Hey! Epic - "I'm staring a game" - thread...

This thread was linked to me and somehow it felt as if I could contribute by participating in this thread.

My intention in participating was not to confront other peoples views or ideas (which I failed), only wanted to show my understanding to the OP. My apologies for making second and third reply on this thread. Sometimes I forget my values.

Back in the days I did participate in "helping threads", even before Unity existed. In other game development forums. It is indeed good question why I no longer do this, and is not really the context of this thread to discuss it here. In case OP feels like actively approaching original subject, then I have already provided my feedback in form of explaining my reasoning and OP already confirmed that I get his point.

So I can crawl back into my lurking ledge. Forum atmosphere is yours and other active people to shape.

 

I'm not judging you as a "newcomer". I'm judging you as someone who is stating we need to behave in a certain fashion and then isn't actually setting the example by taking part in assisting those who are newcomers.

Sorry, but your assistance on other sites does not apply to this discussion. It's entirely focused on this community. You're judging people based on their activity on these forums. Thus I am judging you by your inactivity on them.

 

Ryiah, you did ask a general question about him because of his low post count, that is kinda like judging or being general suspicious..

 

Why are you responding if you're just going to ignore the context of my posts?

 

now your jugging me as well.. your even harassing me for no reason,..

 

Ah. Right. Got it. You're trolling again. I'll just go back to not clicking "Show ignored content".

 

thats pretty immature, if you cant deal with my constructive respond, you call ma a troll.. i got that, thank you... I was just confronting you with your own words, not mine. You reasoning was perfect..

 

Never click the "Show ignored content button". It's not worth it. People seldom change on the Internet.

But it does explain why you were talking to yourself

 

I think that some naysayer's on there "high horse" learned something useful today, and maybe think twice before "attacking" new members on this forum next time. Even if it was not intentional , don't assume you know some one you don't, or pretend to know there background.

It's nice that people want to help, but you don't have to judge any one to do that..Its very possible..

 

uh is that slang I'm not familiar with or something? How is that a threat?

 

Go see part 2:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/epic-im-making-a-game-thread-part-2.392537/

 

No thanks.

 

When I was starting out with game development, I didn't have the first clue as to what I was doing. I had grand plans and no patience. I wanted to build The Perfect Game and all that nonsense.

I'm definitely more of a starter than a finisher, so I easily fall into the trap of taking a simple idea and blowing it up into something huge. Which is why I struggled to be effective in my gamedev -- even getting started was tough because I had taken on too much and didn't know where to begin. I'm glad there are people here like @Ryiah, @BoredMormon, @JoeStrout, and @jhocking "naysaying" people into starting smaller, as I was one of those people encouraged to start small and save my magnum opus for when I was a bit more experienced.

Setting a manageable scope for my first published game is the only reason I finished it. And doing so has been a fantastic source of experience, much more so than floundering about, wallowing in despair in my massive ideas that went nowhere. And actually finishing a product has boosted my confidence enough to take on a considerably larger idea for my next project.

@Freakyuno, one thing you said that I disagree with and didn't see responded to:

While it doesn't cost a developer financially to waste time writing code or dragging around assets that will never see the light of day, it does cost in a considerably more valuable resource: time. Devaluing my time was a mistake I made often over the past 30 years, and it's not until recently that I understood how grievous of an error that is. Our time is (in my opinion, obviously) the most valuable thing we can spend, and efforts to save newcomers from wasting theirs is a noble cause in my book.

As others have pointed out, even on the most asinine of posts about huge game ideas with no previous experience, I haven't seen members encourage the newcomer to abandon the idea, but rather postpone it until they know what they're doing. Often times they're posting something like "I want to make an MMO but don't know where to start!", to which a perfectly acceptable and helpful answer is "Start by making a few smaller games first to build your knowledge and experience."

Having seen the light, I'm proud to be one of these "naysayers" now, doing my best to save newcomers from the irreplaceable loss of their valuable time by toiling ineffectively at something they're vastly unqualified to take on, and instead, pointing them down a path that will, with time and dedication, get them to where they want to be.

Edited to remove redundant word.

 

Ok

 

I'm sincerely glad that you found a style of development that works for you, and a pattern of organization that allows you to get the stuff in your head, done so you or others can enjoy it.

For the record: Breaking someone's BIG GAME IDEA into digestible chunks and having them work on components, much like having them work on smaller games, is probably more effective then telling them to go off and do something else completely until they've "earned" the right through experience to make their game.

Someone in another thread said it very well. Just because people are new to these forums, or Unity, doesn't mean they are new to development, or game making. We often make a whole lot of assumptions about the person asking for help.

Also, just to put it on the record: Being helpfully skeptic and suggesting they watch tutorials, get better at development...learn to code...etc. Being realistic about their "ability" - is completely different than what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if I'm quoting a really small subset of these forums, in fact I'm pretty new here myself (idle account), but I commonly read:

"You have no hope of making an MMO / Open World XYZ / Type of Game you want" Try something you're "capable" of. I just don't think there's room for that advice, I really don't.

 

Nobody looks at the post count. We look at the content of the post. There is a huge difference between someone new to Unity and someone new to game dev.

Q: "I want to make a MMO survival game with open world levels. How do I do it in Unity?"

Q: "How does one handle streaming in of assets for a large scene in Unity?"

Both questions are technically identical. But the level of experience shows through. You see this sort of thing throughout the forums.

 

I think this is the source of our disconnect. Maybe we're not seeing the same threads, but I generally don't see that kind of attitude here. There are a few people on the forums that are a bit abrasive, arrogant, and harsher than they should be, sure. But when you compare these forums to the Internet as a whole, that percentage is remarkably lower than anywhere else, and even the ones who are kinda dicks about it are at least (usually) giving sound advice, unlike some places where people are mean just to be hurtful.

 

Speaking for myself, I usually start by trying to ascertain the asker's level of experience (eg. "do you already know how to program?") I myself was hardly new to game development when I started using Unity; my anecdote about when I scoped smaller and then sold my first game was from before Unity even existed, let alone when I started using Unity.

This is why my book Unity in Action doesn't spend any time up front talking about project scope and simply dives into developing examples; I wrote the book I wish I had when I was new to Unity, a resource designed for people who already know how to program.

That said, boredMormon is right that often you can get a good read on the asker's experience level by how they word their question. People who know what they're doing are usually more specific. Plus half the time they just say up-front that they know nothing about game development but want to make an MMO.

 

That book looks like a good resource. I applaud you for having done it, because I know what goes into it:

https://www.amazon.ca/ASP-NET-Progr...27973-9840323?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

 

There are situations where I will bring post count into a discussion, but this is always due to the contents of their post. I have to point towards posts by someone earlier who was complaining about the community and aggressively stating how we should be handling matters... while simultaneously putting zero effort into it themselves.

That's very hypocritical to me and about the only reason why I will bring post count into consideration and thus very rare.

My experiences with reading and posting in threads on these forums has shown that you can generally get a feel for the developer's overall skill by the contents of their posts. This is why it isn't uncommon for me to glance through a person's post history prior to responding to them myself.

I'll give you two very common examples that are good indications of an inexperienced developer. The first is when they ask "Can I make [game genre/style] in [engine name]?". An experienced developer would have simply investigated games made by the engine or simply would have evaluated the engine themselves.

My second example is more of an impression left by their posts. It's not uncommon for an inexperienced developer to feel like their idea is extremely valuable. I've even seen some examples where they won't even discuss the idea itself for fear that someone will steal it. Profit sharing is frequently the payment offered to those who assist them.

Both of these may seem to be extreme examples but they're actually very common on these forums.

 

Oh neat you wrote a tech book too; I hope it turned out well.

 

Was great for about 14 months. That's about the shelf life of a .NET book in Microsoft's current release cycle. As soon as they released .NET 4.0 our sales went underground.

 

I'm betting it would be quite a lot of effort to update it to a newer release?

 

Yea, there's been some pretty serious changes from .net 3.5 to 4.0 and now were' at stable 4.6.1 for .NET and aspnetcore is on the horizon with .NET 5.0 and an entire fundamental shift in how .NET is consumed. (it's going be allow native compiling to individual platforms for web and native apps).

I was originally approached by Wrox to write it, because of my background and connection with the Microsoft Product Teams. They asked me to update it a couple years ago but I didn't have time at that time to do it, so I let it sit, and haven't really ever gone back.

Generally speaking, the experience was amazing. If you're going to write a tech book, try to get someone to commit to publishing it first. If you can't do that, then don't do it for the money, cause time vs. payment even widely published (we sold about half a million copies) wasn't that great when you broke it down and everyone got their cut, but it was a great experience as a bucket list thing.

 

It's called a matter of experience, probably because we've done it before and understand what's involved in the matter.

I'm far from a naysayer, my ultimate advice is shut up and get on with it. You'll realise at some point what you can and can't do. Ask as many questions as you can and push to the limits, if you decide it's "too much" you can always scale back the project.

If someone new comes in and says I'm making the next Skyrim that's fine, doesn't have any bearing on me. They WILL fail horribly and that doesn't just go for newbies either.

Simple fact of the matter is, even if you're great at art / coding and audio plus you've mastered the engine you're using (which lets face it 99% of game dev's aren't, it's a lot of difficult disciplines which takes years to become good at), unless you're a multi-millionaire you'll still be seriously lacking man power and no positive thinking will ever change that.

Although you'll gain a metric boat load of experience from it, so why not? I encourage people to fail hard, because it's the only way to REALLY learn.

I'm not on the "you should make Tetris" team, you want to make an RPG? Go make one, You want to make an MMO? You go do it, it'll never be like the multi-million dollar projects you play from the big leaders but.! It doesn't mean you can't make a good game.

It'll take you years, it'll be hard beyond belief, you'll get frustrated, indifferent, feel hopeless and all the rest but some (not many) will make it to the end of their "big" project and it'll be a once in a life time achievement.

Thing is some of the "naysayers" lack the skill and commitment to do it themselves, their reasoning is because THEY can't do it everyone else shouldn't. Even though they don't really have a clue themselves.

On the other hand, some of these "naysayers" have a LOT of experience. Some of them work (or have worked) for Disney / EA / Naughty D etc. with decades of experience. I've been at this a long time, worked for big / small studios all over.. The only real thing I've realised is everyone is different and you got to find out what works for you.!

 

This is where it gets tuff, because those out there with the experience you're talking about don't always use their knowledge as an opportunity to help. While by no means are they required to help out...coming from them; their words have LOTS of weight to a newbie and can start to "steer" them with the benefit of their experience.

I've hesitated to talk about specific studios or experience with the MMO's we've released in my own past for that reason, I don't want anyone blindly following me rather than making up their own mind, just cause my name is on the back of a box somewhere.

 

Well here's the thing, been at this over a decade and a half this year. Worked for some VERY big studio's, but it's meaningless. Like when you're talking about the MMO's what exactly did you do? I worked on rendering pipelines and tool / middleware integration, it has NOTHING really to do with building a complete game from start to finish.

For all I know you could of been a rock maker, or like big outfits like to do. Employ someone like Bob, nobody really knows what Bob does but he's funny so they'll keep him on.

Holistic experience came from doing stuff from start to finish, don't get me wrong I had access to a lot of training materials and went on some artist courses etc. but 90% of all my knowledge came from just messing about and building prototypes. Audio experience comes from being in bands and spending late nights mixing and mastering, network experience came from doing some software development for an IT company..

Ultimatley it doesn't matter who you've worked for, it's what you've done. You never really know what "experience" someone has.. Even veterans.! You learn by doing, so first rule is noob's have to create a "bull" filter ..

 

In my first MMO we were a team of 9 when we started. I did everything that wasn't art...literally. I was far from a rock maker (literally - but I did write code in almost every other area of the system, as well as all the business process and decisions that went along with that. It's really really hard to summarize the exact work you do in that environment - if you want to ask specific questions, I'd be happy to give you specific answers.

Ever since, my involvement at studios has been pretty high up, though generally I'm at the management / executive level, I stay close to the technology because that's my passion and background;I code, design and implement most of the time still even as psudeo or example items.

I've never worked in a studio that was so big there was a specific "rock" maker. That's typical corporate scale out with corporate waste. That's not a game company, that's a corporation that also makes games as one of their revenue streams.

 

You're missing the point and being a bit too literal (in terms of this thread), nobody cares what you or I have done. If I had a dollar for every ten man team I've met doing this, that and the other I'd have a fair few bucks. Hell some of the best game coders I've ever met don't even do games as a job, just for a laugh.. I don't judge them on the merit of never releasing a game..

The ultimate point being, this is the most useless discussion ever, because you never know A) What the "experienced" persons duties are and / or if they were any good, I've talked to people who worked on big succsessful games, they've been doing it for ages and holistically they're morons. On the flip side I've spoken to people who are brilliant artists, coders, VFX specialists and audio engineers, some of them could probably do a better job than a ten man team.

B) We don't have any relative context on the person making the game, we don't know if they have the aptitude / skill / drive / financial solidarity to make the game in question. We can't guess where they'll be in five / ten years time.. Most bail after the first month when they think it's too hard.

The only thing I do know is, a one or two man team can't make a game like Witcher 3.

Again, the best advice is for them to try and see if they can do whatever it is they want to do.

 

I didn't miss the point, I was answering this question. You ask a question and then when someone answers it saying they're missing the point? Ok...I don't follow but it doesn't really matter I guess.

You're incorrect. A single person CAN make a game like Witcher, time is the factor, not ability. They CANT make it in a timeframe viable for most peoples attention span person time budget, excuses away from family time...etc.

But you're right there with me with your second sentence. Thats why I started all these threads, because whether or not they will do it shouldn't mater to us, only that they want to. None of us should be telling them not to.

I think a lot of people interpreted what I was saying as giving people false hope, or helping a delusion, and I guess I don't see it that way. I specifically stated that it's important to be honest about who these people are, their capabilities, and the likelihood they'll finish their game, or in some cases even start it...that still doesn't mean we should encourage them to give up on their idea and go build something else entirely. It sounds like you feel the same about that, so I guess that does make this discussion pointless unless someone else reads it and decides not to be so "naysay-ish" in the future.

I'm not holistically a moron by any means, but don't ask me to model art, you'd label me one if you saw me try.

 

Well by that statement I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about, it took 200 people three years to make the Witcher 3. Are you immortal?

 

Well...by that statement, I'm not sure YOU know what you're talking about. There are also advantages, big ones to reduced team sizes. I've proven it over and over in my teams and successes (and through my failures) that small high performing teams will outperform teams 10 times their size, in every occasion.

Theres a very real analogy here: No mater how hard you try, or want it to, 9 women can't make you a baby in a month. Throwing people at the problem often hits critical mass and slows you down more than speeds you up.

Now...that being said, content creation is one of the places where that can fall short, cause you can throw bodies at content creation all day long and the more the better.

Numbers aren't everything though man, and if you're a worker bee in a big organization you ought to know that. You MUST have witnessed the large company methodologies and patterns, and they can be excruciating.

 

How many "Vets" do I have to throw at you to say the same thing? @zombiegorilla @hippocoder @Ryiah @Ony @frosted @Gigiwoo Just to name a few will tell you it's impossible in a very small team to make a game like Witcher 3.

I understand a small team of experienced people can be far more productive, but they can NEVER get close in any way shape or form in terms of hollistic content / structure just to name a few. A while back ago I did some work on an MMO with rigidsoft and kept an eye on their progress. Impressive that they managed to make a good looking MMO in three years with a team of seven? Is it I believe.

But it's not a AAA game, they'll admit that.. It's a great game never the less, I'm not saying you can't make good games in the respective fields. I'm not saying you can't make more interesting games than some AAA games, but you can NEVER match the scope EVER!.

Any newbie who has been doing this three months should know that one. If anyone can do it, what the hell is the point of AAA? I mean why do they spend millions on it? There's some smarter people working their than you or I.. They're making the big bucks, so I tend to believe them that there's a reason why they do it..

 

Dude...I'm starting to think that you really can't understand abstract concepts. I'm not delusional. I'm a successful educated, experienced (25 years or so of hands on) technologist who's owned three businesses, written tech books, worked with some of the brightest minds in the industry, and overall been around to see what goes around. I'm not saying that a 1, 2 or 10 person team can create an exact replica of a AAA 10 million dollar budget game.

You don't ever see anyone showing up here asking to create an exact replica of a game they like. They want to create something "like" it as "their" game with their spin on it. They probably do it as a hobby, they probably don't dedicate much more than 20 hours a week to the task, and it'll probably take them 2 years or better to lay down even workable systems. It'd take them 10 to 15 years of constant progress to produce anything even AA - We ALL know that, nobody said differently.

Since you don't understand my point in the slightest I'm going to let it drop, but trust me...I understand your point, we ALL understand your point, the entire forums, because you're been telling anyone and everyone that wanted to make "their" game that they can't, and honestly I think that's crappy at best.

 

I'm trying to make a Mass Effect / Fallout hybrid with a team of six, I'm probably the "delusional" one here. I'll never deny it..

You can say whatever you like about what you've done, but it doesn't change the fact I've never seen it happen. I've never seen a small team even encroach on the likes of Witcher 3. Even after a decade and a half and even if the team consisted of nothing but geniuses. If I saw tangeble proof don't you think I'd sleep a little easier at night?

Two years to lay down workable systems @ 20 hours a week? Hell that's not an issue, you can do that based off a framework in three months. Even with all the tech / frameworks / procedural art components, it's still just a pipe dream to match AAA / AA at best.

If anyone on this forum routes for people to push the boundaries of what's possible as an Indie it's me (hence me doing a stupidly big game). I even believe I can do it, whether I'm right is a different matter.. I can gurantee I'm about the only person who thinks I can.. But even I think it's insane to try and pull off anything near the scope of Witcher 3 and many of the reasons has nothing to do with the actual game itself.

So after that, if I don't understand why I don't "get" your point. I never said anyone can't do anything, whether they'll succeed or not is a different matter.