Sometimes I wonder why I watch these videos, I already make games lol.

The gamedev castle/cottage idea sounds absolutely awesome!

This is a great video for people on the fence. I have been learning Game Development for the past 2 months. Zero regrets despite having nothing really to show for it other than being able to have conversations and provide insight into the process of how games are made and how they function. Some advice from a novice to the person who hasn't even started, this is targeted at someone who has no coding language experience btw. Use Godot as your engine: Python is incredibly easy to pick up and GDScript reads almost the same as python. Start with 2D even if you want to make 3D games: It's super freaking hard to make games guys... Just start with 2D to get your feet wet. Buy a Udemy course: This is not an advertisement for them and I am aware that there are free resources on KZbin, the resources on KZbin don't compare to the Udemy course I'm taking. 75 hour course for 15$ vs 20 minute scattered courses for outdated versions of your engine for free. I guess it comes down to if you want to struggle or if you want the process to be smooth. This isn't a sprint: This isn't even a marathon, this is a nomadic odyssey. It takes time, to take your time. I have a disagreement on the whole "Doing this for money" ideal though. There is nuance to this. It's unrealistic to separate yourself from the idea of making money off of your games. If so, put your 5 year project on Steam for free, prove me wrong. But money should NEVER be your PRIMARY motivation. Game developers should be in it for the love of games and the love of gaming, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money off of your project, but that will come with time. Money is a byproduct of a high quality game, making a high quality game is a byproduct of someone who loves game development, loving game development is a byproduct of someone who deeply desires making games. It's that simple. Money will come naturally, so don't focus on it. Just focus on making a great game. My source on that is personal experience. I became an aspiring game dev due to my experience with being a composer for other people's games. I love writing music and having my music in a game was a dream come true, sadly the people I wrote for weren't game devs because it was their dream, they thought it would be a simple cash grab and therefore, the music that I wrote with love, believing was going into a game built with love, ended up completely flopping and all my effort was essentially wasted. If I want my video game music to be heard, I need to take the process into my own hands and so I have. What I've learned is that.. I have the stuff. I have the brain for theorizing new games, reinventing old ideas etc. This is what I'm meant to do.

That step 4 is a doozy! Working on it though. 😅

where did you look, do, and ask in order to get paid in the short term to learn? that is my problem right now, all my time and energy is being sucked up by a unfulfilling full time dead end job? I would love to be able to learn while getting paid enough to live. Where should I look?

Lovely first video as always! Cool to see how some of your ideas have been core to your whole journey as a game dev. Good luck this year, I know you are going to crush it.

Having "getting rich" as the main reason for developing games is reason enough to reconsider your priorities in life. Having said that, I'm not sure if there are better ways to make more money with less competition as you said. Making games is hard but considering the amount of money that you, in average, make by making music, movies, being an engineer, making games is definitely a bargain. Also, pretty much all industries have a ton of competition nowadays. In fact, this industry might be (arguably) the only one where you might get rich by mere chance and we shall be thankful about it when it happens to one of us. In short, wanting to get rich by making games is understandable but shall not be your main reason.

That intro 🤣 Awesome tips, I think this might be a video I'll bookmark and send to friends when they ask me what it takes to make games.

4:19 This is called Dad Humor

Hey Thomas. I'm inspired by your story as this is something I'd like to do at some point in time but I feel like I need a 6-12 month savings plan to get me through the first year. But it spans beyond the concept of game development but more along the lines of serial entrepreneurship / part time investing with automation (which I've already figured out the prototype I spent a year on)

Dope game at 0:22 🙃 Great video as usual ❤

Could you please send a link to the Boomerang Fu podcast?

Happy New Year! Such good advice. These principles carry over into whatever you do as well (just substitute 2 and 3 with keep learning). 🙂Thank you Thomas, and all the best, everyone!!

Step 1 is huge yet almost no one mentions it.

Thomas thanks alot for this video! any recomenddation of where to learn color theory? I find a lot of things that look basic online, so not a good way to choose

But the last step is hard duuuude!!! Scope creep has been kicking my butt

Crucial - when we can't define goals, our priorities are lost. It's super important to establish what we want in order to know how to get it (and then proactively work on it as you mentioned with pushing away new game ideas until you complete your current project.) - Great advice!

Great video that talks through a rationale for taking sales success ceiling into consideration. Also good in a big picture sense in that it talks to the creative side that often gets diminished when talking about making these decisions based on data. It's a sort of alchemy in my experience, part science, part speculative, driven by passion.

A fundamental flaw with Zukowski's genre breakdown is that he mixed apples and oranges, comparing very broad genres like platformer, that have lots of different subgenres and styles, with something super-specific like "roguelite deckbuilder". _Obviously_ one pile is going to be bigger than the other. He also assumes that the Steam genre data is correct, which is far from the truth (probably more than 90% of games tagged "adventure" are not what is traditionally considered adventure games). Being in a crowded genre/market can mean tougher competition, but his numbers kinda lie. As for using (art) assets, as a player my main issue is that it tends to comes across as not feeling personal. Personally, I'd much rather have whatever MS Paint scribbles you made yourself than something that "looks professional" but is generic. That really great music track you picked out also isn't going to have as much of an impact if I've encountered it six times before. I'm probably in a minority to feel that strongly about it, but you should at least consider what you give up in the trade.

smart. ive seen people use splines in conjunction with procedural 9eneration and splines co3e with the 6ult in feature of 6ein a6le to stop thin9s 6ein9 spawned on the spline. 3i9ht e useful for re3ovin walls

Since you strive for video quality, here's a tip: you should disbale auto exposure because if you wave your hands and somehow occlude your main light, the auto exposure is all over the place which is really irritating.

@4:48 thank god you came to the astute observation by yourself that if you can't even recognise Balatro, then you know nothing about deck building games because I was worried for you for a second there.

What about "Bridgeborn"? And then transforming the game mechanic... 1. More about building bridges to expand your empire and/or controlling and maintaining your bridges to defend your empire. 2. You are met with choice, expand your empire or build your existing base. 3. As you're doing this the enemy is doing the same. 4. It's about balancing exploration while maintaining what you have with bridge control being a key battleground.

Very cool! :) great to watch these videos

I went with the "personal brand" approach specifically from watching Thomas. He was my template. I can't say it's made me wildly successful or anything, but I think it turned out better than the alternative, and I wouldn't do that part differently if I could go back and change it. YMMV of course.

How often did you update those games? I think you jumped to advertising too fast usually you need to polish the game more then advertise I know it's not easy I think you did a good job overall it

I think you could have upgraded your games at least visually much more with few easy tweaks For example Just go ASMR way adding sounds and visuals make them more interesting Where you rolled balls you could have added more pickups or some FUN obstacles to avoid like say some random and funny springy mechanism that catapults balls Overall I think you approached this as a business and forgot to make them more fun or artistic to make them worth playing I seen this and it's tragic it's like you just needed to make them more appealing I think you can continue to try in spare time if u can manage time but it's hard on creative side maybe get artist and invest to make money Your game seems to have mostly programer art so it's not appealing Just focus on making them more entertaining no need to focus on hard coding algorithms

You mean I can't use assets! What the heck is wrong with this guy? I'm so mad I can hardly stand up.

You are the best

Love your work brother!

Thomas, you seem to have intuited it, but 'small world' networks where a certain mix of more short links, a few medium, and the odd long range connection reflect patterns in nature and efficient system by humans.

Don't waste your time on making the UI pretty. Stay focused on game design. UI is easy to fix later. Poor game design will kill your game.

Very cool and interesting game design. I'm a little bit sad to hear that the vehicles will be electric. Hopefully later on they will add ice engined or hybrid vehicles too, but for the most part the game sounds super fun. Just think driving around might become a little bit boring or annoying with the electric whine sound or no sound at all from the vehicle 😅 sure if the renewable energy thing is something they really want they could still get that all by powering your greenhouses, and everything in your van with windmills and solar panels. Its just a bit sad we wont have to take into account fuel or getting fuel to drive around

I find myself faced with the "work on aesthetics or gameplay" conundrum all the time. Happen to be working on similar stuff right now too (economy and shop UI). It's tough to balance making something that's functional for playtesting, looks decent enough to show, but also isn't so polished that it's a big waste of you need to change/scrap it in response to playtesting. Good luck!

My first thought was "oh no, now you need graph theory" 😆

MSI sponsor this man!

Hi mate, sounds like you're basically creating a network/graph with nodes (islands) and vertices (bridges). Might be worth looking into as there is a lot of information on this in mathematics and computer science. Concepts like adjusting the length of the vertices and avoiding intersections etc are problems which have been solved many times so could give you some inspiration/ideas.

That last clip was so adorable <3

Why not conquer (make your own) one of the islands that attacks you? Isn't that more interesting than randomly generated islands?

Oh 😮 that's the evolution of tower defense, but island instead of tower, and they are customizable

I really liked this devlog. It's interesting to see how you determine the problems and find solutions for them

You can make it such that the player connects the island to fight and transport. Or the enemies might make a bridge to get to the player for resource, etc

after the intro you should’ve stood up and had a very pixelated view of you wearing just underwear lmao

how can I play your demo to help with feedback?

This video is funnier than your average video, love it. "My Sad Implementio--" made me burst out laughing and scare my cat

Just a thought but instead of starting with multiple islands or expanding one central island. what if you can conquer the enemy islands when you defeat all their troops and towers? I'm loving following the making of the game btw - RTS is my favorite genre!

Thanks for sharing, loved the mix of personal and devlog!

This work looks great and promising! Love how gameplay flow starts working.

What it if... and hear me out here.. you changed the square grid to be HEXAGONS and called the game Hexagod 3D? 😁 Funny enough I spent a lot of this week working on generating islands for Hexagod and I ran into a bunch of these same sort of issues. Nice work!

Sounds like a great change. I love the idea of expanding all your little islands and using areas for eco and having to think about how to manage your areas. However I might just pose the thought that you might be thinking way too much in terms or bridges? The excess of bridges and accessibility to movement might take away some of the player choice for expansion and tactics. I am imagining a version of this where you think "I should really spend my gold from this round to connect a bridge to that nearby island for the extra space". As the game goes on the player would naturally connect up the bridges as they see fit for their defence/eco strategy and give you that satisfying feeling of gaining new land and the late game would look more like the current setup with loads of bridges and difficult multi island defense. I am less keen on the bridges everywhere all the time approach. It made sense in bridges and docks but I think with your new MSI plan the player should have more control of the bridges? Maybe instead of enemy land chunks floating in the enemy lands on the shore of any island connected by land or bridge to your start island. So if you fail to expand to enough islands they will eventually all land on your tiny home island as the rounds heat up. Now you have to think about how quick you expand and what the implications are of connecting to a new island etc. Just a thought. Love the new direction of it all though.