#hobbyist gamedev

[thepie]

Art from our game!!

[raspberrykraken]

I have decided to start over game development and designing again.

My main game engine will be Unreal.

My prototyping engine will be Ultimate Doom Builder.

Therefore if it’s not working in Ultimate Doom Builder then it won’t work in Unreal for the final pieces.

I have been sketching on my ipad and sketching ideas. I have procreate but also using apples Freeform to white board it out.

I am cautiously optimistic this year is the year to do things, especially after what happened last year.

I am finally ready to not only be unhinged but also put no limits on my creativity.

Happy 2024.

[bananaman81]

DONT WORRY EVERYONE the game project is still being worked on! unfortunately ive been putting off working on it for awhile, this is my first ever gamedev project and it's mostly a hobbyist project. hopefully i'll be able to release the story demo i've been working on, it won't include most of the core gameplay i have planned but i think it will serve as a great introduction to the story and help gauge interest in the project.

i'll try to release more updates in the future

[markrosewater]

Hi Mark! (this might be too late but nonetheless) I'm a relatively new Magic player and while I have played several deckbuilders before I've really been enjoying my time with Magic (I play on Arena).

But my first instance of seeing your work was actually the GDC presentation you gave way back when on the 20 lessons you learned on game design. I'm a hobbyist gamedev and I absolutely loved that talk! Its inspired me to think so differently about many things. Thanks again Mark!

I'm glad you enjoyed the talk. I'm super proud of it. It just passed 1,000,000 views a month ago.

[askagamedev]

G’day GameDev. I am in my late 30’s and considering returning to school to study Game Design. I currently have no applicable/transferable knowledge, skills or experience and I will be 40 years old when I have finished my studies and looking to find my first job in the industry. Am I too late? Will I be wasting my time (and money) trying to enter the industry at that age?

There's some major questions that you need to answer for yourself.

First and foremost, I think it really depends on what your own goals and responsibilities are. What is it you want to do with your life? Do you have any other major goals outside of your career? Is doing game design professionally what you really want, or would doing game design as an amateur hobbyist be enough? You need to be sure that this is something you want to commit to for years, not just the studying and learning, but also the doing. Remember, getting an entry-level job in the game industry isn't the end of the road but the beginning. Once you get hired, you don't just ride off into the sunset while the credits roll. There's a whole career after that first offer letter, and that kind of career really isn't for everyone.

The second major question you need to ask yourself is "Do I really need to go to school to study game design?" I'll tell you now that I never went to school for game design. The majority of designers I work with didn't go to school for game design. Game design is a field where being self-taught still works just fine, especially if you engage with the game dev community. You can build a game or mod yourself, get it out in front of people, learn from it, iterate on it, and use that as experience to get yourself a job doing it. It is fully possible to learn game design without significant school debt (which will have a large effect on your life as well).

I could go on, but I think this should be enough food for thought to chew on for a bit. Take some time to consider your answer to these questions and about your life. Consider the tradeoffs from making these choices - what you are giving up to move forward with this, especially if you have to take on several thousands of dollars in school debt. If you have further questions, my inbox is always open. I wish you good fortune.

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[naggingatlas]

thinking about the situation in my uni rn and it's just. putting me in stitches.

im from moldova. tiny country between ukraine and romania. i study at the most prestigious university in it, not very hard to get into we have like three of them all in all.

i study game development. year one. its a very recent (3 years, they don't even have alumni yet) addition to the specialty roster here, as part of the JOBS OF THE FUTURE program sponsored by some western fags, mostly americans and swedes. the other two are media production (anything to do with tv pretty much) and animation which i am not sure exists because ive never met anyone majoring in it.

its kind of awesome to study gamedev at my uni. we have good if a little socially awkward teachers, very amicable homey atmosphere, i actually feel like im working on something i love.

but there is just one thing that cracks me up.

the western fags, пендосы if we're being elegant, sponsor most of the course right. they invested in these beautiful clean high tech classrooms, sensor boards and bean bags. the gamer chairs they put in one of the computer labs are - quite frankly - the most ive ever felt alive in a chair. and the computers are quite nice. some gay ass leds in the see through frame. faggish. and yet.

they don't have illustrator. they don't even have photoshop. they have inkscape and gimp preinstalled on them. not even fucking aceprite. same for every engine we have in the curriculum tho it doesnt matter that much - but theyre still all free to use apps. and ive just been wondering. how.

because they know our teachers are still gonna show us how to do work in illustrator instead of fucking inkscape right. they know that. they paid for the classrooms, they paid for these unnecessarily bright machines. and yet they insist on "oh if you can't afford these adobe licences you shall never pirate".

i have not met a single person from a post-soviet country who had ever paid for one piece of software they use for work. in all of my twenty years of life. from hobbyists to cream of the crop in their profession. not a single one. i was taught how to pirate by my grandma at 6 years old.

fucking inkscape man.

[smilestrawbunny]

Hey! Just a heads up, I'm sending this to multiple people, since I wanna get as many different viewpoints on this as I can. I hope this doesn't bother you. Also, this is pretty long.

So, I have a question about gamedev, but more on the marketing/presence side.

Most gamedevs I know, even hobbyist ones, keep their accounts relatively professional. Sure, they may shitpost here and there, but it's mostly in relation to their games, the gamedev sphere in general, or very general inoffensive stuff. And, most importantly, I've seldom seen my favorite gamedevs (or any of my favorite internet personalities, for that matter) comment on random videos unrelated to what type of content they usually post.

All of my social media accounts are quite unprofessional. I've also had them for a long time, so there are a few things on my digital footprint that I'd rather people not see. I also, for lack of a better way of explaining, watch and read random shit and like to leave comments on it sometimes.

I feel like, I were to become a gamedev, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. I'd have to treat my internet presence as its own balancing act, rather than a place for me to express myself unabashedly. I know this is working under the assumption that I would get big and that people would give a damn about me, but there is always the off chance of that happening. Of a random game you make suddenly blowing up because it hit the algorithm just right. So it's better to be prepared. And even if I don't get that big boom in popularity, I still plan to at least make games consistently enough to build a community of their own. Nothing like, huge, but I really enjoy the idea of people enjoying my work and sharing that enjoyment with others. But I don't want that to cross over into my personal life!

I know that's not an impossible feat, but I feel like it kind of destroys the purpose of the internet for me. To me, it's always been a safe space where I could express myself and easily connect with people with similar viewpoints, but I am now coming to odds with this concept as I consider how I want to become a gamedev.

There's also the side note that I don't wanna rebrand. At least not completely. I don't mind cleaning up my accounts or deleting some old ones, but I've grown very attached to being "Quamai". I can't imagine myself having any other online identity, even if there are some cringy moments attached to it.

So, do you have any advice for my situation? How did you personally go about your own online image, and what do you think is the best course of action?

Thank you in advance!

Oh, I am such a funny person to come to about this- I never let being a game dev stop me from interacting with works I like, haha! Maybe that’s just because I’m a smaller creator, though. Just recently I posted death note fan art, I’m currently working up the courage to post about fandom related ocs, and I’m hosting a game jam encouraging fan works that might be considered “cringy.”

The people who like you and your work will still be there regardless. You can count on that as a fact! So why should you stop yourself from having fun?

Life is far too short to be worried about your public image to such a high degree. Like you said, these are already things that you actively do to express yourself and enjoy! So if it gives you any semblance of comfort, I’ll start doing even more “unprofessional” things to help you out there <3 /pos

[just-a-carrot]

Hey! Just a heads up, I'm sending this to multiple people, since I wanna get as many different viewpoints on this as I can. I hope this doesn't bother you. Also, this is pretty long.

So, I have a question about gamedev, but more on the marketing/presence side.

Most gamedevs I know, even hobbyist ones, keep their accounts relatively professional. Sure, they may shitpost here and there, but it's mostly in relation to their games, the gamedev sphere in general, or very general inoffensive stuff. And, most importantly, I've seldom seen my favorite gamedevs (or any of my favorite internet personalities, for that matter) comment on random videos unrelated to what type of content they usually post.

All of my social media accounts are quite unprofessional. I've also had them for a long time, so there are a few things on my digital footprint that I'd rather people not see. I also, for lack of a better way of explaining, watch and read random shit and like to leave comments on it sometimes.

I feel like, I were to become a gamedev, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. I'd have to treat my internet presence as its own balancing act, rather than a place for me to express myself unabashedly. I know this is working under the assumption that I would get big and that people would give a damn about me, but there is always the off chance of that happening. Of a random game you make suddenly blowing up because it hit the algorithm just right. So it's better to be prepared. And even if I don't get that big boom in popularity, I still plan to at least make games consistently enough to build a community of their own. Nothing like, huge, but I really enjoy the idea of people enjoying my work and sharing that enjoyment with others. But I don't want that to cross over into my personal life!

I know that's not an impossible feat, but I feel like it kind of destroys the purpose of the internet for me. To me, it's always been a safe space where I could express myself and easily connect with people with similar viewpoints, but I am now coming to odds with this concept as I consider how I want to become a gamedev.

There's also the side note that I don't wanna rebrand. At least not completely. I don't mind cleaning up my accounts or deleting some old ones, but I've grown very attached to being "Quamai". I can't imagine myself having any other online identity, even if there are some cringy moments attached to it.

So, do you have any advice for my situation? How did you personally go about your own online image, and what do you think is the best course of action?

Thank you in advance!

oh gosh what a question ldkjfadl

hmmmm

putting this under a cut because it got long and rambly lakdfa

for me personally i don't think i've ever made that many "right" choices when it comes to how i handle my online presence in game dev, it was mostly just me doing what seemed like the right thing to do at the time. it's also changed a lot all throughout my time as a dev

tho i guess the main thing is that i did create a whole new game dev online identity, so to speak, when i first got into game dev. this wasn't really due to any purposeful thought put into it though and was more just because 1) i didn't really have much online identity anyway at the time and 2) in the beginning i was trying to be more "professional" LOL

when i released easter, i did it without any presence at all. i had no accounts or anything. i literally just finished the game and threw it up on itch and gamejolt using the new studio name i had come up with based on an inside work joke. it wasn't until i started to get a few people talking about the game or linking to it/making vids that i was like hmmm i should have a twitter maybe LOL so like a week later i made a twitter. but i barely posted on it, it was just responding to other people. a year later when i released the 2.0 update i also made a few posts. then thought i might start using it more so started posting just a few random updates of new stuff i was trying out/working on (this was when i made my first couple of posts about early OW stuff)

but then when i shifted out of game dev again for a while, i abandoned it

it wasn't until august of 2021 that i began actively using my account again to post production updates for work on ow. but back then i was a lot more "emotionless" for lack of a better word. like i approached it in a more no-nonsense way than i do today. i also never got that much response from it either, usually lucky to get like 2 or 3 likes on stuff 🤣 over the course of that first year or so though i would change a lot in how i handled my online stuff, acting much more like myself, interacting a lot more with people, and getting increasingly more unhinged(???) LOL perhaps because i'd begun to see that being "super professional" when i'm just a little random person making a game all by myself there's no reason to be so stiff (and it's just much more fun and genuine to not be afraid to be myself and be a bit silly). over this time was also when i'd shift away from using my studio name and just taking the "carrot" identity. because i realized i didn't like people thinking about me as an impersonal studio and wanted to just be me, carrot, interacting with people, making games, and getting unhinged about my chars and stories

is this the right way to do it???? i have no idea. but perhaps since i never have any aspirations of grandeur and don't plan to be any kind of business, it's fine for me. and while it's true that i don't like to post, reblog, interact with, content unrelated to my games or other VN stuff, that's mostly because i don't want to annoy people who i know only follow me for game stuff (i worry about annoying people a lot, actually, it might be one of the core foundations for how i handle myself online LMAO). i don't have any other presence online though. once i started my game dev stuff, carrot became me, and it's all that's out there. so it's not like i need to "separate" anything. but also i'm not a very avid user of social media in general so it's not like i have an active desire to have different accounts so i can tweet about or comment on other stuff lakdjfasd i'm an old socially anxious duck who gets mentally exhausted just scrolling my feed. i don't need to spend any more time online than i already do with my game dev stuff hahaha. i do know some other devs though for instance that have private accounts on twitter just for their friends and more personal thoughts. so that's always an option too

as for what you should do in your own situation with your own online presence, i'm not really sure, as it all comes down to what you want. for me, since i didn't have much presence anyway, and because i wanted my game dev stuff to be its own thing, it made sense for me to create a new presence just for game dev (that eventually evolved into my entire self LKDJFAS). so it's hard for me to say what would be the best course of action if you already have an online presence that forms a core part of your identity that you don't want to lose. it also depends on what you want to eventually do with your games and if you see yourself really wanting to pursue it actively and make it a big part of your life. most devs that i know do have "game dev" presences for lack of a better word, where if you go to their accounts, it's just for game dev. or they create studios and studio accounts. i think no matter what you decide to do, even if you keep the name the same, it would probably be best to at least keep your game dev stuff separate, because people could potentially be put off from following an account for games but then their feed gets filled with a lot of non-game stuff from you that they don't care about

no matter what you decide to do though, i recommend being yourself no matter what. whether you keep with your same identity or craft a new game dev only one, still do what feels right for you on that account and be yourself and have fun with it!! game dev can already be such an isolating and hard experience, so creating a space where you can be silly and have fun with other devs and fun with your chars and ideas can really help so much to give you motivation and just enjoy your time creating games!!!

(sorry if this was a complete ramble that didn't even still fully answer the question; i can only speak from my own personal experiences that i went through after all and i don't really have any good or professional answers since i also have no idea what i'm doing most of the time 🤣)

[transfaguette]

brain fog vs my love of hobbyist gamedev who will win. find out next week if i give up trying

[sleepy-time-coffee]

Uh hi temporary intro post till I can edit it to something better

I'm Sleepy! I'm nineteen years old, and I'm a hobbyist artist with. Too many OCs. Also, I want to learn gamedev. At some point. I keep procrastinating on it.

I mostly draw my OCs, but you may also see fanart for Pokemon or Cookie Run on here. Who knows! I'll have tags on here for each individual oc.

Eventually I'll probably add on to this with some info about the OCs I tend to draw most or something. I don't know. I wrote this at nearly midnight on a wednesday

[grumpy-gamedev]

Starting from the bottom

As previously mentioned, I have restarted my art journey from the beginning. This will really be a quite uninteresting path at the basics as it involves things like drawing boxes, hundreds and hundreds of boxes...

To make something interesting out of this and to keep myself engaged in the plan I was thinking that I show some of my old art together with the process of the new start. With this I might lure some of you to pay attention and maybe I find a community here that I can grow with as well (needless to say, I crave feedback, be it harsh and realistic all the better, don't sugarcoat it, I'm a big boy, I can handle it).

Let's start with the historic piece, this one I like quite a bit, it's made in charcoal using a technique I worked out whilst in art school, working in layers with fixating the charcoal and really working in the contrast using white charcoal pencil. I present "Dawn of the Gods"

This is a typical Glenn piece for sure. But it does not have the foundational structure, just a surreal, almost abstract piece. This is something that is thick in my old catalog as you will see in the coming months.

Now for the current piece

Boxes, not hundreds, but it's a journey! I wanted to make it a bit funnier to do and went for treasure chests as an added detail. I don't know if this will help me on my foundational journey. But I hope it might. I'm watching youtube videos about the drawing of boxes to get some help on the way. And I will probably do a spread of boxes daily for the coming month or so.

Here's a selection of videos that I put on repeat for the occation

This one I will work on for a while, the first try was quite horrendous, so I understood straight away that I need to really double down on my foundations.

This one is a bit loose and goose, but helpful in my quest for mastering the box!

I'm also doing a bit of contour lines workouts in the middle of this, and also keeping my eyes on the end goal by building up a moodboard of inspirational artists as a PureRef document.

Next week I will start with my day-job again after the holidays, but my goal will be to at least open Procreate everyday and put down a couple of lines to just keep my head in the journey. I might consider waking up an hour earlier everyday to keep a regular time for foundational training and be hard on creating that routine as consistency is key to progress.

So what about game development you might ask? Well, this journeys final goal is that I can make the art that I want for the dream project that I have in mind. It'll be an extended journey as the game dev aspect of things will move to the background for the foreseeable future and all focus will be on building up foundational art skills.

I have given up on actually making it as a game developer, so I will bask in the light of being a hobbyist instead, which isn't a bad thing at all. It gives me more freedom to do exactly what I like and want without having to stress out over the financial side of things, and I do believe that this is the area where you can create true art that might make a difference, albeit tiny, in the world.

And with that I leave you for this time. Expect more boxes, but I'll sprinkle in some old stuff in the mix to keep it interesting and fun!

Cheerz!

/ Glenn the Grumpy Gamedev

[doomtemparts]

Introductory Post!

(No, I'm not new to the site, I just need a better post to pin.)

You can call me Neon! I'm an artist who loves all kinds of crafts from cosplay to animation to gamedev, and I make fanart for all sorts of nerdy properties! I also have a bunch of original artwork, and a hobbyist/personal site on Neocities (check it out!)

Here are some other important links:

bigcartel where I sell pins and keychains and stuff

bluesky where I post various thoughts that aren't art-adjacent

itch.io where I post the occasional zine or book-ish project

Have a look around! (Also I'm always down to talk about art and nerd stuff, please don't be shy to send asks/messages!)

...That's all, I guess LMAO.

[raspberrykraken]

Also don’t ever throw any kind of scrap piece of paper with your notes on it. Just shove it in a drawer, forget it’s there. Let ideas marinate awhile. Comeback to it when your ready.

[kalungepallavi]

Industry practices Blog 6:

Epic Games' Unreal Engine Pricing Changes: A Balanced Approach

As a creator in my last semester before graduating, I was intrigued to learn about Epic Games' updated pricing model for Unreal Engine, Twinmotion, and RealityCapture. The changes, set to take effect with Unreal Engine 5.4 in late April, aim to maintain free access for indie creators while introducing a subscription for larger non-gaming companies.

The key takeaways for creators like myself are:

Indie creators, students, educators, and hobbyists will continue to have free access to these tools if their annual gross revenue or per-title earnings remain below $1 million.

The new seat-based Unreal Subscription, priced at $1,850 per seat per year, will only impact non-game creators in industries like filmmaking, TV production, architectural visualisation, and those integrating Unreal Engine code at runtime, with yearly revenues exceeding $1 million.

Twinmotion and RealityCapture will also be free for students and hobbyists whose projects earn less than $1 million annually, while individual subscriptions will be available for purchase.

As a soon-to-be graduate exploring various creative avenues, this pricing update is reassuring. It preserves the accessibility of powerful tools like Unreal Engine, allowing me to continue experimenting and building my skills without financial barriers. The $1 million revenue threshold provides ample runway for indie creators to grow their businesses before needing to consider the subscription model.

For those interested in learning more about the implications of these changes for non-student creators, here are some additional perspectives:

The Venturebeat article notes that the new pricing model "aims to accommodate the evolving needs of developers and companies, introducing a new seat-based Unreal Subscription model for non-game industries." This suggests that the changes are designed to support a wider range of creators, not just those in the gaming industry.

The GameIndustry.biz article emphasizes that "Unreal Engine, Twinmotion, and RealityCapture will continue to be free to use for students, educators, and hobbyists, in addition to developers who earn less than $1 million in revenue." This is particularly relevant for creators like myself who are transitioning from student to professional status.

 The Famiboards discussion thread highlights the potential for non-gaming companies to use Unreal Engine as an alternative to other commercial tools, like Autodesk's suite. This suggests that the pricing changes could open up new opportunities for creators in various industries to leverage Unreal Engine's capabilities.

In summary, Epic Games' Unreal Engine pricing changes maintain a balanced approach that supports indie creators while generating revenue from larger non-gaming companies. For non-student creators like myself, these updates preserve the accessibility of powerful tools, allowing us to continue exploring and developing our skills as we transition into the professional world.

References:

McEvoy, S. (2024, March 13). Epic confirms Unreal Engine price change for non-game developers. GamesIndustry.biz. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/epic-confirms-unreal-engine-price-change-for-non-game-developers

Sagadego. (2023, October 7). Epic Games to update Unreal Engine pricing for devs outside game industry; Epic Games began running into. . . [Online forum post]. Famiboards. https://famiboards.com/threads/epic-games-to-update-unreal-engine-pricing-for-devs-outside-game-industry-epic-games-began-running-into-financial-problems-about-10-weeks-ago.7726/

Takahashi, D. (2024, March 12). Epic Games updates prices for non-game Unreal Engine projects. VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/gaming-business/epic-games-updates-prices-for-non-game-unreal-engine-projects/

[angeliqueshelleyartist]

Current Industry Advancements

Blog Post #4

AI in the creative field is rapidly expanding to include not only illustration, but also animation, storyboards, script and creative writing, and even modelling. AI has been a continuous theme in these posts due to the breadth of its influence in the creative industry including concept art. The ease at which AI converts difficult, tedious and expert tasks means that creation has never been more accessible, which also means that certain creative professionals are feeling the strain. However, by embracing certain AI tools, concept artists (and any creative) can expand the breadth of their creative presentation.

Animation is one key field concept artists can more easily expand into thanks to AI, which is extremely suitable for conceptualising character movements.

A screenshot of Mixamo's animation library, Adobe, 2024

The automatic rigging, animation preset and motion capture software Mixamo, has been around for a few years, but when coupled with AI animation software Cascaduer, animation becomes something extremely accessible to an amateur. Cascadeur uses AI to create smooth transitions between poses, easily clean up a mo-cap animation and generate the natural deformation physics that come with muscular movement. It also allows for accurate interaction with the environment with their AutoPhysics tool. It seems a god-like tool that I can see also being used by veterans in the field to reduce the amount of clean-up and key-frames needed for life-like and nuanced animations.

A Cascadeur showcase, Cascadeur, 2024.

An example of Cascadeur being used is by indie game developer MLMEDIA, who used it to create parkour animations for their game Rooftops & Alleys. This AI software truly opens doors for concept artists who want to realise their ideas without having to wait for a team or a producer.

A YouTube short showcasing how Cascadeur was used to create animations for indie game Rooftops & Alleys, 2024.

These developments yet again remind me of Shaddy Safadi's imagining of a future where one person may be in charge of the entire pipeline (The Andrew Price Podcast, 2022). It will be a fascinating time in gaming and creative media, which I see as possibly becoming even more over-saturated with content similar to the YouTube phenomenon of media creation. Creative competition may give rise to some truly outlandish creations as artists fight to stand out, which is exciting to think about, but the pessimist in me worries that capitalism will force creative professionals into creative hobbyists. However, I also believe that the years spent training and learning the fundamentals of art and media production will still continue to set media apart from others.

References

Adobe. (2024). Mixamo. [Online]. Available at: https://www.mixamo.com/#/ [Accessed 25 April 2024].

The Andrew Price Podcast. (2022). #29: Is Concept Art Really Dead? With Shaddy Safadi. [Online]. YouTube. Last Updated: 19 August 2022. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YevFQ2qG4Y  [Accessed 20 February 2024].

Cascadeur. (2024). #Cascadeur Parkour Animations in “Rooftops & Alleys” launching May 21 on Steam #gamedev #indiegames. [Online]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtube.com/shorts/B7mGzdGr8Hc?si=kb3Sf2mof8XJVZFm [Accessed 24 April 2024].

Cascadeur. (2024). Cascadeur - AI Tool for Mocap Cleanup and Animation Editing. [Online]. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/euMb627cF9I?si=Hzyy-D5U-7cKroN3 [Accessed 23 April 2024].

[emmetcomputer]

ABOUT ME

hiya I'm your plural system local computer known as Emmet King! (she/they/it/computer) An amateur gamedev, webcomic hobbyist with a passion for the unusual

loving objects and learning all about how to express said love

I'm an adult so sometimes it can get suggestive (I also follow from an 18+ main, whoopsies) so no kids

I like older technology, locomotives, clockwork, science, buildings, space, building sets, ummm...note to self, just make a masterpost list and insert a link lol

I've ended up liking blogging here way more then other accounts so I get pretty talkative here!

I'll make stuff look nicer in the future, for now it's all just one step at a time! SYSTEM TAGS Emmet - emmet is drawing (art) , emmet is typing (writing) , reblogs myself (reblogging my general account) Ricky - ricky w tag (Ricky content) Edgar - edgars tag for edgars stuff (Edgar content) Yang - YANGS MINING (Yang likes Minecraft)

remember