Great! Many posts!

I would ask some of you guys to chill a bit. Yes I did realize a bit late that I probably do need feedback and that's partly why I'm here.

But at the moment I just wanted to know how many of you there are so I can ask questions like:

"What is the area you're having the most horrible time with?"

Because music is killing me right now. Mixing takes aeons partly because my computer lacks ram. I had half-way given up when I first made that post.

Animating is fun but painting is really hard to get in the zone. This is probably the only area that truly brings me down.

Another good question is:

"Do you write every game ideas down into a document as you would show it to other people?

Or do you just skip the process entirely and go directly into programming because you're going to change everything anyway?"

I'm an aspiring programmer and this is a side job at best but that doesn't mean I'm not serious about it.

To be honest it's more freedom for me than glory. Just the sheer fact that I have total control over most aspects gives me pleasure.

I've belonged to a team before and released a portfolio-game and let me just say that more of us didn't always get us anywhere.

Besides, we know we can't do everything. I do need a lot of external libraries and decent engine.

And I'd probably use sound effects that someone else had already made. Sometimes I even borrow beats and forms.

I aspire to make games because I want to and I'm happy when I work towards it. For now that's good enough for me.

My experience is about to be alone moving forward but employing people ( members of my team ) on small parts.

I must say that design every aspect of the game by myself is really cool but also i need help on some parts to improve the result.

Being on a team is really fun and you learn from the others.

I think that mix the terms of "alone" and "team" is really cool.

I want to try it at least once, but I still feel the lack of programming skills :(

Try to make something simple then.

I'm not good in terms of programming but step by step you'll be able to do it.

Would-be: yes. One day I hope to return to game coding from a position of financial security that I can indulge myself as a sabbatical or the way the aristocracy used to dabble in science to keep themselves interested with no need to worry about money!

One-man: while I wouldn't mind getting into the musical side as that's a hobby of mine, I have no real interest or aptitude for art so it's more likely I'd create a playable game which someone else produces the production assets (models, art, music, maybe levels) for

I've enjoyed decades of 1-man-dev, mostly as a hobby, probably seen by others as an eccentric English man.

Only tip I would give is don't (attempt to) contact publishers, investors, or corporations; They're bad for flow.

Everyone begins as a master-of-all, jack-of-all. You decline from there as brainwashing sets in. It’s socially unacceptable to be good at everything? Seriously?

Although my programming career has been distinguishable (senior graphics programmer at Square Enix on Final Fantasy XV, Apple driver engineer), I have actually released more music into the gaming world than I have code.
I’ve professionally produced 3 games, designed 3, credited for story in 1, produced art for 7 (see signature), programmed 34, and produced music/SFX for nearly 50.
I consider music my weakness.

No one is bound with limitations until society implants this idiotic idea into your head that you have a choice between mastering one thing or partially mastering several things.
It’s an idiotic concept which has literally no basis in science.

I will never raise my children to believe that they need to pick a single career path.


L. Spiro

Like so many of you guys, I myself work full time and am a hobbyist game programmer on the side. Though most of my "demos" have been more technical based (oh look, I figured out how to write and atmospheric scattering demo based on Nishita's paper, or a 2D fluid simulator based on Stam's paper... or how about that impulse-based physics engine based on Baraff work? You know what, I want to write a flight simulator, where is that O'Reilly's book?)

Only recently (like last year) I decided to sit create something end to end. So much done but do much to do, but such an enlightening journey. For me, my days tend to conclude with kids in bed, wifey watching some fun shows on CBS, and me with my laptop coding away. (I personally, will always chose coding over TV!).

Also, God bless the creators of Gimp, Blender, Eclipse CDT, MinGW, SDL and GLEW.

Finding a partner is a difficult process. I have tried many times in my life, and have yet to find one single ideal partner. Those who do, lucky for them.

It's not as easy as finding someone else with the same taste and goals as yours. The person must share the same vision, and work just as hard. Many people out there underestimate the amount of work to build anything. They would hear "library X is easy, and doing Y is simple", make them think that it only takes a couple of weeks to build something significant. The amount of dedication that you need to put on building it basically gambling your entire future on it, and the only rewards you have is that game of yours is out there and people are playing it. You may build some monetization on it, but to make real significant income from the get-go is almost impossible. It's not money, it's not fame.

Very few people share this, and even among those who do, there's skill level, there's personality differences, there's trust, and then there are things in everyone's life that is simply out of your control that may throw your project out to the side. All these things have to take place in order for partnership to work.

Used to be back in the day, just getting back into it with some UE4 goodness.
Will probably double-shift the music duty with my buddy though lol