Slashdot Mirror
Indie Games - Fast, Cheap and Everywhere
bios10h writes "MSNBC has an article about indie game developers and their businesses. 'INDEPENDENT COMPUTER GAMING: It's not always pretty, but ask any one in the biz and they'll say that it represents the purest form of game development. And sometimes the cheapest.' Interesting read about the indie games scene... maybe we have indie developers in the Slashdot crowd that would like to comment on this."
A good Indie MMOG: Rubies Of Eventide. I have only heard good things about Rubies'.
Personally, I have an Indie game of my own invention. Although it doesn't take much thought, it does demand agility when using both a mouse and a keyboard with one hand at the same time. It's basic premise has to do with three open browser windows, the web site images.google.com, the text strings "angelina jolie" - "salma hayek" - "britney spears", a scroll mouse, and a big wad of tissue.
My girlfriend is not very fond of the game, and adamantly refuses to play along with me. I even offerred to let her use the joy stick instead of the keyboard.
In my opinion, the hardest part is getting good Artists. I run the open source SQ7.org game project, and we're doing some exciting stuff. We're doing fully voice acted, 3d rendered, interactivty, or a large scale.
While we've always have plenty of programming help (not that we couldn't use more..), I've found that getting 3d graphic artists is amazingly difficult..
Programmers tend to discover the site on their own, or read my sig in Slashdot, and help to volunteer to bring together a project like that. Programming types Rock.
But Graphical Artists tend not to do that, and I'm not sure how to attract them.. I've tried posting to 3d forums, Offering to pay the few bucks I can each month.. But I've never really gotten as much as I need. The people I have are Great, and we're doing some pretty damn cool artwork, but we need more help.
How do other people solve this problem? Can anyone give any advice on how to get their attention? Adwords on Google?
Colin
Colin Davis
So what are the best sites to check out the indie gaming scene on? Gamespot and all those don't quite cut it. Is there an underground game review site that I'm missing? Hed.
http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
Check it out: http://www.compsol.net/users/kinghawk/cdmmorpg.swf
Gotta love the "Xtreme PVP"
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
that is the real question
I would really like to be an indie game developer. It's there like a 3D engine for free for noobs like me?
Who says one form is purer than another? Does creating games for profit make them impure? I certainly hope to profit from my creative work, and it is quite pure - in fact, it is religious music. Where do these standards come from? Look more closely for assumptions in articles, and at least explain them in the write-up, editors.
I am an indie game developer in the J2ME and desktop java gaming realm..
My first game, MoonBuzz gets finished in August for sale to run on most handsets worldwide..:)
Tools:
Blender!
Gimp!
java
Don't Tread on OpenSource
INDEPENDENT COMPUTER GAMING. It?s not always pretty, but ask any one in the biz and they?ll say that it represents the purest form of game development. And sometimes the cheapest. A check for ten bucks sent to a site called Cheap Ass Games buys you "Dr. Blob?s Organism." ... cutting edge ... a different audience ... are indie games the punk rock of computer gaming?
And because indie gaming lies outside of the publisher money train , and all the corporate pressures to follow trends , it often delivers some of the most creative PC games available to an audience far beyond your typical 19-year-old gamer.
Cheap
INNOVATION ON A BUDGET
Geoff Howland, a full time UNIX administrator, devotes his free time to his company Alitius. With Alitius?s employee population running at one , Howland, himself , the chances of creating a game with the big budget and killer graphics of a typical retail title are zilch. But Alitius?s garage-like business philosophy in an industry of manicured office parks is not a cause for complaint, but an incentive for creativity.
"In retail, there are about five or six different genres. No one is doing anything different," said Howland. "Whereas independents can and should concentrate on that difference."
His game, "BaseGolf," is a coffee-break friendly diversion that combines aspects of, yes, baseball and golf. But the "difference" cited by Howland extends beyond sports hybrids. In indie gaming, it can include new story-lines, audiences and game play.
"Teenage Lawnmower," from Robinson Technology, a Japan-based husband and wife team, plays like a Gen Y afterschool special, with an alcoholic mother, an abusive boyfriend and a lawnmower gig.
Battlefront.com recreates World War II-era armored battles for the serious military gamer, a niche market. Dexterity Software does the opposite; reaching a mass audience with puzzle games. Both of these indie developers target audiences that retail games can?t or won?t reach.
For game developer Egenesis the difference lies in turning the massively multiplayer online game on its head. "A Tale in the Desert" ignores dragons and orcs for game play geared toward constructing an almost utopian society. Players accumulate power not through combat, but through mentoring and acts of leadership.
Mentoring? Radical.
WHO ARE THE INDIES?
Games hatched beyond the pale of the corporate development is not new. On the contrary, it?s where game development was born. Yet while computer gaming goes Hollywood with all its giant E3 tradeshows and movie stars plugging console games, a steady stream of talented programmers is making independent games , traditionally an idea incubator of sorts , a continually fascinating subculture of computer gaming.
"These developers are really returning to the way PC game development was in the late 80?s and early ?90s before it became so corporate," said indie game evangelist James Hills. "Doing it because they love games and have a passion for creating the visions they have in their heads."
The approximately 1,500 teams and individuals involved with indie development are as diverse as the games themselves. Some are in the business to make it big by selling their title or talent to a major game publisher. Others, including an ever-increasing number of developers with experience in larger companies, cherish the freedom of doing what they please with Rob Malda's love sausage.
"I see a lot more people with really solid, big game development making the leap," said David Nixon, executive producer at RealOneArcade, an online game portal. "It?s why they got into game development in the first place."
Dexterity president Steve Pavlina once worked in commercial game development. "With game budgets larger and teams larger, developers can feel like a cog in the machine," he said. "They feel like there is no room for creativity. So yes, there?s a move to go back to the roots."
There's a reason why Indie games developers are indie. They just don't cut it for the big publishers, and trying a few reveals why! They usually develop sub-standard games with crap graphics, no sound and appalling gameplay. That's why I never bother with their junk. Especially when you can usually *cough*obtain*cough* big-name games for free if you look hard enough anyway.
Content will always beat flash and show.. (unless you're talking about Squaresoft and FF.. they still sell their millions of copies..)
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
Like it said in the article, this kind fo stuff brings you back to the gaming scene int eh late 80's and early 90's, where some of the best gaming titles came from. Some of the gaming companies that made games in those times grew to become bigger franchises, such as ID with their cheasier games like Commander Keen. I still remember games like Epic Pinball, Raptor, and such, that I still play in Dosemu all the time. I remember a quote once, I think it was from the guys from ID, that basically said the next big gameing change isnt going to be done by the big guys, but by a couple of guys in their garage (if anyone remembers who said that, feel free to enlighten me, I cant remember and it would be nice to give credit). Ill spend a few hours checking out some of these games, they ought to somewhat entertaining, even if they are simple few minute diversions...
It's called "Slashdot Effect." And MSNBC just lost.
I suspect that you're supposed to infer that 'pure' indicates that indie games are driven by a desire to produce a product from individual inspiration, whereas commercial games are more likely to be based on marketing stats.
Indie games are great. I love them because their communities are so small and tight-knit. One of my favorite Indie games would have to be Wulfram 2. The game is completely volenter driven. There are more than a few people who have stuck with the developer for as long as five years.
There are some problems with Indie games however, the biggest would have to be support. Alot of these games are struggling to stay alive, and to do so they need to either be pay to play, have a large number of donations, or just simply have a ton of advertisements.
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
I run my own indie game company and let me tell you, there's nothing better than having the freedom to do whatever you like in the development process. Many game companies, especially the big ones, make you work one position and your input isn't appreciated on other topics. With Indie game companies you'll have anywhere from 1-15 people working at the company making something that truly (in most cases) want to play themselves.
The ideas portrayed in many indie games, although not blockbusters, are normally fun to play, small in size and are fairly inexpensive. With my company I have the freedom to code in whatever OS's I want, so my companies next game will be released for Linux/Windows at the same time, absolutely no code changes, literally. Most companies don't give that sort of freedom, where indie projects do!
There's a couple to choose from, but for free engines, IMHO, your best best is Crystal Space 3D. PlaneyShift made use of it successfully - it's pretty good.
However, my tool of choice is Torque which isn't free - it's $100, and you get the source code for it. Damned flexible, and one hell of a community behind it. Go cruse the forums (same site, under Make Games) and check it out. And take a look at the screenshots. I'm currently using it on Trajectory Zone (Mm.... why bother with the link - still no dev pics up there at the moment, even though it's almost done!) and I'm really impressed with it's power - the best $100 I ever spent for game development.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
"...They don't want to be reminded that they're idiots or lack hand-eye coordination..."
I mean seriously, that certainly sounds like a MAJOR INSULT to me, luckily he (Nixon), was not talking about me.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I love the concept of indie game development. I dearly do. But look at indie development forums, look at indie game companies, and what do I see: endless reworkings of stale puzzle games, endless reworkings of a certain group, 8-bit games (Boulder Dash, Asteroids, Breakout), clones of Commodore/Atari/Apple favorites that now run on your desktop, and so on. There's also a certain high-end crowd that creates engines that look like Quake II, but without any games on top of them.
Imagine if the independent music scene were like this. All indie bands would be scrambling to record cover versions of small set songs from bands from the early 1980s. And they'd be defending that practice by claiming that there are only a handful of good songs out there, so why write a new one?
Then again, given how many indie games make the big time, maybe I'm just smart. :)
In any case, my web game, Carnage Blender has a small (I've made enough back to cover hardware costs and the odd pizza) but loyal following. It's primarily a clickfest but, I think, an entertaining one. There's far more depth to the strategic choices than is initially obvious, particularly when you start to get to the high-level spells.
We probably have one of the highest overall IQs of gaming communities that you'll find, because the admins actively discourage idiots. (As opposed to newbies, who are welcome.) Unfortunately, a lot of idiots have credit cards. Guess you can't have everything... :-)
I would have to agree that it is hard to find good 3D artists. The benefits of having the creative freedom without the pressure of suits who just want something that will make money fast are huge! However, it takes a lot longer to get things done when you have no funding.
Keep an eye out for Magicosm
For a minute there, I thought we were outsourcing game programming to India.
Go closed source.
Raise some capital.
And pay the devs.
He's ALMOST right on that. Part of what most of the artists who WILL work on you project look at is what the likelyhood that they get some sort of return on thier investment (time = money). I'm not saying that there aren't any artists who will work on a free - just damned few. And most that I do know are doing it to get a leg up in game development - build thier portfolio, etc.
If you've got a project that's up to the point of beta, you'll find it much easier to get artists on board. Also, go make an account at GarageGames, and watch for artists lookin' for a freebie project to work on in thier free time, or people who just quit a project and are lookin' for something else to work on (watch the .plan files.)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
... the most important indie games of the internet's history - MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs and the like. They incorporate written and linguistic creativity, roleplaying, imagination, don't require any special software other than generic telnet, can be played on the oldest of links and, most importantly, are often free :)
Try a good one at hypercube.org:9000, or many others at www.mudconnector.com.
-- K
Is there a place where an indie developer can go to get good open-source rendering engines? It seems like a lot of developers are "rolling their own" -- but if I was a game developer, I would probably want to start with the best open-source rendering engine I could find, just to save myself a lot of work. Or is it too much to ask to find a one-size-fits-all rendering engine?
Story the first
Story the second
So what, now whenever another source runs an article along the same lines it's a new slashdot story?
Yes, I work for this company, but the product is really great, cheap, and has a 30 day trial. It is also really easy to use (no programming required) but flexible (you can script your own stuff using a built in language or expand the engine itself using the SDK and C/C++/or Delphi)
Okay, I'll stop plugging the product and give the link. ;)
http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Hands down, www.garagegames.com. They're selling the Torque game engine (of Tribes 2 fame) for developers for a measly $100. Great community there too
Well, that's nice and all, but it's not the question he asked. He asked about review sites for independant games. That's a project I've been working on as a side line (a nice community oriented freeware / indie game site) but haven't completed. One of them I would recommend is Indie Games. Not a great site, but fits what you are lookin' for. Also check a lot of the shareware games sites - pretty much Shareware Game Author or Freeware Game Author = Indie Game Author.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I just stumbled onto Starscape by Moonpod, an indie developer, and am extremely impressed by it. It's only the 2nd piece of software that I've ever bought online (the first being Kali).
It's sort of an evolution of Raptor by Apogee -- have ship, buy upgrades -- but adds research for better upgrades and a lot of exploration. And the game just oozes style and polish. Highly recommended.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I have lost control of all my department's windows machines due to the RPC attack launched at 8/1/2003 3:30pm EST!!!!
What am I supposed to do TO FIX THIS???
SHIT, I am going to be FIRED!!
I find it is a lot of fun to write something just for the sake of doing it and letting people play. It's quite rewarding to get E-Mails from people who enjoy playing what you've done.
For those of you who liked Tetris I've got a multiplayer competitive version up and running at Blockwars. No ads or popups or any of that nonsense...
Blockwars isn't my end goal though... it's a testbed for the multiuser code I intend to use on more creative projects. So if you hit a bug, I'd love to know! :)
Blockwars: a real-time, multiplayer game similar to Tetris.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
The same code works natively on both Windows and Linux without changes? Unless its in pure Java or text based (even then), i find that hard to believe
It's not just computer gaming that people are developing on their own. I was part of a small board gaming group that informally meets at RIT.
While we primarily focus on playing euro-based board games, we've test played quite a few games that individuals have come up with. We play, think about what happened, then come up with suggestions on how the game can be better.
True, sometimes the games are knock-offs of others with little twists (We had a game called Feregi that was based on the German bidding game Kohle, Kie$ & Knete), but more often, the games were true originals.
It takes some thought to make a game. it takes a lot of thought to make a good game.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I don't get into the whole Indie vs. Big Time game development thing. I run my company on a very small budget and does effect some of the things I can do, but I also do not have any external force telling me what to put into my games (Zenfar and Zenfar ][). No marketing guy or publisher saying 'that won't sell' or 'we need more X'. But the same could be said for a well established developer such as id, they can do what they want and can publish a game when it is done. So it not so much a matter of budget as freedom to develop.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
The next big MMORPG (Java at it's best) Magicosm
The Irony of Indy Games
;) Than again, there are a few companies that are going from commerical projects to more of an indy style. Once you see the amount that publishers take... you start to see the value in online distro's!
;) Enjoy the world of game development for zero cash!
Outside of the handheld ( PalmOS, PocketPC ) markets, or cell phones... many indy games are either crap... or sales pitches to publishers! Im not saying all... there are probrably dozens of exceptions, but on the whole this remains true. Its funny though, when you look at "past" indy games...
HomeWorld
Doom
FlashPoint
Really... by definition, an indy game is self financed, without a publisher in site. Its funny that that moment you have success in the indy market, you tend to get picked up by a publisher... then your no longer indy!
For anyone really interested in learning more, check out:
Garage Games Misc resources, plus a licensable engine
FlipCode Great gaming related site
Gamedev.net Like flipcode, but less mature ( you'll see! )
Gamasutra The site for game developers! Must see
CrystalSpace LGPL 3d Engine. Very impressive
WildTangent Cheap game engine (web based), plus online publishing
Auran Jet Affordable 3d engine, flexible licensing
OpenGl The site for OpenGL info. Lots of useful links
From the above list, you should easily be able to find anything else your looking for!
It still seems picking up an opengl book and doing it yourself is the best way to go in the long run.
Oh that depends on if you want to concentrate on game development part time for the next 18 months, or on engine develpment part time for the next 12 months, THEN start game development. Engine development and game development are two different beasts really - the overlap in some areas, but, game development concentrates on issues like gameplay, content, etc., while engine development concentrates on things like speed, graphical optimisation, etc.
My opinion to ANYONE who's looking at starting into the Indie field, get a free engine or buy an engine (see a couple o' edorsements for my favorite elsewhere in these threads) and use it. Indie Game Development is rarely someone's fulltime job, so why spend the time re-inventing the wheel? Spend the time developing games.
(On the flip side of that, there's always the issue that you know the engine like the back of your hand if you developed it yourself. I purchased the Torque engine, and it's something like 250K lines of code. I'm surprised how well I know certain parts of the engine, because I decided I just wanted to make a 'quick tweak' on something, like adding particle system LoD, and ended up pretty much knowing it by heart now. So this is kind of a non-issue - get to know the parts of the code you WANT or NEED to know about, and ignore the other stuff. Just be sure to start with a fairly stable and secure engine before thinking this way ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
INDEPENDENT COMPUTER GAMING. It?s not always pretty, but ask any one in the biz and they?ll say that it represents the purest form of game development. And sometimes the cheapest. A check for ten bucks sent to a site called Cheap Ass Games buys you "Dr. Blob?s Organism." ... cutting edge ... a different audience ... are indie games the punk rock of computer gaming?
And because indie gaming lies outside of the publisher money train , and all the corporate pressures to follow trends , it often delivers some of the most creative PC games available to an audience far beyond your typical 19-year-old gamer.
Cheap
INNOVATION ON A BUDGET
Geoff Howland, a full time UNIX administrator, devotes his free time to his company Alitius. With Alitius?s employee population running at one , Howland, himself , the chances of creating a game with the big budget and killer graphics of a typical retail title are zilch. But Alitius?s garage-like business philosophy in an industry of manicured office parks is not a cause for complaint, but an incentive for creativity.
"In retail, there are about five or six different genres. No one is doing anything different," said Howland. "Whereas independents can and should concentrate on that difference."
His game, "BaseGolf," is a coffee-break friendly diversion that combines aspects of, yes, baseball and golf. But the "difference" cited by Howland extends beyond sports hybrids. In indie gaming, it can include new story-lines, audiences and game play.
"Teenage Lawnmower," from Robinson Technology, a Japan-based husband and wife team, plays like a Gen Y afterschool special, with an alcoholic mother, an abusive boyfriend and a lawnmower gig.
Battlefront.com recreates World War II-era armored battles for the serious military gamer, a niche market. Dexterity Software does the opposite; reaching a mass audience with puzzle games. Both of these indie developers target audiences that retail games can?t or won?t reach.
For game developer Egenesis the difference lies in turning the massively multiplayer online game on its head. "A Tale in the Desert" ignores dragons and orcs for game play geared toward constructing an almost utopian society. Players accumulate power not through combat, but through mentoring and acts of leadership.
Mentoring? Radical.
WHO ARE THE INDIES?
Games hatched beyond the pale of the corporate development is not new. On the contrary, it?s where game development was born. Yet while computer gaming goes Hollywood with all its giant E3 tradeshows and movie stars plugging console games, a steady stream of talented programmers is making independent games , traditionally an idea incubator of sorts , a continually fascinating subculture of computer gaming.
"These developers are really returning to the way PC game development was in the late 80?s and early ?90s before it became so corporate," said indie game evangelist James Hills. "Doing it because they love games and have a passion for creating the visions they have in their heads."
The approximately 1,500 teams and individuals involved with indie development are as diverse as the games themselves. Some are in the business to make it big by selling their title or talent to a major game publisher. Others, including an ever-increasing number of developers with experience in larger companies, cherish the freedom of doing what they please with Rob Malda's love sausage.
"I see a lot more people with really solid, big game development making the leap," said David Nixon, executive producer at RealOneArcade, an online game portal. "It?s why they got into game development in the first place."
Dexterity president Steve Pavlina once worked in commercial game development. "With game budgets larger and teams larger, developers can feel like a cog in the machine," he said. "They feel like there is no room for creativity. So yes, there?s a move to go back to the roots."
We've been a successful indie game developer for over 8 years. We develop card games. Our games use a lot of newer 3d special effects to enhance the game. 3D cards, particle effects, lots of alpha shading. Enviromental sound, definatly should check them out. Hardwood Solitaire Hardwood Spades Hardwood Hearts Hardwood Euchre
I've heard it suggested by RMS that gamers/coders should start gaming clubs to create free software licensed games. I think this would be a successful approach to development, as it mirrors the Free/Open Source community, which is highly successful.
It's a Sourceforge project (Link.). One of the things we're trying to do with the project is to keep it original, which games are desperately lacking. I am with the rest of the slashdot crowd that artists are very hard to find, and right now my project only has one artist. Which is a shame considering I have not even considered implementing sound and I know of a few friends that are willing to compose some music for the project.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Indie games have so much going for them in that they aren't stiphled by the big budget and theirfore need to make lots of money that big games have. I am currently involved in an Indie Game company project called Happy Kitchen Games, we will have our first game out in a few months and we have had a blast doing it. Our overhead is so crazy low that we plan to sell the game for about $3 a pop. Head on over and if you want sign up to get emailed when we release our first demo.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Dupe! http://www.a2central.com/reviews/lemonade/
When's it going to run on linux?
SDL anyone? Certainly, there are a few things left that will need to be preprocessed one way or another, but it can be done, and not too painfully.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Wulfram 2 is an indie game which I've found to be somewhat original. While development is a bit slow, the community is one of the best I've found in any online game, and the game is free to play. It's a FPS with some strategy elements involved, and the game puts an emphasis on teamwork. The amount of work put into training new players is impressive, as is the moderation, making this one of the best free multiplayer games I've seen.
Play this game and there is no need to look ne further, it has it all. Why P2P elsewhere , when u can play free of charge , or donate a little for a game that is getting better all the time . Team play, retro active on line combat and the community , WoW, doesnt take long to know hundreds of individuals that become great friends in and out of game, this game is going only one way that is up. Ad Hoc, doesnt hurt the game ,bring back the active player list Slurpy,
it's my only fault.
Player name is Dr_Devious, not a coward, just didnt want an account, LOL,ROFL
Take your pick at E-Baum's World. SimGirl is one of my favorites.
Soldat is great multiplayer fun
no comment
PyGame is a fun python library to play around with if you want to try and create your own simple games. I am not sure if anyone is building anything graphically intense with it, but I prefer PySol over Quake any day of the week so it doesn't much matter to me.
IanShootclub Webmaster
Shootclub Wrestling RPG
Speaking of independent games, I sucked down the demo of Marble Blast Gold yesterday and have found it a lighthearted and interesting change of pace from my usual fare, the very dark Quake 3. It apparently runs on just about anything: Mac >=10.1, Windows >=98, and a bunch of x86 Linux distros.
INDEPENDENT COMPUTER GAMING. ... cutting edge ... a different audience ... are indie games the punk rock of computer gaming?
It's not always pretty, but ask any one in the biz and they'll say that it represents the purest form of game development. And sometimes the cheapest. A check for ten bucks sent to a site called Cheap Ass Games buys you "Dr. Blob's Organism."
And because indie gaming lies outside of the publisher money train , and all the corporate pressures to follow trends , it often delivers some of the most creative PC games available to an audience far beyond your typical 19-year-old gamer.
Cheap
INNOVATION ON A BUDGET
Geoff Howland, a full time UNIX administrator, devotes his free time to his company Alitius. With Alitius's employee population running at one , Howland, himself , the chances of creating a game with the big budget and killer graphics of a typical retail title are zilch. But Alitius?s garage-like business philosophy in an industry of manicured office parks is not a cause for complaint, but an incentive for creativity.
"In retail, there are about five or six different genres. No one is doing anything different," said Howland. "Whereas independents can and should concentrate on that difference."
His game, "BaseGolf," is a coffee-break friendly diversion that combines aspects of, yes, baseball and golf. But the "difference" cited by Howland extends beyond sports hybrids. In indie gaming, it can include new story-lines, audiences and game play.
"Teenage Lawnmower," from Robinson Technology, a Japan-based husband and wife team, plays like a Gen Y afterschool special, with an alcoholic mother, an abusive boyfriend and a lawnmower gig.
Battlefront.com recreates World War II-era armored battles for the serious military gamer, a niche market. Dexterity Software does the opposite; reaching a mass audience with puzzle games. Both of these indie developers target audiences that retail games can't or won't reach.
For game developer Egenesis the difference lies in turning the massively multiplayer online game on its head. "A Tale in the Desert" ignores dragons and orcs for game play geared toward constructing an almost utopian society. Players accumulate power not through combat, but through mentoring and acts of leadership.
Mentoring? Radical.
WHO ARE THE INDIES?
Games hatched beyond the pale of the corporate development is not new. On the contrary, it's where game development was born. Yet while computer gaming goes Hollywood with all its giant E3 tradeshows and movie stars plugging console games, a steady stream of talented programmers is making independent games , traditionally an idea incubator of sorts , a continually fascinating subculture of computer gaming.
"These developers are really returning to the way PC game development was in the late 80's and early ?90s before it became so corporate," said indie game evangelist James Hills. "Doing it because they love games and have a passion for creating the visions they have in their heads."
The approximately 1,500 teams and individuals involved with indie development are as diverse as the games themselves. Some are in the business to make it big by selling their title or talent to a major game publisher. Others, including an ever-increasing number of developers with experience in larger companies, cherish the freedom of doing what they please with Rob Malda's love sausage.
"I see a lot more people with really solid, big game development making the leap," said David Nixon, executive producer at RealOneArcade, an online game portal. "It's why they got into game development in the first place."
Dexterity president Steve Pavlina once worked in commercial game development. "With game budgets larger and teams larger, developers can feel like a cog in the machine," he said. "They feel like there is no room for creativity. So yes, there's a move to go back to the roots."
Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
You can make great, fun, and interesting games without artists! Those games are called MUDs and Interactive Fiction.
Most MUDs are indie and free. Many are even open source and kept alive and going by one or two developers and a handful of loyal players.
Over the past decade, the player base for MUDs and IF have been whittled away by first-person shooters, Diablo, and now games like Everquest. But MUDs and IF are still alive and kicking. A lot of them are more creative and groundbreaking than any commercial game.
I think most people are too overly concerned about pretty pictures and not concerned enough about game play. I guess this is why most people would rather watch TV or a movie than listen to some 'radio drama' or read a book.
If MSNBC cites X-Plane as an example of a indie game
;-)
then I have to plug Orbiter Sim. at http://www.orbitersim.com
and my own Mercury, Gemini add-ons at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mscorbaddon/
They even come with the original manuals.
Enjoy
Rob Conley
I've always been amazed by the 24 and 48 hour game contests (or any short programming contest). It's been a long time since I looked at that scene, but I remember some goodies back in my Apple ][ through Apple ][gs days. A quick google search turned up a couple interesting links: A 48 journal developing a Godzilla game and These entries in another contest (complete with ratings and descriptions).
I'm sure someone here knows the "big site" for these contests and I'd certainly like to hear about it.
AB
I was disappointed not to see a section about Chris Sawyer, who programmed one of the most popular games ever essentially on-his-own (although backed by a commercial vendor, eventually).
ive been working on a indie game for the last couple months. It's a very relaxing dev schedule. None of the team works on the game full time, we all have 'real' jobs that we spend most of our time on but since making an indie game on the net is mostly a for fun and not considered a job we make good progress.
Further more, the net is a perfect place to develop a game, you can find all sorts of talent if you know where to look. Hell, 2 of our team members work in the game industry.
Indie games have the freedom to implement whatever they feel would be cool, now while this can be a boon to some projects and force them to go nowhere, if you are selective about what you want to support and furthermore where you want the project to be in X amount of time, this isnt really a problem.
Just my 2 cents developing a game with a random group of people on the net the last couple months. Feel free to check out our work at:
www.bioscythe.com
The entire engine was coded around SDL (a cross platform multimedia API). All the functionality for initializing OpenGL, Sound, CD-Audio, Input (Mouse, Keyboard, Joystick), Threads and even Timing are all conveniently packaged into SDL.
The API works in many os's (Linux, Windows, MacOS/X, FreeBSD, and more). In Visual C++ we use the regular project workspace and in Linux I use a small shell script to compile the engine. Check out SDL (www.libsdl.org).
Hrmm.. You aren't by chance the say Davis Ray Sickmon who used for work on the Freedows/AllOS project, are you?
[Peforms Jedi Mind Trick, waving hand]This is not the Davis you are looking for. I never worked on Freedows or AllOs. Move along.
Yeah, same guy. Don't mention that again. ;-)
In any event, what's the difference? Why is it people will code on Open Source projects, but not do 3d work? I guess I come at this from a bad perspective, but I really don't understand the difference.
Well, you make the assumption that people do code on Open Source projects. Many of them totally flop for lots of reasons (go cruse SourceForge looking for inactive projects. There are LOTS.) It really all depends on how many people feel the need to scratch that particular 'itch'. Since you mention Freedows and AllOS, it's amazing how many people involved were more interested in artistic pursuits (making webpages, etc.) than doing coding. There was only a core set of developers who were interested.
Artist on the other hand work totally different. And most of them that seem to have the skills to do the job are doing it commercially already (part of the Trajectory Zone team I have are commercial artists working for a percentage of profits. Thank god - no more "programmer art" ;-) , and those that don't are often not worth having on the team, haven't learned focus, etc. It's very very strange how most of the graphic arts for games that I met work. Totally different mentality than the programmers on the same project. I have a hard time relating some days ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I happen to fall pretty close to the one-man shop, with the only other person being a friend who does the graphics. I've only been in business for 8 months, but things have been getting better and better as time goes by and my game improves.
If you are interested in the real numbers then I can say that in the month of July I sold 32 copies. Not enough to make it my full-time job, but I still hold out that it could be in the future. My game is currently only available for Macintosh, and a windows/linux port is in the works. If you like the boardgame Risk then check me out...
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
SDL, OGL, wxWindows, write to the game APIs, not the underlying OS.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Burn your mod points, bitches. you can't silence the message.
... cutting edge ... a different audience ... are indie games the punk rock of computer gaming?
INDEPENDENT COMPUTER GAMING.
It's not always pretty, but ask any one in the biz and they'll say that it represents the purest form of game development. And sometimes the cheapest. A check for ten bucks sent to a site called Cheap Ass Games buys you "Dr. Blob's Organism."
And because indie gaming lies outside of the publisher money train , and all the corporate pressures to follow trends , it often delivers some of the most creative PC games available to an audience far beyond your typical 19-year-old gamer.
Cheap
INNOVATION ON A BUDGET
Geoff Howland, a full time UNIX administrator, devotes his free time to his company Alitius. With Alitius's employee population running at one , Howland, himself , the chances of creating a game with the big budget and killer graphics of a typical retail title are zilch. But Alitius?s garage-like business philosophy in an industry of manicured office parks is not a cause for complaint, but an incentive for creativity.
"In retail, there are about five or six different genres. No one is doing anything different," said Howland. "Whereas independents can and should concentrate on that difference."
His game, "BaseGolf," is a coffee-break friendly diversion that combines aspects of, yes, baseball and golf. But the "difference" cited by Howland extends beyond sports hybrids. In indie gaming, it can include new story-lines, audiences and game play.
"Teenage Lawnmower," from Robinson Technology, a Japan-based husband and wife team, plays like a Gen Y afterschool special, with an alcoholic mother, an abusive boyfriend and a lawnmower gig.
Battlefront.com recreates World War II-era armored battles for the serious military gamer, a niche market. Dexterity Software does the opposite; reaching a mass audience with puzzle games. Both of these indie developers target audiences that retail games can't or won't reach.
For game developer Egenesis the difference lies in turning the massively multiplayer online game on its head. "A Tale in the Desert" ignores dragons and orcs for game play geared toward constructing an almost utopian society. Players accumulate power not through combat, but through mentoring and acts of leadership.
Mentoring? Radical.
WHO ARE THE INDIES?
Games hatched beyond the pale of the corporate development is not new. On the contrary, it's where game development was born. Yet while computer gaming goes Hollywood with all its giant E3 tradeshows and movie stars plugging console games, a steady stream of talented programmers is making independent games , traditionally an idea incubator of sorts , a continually fascinating subculture of computer gaming.
"These developers are really returning to the way PC game development was in the late 80's and early ?90s before it became so corporate," said indie game evangelist James Hills. "Doing it because they love games and have a passion for creating the visions they have in their heads."
The approximately 1,500 teams and individuals involved with indie development are as diverse as the games themselves. Some are in the business to make it big by selling their title or talent to a major game publisher. Others, including an ever-increasing number of developers with experience in larger companies, cherish the freedom of doing what they please with Rob Malda's love sausage.
"I see a lot more people with really solid, big game development making the leap," said David Nixon, executive producer at RealOneArcade, an online game portal. "It's why they got into game development in the first place."
Dexterity president Steve Pavlina once worked in commercial game development. "With game budgets larger and teams larger, developers can feel like a cog in the machine," he said. "They feel like there is no room for creativity. So yes, there's a move to go back to the roots."
I've simply tried to make do with games that don't require a whole lot of graphics. What graphics I do have, I generally draw in pencil on a piece of paper, scan that in, then color it in using either Paint Shop Pro or The Gimp. My artwork isn't all that good, but it really doesn't have to be if the game behind it is good. Whether my games are good is in the eye of the beerholder, but I do my best. But better art is usually the hardest thing to come up with, being more of a coder than an artist.
:)
Been working on indie web games for a few years (Click my sig for that), and have just started messing around with PocketPC stuff. Insultor's really not a 'game', but it's pretty entertaining.
One of the best and newest game engines available for $100 is CipherEngine. The engine is actually written in mostly C, rather than C++, which accounts for the compile time of less than 15 seconds.
Another interesting and free engine is from Qubesoft.
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
It apparently runs on just about anything: Mac >=10.1, Windows >=98, and a bunch of x86 Linux distros.
No kidding - I love Marble Blast Gold (however, I got it for free - but had already planned on buying it after playing the demo.)
One of the trends with the games offered at GarageGames is they are CROSS PLATFORM!!! That may not sound real exciting, but, I own Orbz 2.0 and Marble Blast Gold. I own a PC and a Mac (I love my PowerBook. Er... my WIFE'S PowerBook.) If I ever switch over to Mac completely, I don't have to re-buy the game, or give up the game - just download the Mac version. It's hard to get publishers interested in a cross platform game these days - Indies WANT crossplatform, since the Mac market may be smaller, but less cluttered (and same for Linux).
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I feel bad about your predicament, it's just the way it was written that cracked me up... maybe it's a Friday-at-five thing...
"Our customers are playing to relax and unwind from the day to day grind. They don't want to be reminded that they're idiots or lack hand-eye coordination," Nixon explained.
So his users are constantly being told that they're idiots who lack hand-eye coordination?
want to play a great indie game? go to www.shampoopoo.com and click on the games link.
kick'em in the balls is the best!
This article sucks. Does anyone else get the feeling that this is an annoying Microsoft tactic to discredit good Indy games with implicit advocacy of their stupid console?
Laws are for people with no friends.
Has anyone made money from getting donations, or by charging a small $5-10 fee for the homemade game?
check out the part about rob malda's love sausage!
I had problems with 3D gameplay as well, and besides, it doesn't make a good game more fun -- so I started working on a 2D one (with SDL) instead. Out of fear for my bandwidth, I sadly will not be posting links -- but email me (mrseigen@sdf.loneSHOTGUNstar.org minus assault weapon) if you want one.
Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but back on my Mac II, I relied exclusively on Indie shareware titles to keep myself amused (at least until they ported Civ over).
Great sites like Ambrosia released excellent games, like the Escape Velocity series, which still has great gameplay (and was recently released for Windows), and a fairly cheap price.
Indie gaming isn't new, but it seems like the people that grew up on Indie games are now getting into it themselves, creating a real boom as far as number and quality are concerned. Heck, if you look at Mods as a type of Indie game, Indie games are threatening the "Real" game industry!
skye
How do you find the torque engine in terms of flexibility, speed, and ease of use? I'd really like to try it out but I'm not sure if I want to spend a $100/developer licensing fee at this time ... (I have 3 developers, and not $300, haha). But if it's powerful, and will save some time on the development of our in-house engine that we're working on, I might drop a hundred bucks for myself.
Well... I fucking LOVE it. Seriously. The built in scripting language (TorqueScript) is pretty powerful for stuff that either (A) needs to be accessable to modders or (B) 'makes sense' in the scripting side (doing all of your collision detection from the scripting side would be bad. Handling the effects of a collision on the scripting side works well, and I use it extensively.)
Getting up and running with playable results is easy, depending on what gametype you are doing. If it's a first or third person style game, it's fairly simple - the SDK comes with a fully playable example that you can use as much code as you like from it. Just load it up, and start hackin' out what you don't need, and hackin' in what you do need.
It's pretty flexible - and what the engine doesn't have can be found a lot of times in the community forums under the Resources or Code Snippets area. If it's not there, it's usually pretty easy to hack it in on the C++ side or the scripting side.
There's a HUGE community to get help from. That's a wonderful thing some days! And the Indies who are workin' on other stuff tend to help each other out - good example was that I talked to Justin from 21-6 after playing a bit with the beta of Orbz 2.1, and noticed that he made Ogg encoded sound work a lot better than my implementation. I asked him about it, and he just packed up the engine/audio directory, and sent it to me, fixing all my problems in a single .zip file!
Speed is good. Trajectory Zone is an example I'll use (since it's my project ;-) Scorched3D and TrajectoryZone share a lot of the same hertiage - Scorched Earth is the inspiration for both of 'em, but we took very different development pathes. I finally checked out Scorched3D on one of my Dev machines. PIII 400Mhz, dual processor, LOTS of RAM, 64MB TNT2 (what a bastardized card - still can't see why they released that, or how I ended up with one ;-) . TZ does not run perfectly on it (which is why I created some modifications to the particle system - I added an LoD system for particles, and added it as a Code Snippet for the community to use), but it's very playable, usually running at 25 - 30 FPS after the modifications I made to the particle system (I beat the hell out the particle system. Imagine a mushroom cloud from a nuke, made entirely with particles and does collision detection with the terrain. Now imagine 20 or so on the landscape at once while players are going nuts. That's how badly I abuse particles ;-) Scorched3D is NOWHERE near as playable, even after I turned all the settings down (no animated water, low textures, etc. etc.,etc.) It does really well, and handles multiple players pretty well (NOTE: as long as you aren't doin' stuff like 3000+ poly models with no LoD!) So, it's pretty good performance.
If there's one complaint I've got, it's the documentation. It needs to be better. However, they are working on Torque 1.2 right now, and that's one of thier priority items - better and more current documentation. However, what the documentation lacks, the community makes up for - cruse the forums, and you'll find the answer 9 times out of 10.
If you've got any more questions, feel free to email me.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
can't believe no ones said anything about natural selections, with the newest release just a day ago. incredible work done in modding the HL engine. hat's off to flayra and the other devs.
Best game ever.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The thing about developing your own game is, you have the power to really try and make it perfect. You have real creative control, you know? You can take the high road if you want, or lean towards a humorous kind of bent, or just go completely deranged and do something freaky. It's cool. And, you don't have any creeps in suits leaning on you to make your character's tits bigger, or dumb down the dialog.
One bummer is, being only one guy, I won't be able to get anything to market in less than a year or two, and I can't afford too fast a computer, so my graphics will be targeted at lower-end machines, like, say, a 500Mhz Celeron. So, my game will *look* like an older game in a sense, and won't be as flash as the crop of games it would normally be competing against. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Let the big shops have the high end. I think there's room at the lower end for guys like me. Not everyone has a P-IV, right?
As far as my game goes, it'll be a third-person shooter with first person controls and modest but smooth graphics. I don't want to give away too much, but I think it'll really appeal to this crowd. It's very high-tech oriented. I figure, maybe, 2005 sometime. My business model is: I'm going to release the game engine itself, with development tools, open source for Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD so that anyone who is into this stuff can create their own game using the tools. I'm looking at using Crystal Space or Ogre as a base, and building my system as a game-engine layer on top of their graphics engine. So, if you want to play the game, you download a bundle with the game engine and a compatible build of one of the graphics engines, for free. But, then, you pay for the actual levels and mods. Every couple of months, I come out with a new set of levels and mods, which you can pick up for like, twenty bucks. You can't steal my *story*, because it's like a novel, right? But you can write your *own* story using my tools, and jump into the market right alongside me. Isn't that a neat idea? I figure, the more people create cool, weird little games, the more there are for me to play. That's GOT to be a Good Thing, right?
And, since I just posted it, and it's now in the public domain, it can't be patented (this post is a prior-art description of the concept, 8/1/2003 5:29PM).
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Programming a video game is really all I've ever wanted to do for a career. Seems like now a days you need a hollywood production studio to create these things in any reasonable amount of time. Does anyone have any experience on doing such?
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
For those of you that enjoy interesting and different games, you should check this out. It's a 3d arcade version of the ancient chinese game Go.
www.facestat.com - See how strangers judge you.
I have an OSS game project that I have been working on as a hobby for about 4 or so years now. Its in Visual Basic (I know, some will say Yuk!) and the basic idea is to build a framework that others can use to create their own MMORPG. I wouldn't exactly call it an Indie game since its not exactly a game (more like an engine), nor are we(mostly I) incorporated in anyway.
My Comments on such a venture, Unless you just really like to program and don't have any thing to code that is more worth while then don't start such a project. However, If you just want to flex your muscles, and understand that it will almost never be finished, or 'good enough' or profitable then go right ahead. Also keep in mind that there is a good chance that it will become one of those unfinished things that you will probably spend the rest of you days regreting that you still havn't finished it. You'll go through periods of fast developement where you code more every day, and there will be times when you won't touch it for months. God forbid should anyone actually want to play your game then you introduce new nightmares in terms of support and such.
Other than all these headaches it has been a very rewarding hobby for me.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
*YOU* choose your platform. THink about it. :: sniff ::)
;) ) Same rules apply. I play the music I want to play, no one can tell me otherwise.)
Are you tired of seeing the best games only come out for Win32? Maybe you're a Linux user and have to dual-boot, just so you can play the greatest/latest game. Maybe you're a Mac user and you're just SOL (for the most part). The fact is, most commercial companies only want money, and lots of it, and money can be made on Win32. Even with a shitty game, if it can sell to just 1% of the market, can still pull a profit (unless it's one of those billion dollar all-graphics-no-game jobs). With Indie developers, there's no shareholders to satisfy. There's no board of directors mandating you use DirectX or whatever. You can target minority platforms if you choose, and with a reduced overhead (and pent up demand for a good game), can actually find a market. I don't know if A Tale in the Desert is making a profit, but you know, the marketing (almost non-existing, word-of-mouth kinda thing), the packaging (download only? I've not seen a box) and the fact that it runs on Linux without WINE is truly revolutionary in many ways. While the game doesn't appear to be my cup of tea, I give them mad props for doing it and doing it on their terms. AFAICT, they didn't have to rush it out of the door to meet some projected sales targets. AFAIK the rollout was very smooth. It's nice to be able to produce quality. (Of course, someone's probably going to come along and say they're not an Indie company and were bankrolled by EA or something and completely crush my dreams..
Anyway, if I were under the pressure to produce mounds and mounds of money, you can bet I'd be a Win32 developer. However, I'm just a hobbyist/indie/wannabe, so guess what? I'm trying to do everything I can on Linux, because I can. No one is there to say I can't. YOu know what? I'm even using Java! Take that! (see www.lwjgl.org). See, I'm not stuck in a shop that says I have to use 3DStudio Max (I can't afford $6k, can you?). I use TheGimp because it works for what I do (although Photoshop + some KPT filters is better for a few things (the KPT Procedural Texture plugin is just.. nifty.. For the kind of stuff I require, that is). I can use Eclipse + Java + LWJGL, all on Linux, targetting Linux (of course, get the benefits of cross-platform, but that's secondary, eh?). What I'm getting at is, as an indie developer, you can call the shots! And I can even GPL the game, if I so desire! That's what's rewarding, to me, the ability to have control.
(Also note: I'm an independent musician (lack of talent?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If I were a developer in the indies, whould I be an indie game developer?
Disclaimer: I am a Vega Strike whore
Vega Strike
It's an open source 3d space flying/fighting game where you take missions or trade cargo to improve your ship. (quick description)
For the old-schoolers: It's like Wing Commander Privateer
For the n00bs: It's like Freelancer
Currently in development, but a lot of fun. It's interesting seeing a game evolve over the course of its development. One of the hardest things, I think, in making it available while its being worked on (even though its essential to attract more developers and artistic talent), is that there is an intense pressure to work on the 'funness' of the game, when perhaps time would be better spent on cleaning up code, adding essential (but boring) features, or something.
Anyways, its cool! Czech it out!
no thanks
http://www.darkunicornproductions.com
:-)
A lot of cool games here. Some are 100% Free too!
Yes, I'm a little biased as I wrote one of the games (FrostByte Freddie), however, since it doesn't cost you anything to try them, you have nothing to lose
Check it out!
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
The same code works natively on both Windows and Linux without changes? Unless its in pure Java or text based (even then), i find that hard to believe
It's entirely possible. If he started out with a crossplatform engine, then there's no extra work to support other platforms. That's why I personally like licensing other people's work (Torque in my case, but there are pleanty of others that can do it). From MY point of view, I just copy it over to the Mac, and hit compile. Big deal - unless I break the engine by doing something like DirectX only work, then it's all one codebase, and I've not had to do any work to make it crossplatform.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Personally, I like how they spend most of the article talking about how the indy developers break out of traditional genres... then they list the developers by the genre of game they make...
Actually a friend of mine is involved in the creation of a game Gastronaut Studios (needs to update his site) it looks awesome.
He spent just over a year immersed in creating his own 3D engine and puzzle-time-multi player based game.
Ah - a subject close to my heart. I've been programming games of varying quality and complexity for 13 years. The closest any of them came to 'success' was the modest following garnered by a top-down RPG called Aspetra back in '96; but it has never really been about getting big or making $ for me. I simply LOVE designing game engines, from graphics to AI to physics to everything else. Although I have had a pretty easy time of landing interesting, fun software jobs, I have had absolutely NO luck attracting the slightest bit of interest from game companies, ever. So I continue to enjoy my 9-5, M-F, working on everything from compilers, to integration, to various business apps; but if I want to develop a game, doing so in my 'garage' is, so far, the only way to go!
Just an FYI to other Indie developers and people who are lookin' at getting into Indie game development. Oct 10th - 12th is this year's IndieGamesCon )but they haven't updated the website) in Eugene, OR, hosted by GarageGames. I was there last year as a speaker ("Can I Make Money As An Indie Developer?" co-presented with David "RM" Michael of Samu Games) and will be there again this year as a speaker ("How to survive Indie Game Development" - again co-presenting with David). IGC rocks - it was a hell of an opportunity to get to meet other indies, find out how some of them are doin' what they do, how many are actually making money as indies, etc. LOTS of information to be had in a very short span of time. Also made some friends there, which was great since I didn't personally know any other Indie game developers. And free press - Gamespy, MacGamer, and a few others were there, plus I ended up with interviews with TechTV and G4 (of which neither ended up on TV. Bummer.)
It's worth the trip.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Has anyone made money from getting donations, or by charging a small $5-10 fee for the homemade game?
From donations? Dunno about that. But charging small fees for games, well, I do pretty decently with that (when my website isn't carved up, like it is now ;-). I only sell puzzle games at the moment (however, I've got a massive 3D project that's getting close to completion) and I've made enough money that I've made my mortgage payments on it a few times. Not big money, but, it's more money in my pockey. Slowly but surely I'm moving towards projects that allow me to do it full time. Typically my game prices range from $12.50 to $15.00 (it would be cheaper, but, there's overhead for each sale, so I include that in the price.) Online sales is great - while I can't keep 100% of the sales price, I get A LOT closer than when you go through the conventional publishing route!
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I think the hardest part of being an Indie Game devel0per is making the right choice in proejcts with repsect to resources, market potential/business potential , and etc..
My first bad year out I made the mistake of not fully investigating itv platform and thinking I could do games on that platform as it turns out not all the infrastructre is there to make it business wise..whereas I might get back in in 2005 ro 2006..
Whereas I worked at some startup project earlier this year to fund part of my dev in J2ME..I think I have chosen the correct realm at the moment because I can by developing gameEngine frameworks get game dev on J2ME down to 1 to 3 months total..
Waht I would like to see in the future is more improvements in tools I use..
I can fully extend eclipse ide so that is covered but I would like to see more OpenGL integration within Blender...as I am building a 3d game engine over the next 12 months to do 3d games on J2me and need OpenGL and the Metadata format effects in the 3d models to make the engine compact enough..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Wow.. who woulda guessed?
I spent about 30 mins going through the ropes, and I liked it enough to donate $20. Not bad, you earned money by posting to slashdot.
;P
As for me, a sucker is born every minute, I guess.
I came to carnageblender to kick butt and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of bubblegum.
I have a fairly good knowledge of the Amiga scene, where - for obvious reasons - almost all the game releases of late 1990's were independent games. Some of them were actually quite good and I really miss them on the mainstream platforms. Amiga coders were doing some true magic with optimizing 3D engines to cope with high-screen true-color animations on ancient processors like the 68040. The quality of their work was superb. However, it was rarely followed by the quality of the scriptwriting and graphics design. Now here's my question: why is it easier to find a guy who will spend many sleepless and unpaid nights writing the game engine - than to find a guy who would put a similar effort in writing a good story or drawing an interesting texture? This resulted in weird "sort-of-games", that were actually nothing more than a blazing fast 3D engine and just a couple of rooms to show that it works. What's the point?
I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious: There's a definite future in indie games. We've soon come full circle and will have enough framework(s) in place that the indies can play again, really play.
I just heard that Reflexive/Black Isle had to remove the "Childkiller" trait (basically a visible flag that was set if you killed children) from the game Lionheart and make the children in the game immortal, or they couldn't get the rating they wanted. Crap like that is what's nice about doing it yourself, for yourself, in your own time, because you love it, not because you want to become famous and buy a ferrari and get the chick.
Too bad that graphics artists and musicians don't feel about their craft as programmers though, they hardly ever want to get involved in independentt projects from what I've heard. It's a little odd, because there were always artists available on the demo-scene. The best of course went on to do games full-time, if the wanted to. Maybe it's because in those days the community was smaller and more intimate.. I dunno.
Personally I think it's better to hack around the system; use the resources of other games. No, you can't re-distribute them, but noone can stop you from making the game compatible with them either. At least in my genre of choice the graphics/sound is secondary to the things I'd like to explore, which is in AI and other game-play aspects.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
remember that old text game on Bulletin boards?
Legend of the Red Dragon
the guy who made teenage lawnmower is the same guy who wrote that..seth Able Robinson. except he wrote LORD when he was like 17 i think..
go seth able the bard!
I have been following a certain game for a long time, it started as a remake of the first Ultima, but due to legal issues it has evolved into something probably better. The developers talk with the people and that helps them decide what steps to take. Many things have been influenced by the people, as they have a forum just for "fan" interaction. peroxide.dk for the developers main site, eragame.com for the actual game. They have screenshots that are amazing, and best of all its not yet another crappy mmorpg!
We're currently selling videos featuring Hawaiian Tropic models via Altnet/Kazaa, and we will soon be launching original Sci-Fi from Melano.TV
Just looking for synergy from the gaming world if there's any there.
godivx
SoSoHot.com, etc.
Someone oughta' mod that guy up! 3D != great game, 2D != crap game. There's a lot that can still be done with 2D. All of my crappy little puzzle games (that I make money off of) are 2D games. People are still making good 2D games to this day - IMHO, one of the best games out there is MetalSlug X, a 2D platform / shooter. Cool part about 2D games is they run on much lesser hardware requirements (most of the time) and don't require nearly the effort to create a game engine ('specially something cross platform). And content development is typically much easier.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Visual Basic? Yuk!
RMS can have my code when he prys it from my cold dead hands. I think that covers my opinion of open sourcing any of my games completely. I've got a whole spiel on this, and I'll break down and write an article on MidnightRyder.Com about it some day. BUT - don't take me as a non-Open Source supporter. I am a supporter. I just think there's not many ways to make enough money to, oh... pay my mortgage, important little things like that if I if make Free Software style licensed games.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Here
Check these out. http://www.racer.nl http://www.peroxide.dk/era/ http://lfs.racesimcentral.com/ http://shael.theoldentales.com/ http://www.web-discovery.net/main.asp
Here is what you do:
- Get to know the art teacher
- Propose an 'Art Contest'
- Make a one page write up about what you are looking for
- Let the kids enter art submissions
- Offer a cash reward to the winner(s), along with the carrot of being given the chance to work on a "real video game!"
Of course a lot of it will be crap, but I think you will be amazed at the amount of real talent you will find.Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
... that game development had gotten too expensive and needed government subsidies! I mean, Peter Molyneaux said so right here on slashdot, so it must be true... (no idea how to get search results older than two months, so no link)
But getting heard above the increasing online noise is a problem.
No it's not. Not even in the slightest. Funny how they start right off painting obstacles for a business they have only written two pages about.
"There are certain attributes in 'try before you buy,'" said David Nixon, the executive producer of RealOneArcade. "They have to be a small download. They have to be understood easily. They have to get you hooked right away."
Spoken like a true corporate management genius. They do not have to be a small download, they do not have to be understood easily, and they do not have to get you hooked right away. Put away the FUCKING LAUNDRY LIST and try to LEARN SOMETHING.
RealOneArcade? Owned, no doubt by Real Networks which has a market cap of only $7 million. Yeah, that's really the two-guys and a musician indie scene, isn't it?
PopCap and the online game portals have helped open up computer gaming to soccer moms worldwide.
Show of hands. Who didn't get stomach cramps reading that little blurb?
So what's next?
An attempt at research would be nice. PopCap and Real Networks ain't it.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Fancy that - VV has one title out that I (used to) play rabidly: Terminus. True space physics (albeit acceleration/G-force stress on the player gets ignored for gameplay purposes), working economical system, multiple paths through the main plot, and open-ended play.
In fact, TerminusPoint is expanding the game as we speak. There's so much right about that game that it isn't even funny. It's one of the few games out there that reminds me just how games are supposed to be (fun!).
Look at the Amiga: the original Sound Tracker sparked a flood of clones, an incredible number of crappy songs, and a few absolute gems. The point was that everyone could write music using that program, and everyone did. I'm not aware of any *simple* music-production tool similar to Sound Tracker on Linux (but I haven't looked for one either).
Similarly, Deluxe Paint unleashed a flood of crappy drawings and a few great works of art. Again, I'm not aware of a counterpart on Linux (Gimp is too complex) or Windows (mspaint is too basic).
Both of these programs fit in a specific niche. They are not professional tools, but they have sufficient power to do some pretty good work anyway. Anyone could play with them and get interesting results; some of those people went on to make a carreer out of music or digital painting. And those are the people you are looking for: just starting in the field, having something to prove, and willing to do work for free in return for name recognition (which is the most valuable thing you can offer at this point).
Meanwhile in the Linux camp, we need to make those tools for Linux. We also need to provide a distribution specific for creative types, one in which the start menu contains a Sound Tracker clone, a DPaint clone, a *simple* 3D modelling tool, a sample editor, and anything else that is artistic, accessible and powerful.
www.kaser.com
also maker of other puzzle games like dinner with Moriarty, decartes' enigma, honeycomb hotel
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
And, you don't have any creeps in suits leaning on you to make your character's tits bigger
Yeah ! Just because you didn't find time to make her tits big enough yet, it doesn't mean this won't be fixed once the rest of the game is finished ! Sheesh, as if this was an issue at all.
Quake 1 / 2 and most of the earlier games are GPL, you only pay for the data files. Make sure to give away a shareware chapter so we can see what it's like :)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Back in the 80's, the indie coders released their games either on their own or in a magazine. Anyone old enough should remember walking into Inacomp or something like that and seeing the latest indie release hanging on a rack with a Dot Matrix printed manual, hand drawn art, a single 5 1/4" floppy all neatly sealed in a ziplock bag. Anyone like me should remember typing in the latest game from your favorite computing platform magazine (for me, that was Antic, Analog, and Compute!).
I remember coding my own little games back in my Atari 800XL days. Most of my games were written in TurboBasic with little ML routines I picked up from various games published in magazines of the day (or larger engines like PM Magic published in Compute!). I've only had the courage to submit 2 games of mine to the large companies from back then, and (of course) my games weren't "polished" enough to get picked up.
I've since left coding to pursue sys administration, but have always had a little something in the back of my head that wants to finish one of my old games, but updated for todays machines. I think that's what drew me to Linux. The community reminded me of the indie gamer developers comunity of the 80's. Going to small "conventions" or local users groups, meeting the guy that coded your favorite indie game, and sharing code and tricks with others is a lot like what happens in the Linux community today. I've already decided that if I ever get back into developing, the games I write will be for Linux and done entirely by myself (I'm also a musican as well as an artist) and will most likely be freeware or shareware.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
.. in old days the artist wished to enrich everybody else - today they are only in it to enrich themselves. Ain't Copyright grand.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
And I went independent again not long after, making games with just two people (myself and my artist partner, 'Manda). Big game publishers would rather fund the big teams, because they need games with enough flash to compete with the other big expensive titles on the shelves. But being small means we A) have an easier time scraping up enough cash to become self funding, B) are less likely to fail to complete a game because it got too tangled up in conflicting visions and goals, C) can do exactly the kinds of games we want rather than only what a publisher will take, and D) don't have to put up with anyone telling us what to do, which I've been allergic to ever since I was a kid being forced to go to elementary school.
The result is, though I have about three dozen published games I've been involved with over the years, the one we have total control over (and ownership of) is the one that I feel is my best work by far. Some of our players are still addicted to it more than six years after they first started playing, and it's now supporting a team of six people. If you want to check it out, the link is in my sig line below. Independent games won't ever supply all of the public's gaming demands, but they are crucial for keeping the variety and innovation levels high - hopefully they'll do so even more as improving software and art tools keep lowering the barriers to entry, and online distribution lowers the costs of getting your game out there and making a few bucks!
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
For anyone who's interested in Indy developing, here's a good tool to start with - Blitz 3D . It's a programming language that's been around since the good old Amiga days, and it provides a very stable and fast 3D engine, coupled with support for just about every sound/image format imaginable. Compared to most commercial engines, it's quite affordable, and it provides the "whole package", not just the graphics engine. This being Slashdot, I should note that it is currently Windows-only, but there is a multiplatform, OpenGL based version in the pipeline.
--- Bwah?
I knew Quake 1 was GPL; I didn't know Quake 2 was. That was an awesome game... Maybe I'll take a look at it as a source, it seems to run on just about everything. Thanks for the tip!
As far as my chapters, of course I'll give away a shareware demo! And, starter files for building worlds, besides. The way I'm thinking of it, I figure I'll do a few different kinds of basic rooms good for different kinds of areas, like indoor, outdoor, underwater, etc. A game developer would take that base and add features to it. I see the whole thing as a sort of 4GL for game development. I'd give away a set of starter meshes, too, for characters.
I think the really interesting part is I'm going to have to come up with some streamlined way of building cut scenes. Now, of course, you'd build cut scenes with the tool for your levels, right? But, once you got good at it, you could actually make small movies, machinima style, using the cutscene editor. If the editor got streamlined enough, it would be like a cut-and-paste movie creator, which I think would be kinda cool.
I'm definitely going to take a look at QuakeII, though. It might save me a hell of a lot of time. Thanks A LOT for the heads up. Now that I think of it, I seem to remember a patch for Quake that generated a third-person mode. I might be able to achieve a lot of my objectives using QuakeII as a starting point...
Thanks!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Pardon my adding a second reply, but I've just been over to SourceForge and my GOD, I can't BELIEVE how much Quake-related stuff is on there! I'm glad you caught me before I started reinventing this wheel... I figure you've saved me at least a year or two. I can't believe it. Carmack is a SAINT. What an incredible gift to the community! I mean, wow.
;)
Dude.
This means I can start building my game this fall! This is so awesome! I mean, I'm totally set! I've got a pretty good storyline, too, this ought to be really cool.
Thank you, seriously, thank you very much for this tip. You've made my whole week.
(If and when I get this game rolling, you've got free licenses to game packs for life).
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!