> So how can you take 7 years to make your game? [...] Simply open up your code editor, download a basic windowing layer like SFML (we aren’t savages and this isn’t handmade hero), and then start writing your resource manager, event system, animation system, physics system (which you’ll ultimately throw out and replace with Box2D), scene manager, GUI code, serialisation framework, build tool-chain, entity-component system, and texture manager, to name but a few.
That's the meta game, where the author of the game enjoys building the game as its own game. Not productive if you're trying to ship a game, but definitely sounds fun.
I have been working on my roguelike for about twenty years. I've never come close to even playing a quarter of the way through it. It's never been anywhere near done.
If you enjoy writing those things, it's actually better since you're getting more motivation to work on it. You actually like making it, so it's much less draining and much more satisfying.
Also, you only write what you need. Honestly I can never find a library that is good enough for what I want to do. Games have so many possible features that it's impossible to cover them all with good libraries.
So it's better to aim low, with simple enough features, and make them yourself so that it's tailored for your programming style, and for what you want to do. You're not reinventing the wheel (I'm not talking about making a graphics of physics engine).
That's the meta game, where the author of the game enjoys building the game as its own game. Not productive if you're trying to ship a game, but definitely sounds fun.
It's hard to stay focused on building a shippable product when you have no stakeholders. It's something I struggle with myself when I have 'build yourself a side-gig' time. At the end of the day, no one really cares if you fail.
To be fair, if you google the first steps in choosing a library, you are going to get bombarded with people suggesting you do things from scratch avoiding any boilerplate that people before you worked on.
You know... for customization and some obscure problem that one person ran into...
And the alternative is to use a framework and sell your soul to it or, even worse, the company that makes it. In some cases that includes giving them a % of your revenue. If you ever ship, that is.
Ha, amateurs. The Haiku operating system project is almost seventeen years old and still hasn't shipped a beta.
Finding excuses is vital, but it's important to have both excuses for not shipping the beta and excuses for why beta is almost here and there's no need to think the past history of delays bodes ill for the project.
Here's a HN comment back in January where the poster says Haiku's beta will be out "this quarter" (Q1 calendar 2018), I laugh at that, and another HN poster says OK, but definitely by _next_ quarter (Q2 calendar 2018).
Well, developing an OS is more work than a game
That said those working on Haiku suffer from the same NIH syndrome as the article's author but unfortunately all the efforts of the 'pragmatics' one who wanted to reimplement BeOS on top of Linux failed much earlier than Haiku..
New OS are in a bad situation: those build on top of Linux doesn't seemn to attract contributors (I blame personally a lack of imagination: a kernel isn't an OS!) but those who use their own kernel are doomed for the lack of drivers..
You know, it's almost as if a project run entirely by volunteers, who have lives outside of it, entirely on their spare time, which fluctuates wildly from week-to-week, meaning that sometimes key developers who were previously available are now suddenly not, makes it anywhere from "difficult" to "functionally impossible" to give accurate date predictions; let alone ship a release...
Just 7 years? That's surprisingly short in game development terms, especially where certain examples of vapourware/overly ambitious titles/indie games are concerned.
I mean, this guy took 13 years to make his dream game:
It gets all the more insane with mods and hacks too, since fan projects don't have any real pressure to get released at all, so overly OCD creators can spend decades on projects without having a publisher telling them to hurry up.
Mushroom Kingdom Fusion started in 2007 and only got cancelled in 2015, with the last demo being version 0.5. Brutal Mario had its first known demo released in 2006, and is still (presumably) in development in 2018. May be longer, said first demo was actually number demo 6.
In the Doom community, Mordeth apparently started in 1997, and was (probably) still in development just a few years ago. If it ever does get finished, it would have been in development so long that Duke Nukem Forever would have started and finished its own development in the middle of this game's dev cycle.
Really, games can take a really long time, especially if you don't have much in the way of monetary pressures or nagging publishers. And hey, who knows what projects will turn out to join that list in future. For all we know, thousands of people may have been working on games since the 90s, with their finished product only being released sometime in the next few years.
Somewhat unrelated, but Adam Butcher's (the guy who took 13 years to release his dream game) Internet Story is a beautifully made, creepy, short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-SL4ejpP94
I have to say I have trouble differentiating these games, though. From what I can see Terraria, Starbound, and Moon Quest seem to be generally the same style of game, but it's not clear to me why play one over the other.
Doesn't that apply to pretty much everything? Be it JS frameworks, games, fridges, toothpaste etc there always seems far too much choice. It is the nature of our system.
For games, frameworks and such like there's so much choice that it's unlikely you'll come across all in a niche - so you're choosing from the few little islands you happened to come across. One or two of those discoveries will have a wrinkle or two that appeal and there'll be the occasional surprising diamond.
Only much later when the SaaS or game closure is on the front page of HN do dozens of others get to hear of the thing and make posts along the lines of "wish I'd heard of this earlier..."
I far prefer the world of Indie games to the tedious repetition of AAA titles.
Well it seems Moon Quest is single player-only, which might or might not help narrow things down. It does look pretty cool though despite that limitation. I might try it out.
This is exactly how it feels to me as well. I've played Terraria, I've played Starbound. Moon Quest doesn't seem to offer anything unique over those games.
Oh man I knew this was going to be a disaster when I head they were going straight into a grad degree.
I'm still on the fence about if CS students can actually program before working in industry, but doing a grad program that isnt paid for by Industry was a major red flag.
On the bright side, it sounds like OP learned tons and tons and tons. While the game flopped, I bet they could throw together a top notch program in a year with their lessons learned.
Second that: game looks amazing! Maybe you should scratch the irony in the article because I'm sold :) I'm spending the next seven years on my project :)
One and a bit programmers - I worked on moon quest for a couple of months a couple of years ago, and will probably be helping out a bit more in a couple of months.
I backed this project some number of years ago on Kickstarter. I had honestly forgotten all about it, and then out of the blue last week: an email announcing that it was released and how to obtain it!
It looks great and plays well (notwithstanding early access); congratulations to the author for shipping at last.
I have been doing this for the past three years with a game based on the film adaptation of my favorite drug adventure book.
Don't forget to save all of your work locally, on the cheapest hard disk with the highest failure rate. That way, when your hard disk fails 2 years in you can start from scratch.
This mirrors a lot of what the guys who made Retro / Grade [0] said about how they made their game after quitting their day jobs. Although from this post it seems like he had a better time doing this, than they had.
I've been following it for a while, and the game turned out really well (even ignoring the fact that it is still in beta). Images and movies don't do it full justice, but the game is quite beautiful.
jfim|7 years ago
That's the meta game, where the author of the game enjoys building the game as its own game. Not productive if you're trying to ship a game, but definitely sounds fun.
munificent|7 years ago
jokoon|7 years ago
Also, you only write what you need. Honestly I can never find a library that is good enough for what I want to do. Games have so many possible features that it's impossible to cover them all with good libraries.
So it's better to aim low, with simple enough features, and make them yourself so that it's tailored for your programming style, and for what you want to do. You're not reinventing the wheel (I'm not talking about making a graphics of physics engine).
HumanDrivenDev|7 years ago
It's hard to stay focused on building a shippable product when you have no stakeholders. It's something I struggle with myself when I have 'build yourself a side-gig' time. At the end of the day, no one really cares if you fail.
robertAngst|7 years ago
You know... for customization and some obscure problem that one person ran into...
doitmw|7 years ago
severine|7 years ago
Some highlights:
365 days of pixel art
109 points eigenbom 3 years ago 34 comments
(https://medium.com/@eigenbom/365-days-of-pixel-art-f6131f280...)
A game whose source code fits in one tweet
162 points eigenbom 3 years ago 51 comments
(https://github.com/omnus/tiny-twitch)
I'm 2 years into development of my sandbox game, Moonman
128 points eigenbom 5 years ago 71 comments
(http://bp.io/post/1501)
Ask HN: What are some poorly written but very successful open source software?
35 points eigenbom a year ago 32 comments
3.5 years of open development for a procedurally-generated adventure game
15 points eigenbom 3 years ago 4 comments
(http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=21997.0)
Moonman: 3 Years of Solo Gamedev and 2 Left to Go
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9011787
13 points eigenbom 3 years ago 8 comments
I'm a dad
11 points eigenbom a year ago 9 comments
tialaramex|7 years ago
Finding excuses is vital, but it's important to have both excuses for not shipping the beta and excuses for why beta is almost here and there's no need to think the past history of delays bodes ill for the project.
Here's a HN comment back in January where the poster says Haiku's beta will be out "this quarter" (Q1 calendar 2018), I laugh at that, and another HN poster says OK, but definitely by _next_ quarter (Q2 calendar 2018).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16149192
renox|7 years ago
waddlesplash|7 years ago
staz|7 years ago
ChefboyOG|7 years ago
There's no need to personally attack me like that.
eigenbom|7 years ago
CM30|7 years ago
I mean, this guy took 13 years to make his dream game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b0tSu0QDQ0
Duke Nukem Forever infamously took 15 years to make.
And well, as Metacritic shows in this list, 5/6/7 year development times are not too uncommon in general:
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/games-that-shed-vaporware-...
It gets all the more insane with mods and hacks too, since fan projects don't have any real pressure to get released at all, so overly OCD creators can spend decades on projects without having a publisher telling them to hurry up.
Mushroom Kingdom Fusion started in 2007 and only got cancelled in 2015, with the last demo being version 0.5. Brutal Mario had its first known demo released in 2006, and is still (presumably) in development in 2018. May be longer, said first demo was actually number demo 6.
In the Doom community, Mordeth apparently started in 1997, and was (probably) still in development just a few years ago. If it ever does get finished, it would have been in development so long that Duke Nukem Forever would have started and finished its own development in the middle of this game's dev cycle.
Really, games can take a really long time, especially if you don't have much in the way of monetary pressures or nagging publishers. And hey, who knows what projects will turn out to join that list in future. For all we know, thousands of people may have been working on games since the 90s, with their finished product only being released sometime in the next few years.
Reedx|7 years ago
Very very few people and companies have that kind of runway and patience.
zichy|7 years ago
joshvm|7 years ago
qrian|7 years ago
They also have video presenting great tips for prolonged development such as ‘different mechanic for every rooms’ and ‘stick to your original plan’.
kuroguro|7 years ago
_edit_
Nvm figured it out :3
projektir|7 years ago
I have to say I have trouble differentiating these games, though. From what I can see Terraria, Starbound, and Moon Quest seem to be generally the same style of game, but it's not clear to me why play one over the other.
NeedMoreTea|7 years ago
For games, frameworks and such like there's so much choice that it's unlikely you'll come across all in a niche - so you're choosing from the few little islands you happened to come across. One or two of those discoveries will have a wrinkle or two that appeal and there'll be the occasional surprising diamond.
Only much later when the SaaS or game closure is on the front page of HN do dozens of others get to hear of the thing and make posts along the lines of "wish I'd heard of this earlier..."
I far prefer the world of Indie games to the tedious repetition of AAA titles.
resonious|7 years ago
dom96|7 years ago
robertAngst|7 years ago
Oh man I knew this was going to be a disaster when I head they were going straight into a grad degree.
I'm still on the fence about if CS students can actually program before working in industry, but doing a grad program that isnt paid for by Industry was a major red flag.
On the bright side, it sounds like OP learned tons and tons and tons. While the game flopped, I bet they could throw together a top notch program in a year with their lessons learned.
fritzy|7 years ago
freekh|7 years ago
nitwit005|7 years ago
Although I see he got some freelancer artists and a musician. At least he didn't have to learn to compose music (people have done just that).
bananaboy|7 years ago
ropable|7 years ago
It looks great and plays well (notwithstanding early access); congratulations to the author for shipping at last.
jzemeocala|7 years ago
Don't forget to save all of your work locally, on the cheapest hard disk with the highest failure rate. That way, when your hard disk fails 2 years in you can start from scratch.
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
milanmot|7 years ago
NegatioN|7 years ago
[0]: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1017963/Obsessive-Compulsive-D...
xchaotic|7 years ago
bananaboy|7 years ago
eigenbom|7 years ago
ianseyer|7 years ago
Development began in 2002, and the main author says 1.0 will be out in 14 years!
Extremely complex generative world with a vi-flavored interface. The game itself is like no man's sky/Minecraft.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress
the_duke|7 years ago
gavanwoolery|7 years ago
zenbai|7 years ago
sandworm101|7 years ago
Change game engine mid-beta.
Replace dev team mid-beta.
Keep adding game mechanics post-release.
"Beta" has no meaning. Just release whatever you got whenever you feel like it.
BinaryArcher|7 years ago
bhouston|7 years ago
eigenbom|7 years ago