Show HN: Four months of indie game dev (opens in new tab)

(cannonade.net)

66 pointsredbluething13y ago25 comments

25 comments

25 comments · 11 top-level

krakensden13y ago· 4 in thread

It's interesting to me that the thing you started with was the flipping disk. Reminds me of some blogposts from a year or two ago about 'juicy' interaction, and why it's important.

glitchdout13y ago

"Juice it or lose it" is the best presentation I've seen on the matter. It's really funny and it clearly show how adding some bouncing or some particles can completely change the feel of a game (or UI) http://youtu.be/Fy0aCDmgnxg

shardling13y ago

That sounds a lot like what Tim Rogers calls "friction".

cocoflunchy13y ago

Awesome talk! Thank you for sharing.

redbluethingOP13y ago

Yep. My premise for the project was that there are lots of these kinds of apps on the store (about 6 or 7) but I wanted to build one with no ads and a 'juicier' UI.

BSousa13y ago· 3 in thread

Congrats on finishing and publishing the game.

I skipped a bit through the video and checked the game at the end.

Please, please, please save 1000-2000 grand, browse dribbble.com or similar, and get a decent designer to update the look on the game.

I'll try the game when I get home but if you hope to make some money out of it, you really need to polish the graphics/UI.

markdown13y ago

> 1000-2000 grand

O_o

prawn13y ago

If you're boggling at the $1-2m mistake, then fair enough.

If at the $1-2k budget being too small, then:

When there are people around the world entering design competitions for simply a chance at $xx, and a few are half-decent, you could get some mileage for assets at $1,000-2,000. At least something that will improve the polish on this game.

(Otherwise, I love the progress video. Great to see persistence!)

BSousa13y ago

Sorry, was missing my morning cup of coffee. 1000-2000 dollars :)

There are some nice artist on Dribbble that can redo the UI for that range.

Rinum13y ago· 3 in thread

Based on the timestamps on the video it seems like 2 months were spent building the core game functionality. The remaining 2 months were pretty much used to polish the game.

Is that the case with most indie games? ~50% core gameplay and ~50% polish.

angrycoder13y ago

I would say the 50/50 rule holds true for most software, not just games. Although most people usually express it as the 80/20 rule where 20=the other 80%.

shaggyfrog13y ago

"Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining ten percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time." -- N. J. Rubenking

redbluethingOP13y ago

Hehe. Yep. That was pretty much how it went.

bprater13y ago· 2 in thread

Fascinating way to view the development of an app. I'd love for more developers to do this!

xtrumanx13y ago

Do you think it would be better with commentary and unedited?

For instance, imagine watching a 20 minute video of the dev trying to get the discs spinning with the textures? It'll be like the Let's Play[0] videos on YouTube of people playing a video game with commentary (usually unrehearsed) except this time the person is writing code and switching between their IDE and StackOverflow.

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya2mm6iwiKs

redbluethingOP13y ago

Maybe not unedited, but definitely commentary would be cool :)

notclive13y ago· 1 in thread

I like the idea of showing the progress of an application over time. You could use your CI system to take a snapshot on every commit. In the simplest form you could just take a screenshot, or to capture interaction you could record selenium tests (or any equivalent suite).

redbluethingOP13y ago

I actually did it at the end.

Just went back through the Git history, found milestones and checked out those commits. Ran each commit in the sim and took a video. First time I have done that and pretty happy with how it turned out :).

johnkchow13y ago· 1 in thread

Great video OP! Really inspiring stuff. Rooting for you and your game! :D

redbluethingOP13y ago

Thanks very much. Awesome getting such wonderful support from the HN community.

forrestthewoods13y ago

Nice! It's always super cool to see this type of thing. The more people doing it the better. I recommend putting together an easy to view infographic image.

I did something very similar for a project and put together a full blog post, video, and infographic. The infographic got waaaaaaay more attention and views than everything else.

Blog: http://forrestthewoods.com/30-weeks-of-development/

Image: https://outland-live.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media/downlo...

Lockyy13y ago

This is awesome. I was going to agree with the guy below about the ui needing some polish, but once it got to the later iterations I think it looks great. Shame I don't have an iOS device to try it out on.

I'm doing some game dev now too and wish I had video's of my progress to compile into a video like this. I guess I've got screenshots that I could stitch together that I used to show friends my progress early on.

winter_blue13y ago

Can the horizontal rotation being performed on the discs/coins as shown in the game, be performed with a 2D engine? (Is there some kind of matrix transformation that can accomplish it on an image?)

Or is it absolutely necessary to have a 3D model of a coin, in order to do that?

swanify13y ago

It's really great to see the evolution of a game like this, i agree with other commenters that it would be great to see other game developers do this.

thenicepostr13y ago

Great work! loved the vid too

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25 comments

25 comments · 11 top-level

krakensden13y ago· 4 in thread

It's interesting to me that the thing you started with was the flipping disk. Reminds me of some blogposts from a year or two ago about 'juicy' interaction, and why it's important.

glitchdout13y ago

shardling13y ago

That sounds a lot like what Tim Rogers calls "friction".

cocoflunchy13y ago

Awesome talk! Thank you for sharing.

redbluethingOP13y ago

Yep. My premise for the project was that there are lots of these kinds of apps on the store (about 6 or 7) but I wanted to build one with no ads and a 'juicier' UI.

BSousa13y ago· 3 in thread

Congrats on finishing and publishing the game.

I skipped a bit through the video and checked the game at the end.

Please, please, please save 1000-2000 grand, browse dribbble.com or similar, and get a decent designer to update the look on the game.

I'll try the game when I get home but if you hope to make some money out of it, you really need to polish the graphics/UI.

markdown13y ago

> 1000-2000 grand

O_o

prawn13y ago

If you're boggling at the $1-2m mistake, then fair enough.

If at the $1-2k budget being too small, then:

(Otherwise, I love the progress video. Great to see persistence!)

BSousa13y ago

Sorry, was missing my morning cup of coffee. 1000-2000 dollars :)

There are some nice artist on Dribbble that can redo the UI for that range.

Rinum13y ago· 3 in thread

Based on the timestamps on the video it seems like 2 months were spent building the core game functionality. The remaining 2 months were pretty much used to polish the game.

Is that the case with most indie games? ~50% core gameplay and ~50% polish.

angrycoder13y ago

I would say the 50/50 rule holds true for most software, not just games. Although most people usually express it as the 80/20 rule where 20=the other 80%.

shaggyfrog13y ago

redbluethingOP13y ago

Hehe. Yep. That was pretty much how it went.

bprater13y ago· 2 in thread

Fascinating way to view the development of an app. I'd love for more developers to do this!

xtrumanx13y ago

Do you think it would be better with commentary and unedited?

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya2mm6iwiKs

redbluethingOP13y ago

Maybe not unedited, but definitely commentary would be cool :)

notclive13y ago· 1 in thread

redbluethingOP13y ago

I actually did it at the end.

johnkchow13y ago· 1 in thread

Great video OP! Really inspiring stuff. Rooting for you and your game! :D

redbluethingOP13y ago

Thanks very much. Awesome getting such wonderful support from the HN community.

forrestthewoods13y ago

Nice! It's always super cool to see this type of thing. The more people doing it the better. I recommend putting together an easy to view infographic image.

I did something very similar for a project and put together a full blog post, video, and infographic. The infographic got waaaaaaay more attention and views than everything else.

Blog: http://forrestthewoods.com/30-weeks-of-development/

Image: https://outland-live.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media/downlo...

Lockyy13y ago

winter_blue13y ago

Can the horizontal rotation being performed on the discs/coins as shown in the game, be performed with a 2D engine? (Is there some kind of matrix transformation that can accomplish it on an image?)

Or is it absolutely necessary to have a 3D model of a coin, in order to do that?

swanify13y ago

It's really great to see the evolution of a game like this, i agree with other commenters that it would be great to see other game developers do this.

thenicepostr13y ago

Great work! loved the vid too

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