4 ms·

I can only think of 1 successful game that was built as a part time hobby (Cave Story). Development of even a simple game takes so much time I don't know how p

by jiggy2011 14y ago

I can only think of 1 successful game that was built as a part time hobby (Cave Story). Development of even a simple game takes so much time I don't know how practical it is on 10 hours a week. Game studios have armies of employed people on 60+ hours a week each.

reitzensteinm 14y ago
Not many household name games are built as a part time hobby. I'm not saying wait until you're a multi millionaire :) You can easily make a decent Flash game or experimental iPhone game part time. My first Flash game, with over 200 million plays, was made in two weeks including the time it took to learn Flash. The additional hours will get eaten up by business stuff and maintenance once you're full time anyway. I dogfooded my own advice, for what it's worth.
- gabemart 14y ago
  Would you mind linking to your first flash game, for the curious?
  - windsurfer 14y ago
    It looks like this is the game, made in 14 days, by a team of 6: http://www.bigblockgames.com/games/coffeehero/ http://www.bigblockgames.com/games/coffeehero/
    - reitzensteinm 14y ago
      This is the one, at my first company: http://www.miniclip.com/games/stunt-pilot/en/ http://www.miniclip.com/games/stunt-pilot/en/ Two people, two weeks, normal working hours (Coffee Hero was an absurd crunch).
thenomad 14y ago
Very much depends what sort of game you're considering. Anything approaching the AAA space, agreed. But mobile games / Web games / anything with carefully controlled scope, not so much. You may or may not have heard of the 48-hour game development event GameJam? http://globalgamejam.org http://globalgamejam.org It's possible to create something playable even in that time. Also, Minecraft was originally developed part-time, according to Wikipedia. Working on something serious part-time is hard, and I'm impressed by people who manage it. But it's doable.
kiba 14y ago
Dwarffortress - started out as an ASCII game and end as an ASCII game. Actually, it's two games in one, and also insanely complex. Game studios that employ armies of developers usually have tons of artists and spend ridiculous amount of time on graphics and assets. That's why a massively complex game like dwarffortress are never created. So there's tons of niches for complex games with ASCII graphics. (Sorry, pixel arts also takes ton of time) As everyone else already said, control your scope or otherwise you never finish the game. Dwarffortress got where it is today by simply not aiming for great 3D graphics.
- lukeschlather 14y ago
  There's plenty of permissively-licensed tilesets out there. Dwarf Fortress really had some trouble because it was built on ASCII until a fan was kind enough to write a graphics library : https://github.com/Baughn/Dwarf-Fortress--libgraphics- https://github.com/Baughn/Dwarf-Fortress--libgraphics- . Writing an ASCII rendering engine was probably more work for a lesser product than going with a library to begin with would have been. Also, Dwarf Fortress isn't done yet. It quite possibly ends with beautiful procedurally generated graphics (though I can't imagine that would happen with Tarn keeping it a solo operation.)
  - pindi 14y ago
    Not quite: Dwarf Fortress has always used OpenGL (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28841.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28841.0) to render tiles that just happen to be ASCII characters onto the screen. The fan effort was to port it to SDL, making it much more efficient.
daniel-cussen 14y ago
I think Minecraft was developed this way too.

reitzensteinm 14y ago

Not many household name games are built as a part time hobby. I'm not saying wait until you're a multi millionaire :) You can easily make a decent Flash game or experimental iPhone game part time. My first Flash game, with over 200 million plays, was made in two weeks including the time it took to learn Flash. The additional hours will get eaten up by business stuff and maintenance once you're full time anyway. I dogfooded my own advice, for what it's worth.

gabemart 14y ago
Would you mind linking to your first flash game, for the curious?
- windsurfer 14y ago
  It looks like this is the game, made in 14 days, by a team of 6: http://www.bigblockgames.com/games/coffeehero/ http://www.bigblockgames.com/games/coffeehero/
  - reitzensteinm 14y ago
    This is the one, at my first company: http://www.miniclip.com/games/stunt-pilot/en/ http://www.miniclip.com/games/stunt-pilot/en/ Two people, two weeks, normal working hours (Coffee Hero was an absurd crunch).

thenomad 14y ago

Very much depends what sort of game you're considering. Anything approaching the AAA space, agreed. But mobile games / Web games / anything with carefully controlled scope, not so much. You may or may not have heard of the 48-hour game development event GameJam? http://globalgamejam.org http://globalgamejam.org It's possible to create something playable even in that time. Also, Minecraft was originally developed part-time, according to Wikipedia. Working on something serious part-time is hard, and I'm impressed by people who manage it. But it's doable.

kiba 14y ago

Dwarffortress - started out as an ASCII game and end as an ASCII game. Actually, it's two games in one, and also insanely complex. Game studios that employ armies of developers usually have tons of artists and spend ridiculous amount of time on graphics and assets. That's why a massively complex game like dwarffortress are never created. So there's tons of niches for complex games with ASCII graphics. (Sorry, pixel arts also takes ton of time) As everyone else already said, control your scope or otherwise you never finish the game. Dwarffortress got where it is today by simply not aiming for great 3D graphics.

lukeschlather 14y ago
There's plenty of permissively-licensed tilesets out there. Dwarf Fortress really had some trouble because it was built on ASCII until a fan was kind enough to write a graphics library : https://github.com/Baughn/Dwarf-Fortress--libgraphics- https://github.com/Baughn/Dwarf-Fortress--libgraphics- . Writing an ASCII rendering engine was probably more work for a lesser product than going with a library to begin with would have been. Also, Dwarf Fortress isn't done yet. It quite possibly ends with beautiful procedurally generated graphics (though I can't imagine that would happen with Tarn keeping it a solo operation.)
- pindi 14y ago
  Not quite: Dwarf Fortress has always used OpenGL (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28841.0 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=28841.0) to render tiles that just happen to be ASCII characters onto the screen. The fan effort was to port it to SDL, making it much more efficient.

daniel-cussen 14y ago

I think Minecraft was developed this way too.