavily on motion controls which was perfect for the direction they were taking the phone (they were really pushing the envelope with motion + cameras + other sensor fusion things). We worked even harder. Before long we had a meeting with Jeff Blackburn. He showed it off to Bezos and got signoff to acquire us. We worked even harder. Contracts were signed and due diligence started. Then our lead dev died. Amazon backed out as we had no way of completing the game on time. We had poured everything into this game with the intention that the payoff would be worth it. We never prioritized enjoyment of what we were doing or our own health. Our mistake was we hadn't left room for failure. Whatever you do, ensure you have gas left in the tank for when things go wrong. Things will always go wrong in ways you'll never be able to plan for. If you stretch yourself to the limit, when a bump in the road hits you you'll break and everything/everyone around you will suffer. I now have a far, far healthier approach to moonlighting. I try and work a little bit every day on something. It doesn't need to be 5 hours of work - 20 minutes is enough. I've been working on something for the last 3 years or so and while it doesn't have the velocity that that game did, it makes me happy while I work on it. If it fails, it's OK because I find joy in doing it. Success isn't a requirement.
- piker 5y ago
  > Then our lead dev died. That's terrible. Was the death a direct or indirect result of working on the project?
  - jjcm 5y ago
    It was a question we all asked ourselves many times, but it's hard to say. He was diagnosed with an extremely aggresive stage 4 cancer and was given a couple weeks to live. Whether or not he would have seen a doctor earlier had we not been in crunch mode is uncertain.
mikesabbagh 5y ago
> All that said, the joy of doing something for us by us is not something I've encountered in my 15 year career yet I like the "us" in your comment. I worked on many personal projects, the best was when someone else is working with me. By the time you finish your feature, the other person would have finished his, and you see everything being built fast and with less pain. Actually as you know, startups are recommended to have at least 2 founders. So I would suggest that if you are working on a project alone, find help
Taylor_ 5y ago
In the past when I was at University during the summer breaks I somehow managed to create and publish two indie Xbox 360 games. However I have been working full time now for 8 years and I have never been able to come close to creating something similar to what I did back then. I will either get simply burned out by staying up late working on it (I don't recommend) or come to the conclusion that the it wont be a success and give up on it. I have been working on something new though and what has been really working well for me is that I will try to spend at least 15-20 minutes a day working on my new game, this usually always results in more time being spent on it. When I finish working on it for the day at a reasonable time I will create a list of very minor and easy tasks and list them, then the next day when I work on the project I will pick that minor thing implement it and see something I'm happy with and then maybe complete another one. Usually If I feel like I will tackle something bigger, if not then I will enjoy the rest of my day. The game has been coming together nicely so far me and it feels far more sustainable. I'm also doing this more now as a hobby rather than trying to make it a financial success (as there are much easier ways to make money).
yeureka 5y ago
I have been working on a game as a side project for 10 years now. Why such a long time? It started when I was freelancing and carried on through full-time jobs, a marriage and now a small child. I am lucky if I can get one hour a day to work on it - but as others mentioned here, the best time to work on it is before your main job, otherwise I am too tired to code after a full day of software development, childcare, and home chores. I really wish I can finish it some day and show it here.
jasonleowsg 5y ago
Anyone juggling a ft job and finishing a side project on evenings/weekends deserves celebration. Congrats for finishing it. 1000x claps :)

467 points by ntide 5y ago

How did you create your App Icon and Screenshots?

The hardest thing for me is art. Music too, but in theory you can go without that. And it's not just "ok, then find free art online" because you also have to be able to do art in code to, e.g. let players customize their character, etc. I'm sure there are ways to reduce this, but making a game is a lot of work.

jordanmorgan10 5y ago

Working full time, married with three kids. I know this well. I've had a business acquired, write blog posts, writing a book series, have taught courses and more....by far the most common question is "How do you do that?" For me, it really is as simple as....I just go to work hours early to work on those things, because I enjoy them. When I get home, I'm just a dad and a husband.

FlyingSnake 5y ago
I’ll read and upvote your take on this rather than OPs, because your story is closer to the reality for most people. No offence to OP but when you’ve no kids, mortgage and household responsibilities, it’s not that hard to do a side hustle.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Were the parent's activities "side hustles" or were they his main hustle for various intervals? It's a little unclear. In either case, those side-hustles seem pretty lucrative--it's harder IMO when your side-hustle is just for fun.

WhompingWindows 5y ago

Scope! You must define the scope of the game from the beginning, and it'll often be the case that your goals far exceed the practical limits of what you can code. This is OK, as long as you know you're dreaming too big, but then you need MVGs, minimal pieces of the project that are playable games. If you need a giant world just to get started playing, you'll not get started playing.

dncornholio 5y ago

My inability to finish personal projects has nothing to with project management or planning etc. I can't finish a side project because for me it is never 'finished'. I lack the ability to say that this is fine enough for my own projects. I always keep wanting to make things better and never can say it's finished.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

I only really agree with #3. Planning things out actually hurt my productivity as I'd get side tracked or disappointed when things took longer than expected...then I'd look at the backlog and get equally frustrated. I really just went with the flow and it all came together. You have to have passion for it though. It's the common trap I find a lot of people in that fall out of side projects quickly. They're doing it for the wrong reasons and inevitably get tired of it/uninvested and burn out. It's more about the journey than it is reaching the end.

bodge5000 5y ago

For me, after I got one project properly done, it actually became harder to abandon a project partway through than to not finish it. To my detriment even, I've been working on a game for the past 3 years which I'm fairly sure just "doesn't work" in a way I find difficult to explain. But as much as I try, I can't stop working on it. The other thing that plagues me is decision fatigue. I'm working through a decision right now which is tangentially related to my personal projects but is absolutely weighing me down mentally. Edit: Reading another reply, maybe I haven't conquered my problem, and that now my projects just never finish, rather than me abandonding them. Maybe thats the case, but right now its absolutely not finished by any means, so thats a problem for later

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

I'll add to his advice not to quit your day job. Gamedev is unreasonably difficult. It's not software engineering (whatever that might mean). It's a different beast entirely. I've advised several folks who said they want to quit their jobs to make games to do a compo, a game jam, something small and constrained. Ludum Dare has historically been good. Try but expect not to finish. You'll learn about your own weaknesses and limitations. Even if you don't finish the first few times, you'll hopefully understand what it takes, or at least think you do. A good next step is to timebox one or two months, in your free time, to make a game, publish it, _and earn $1_. That's it. Make a buck. If you can pull that off, and make a buck, you've made it. You're a professional game developer.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
I'll also add, it's not the planning that helps, but having goals. If you set out to "make a game" you will never finish. You need a goal in mind. A line that you can cross.

pddpro 5y ago

> You need to focus, scope right, relentlessly break work down into bite-sized tasks, and create a rock-solid habit of getting things done. This is my only takeaway from the article. I think it's well-written but I also found it vague. Finding implicit joy is such an abstract thing that has no set formulae to it. I am glad that the author was able to complete his game.

q_andrew 5y ago

Something surprising I've noticed while developing my own side project game is that I end up being a better marketer than developer. I can only work on the game while I'm at home and 'in the zone', but I can post screenshots on social media at any time of the day. The consequence is that I have a larger-than-anticipated fanbase who are starting to get confused about why the promotional material flows freely while development time appears to slog.

failrate 5y ago

My trick is to spend 15 minutes per day minimum working on the side project.

chadcmulligan 5y ago
this is the way I think - a writer writes, always. its many authors recipe for success.
awkward 5y ago
Keeping a task board, written documents about the planned goal, and all of the other project ephemera can be a great way to keep up this kind of 15 minute momentum.

toivo 5y ago

havent shipped a side project, but i do keep track of my project so i can say with some certainty what things have helped me to accomplish the most. they are the following 1) the no zero days mantra - 15 minutes a day of progress is fine it helps to keep the momentum going and when you got that free sunday you just find yourself wroking more. 2) i do keep also a lot of trail of notes of ideas and concerns on how to further the project. if I have to keep a break and come back to it after some time it helps to remind my self where i was.

tmountain 5y ago

Bite sized tasks are great. Finding the motivation to start the next task is also important. If you want to read a chapter of a book, start by reading the first sentence. This naturally leads towards getting into flow, and the next thing you know, you've read three chapters. The brain tends to engage readily once you get over the initial hurdle of beginning the task.

ca6d8815 5y ago

Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. Not having "pure energy" for the side project meant that everything suffered. We had to learn-by-trial virtually _everything_, I don't recommend ever doing a big project that way. If you want to finish a game, choose a small game. Start doing game jams. Practice _finishing_. You can do more and more later. Or, go for it, do it our way, all in to win (win is subjective, the pride is real, the monetary result didn't really do anything meaningful for so much investment). I wouldn't do it this way again, but I understand people who do. All that said, the joy of doing something for us by us is not something I've encountered in my 15 year career yet. So... if you've never built something (and truly finished!), but you want to try... go for it.

markus_zhang 5y ago
Agreed. It's a LOT difficult to finish something, especially something to sell.
capableweb 5y ago
> I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better? The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  This has been my line of thought for a while. You spend a minimum of 8 hours working, and ideally you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Let’s say you have a couple more daily responsibilities that take 2-4 (could be commute, cleaning, some other maintenance). There’s almost no time to do anything, and some of the hours you have left may be at non-prime times of the day. > The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of. The problem is this means sleep or work. I’ve opted for the former, and suffer for it. Sacrificing working, at least any notable amount, just means trading time-loss for money-loss which may or may not work depending on person.

leroman 5y ago

Getting that 1 hour of work done every morning is what keeps the ball rolling.. momentum is critical..

_wpya 5y ago

Game jams are a great motivator. I need hard deadlines. I recently did this [1] for a game jam, over one sleepless week. It's pretty unfinished but submitting something felt good. (Source: [2]) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX6AZNWuI5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX6AZNWuI5Q [2] https://github.com/mpersano/generic-rhythm-game/ https://github.com/mpersano/generic-rhythm-game/

markus_zhang 5y ago
I also found that hard deadlines work. The closer they are, the better they are. Yesterday I spent just one hour to review my computer architecture mid-term. I totally forgot about the date and thought I'm going to bomb it. Eventually I did a very quick efficient review and felt very good about it. The thing is, as you said, and as my Physics teacher said 20 years ago, that I really need to be pushed HARD to be efficient. That's why I hate assignments with long deadlines.
- EarthLaunch 5y ago
  I've found this leads to burnout if the deadline is too far out or if the deadline keeps getting pushed forward. The antidote is to have no deadlines, and take the time to enjoy doing things right.
ArtWomb 5y ago
Maybe instead of a "jam" format to motivate indies, do a "game race" instead? Points for timeliness. Bias toward micro-games. Organized around theme or asset for creativity constraint ;)
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Agreed. I'm thinking about attending one of those jams. I like tight or even unreasonable deadlines. Ordinary jobs don't give people this kind of deadlines (or if it is the compensation might be shitty). One thing I need to learn is to create pixel Sprites quickly. Maybe there is even a way to programmatically generate some template Sprites.

markus_zhang 5y ago

I tried to complete a simple 2D RPG that is a Ultima spinoff a few years ago. Nothing is technically impossible as it's just a simple 2D game but eventually I lost interest and broke away. Now that I look back, there are two obstacles: - I'm not really interested in such a game. I probably fancied about the genre as it's classic but I never finished any of the Ultima games. - In the middle I tried to implement a full scale map editor. I managed to build a simple yet working one, but dropped the project once I realized that it needs a lot of work to write my own GUI (back then I'm using C++ and SDL2). I also find out that once I know how to implement something on paper (e.g. if I can draw the process of an algorithm on paper), I usually lost the interest to implement it in code. It takes a huge amount of effort for me to complete assignments for the Data Structure class I'm taking, to the point that I'm thinking about dropping the class.

Longwelwind 5y ago
> - In the middle I tried to implement a full scale map editor. I managed to build a simple yet working one, but dropped the project once I realized that it needs a lot of work to write my own GUI (back then I'm using C++ and SDL2). Sharing my slightly unrelated experience, but Tiled2D is a nice piece of software to achieve this. I've used it for one of my personal project, where I wanted to make a digital adaptation of a board game, and I needed to "digitalize" the game board[1]. I don't use the tiles or the tile grid at all, but just the "polygon" feature that allows me to draw the borders of the different regions. It's not at all why the software has been written, as the polygon is supposed to be a small feature to define areas in a tiled game, but it gets the job done. [1] https://github.com/Longwelwind/swords-and-ravens/blob/master/agot-bg-game-server/data/westeros.jpg https://github.com/Longwelwind/swords-and-ravens/blob/master...
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Thanks, I knew about Tiled at the time. The project was kinda of a learning project so I didn't bother to use an external tool. Now that I look back, that's probably how I approach all projects (not work-related): I just want to learn how it works superficially, and once I do I'd lose motivation and drop the project eventually. Very nasty mindset I have to admit...

DizzyDoo 5y ago

I did this for my first Steam game, which let me go full-time back in 2015 as an indie game developer and where I still am today. [1] I'd get up early and get a few hours in before my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer at a fintech startup. And then on Saturdays I'd get something more like a normal days work done on the project. It worked, and I'm glad I did it, but it definitely was a temporary situation, I don't think it's something you can do long-term without facing burnout or neglecting other important areas of life like family, friends, exercise, reading books, etc. So that last paragraph of the original post - making it sustainable - I'm glad to see it in there. [1] The Cat Machine - https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/

pbourke 5y ago
> my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer Did you use Python for your game as well? This looks really cool - congratulations on making the leap to full time.
- DizzyDoo 5y ago
  No, though I wrote the level/puzzle editor in Python, which would generate json that was read by the game, which was written with the Unity engine and lots of C#.
dgb23 5y ago
Your game looks absolutely ridiculous and I love that.
- DizzyDoo 5y ago
  It is very silly.

trezemanero 5y ago

bruh, i didn't finished the text, how could i finish my project?

andyish 5y ago

Good tips and different things work for different people. I find that I need to find something that I think would take a week to build. Then accept the fact it's going to take 8 weeks to finish given i'm doing about one hour a day rather than 8.

a_c 5y ago

Kudos to launching. This is hard. To me the hardest part is context switching. Meetings, scheduling, resource planning in day job, child care after work, household core, reading, occasion workout, etc. The amount of energy, both intellectually and emotionally, left after all these is... miniscule I'm trying with social contract - commit to somebody that you are showing some progress to them, and have them to help picking what's their desirable next step/topic. Hopefully I can get something started

twodave 5y ago

I don't work on personal projects on my own time, but I do work a part time hourly job alongside my software engineering job. I've found for me this is an essential part of my mental health. My arrangement offers up a little more variety than I'd otherwise have and allows me to work with another group of people in a totally different domain. Also, I've found the best opportunities come through word-of-mouth connections, and having 2 sets of colleagues essentially doubles the chances of that happening.

doitLP 5y ago
Interesting. What is the field of the part time job?
TuringNYC 5y ago
For many years, I worked at the Park Slope Food Cooperative (https://www.foodcoop.com/ https://www.foodcoop.com/) several hours a month, which was a great orthogonal use of my mind. I started as a box-breaker, got promoted to an olive processor and finally became squad leader for Olives & Cheeses. The whole experience was like using a completely different part of my brain. They tried to get me to join their technology group, which i rejected :-)

tsozz 5y ago

I dont care about finishing side projects. They exist to keep my mind occupied or give it a break from other stuff. Thats it.

one_off_comment 5y ago
That's the right mentality. Thank you!

dicroce 5y ago

Here are my side project tips: 1) As the article states, work on your side project first in the morning before your work. You will be too tired after work. Yes, this means your not really giving 100% at work. Hopefully your good enough at your job that this is OK. 2) Create little task lists, with short little tasks... Then knock those tasks out one by one. If you find yourself procrastinating about some task do another little task first, then later make a quick spur of the moment decision to go do the procrastination task. 3) It's OK to dream about the best case scenario, but also have realistic side goals: "worst case scenario, I've built a cool engine for my next project." 4) DO create the right amount of tests (too little and your going to be creating buggy crap code, too many and you're bogged down updating your tests constantly)... get a feel for what your right amount is. 5) Don't type so much, think more... think through designs... use paper, be messy and redraw... all of this is faster than building the wrong thing. 6) I think its OK to be quirky. Make the thing YOU want to make. This is another way to monetize: your mental health is worth a lot and personally I find bringing shit that I want to exist into the world just the way I want them to be is a good trick for staying happy.

neokya 5y ago
Creating small task lists seem to be the way to go. Does anyone know what app the author is using to create nested tasks for 'lightweight sprint'?
- secondstring 5y ago
  Notion https://notion.so/ https://notion.so/
Sammi 5y ago
"Create little task lists, with short little tasks" Yeah I tried that. The side coding projects I have are things I'm not good at yet and want to get better at, so they are this big pile of "I have no idea yet until I try", and that does not break down into neat short little tasks to knock off in an hour before work. They need deep concentration and focus in order for me to learn and figure out what the hell I should do.

boplicity 5y ago

Not discussed in the article: You have to have the support of the people in your life this will impact. For example, the 7-9am timeslot for working, as listed in the article, will impact my family, as that is when I'm getting the kids up and off to school. OK, so I could move it to 5am to 7am, but that would mean I'd need to go to bed earlier, which eliminates important evening time with my wife. Similarly, I could do it from 8pm to 10pm, but that also affects my relationship with my wife, and my social life in general. This isn't to say that people with a family can't do these things, but that you need to acknowledge the impact it will have on other people, and plan with them to make it work. For example, I often make the time for my wife to work on her novels between 7pm and 9pm. I get the kids to bed and do some cleaning, while she writes, and we still get to connect before sleep.

klik99 5y ago
Yeah, something has to give, I have the exact problem you have. Currently my weekday sleep suffers. There is no right way to do it, but you have to acknowledge the trade offs and make your decision knowing the impacts. So many people want to have their cake abs eat it, and usually get the worst outcome.
fitzn 5y ago
I totally agree with your perspective. It reminds of an essay pg wrote (http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html) about having kids, and I think the principles are similar to yours. You can be successful and "do it all", but you might have to modify "all" _a bit_ and you have to be very disciplined and honest about your trade-offs.
mattlondon 5y ago
Totally agree with this. I am woken by my kid at 6am, then it is 100% go-go-go with work or family until about 7pm when the kid goes to bed, then it is starting to cook and prepare dinner and do housework etc. There might be 2 hours or so between dinner and bed to spend time with my wife before we collapse into bed at 10pm or so - talk, watch a movie, play scrabble or whatever. I don't want to ignore her and just do my own thing - it is important to nurture these sort of relationships. If I do get some spare time that is entirely mine, the absolute last thing I want to do is more work - one needs to relax! Go for a run, watch a movie, do some coding for fun, play a game, or just waste time on youtube or whatever - I don't want to be "hustling" a side project. I could stay up later after the wife has gone to bed, but that is going to harm me long-term by trading sleep for side-projects that in reality are not going to change my life as much as long-term sleep deprivation is going to change my life. That said I do occasionally from time-to-time stay up late to have a beer and mess around on the computer - I think that is healthy in the long run :)

programmarchy 5y ago

Thanks for the write up and congratulations on publishing the game. Looks great and can't wait to give it a try. One of the keys to your success seemed to be that consistent, early morning routine. I've often find myself trying to hack on side projects in the evening, after much of my energy is already zapped. Even if I do have a highly productive session coding into the wee hours of the night, the next day will be ruined by lack of sleep, and as someone with a family it's too detrimental. But when I am working in the mornings, once I'm awake and at my keyboard, I'm much more productive. Sometimes, it's hard to stop! But, leaving yourself a cliffhanger is also a great way to build excitement to jump back in the next day.

levmiseri 5y ago

I have done something similar - building a game while working full-time. But my approach was the complete opposite of this article. No real process, no plan, no scrum method, not even a trello board to track progress and todos. Personally, I enjoyed the "fun" of it being very spontaneous, yet still passionate. I didn't write to-dos and tasks to be done, because there is always something to be done. And intuitively you feel what's important and what's not. I also didn't want it to "feel" like work. For context - the game took me about 6 months to create: https://yare.io https://yare.io

kotrunga 5y ago
Your game looks like a lot of fun, and the concept is really cool. Would you mind telling us more about your process and the technical aspects?
- levmiseri 5y ago
  There is one last major piece to be done for the game (now I’m no longer working alone on it) after which I want to write something a bit more detailed about the journey. But on the high-level — my full-time job is interaction design. Throughout my career I used JavaScript a lot for building interactive design prototypes and it’s the only language I know, so when I had the idea for Yare.io (heavily inspired by MIT’s Battle Code), vanilla JavaScript (and Node for server) was the only thing I could use (didn’t know any libraries or frameworks) The project was really just a “problem” to be solved. Use JavaScript to move basic geometric shapes on a canvas in a 1 versus 1 battle. It needed to have a UI, rendering of a game state, authentication, event queue, basic ruleset, … None of this really required any tracker or rigorous process. I know what needs to be done, because I’m literally sitting in front it, seeing what needs to be done. It didn’t need a “plan”, because it didn’t matter when each piece of the puzzle was made. Just, whatever I was in the mood for that day. I think the principle of simplicity (as cliche as it sounds) – trying to keep everything (especially the foundations) as basic as possible – was really the main thing that allowed me to finish the game. I don't think I could enjoy it as much as I did with some scrum method, brainstorming bullshit, or anything reminding me of work.

OJFord 5y ago

I should first disclose that I'm terrible at 'finishing' things (I don't make games, so generally not such finishable 'done and shipped' things, but by 'finishing' I mean a sort of 'version 1.0' I suppose, something I'm happy with, think others might want to use and now it's just maintenance and improvements) so maybe don't listen to me at all..! But I think there's something key here that's left implicit - do your own project first in the day. Obviously everyone's different, but I reckon for the most part that means 'don't necessarily start everything at 7am' (or do so even earlier), rather than 'work first and moonlight on the side project'. I have way too many days where I'm less productive on the paid work than I could be because I've got something else on my mind; then come the end of the day when I could finally put some thoughts into action, I'm just too drained and fed up of sitting at a computer to do anything about it.

toyg 5y ago
I reckon "my project first" is a great habit, but it requires something else: the willpower to start. It's very easy to spend those extra couple of hours in the morning just sipping a coffee, reading HN, catching up with social media. Work is work and it starts because other people will ping you, you'll have to be online on a certain computer, etc etc; but if you are your own boss, it's very easy to let employee #1 (yourself) slack off. Also, this works only if you are a remote worker. Most commuting will nuke those two hours away (yeah you can work on the bus/train, but probably not well - spotty connections, uncomfortable, no extra monitor, no mouse, etc; and if you have motion sickness like me, it's a non-starter), and in the evening you'll be even more shattered.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Or it works better if you work in an office - you're at home working on your own project and can't be pinged until you go in to the office. Not everyone has an hour long commute, and even if so it's a sunk cost, still better to do your own project first IMO. (It just means being even earlier up, or being able to start work compatibly late in the morning.)
- Zababa 5y ago
  > It's very easy to spend those extra couple of hours in the morning just sipping a coffee, reading HN, catching up with social media. Work is work and it starts because other people will ping you, you'll have to be online on a certain computer, etc etc; but if you are your own boss, it's very easy to let employee #1 (yourself) slack off. It's the same when you get back home after work though. > Also, this works only if you are a remote worker. Most commuting will nuke those two hours away (yeah you can work on the bus/train, but probably not well - spotty connections, uncomfortable, no extra monitor, no mouse, etc; and if you have motion sickness like me, it's a non-starter), and in the evening you'll be even more shattered. I personally have 5 "free" hours after work, which includes time to do shopping, eat, exercise, cleaning, all that sort of stuff. It's not a lot but it's not 0. That's with 1h30 of commute each day.

klik99 5y ago

“Make it sustainable” was the part it took me a long time to realize - in my 20s I’d pull all nighters to finish things. When I got older, started a family, and worked on projects that take months or years, I’d still approach it like a sprint - I’m talking multiple times going a month of less than 2 hrs of sleep most nights, full nights sleep once a week, 5 years of working Saturday and Sunday. Now I spend time with friends and family, treat weekends as sacred, and though I still don’t get as much sleep as I should, I get way more done than blindly putting in the hours. People warned me of it and I didn’t listen, as I’m sure whoever needs to hear this won’t listen either, but 100%, treat it like a marathon and take care of your life holistically.

racl101 5y ago

Feel like I need a plan to make the plan to do the side project.

jdbartee 5y ago

A lot of my side projects end up being: “I want to learn how to do X, but I have no idea what that’s going to take.” And I end up just coding a logical step and if I don’t know what to do go research it, realize I did something wrong 3 steps ago and then either revert or abandon depending on my current motivation. I’ve tried before to create a “game plan” before but most of the time there’s so much that I don’t know that I don’t know that it’s either impossible to make that plan or once I do, that plan ends up being wrong anyways. As such it always feels like I’m doing side projects wrong. But since they’re more learning endeavors more than actually trying to launch a product maybe that’s fine?

dgb23 5y ago
I think it's absolutely fine. You do something you enjoy and you learn new things. I think if you actually _want_ to finish something you finish it.

marcodiego 5y ago

How to finish your first game? Do it in one weekend! How to do it in one weekend? Use simple game mechanics: a spaceshooter! Aren't you a good artist? No problem! Use processing and art from https://opengameart.org/ https://opengameart.org/ . I've done it once just to have fun with my girlfriend. We built a very simple and fun space shooter in one weekend. I didn't keep the license or links of the resources, so I didn't publish it.

toyg 5y ago
> I've done it once just to have fun with my girlfriend. This is humblebrag³: "I have a girlfriend" x "my girlfriend is as nerdy as me" x "we coded a game in a weekend".

Zababa 5y ago

Small nitpick but I really don't like how scrum uses the name "sprint". You don't go far by making lots of sprints back to back. You go far by walking with a clear goal in my. "Sprint" carries no notion of direction.

honksillet 5y ago

Don’t forget the opportunity cost of taking on such a project. You could be hiking, exercising, working on relationships, family.

evancoop 5y ago
Personal agency requires a sober assessment of priorities. Everything has an opportunity cost. Certainly, a full-time job and a non-trivial side project takes from self-care and family. Certainly, self-care and family (and sleep!) can preclude side-hustles. The important element is making the choice with clear eyes.

one_off_comment 5y ago

Treat it as a hobby, not a means to a payday. It's your free time. If you're not having fun, why do it?

umvi 5y ago

I've done it with a full time job and two kids[0]. Here's my $0.02 For me I had to constantly reign in the scope to be a minimum viable game. I would let my imagination run wild and come up with all these grand ideas for an overarching plot, etc. But the project gets really hard to finish after you've done the fun bits like getting the main gameplay mechanics implemented and there's a big stretch of grunt work ahead ("the last 20% takes 80% of the work"). It's easy to let it languish and never ship/release. That's when you need to re-evaluate what it takes to achieve a minimum viable game and ruthlessly reign in the scope. Tell yourself "I can implement all my other grand ideas if this minimum viable game proves successful" - and you can. And if it isn't very successful, then you can move onto the next project/idea. [0] https://www.bryanpg.com/games/embergram https://www.bryanpg.com/games/embergram

keewee7 5y ago

How did Chrome know that this article belonged to my gamedev bookmarks folder when I bookmarked the page?

chromanoid 5y ago
The page you bookmarked before that also was in this folder?

rocky1138 5y ago

Jason, if you're reading this: I loved your post but I can't find an RSS or Atom feed for your blog.

JimWestergren 5y ago

Yeah, I started my game[0] in the summer of 2018. Wife and 3 kids. It is tough. Giving up would be the normal thing to do, but I guess I am not normal. [0] https://thespacewar.com/ https://thespacewar.com/

spywaregorilla 5y ago

I'm in this boat. I think it would be impossible to do with a proper family with kids, so I've got maybe 5 years to pull it off. I've spent several years working on game efforts in parallel and decided to dump them all. It's not the worst thing in the world to give up on a concept. It's a good hobby even if it doesn't pan out. It's decidedly not a side hustle.

kuu 5y ago

How do you spend more hours sitting at your desk after 8 hours of sitting at your desk? I really would like to do more things at my PC, but whenever I finish with my work I'm drained

crhutchins 5y ago

It depends on your productivity after work as there will be a lot of factors that will come into play. It would help if you tried to maintain a work-life balance in which further delays your project. It's better to enjoy what we have right now and enjoy it at the same time.

luizbarroso343 5y ago

Abaixar

parksy 5y ago

The way I did it was I was writing music and doing pixel art since the 90's and learning to write games on the side. One day I decided to take all the assets I'd built up over 30 years and condense them into the simplest game I could complete on the side and that's how I made Space Strafer. I think if I had to start from scratch with all the music, art, and concepts it would have been impossible, what with having kids and all.

thn-gap 5y ago

I feel this also represents my situation quite well. Here's personal experience: What worked the best for me to deal with a full-time job and a side project of gamedev (or programming in general) was to move the side project development time in the morning before my full time job, and just put a bit less effort into work overall (remote work helped here as well). Moreover, while I tried to have a consistent routine for my personal dev time, I tried not to force it when I was really not feeling like it, to avoid burnout. I sometimes did additional gamedev in some evening (or moved the morning one), but otherwise, tried to do non-computer stuff in the afternoons/evenings. Another key insight, is that this also helped me getting an earlier sleeping schedule. Previously I would procrastinate until late, even if tired, because whenever I went to sleep, I would then wake up and have go to work immediately. Instead, now I rather go to sleep early, because I know I'll have more energy to do the things I like in the morning, rather than full-time work.

oneearedrabbit 5y ago

Ah, good memories. My tipping point was when I watched Krystian’s video “We Are All Game Beginners” [0]. It helped me embrace and acknowledge difficulties that one has to overcome to begin and finish a game, no matter how big or small it is. It took me about three months through a turbulence phase to finish my first game [1]. Also, taking this chance, any Pico-8 enthusiasts? Before I wrote the first line of code, I had an honest conversation with myself about why I am starting a project and put it on paper as my true motivation and goal. Over the course, I had to remind myself multiple times to be sincere and forgiving. Working on a side means that even the simplest task could stretch over several days, and it is okay. I particularly enjoyed sharing my work in progress on social media and with my friends. During the darkest moments, I found that a great “hack” is to record a milestone that I am proud of to boost my motivation and push a game a little further. If I may quote Rocky, it goes like:” One step at a time. One punch at a time. One round at a time.” Another “hack” is to cut it out if something takes longer and drains your energy without any significant progress. Make something even just one person to enjoy. It is already a good milestone. Ultimately, I took this journey as a self-exploration to get to know my true self better, slay a few dragons on the way in a reasonably safe environment. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9wztsnmEIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9wztsnmEIw [1]: https://oneearedrabbit.itch.io/the-pixel-maze https://oneearedrabbit.itch.io/the-pixel-maze

ensiferum 5y ago

I was spending anything from 12 to 16h per day (including weekends) for about 10 months working on my game engine after i quit my day job. Now that I'm working again i still try to throw at least 2-3h at it after work. Mostly i enjoy bit but sometimes there are moments when it begins to feel like a grind too. But unfortunately there's no choice but to grind through those boring tedious parts just go get it done. The key i find is to find the balance between doing the "fun stuff" abd the boilerplate "just has to be done" parts. It's on GitHub here http://github.com/ensisoft/gamestudio http://github.com/ensisoft/gamestudio

nonbirithm 5y ago

I've recently realized that I haven't felt comfortable with doing anything for its own sake. This revealed itself as I was working on a game engine reimplementation. For two years I was personally satisfied with myself by being able to return to a hobby and actively enjoy my time programming, and I thought I had managed to find something I was comfortable with doing just for myself. It turned out that I was deceiving myself by saying that I was in it for the personal enjoyment. This was false. I was ultimately working towards a goal that I didn't properly define, which was releasing the engine. This is the goal that everyone talks about when discussing game development, and it is a goal that carries value only because it involves other people - people that learn about and play your game. So in the future I will have to be more perceptive of the goals I'm hesitant to admit exist. From the beginning, I was only ever going to work on such a project with the eventual goal of making a release, as in making my project have an effect on people other than myself. That meant I was only working on my project for other people, and not for myself. The enjoyment I found in working on it was nothing more than a prerequisite to getting to work. It makes you feel virtuous to think otherwise, but it's nothing more than an elaborate lie. I don't understand how one could possibly develop games just for their own sake if shipping the finished game to other people is the point of game development. I guess I would say that if you aren't willing to permanently delete everything that you've worked on the moment you've finished a project, then you're not actually "doing it for yourself". That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you have to be honest or perceptive enough to be able to admit the truth.

dicroce 5y ago
Well, you shouldn't deceive yourself about your goals. I don't think a goal that involves other people is inherently bad. Nothing wrong with wanting to impact the world IMHO. Unless you create a game that has infinite replayability and you find playing it fun you're right that game development is ultimately FOR someone else. But there is nothing wrong with that. Ultimately you have to find a project whose goal is worth the effort. Honestly part of why I got out of game development was because I wanted some more reasonable projects.

jimbob45 5y ago

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Making_a_Mod https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Making_a_Mod The "Making a Mod" Valve wiki page is actually fairly useful for devs totally bereft of mentorship. In general, it seems like there is very little opportunity for devs to find mentorship in making games. Rather, you either figure it out or you wash out.

atum47 5y ago

Yeah baby. I'm on my way also. I've been working full time and some days after work (when I have some energy left) and weekends I'm little by little taking a game out of paper. To be honest I don't think of it as work, cause I do have fun implementing game mechanics, but I know it's hard work. Congrats

mayapugai 5y ago

Congratulations! It's always refreshing to see someone use simple, readily available tools to level-up. I don't know how many people will relate to this, but while I've known that scheduling time will help me get things done, I keep avoiding actually getting around to it. It's as though I am afraid to face my own impending success. You've motivated me to try and get things done though - thank you and congrats once again!.

jjcm 5y ago

The most important message here is "take care of yourself" near the bottom. I want to share a story about how I did a moonlight effort the wrong way. I treated it like a second job. When my day job was finished, I started my second job working on a game with a team of coworkers and friends. We were working crazy hours, but we were crushing it. Before long we got the attention of Amazon who wanted to acquire our game as part of their Fire phone launch. Our game focused heavily on motion controls which was perfect for the direction they were taking the phone (they were really pushing the envelope with motion + cameras + other sensor fusion things). We worked even harder. Before long we had a meeting with Jeff Blackburn. He showed it off to Bezos and got signoff to acquire us. We worked even harder. Contracts were signed and due diligence started. Then our lead dev died. Amazon backed out as we had no way of completing the game on time. We had poured everything into this game with the intention that the payoff would be worth it. We never prioritized enjoyment of what we were doing or our own health. Our mistake was we hadn't left room for failure. Whatever you do, ensure you have gas left in the tank for when things go wrong. Things will always go wrong in ways you'll never be able to plan for. If you stretch yourself to the limit, when a bump in the road hits you you'll break and everything/everyone around you will suffer. I now have a far, far healthier approach to moonlighting. I try and work a little bit every day on something. It doesn't need to be 5 hours of work - 20 minutes is enough. I've been working on something for the last 3 years or so and while it doesn't have the velocity that that game did, it makes me happy while I work on it. If it fails, it's OK because I find joy in doing it. Success isn't a requirement.

piker 5y ago
> Then our lead dev died. That's terrible. Was the death a direct or indirect result of working on the project?
- jjcm 5y ago
  It was a question we all asked ourselves many times, but it's hard to say. He was diagnosed with an extremely aggresive stage 4 cancer and was given a couple weeks to live. Whether or not he would have seen a doctor earlier had we not been in crunch mode is uncertain.

mikesabbagh 5y ago

> All that said, the joy of doing something for us by us is not something I've encountered in my 15 year career yet I like the "us" in your comment. I worked on many personal projects, the best was when someone else is working with me. By the time you finish your feature, the other person would have finished his, and you see everything being built fast and with less pain. Actually as you know, startups are recommended to have at least 2 founders. So I would suggest that if you are working on a project alone, find help

Taylor_ 5y ago

In the past when I was at University during the summer breaks I somehow managed to create and publish two indie Xbox 360 games. However I have been working full time now for 8 years and I have never been able to come close to creating something similar to what I did back then. I will either get simply burned out by staying up late working on it (I don't recommend) or come to the conclusion that the it wont be a success and give up on it. I have been working on something new though and what has been really working well for me is that I will try to spend at least 15-20 minutes a day working on my new game, this usually always results in more time being spent on it. When I finish working on it for the day at a reasonable time I will create a list of very minor and easy tasks and list them, then the next day when I work on the project I will pick that minor thing implement it and see something I'm happy with and then maybe complete another one. Usually If I feel like I will tackle something bigger, if not then I will enjoy the rest of my day. The game has been coming together nicely so far me and it feels far more sustainable. I'm also doing this more now as a hobby rather than trying to make it a financial success (as there are much easier ways to make money).

yeureka 5y ago

I have been working on a game as a side project for 10 years now. Why such a long time? It started when I was freelancing and carried on through full-time jobs, a marriage and now a small child. I am lucky if I can get one hour a day to work on it - but as others mentioned here, the best time to work on it is before your main job, otherwise I am too tired to code after a full day of software development, childcare, and home chores. I really wish I can finish it some day and show it here.

jasonleowsg 5y ago

Anyone juggling a ft job and finishing a side project on evenings/weekends deserves celebration. Congrats for finishing it. 1000x claps :)