The answer to every 'Can it be done?' and 'I've lost my way' post.

Congrats on taking the next step on your journey! Take a moment to savor the experience - you released a game into the wild! When you're ready, roll up your sleeves, and do it again - try, improve, repeat.

Gigi

 

Hi guys! I`m sorry - I forgot to tell you, that my game "Spiro" from Gigi Challenge was released on Google Play Store on 19.09.2017 To be honest, it took me 16 weeks, because it was my first game and I had to learn Unity first My experience in making games was zero. For now it got 196 downloads, one-third are foreign players and I am so proud that I made it There were times when I wanted to break the project because I was stuck on something. Sometimes I wondered if I wanted to do it, to make games, to sit after working hours and - try, improve, repeat - again and again. But after all I learned many important things:

1. Scope small, start right - Minimum Viable Product. You need to watch this great short film -
2. How to organize your time and work - I use Trello board. It is important to have a place that remembers what you need to do. And for me the best idea was to create tasks that you can probably do in 30 minutes! Even if it`s watching a tutorial on youtube. Thanks to it, even if there is one thing after another that day, you can still make a little progress in your game and make you feel good.
3. Don`t try to invent the wheel again - more of the problems were solved on the unity/stack/gamedev forums, which help me a lot .If you can not find help and you stuck on something longer than 1-2 hours, just stop and came back to the problem in time and go for a walk or something. For me it works great but before I started using this method I lost so many days for simple problems that I think most of beginner gamedev also make.
4. Work and life balance - sounds trivial but too many developers feel compelled to put in extra hours on nights and weekends, even as studies suggest crunching can actually hurt a game’s outcome. Unplug the mind, do sport, eat healthy and sleep well! Don`t forget to socialize with other like minded people

Thanks to all for your wonderful stories that motivated me to create my first game! Thanks Gigiwoo for your 12 weeks challenge thanks to which i am here where i am

Ps. Now I`m working on another game and I will be in touch with you guys more often and I hope that my story will also inspire someone to create something of their own.

SPIRO GAME

 

@czkczm - Grats!!!! A small step for man, a giant leap for czkczm .
Gigi

 

Accept

 

DId I do that right?

 

Well, you didn't do it wrong.

 

Plast from the bast.

 

Slightly more acceptable necro. >_>

 

this thread is worth the necro just read through the entry post again and it makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy ^^

 

I didn't realize it, but I am doing exactly this challenge myself. 4-12 weeks of work to complete & release our first game, Traveler's Tale

We're a part time team, but our goal is to stick with this timeline in real world time (1-3 months), not just in hours worked (4-12 weeks = 160-480 hours per person).

Tried to start this late November, but Christmas & a bit after took over. We're booting up fresh now, so I'll post back how far we got when we release or progress around 5/16.

I ACCEPT

 

Sounds cool, best of luck to you! I'd love to read about your progress, but the link under "Traveler's Tale" goes to a user profile, that doesn't seem like it's supposed to be like that.

 

Doh! Copied the wrong link. Thanks for pointing that out! Just fixed it.

 

What if one of us makes an awesome game, first. I think that person should win a prize.

 

I already did. www.dogfightelite.com 100% me (except for the assets from the asset store and such)

 

Could finishing be the reward?

Gigi

 

That's exactly what I was thinking. Releasing one of my games would be the biggest reward possible.

Releasing any of the 3 games we have worked on would be my team's biggest dream fulfilled. To become a "successful" (in any measurement) game developer would be fantastic for us. Even if all that meant was just a release.

On a side note, I keep having to fight feature creep. I'm drawing from pre-established lore & finding myself thinking about all these different calculations & complex math for procedurally generating the entire massive world the game is based on, just so I can get some insignificant numbers for my small game (ex. like crunching population numbers based on land density to determine the chance of a party member being a Half Elf compared to a Human). It's silly, when my game is something like <1% of said world - and not even necessarily a part of the same lore

I need to realize I'm not making the enormous game I originally planned over 8 years ago. I'm making an entirely different game - a very small project that just derives a tiny bit of lore from it. Sometimes it's hard to separate the two though since the smaller project could easily transform into the bigger one if I let it.