I just finished and published my first game!

[ludovician]

Pretty exciting stuff considering I've been modding games and making content for the past 17 years of my life.

The site is here if anyone wants to check it out. If you really want to try it out and don't want to buy it just PM me and I'll call you a tester and give you a key to get it.

I just want to generate traffic to its site so it trends toward the popular lists :D It's a throwback to "Lemmings" which I think is probably familiar to most of us older gamers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ck0AoJUxuM

https://burgee.itch.io/lemmy-the-wizard

[R Flair]

This would have been game of the year in the late 70s.

[ludovician]

https://burgee.itch.io/lemmy-the-wizard-demo free demo dogs!

[big_ole_jpn]

yikes

[Pokesan]

please throw this game, and yourself, into the garbage

thank you

[ludovician]

please throw this game, and yourself, into the garbage

thank you

Care to elaborate on your feelings?

[Secrets]

Not bad at all for your first game attempt; I'd recommend continuing other projects once it is completed (if it's something that makes you happy - DON'T ever get roped into this for a living if it's something you aren't passionate about). You'll want to try and make other games and learn from your feedback. Being in game development as a programmer now, I can't offer much from the design perspective, but...
Unfortunately, in the AAA games world, designers are underpaid and short of creating a hit product in the past and bringing that talent to another studio, you probably won't find work short of working for yourself. So if you REALLY want to design your own games, you're gonna have to do everything. Here's some tips:

The game needs to be object-oriented. You appear to be using yoyogames.com's GameMaker software. I am not familiar with this program however I can tell that it's meant to be transparent to the end user using the product. This severely limits your potential for object-oriented programming. An engine like Unity will teach you the basics of OOP and inheritance via C-style languages so you can eventually transfer your work into the 3D or 2D-in-3D worldspace and beyond.

Imagine if you could have a base player object, but instead of equipping it with weapons that you drag and drop and cannot change the functionality of, each weapon would be another class object that you'd attach to the base object itself in some way (in laymans terms).

This is all possible in Unity's Gameobject and UE4's Blueprints. It is better to learn those concepts early and not getting spoiled by someone doing all of that work for you.

I recommend reading up on Unity and abandoning the engine you are using now. It will teach you more in the long run. Even if you use Unity's asset store, it will teach you more about programming than any other game engine while still retaining the 'fun factor' of indie design principles.

If I was making a new 2D Game, Unity is primed to spoil you without forcing you to take shortcuts due to technical limitations. If you want to delve into the rendering engine, though, you should definitely use Unreal 4 instead.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

[ludovician]

Not bad at all for your first game attempt; I'd recommend continuing other projects once it is completed (if it's something that makes you happy - DON'T ever get roped into this for a living if it's something you aren't passionate about). You'll want to try and make other games and learn from your feedback. Being in game development as a programmer now, I can't offer much from the design perspective, but...
Unfortunately, in the AAA games world, designers are underpaid and short of creating a hit product in the past and bringing that talent to another studio, you probably won't find work short of working for yourself. So if you REALLY want to design your own games, you're gonna have to do everything. Here's some tips:

The game needs to be object-oriented. You appear to be using yoyogames.com's GameMaker software. I am not familiar with this program however I can tell that it's meant to be transparent to the end user using the product. This severely limits your potential for object-oriented programming. An engine like Unity will teach you the basics of OOP and inheritance via C-style languages so you can eventually transfer your work into the 3D or 2D-in-3D worldspace and beyond.

Imagine if you could have a base player object, but instead of equipping it with weapons that you drag and drop and cannot change the functionality of, each weapon would be another class object that you'd attach to the base object itself in some way (in laymans terms).

This is all possible in Unity's Gameobject and UE4's Blueprints. It is better to learn those concepts early and not getting spoiled by someone doing all of that work for you.

I recommend reading up on Unity and abandoning the engine you are using now. It will teach you more in the long run. Even if you use Unity's asset store, it will teach you more about programming than any other game engine while still retaining the 'fun factor' of indie design principles.

If I was making a new 2D Game, Unity is primed to spoil you without forcing you to take shortcuts due to technical limitations. If you want to delve into the rendering engine, though, you should definitely use Unreal 4 instead.

Hope that helps, and good luck.


Hey, thanks for checking it out and thanks for all that!

I'm new-ish to programming, self taught in everything. A little C++, javascript, etc.

Gamemaker touts itself as being object oriented, and its language is based on C++ very heavily. My amateurish work probably doesn't show that off, though. Each object in game has it's own lines of code that reference eachother when necessary as well as global functions running the show. I had to program all of the collision detection, movement, etc myself.

Unity was actually next on my list to learn. I have a friend who's pushing it on me heavily, and it's nice to hear from a second source that it's worthwhile. It's actually already installed on my desktop!

This is the first project I've ever finished, so I've gained a ton of confidence and motivation to move onto the next thing.

Your comment is really appreciated, thank you!

[R Flair]

I went to school with game design in mind and took 2 years of computer programming. Never did manage to break away and pursue that dream.

Good on ya. Don't be discouraged even if people clown on your early work.

[ludovician]

I went to school with game design in mind and took 2 years of computer programming. Never did manage to break away and pursue that dream.

Good on ya. Don't be discouraged even if people clown on your early work.

Thanks man, I'm not expecting to make a living at it, but it's a nice alternative hobby to gaming which doesn't fit into my schedule as much as I'd like it to. If you still have the itch check out gamemaker or rpgmaker or anything, and hit me up if you want help starting

With making stuff, you can sit down for 5 hours and go hard or 5 minutes and still accomplish something.

My now-wife doesn't and future kids won't really respond well to "hang on, this game doesn't pause!" So this is the new hobby :D

[R Flair]

Thanks man, I'm not expecting to make a living at it, but it's a nice alternative hobby to gaming which doesn't fit into my schedule as much as I'd like it to. If you still have the itch check out gamemaker or rpgmaker or anything, and hit me up if you want help starting

With making stuff, you can sit down for 5 hours and go hard or 5 minutes and still accomplish something.

My now-wife doesn't and future kids won't really respond well to "hang on, this game doesn't pause!" So this is the new hobby :D

Actually did a little work in unity. I made a cheesy fps game through book tutorials. I haven't had much motivation though because EQ ruined me. My gaming and dev interest has mostly revolved around mmorpgs, but that industry is shrinking unless you want to make free to play games.

I dunno, some things are just probably never meant to be.

[Slathar]

Actually did a little work in unity. I made a cheesy fps game through book tutorials. I haven't had much motivation though because EQ ruined me. My gaming and dev interest has mostly revolved around mmorpgs, but that industry is shrinking unless you want to make free to play games.

I dunno, some things are just probably never meant to be.

yeah ur game would suck because you suck

[R Flair]

yeah ur game would suck because you suck

Ya before this post I was really reconsidering game dev, but now I'm just going to kill myself instead.

[Shrubwise]

Pretty exciting stuff considering I've been modding games and making content for the past 17 years of my life.

The site is here if anyone wants to check it out. If you really want to try it out and don't want to buy it just PM me and I'll call you a tester and give you a key to get it.

I just want to generate traffic to its site so it trends toward the popular lists :D It's a throwback to "Lemmings" which I think is probably familiar to most of us older gamers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ck0AoJUxuM

https://burgee.itch.io/lemmy-the-wizard

Looks fun! Well done man.

[Thulack]

Grats on the game. Looks like a cool little game to kill some time with. Picked it up+some to show support. Always wanted to try my hand at making a game but programming just isnt something i have a passion about. Good luck on your future projects :)

[ludovician]

Thanks so much! It means more than you know :D

[Beckoning]

This looks pretty cool - it's like Lemmings meets Super Meat Boy; this style of game has a huge niche in the speedrunning community (not sure if you watch Awesome Games Done Quick or one of those fundraising marathons).

[ludovician]

This looks pretty cool - it's like Lemmings meets Super Meat Boy; this style of game has a huge niche in the speedrunning community (not sure if you watch Awesome Games Done Quick or one of those fundraising marathons).

Lemmings is what I was going for, and yeah Awesome Games Done Quick is a favorite of mine. I watched a lot of it this year.

Thanks for the compliments, being compared to super meat boy is no joke!

[big_ole_jpn]

just curious ludo, how many copies ya sold thus far? and how long has it been up?

[ludovician]

Disappointingly few. It went up at 1pm my time yesterday, and traffic has been an issue. 12 people have downloaded the demo, three have bought the game, and roughly 350 have visited the page.

itch.io offers a ton of free games, so charging for mine gets it overlooked. I didn't know how free-game driven it was until i posted it.

Going to look at steam green light probably, what's to lose?

Regardless though, I made a game and sold a copy, so in a really really big picture kinda way: life dream accomplished!

[AzzarTheGod]

its his first game and he just wanted to share that you can do something positive with your spare time rather than troll forums

[Barkingturtle]

I've succumbed to your high-pressure sales tactics.

Only played for a few minutes so far but I like your game. It's fun. It's way better than the pure crap I've created with GameMaker.

Seriously though, thanks for the game -- and best of luck.

[big_ole_jpn]

I've succumbed to your high-pressure sales tactics.

Only played for a few minutes so far but I like your game. It's fun. It's way better than the pure crap I've created with GameMaker.

Seriously though, thanks for the game -- and best of luck.

u just trying to pressure us into buying your gay zombie book

[ludovician]

I've succumbed to your high-pressure sales tactics.

Only played for a few minutes so far but I like your game. It's fun. It's way better than the pure crap I've created with GameMaker.

Seriously though, thanks for the game -- and best of luck.

Thanks for buying it man, super appreciated! If you get stuck there's some cheats to skip levels, PM me if you need 'em!

[maskedmelon]

u just trying to pressure us into buying your gay zombie book

lol

[Matthalas Winterheart]

This is not my type of game really, however with that being said. Well done on the hard work you've put into this. Dont let the trolls bring you down, it takes a lot for a man to pursue a dream that he's got and see it come to a finished product. Keep up the hard work and best of luck to you.

[Saludeen]

Now remake Everquest because I don't have high hopes for Pantheon.