The question I get asked the most often as a Game Dev... [Q&A]

[@InboundShovel]

If you're interested, here's where you can wishlist Isadora's Edge on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/3125320/Isadoras_Edge/ And you can follow the Kickstarter here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/inboundshovel/isadoras-edge Thank you!

[@legokirbymanchannel]

Damn, he's a game developer *and* he has an anime wife. The man's living the dream of many.

[@rhnirsilva652]

the ultimate gamer

[@HeroGetsu]

Fax

[@Rayu25Demon]

the best thing he didn't show his wife real face i respect this kind of people.

[@عبدالحميدغندو]

Yes he is a good guy ​@@Rayu25Demon

[@abdullahgamer4477]

"The idea of being ready for something is a myth". Damn

[@stubz6077]

"you look lonely i can fix that" type lighting

[@stubz6077]

also great vid, i've been thinking about game concepts for years now but ive always shyed away from getting started!

[@GuiriTV]

You are amazing. I never thought that my one cry for help amongst many would be addressed and recognized. We are in the era where game development has become more accessible but likewise more competitive. And despite all the hard work, tears, and sweat your team has put into your own game, you still find time to teach, motivate, and push us forward. Thank you Mr. Shovel! Can't wait to see what you create, and likewise what we'll create!

[@InboundShovel]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate your comment! And I'm glad I could help you on your journey! :D

[@CluelessYukan]

Genuinely man, as someone who just recently picked up game development as a hobby. Any little insight or advice is extremely useful. And looking through your development process is super inspiring! Keep up the good work!

[@TheLazyBeanss]

I started my game dev journey in Roblox Studio last year and it took a couple months to learn but after that it was amazing. The only problem with Roblox studio is that it's basically impossible to make a game with even just 5 concurrent players without thousands of dollars for advertising or a KZbin channel. So I switched to Godot and it's been rough so far but I'm hopeful it will start to get easier. Love the vid btw

[@InboundShovel]

Yeah, I've heard Roblox is incredibly competitive (and exploitative for the devs), so I'm wishing you the best on switching over! You got this!

[@TheLazyBeanss]

@@InboundShovel thanks!

[@ExzaktVid]

Roblox basically forces the devs to scam the players just to make a fair amount of money. A 5 dollar gamepass that is just like s bit of in game currency is just normal and expected in any roblox game because of how little of a cut the devs actually get.

[@TheLazyBeanss]

@@ExzaktVid yeah, after all the cuts Roblox takes, it's probably something like: someone spends 10k robux on your game; you get 1$ irl

[@iloem3917]

wow man the jump in subs are insane I remember when this was starter small channel

[@InboundShovel]

Yeah, it's been a wild ride! I certainly never could have expected it LOL

[@dwightbvg]

If you don't know what to make as your first game, make a menu. a full fledged ugly menu for your favorite game. it helped me out with the basics and where to find stuff in the engine.

[@Drakhis]

I'm just at the moment you said PixelTheWise is the one doing the art in your game and... wow. I follow him on twitter since a long while and I just LOVE his art. Good luck for the project and I can't wait to see the future of Isadora's Edge!

[@NoomStuff]

Congratulations on 69420 subs!

[@InboundShovel]

LETS GOOOOO

[@fictiondreemz]

Might I say, this video came around at the perfect time. I love coding, but have only ever used beginner platforms to make games. I just recently had a really cool idea for a game, but have yet to work up the courage to start. I now have a lot more motivation to finalize my research, so thank you so much for that.

[@AbdulLegendary]

I REALLY love your personality. I've subscribed to your channel and wishlisted your game

[@calico8850]

Thank you!

[@Rezornch_and_Dvelenktronx]

Brother! I hope you experience great success. Can’t wait!!!

[@Simon-et4hu]

You explaining the language, decay cooking and super VR MMO dream of your mushroom people was very entertaining! I think people will love hearing all the stuff you have in your story bible :)

[@P1Ckl31]

THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND !!! You upload so fast bro are you good 💀

[@InboundShovel]

Haha, Editor-senpai really been keeping me honest on the video schedule LOL

[@P1Ckl31]

@@InboundShovel lol just don’t burn out :)

[@CSDragon]

Making games is one thing...making a company is another. What were some of the hurdles you faced setting up Inbound Shovel studios? How did you get on Steam?

[@Sedokun]

Totally agree with "go with the vibe" when selecting a game engine. There is one advice. Just look which games were released using that particular engine. Each engine has weak and strong points, and nothing shows it better than released games. (I assume the programming language is not a limiting factor here)

[@johnonyango3166]

That was a great video. Always love the enthusiasm you have when talking in your videos and thank you for responding to my question. Extra props for adding a Signalis reference😀

[@IndigoBabies]

Lore sounds amazing, multiple super interesting elements!

[@cade4820]

Awesome video as always man! Really motivating to see other indie devs doing well! I might actually stop slacking off now.........naaaah, maybe later. By the way, have you thought about making a devlog for music and sound design for the game? It would be cool to have an episode about that since I haven't seen much about it on devlogs honestly.

[@edwardperkins1225]

You're correct about resolution. I worked out 640 by 360 as the perfectly scaling resolution with a spreadsheet before. The only issue is it's not a power of 2 resolution like classic 4 by 3 games had, so tile size for griding your scene becomes much more restrictive as a result. I wish they'd stuck with power of 2 resolutions for monitors for that reason, but we have to fit things to the standard now. If you don't choose the right resolution from the beginning you will be stuck if the screen is not meant to scroll both directions. I go with 640 by 360 on any new game projects, but a while ago I didn't. An old mostly complete game project I made on a 4 by 3 screen was at 640 by 480. Even though it's close, setting it to 640 by 360 means having the screen scroll up and down in a shump which isn't ideal due to hiding things off screen and a lot of vertical motion. Attempting an increase in width resolution would mean changing the x coordinate when enemies and obstacles act, and would have a snowball effect on the timing of when things of different speeds show up and leave, and how parallax works. Even if I did so I still wouldn't have a true interger scaled resolution. One display mode I could potentially add would be adding a hud info through menus at the sides of the screen filling the horizonal difference between 4 by 3 and 16 by 9. Enemy and obstacle behavior would not need any change then. This would allow players to run at close to 16 by 9 and see all the verticality of the screen. It would be 854 by 480 which is very close to 16 by 9, and goes into 1080 at about 2.25 times. Not ideal, but it might be a good display option along with 640 by 360 that shifts up and down. If I were designing the game now I'd go with 640 by 360, and have no issues besides dealing with griding restrictions. I couldn't have known this at the time though.

[@SoloCap-Games]

Got a lot of respect for you, man. If it's not too personal, I'd love to hear your insight on some of the non-development aspects of being an indie dev. I.e. how do you handle marketing (aside from your KZbin channel of course), do you ever feel burnout or pressure to post updates about the game, have you considered a publisher? I know that's a lot, so I don't expect you to answer all of them haha

[@rogercruz1547]

About steam deck: I use Arch Linux, if it runs on my computer and has controller support it will run on steam deck. PS: You need chapters, put the timestamp and question one on each line in the video description ;)

[@gigashill]

Tbh the only thing I am worried about is "at what point is my idea too ambitious". It is very difficult to see whether your idea is feasible and you have enough resources or noy. Planning 4-5 years of development is hard and if you dont plan, you might end up flip-flopping between ideas which is also not ideal. There is a sweet spot in between undershooting and overshooting, so I would like to ask how did you get an answer for this? Or is this something that just happens over time. Cause I think this is the exact thing that happened to Silksong and if one of the most successful indie devs in the world can mess this up, its almost inevitable for me is what it feels like.

[@IndieQuest-s8q]

choosing the right game engine for yourself is not always the easiest choice, i started with unity then moved to unreal engine and now i feel more comfortable with Gdevelop for 2d games

[@loathablel6353]

congrats on 69.4k subs :D

[@InboundShovel]

Thank you! :D

[@CSDragon]

10:12 don't forget the best resolution for windowed-mode games, 1600x900!

[@DrPhilsGaming]

I am sure someone mentioned this but you actually don't have to have a steamdeck to get it steamdeck verified. Valve will work with you and test it themselves to make sure it runs on the Steamdeck. Valve over here being great to devs as always.

[@soninhodev7851]

if you are STILL looking for an enviroment artist, theres me... i will tell you right now, i am not as good as the guy with the health issues, BUT, i can make some decently built tilesets, of any tile size, be it 16x16, or as large as 64x64, and i can make some backgrounds, but dont expect the crem de la crem. essetialy, if you call me up, you will end up with: foregrounds made out of tiles, where level desing with them is relatively easy, and they would also never be able to be confused with the backgrounds, which would end up having 10 layers of paralax because im a mad man.

[@fivetwoeighty7012]

8:25 whoa that's huge! If Sony, Microsoft, and/or Nintendo make a deal with Godot, that blows the floodgates wide open on console releases!

[@ShOwOba]

game dev husband, vtuber wife... damn.

[@OMGtrple]

Relationship goals

[@inevgames]

If we wait until we are ready to start developing games, we will wait forever 👏

[@mightbeanerd]

Recently downloaded Godot, started doing something called the 20 game challenge, it's a list of games you can make that slowly increase in complexity, I just made pong and I started making Flappy Bird, it's fun to do honestly. There's a couple games at each stage you can pick between but I just wanna try all of them, or at least start all of them!

[@PuraOrigin]

I'm using Unity, because this was the engine I found the best introduction to. When people say I shall use this or that engine instead I answer "no" cause I don't want to start learning an engine from scratch again. I want to make progress.

[@Speedysouls]

This game is rather hype

[@JediMB]

9 Years of Shadows pixel artist, huh... Fantastic choice.

[@Zero-ef7qv]

I think it would be awesome if in the Reddit or discord that there would be a space dedicated to talking in the ushroot language.

[@Deeplight32]

What does Isadora’s Edge have to make it stand out from other Metroidvanias?

[@TheHelderVinicius]

Where is the reddit link ?

[@InboundShovel]

Oh man, I totally forgot to include it WOOPS www.reddit.com/r/InboundShovel/ Thanks for letting me know, haha!

[@TheHelderVinicius]

@@InboundShovel Thank you so much!

[@oldschoolhistory3246]

How did you get hired to work on Halo Infinite without prior experience? Am I being dense?

[@TheLazyBeanss]

@@oldschoolhistory3246 he said he studied computer science in college

[@InboundShovel]

Honestly, I just really nailed the interviews! I had enough programming experience for the technical interview, and my interviews with the designers were just a fun discussion about game design, which I've always loved, haha!

[@oldschoolhistory3246]

@@InboundShovel Very well played!

[@SmallusDicckus]

The reason I want to make a game is that game doesn't exist yet. And I want people to experience the vision I have.

[@RockyMulletGamedev]

69k subs ! Nice.

[@похуйпляшем-й1н]

identify problem. simplify problem. solve problem.

[@lhsebi10]

"If you want to make something right now i´d rather have it you turn off this video and start" damn, ok.

[@CluelessYukan]

Nice bro

[@bgcorporation]

So wait... You're a game developer, married to a V-Tuber? Why does that sound badass. That really sounds badass. Talk about living the life. No, seriously, that's amazing. I tip my hat to you good sir, lol.

[@glareninja]

how much is the cost of paying the artist, and such?

[@ItazuraChanDev]

I'm trying to create my own game, but I've only been able to implement basic movements and a test level with placeholder assets thanks to online tutorials. I'm amazed how people are able to figure out how to code all on their own. I still have no idea how to code on my own. Is there some kind of secret to learning it? I'm at a roadblock currently.

[@smokelingers]

What helped me learn to code on my own was thinking of the code as a number of questions, and you just set up your code to ask, answer, or decline to answer the questions. Don't want an answer to be ambiguous, so when you really can't decide on an answer, then it's fine to decline to answer. But think about what happens if someone declines to answer your question during a conversation. If you're expecting an answer, you'll probably want an explanation. So consider commenting your code with a short explanation. Declining to answer is also the quickest way to say "I can't answer that", or "I shouldn't answer that", or "you already know the answer, dude". Programmers use this tactic to avoid running unnecessary code. And that's just one way to look at it. Imagine how a conversation goes if someone answers, but they lie? That's likely going to break the code. What if they answer in a way you don't expect? I have negative health points - huh?! So this kind of thinking helped me to code. Think of the question then figure out how I want to answer it, or the other way around, have an answer I'd like to reach then figure out how phrase the right question.

[@smokelingers]

But thankfully you also don't necessarily have to begin with nothing but questions. You can go straight into a tutorial, but don't search for a game dev tutorial when learning to code, search for a coding tutorial. Learn the building blocks, such as functions, variables, conditional statements, loops, arrays, and so on. Most standard coding languages just have you writing the same functionality in different ways. A platformer tutorial probably won't focus on teaching you all the coding fundamentals.

[@ItazuraChanDev]

@@smokelingers That makes sense, though I don't intend to become a big indie developer or make a bunch of games, I just need to figure out how to make my game work, so I guess that's why I was more focused on looking at information thats about platformer games.

[@smokelingers]

@@ItazuraChanDev How exactly would you describe the roadblock you're at? Because if the roadblock is that there isn't a tutorial that helps you code something specific for your game, you're gonna have to get creative, haha. The only secret techniques to getting to the finish line faster that I know of are: start doing that thing you need to do; or find someone else to do it. Maybe collaborating with a programmer could just be more enjoyable for you. For that I would recommend finding a beginner-friendly game jam.

[@ItazuraChanDev]

My roadblock is outside of just having trouble understanding how coding works, I also fear that I might simply be incapable of making my dream come true. I don't want to make anything grandiose; I just want to make something fun but still having polish and good quality for its size. I see all these people making awesome games all on their own. I don't know if I could find a programmer or anyone to help me out, and I want to find a way to do it on my own, so I don't inconvenience someone by asking a bunch of questions and annoying them. I feel like if people can do it on their own, I can do it too.

[@-datnerd-3125]

story bible 21:44

[@chronolecte4388]

Always wanted to make games, always struggle to make assets- That's the only downside

[@joparadis3473]

Where’s the ring tho?

[@keylorcampos5318]

Definitively God has its favorites😂

[@SonOfUdz]

HI

[@kardokdelikaya9570]

I wish I had a wife... I wish I started with Godot instead of Unity... I wish I had a job after graduating from computer engineering but I have to serve in millitary for 6 month before I could get a job... I wish I had devlogs and talk about my game, what and how fun it's gonna be too... I wish I had a sub reddit for my game...

[@strangeapprentice]

This is great. Can a 40 year old man get into it? I want to do everything from pixel art to making it,...

[@boomgoesthedynamite69]

no your life ends at 20

[@strangeapprentice]

@@boomgoesthedynamite69 yeah. I am too old for this... haha

[@smokelingers]

I love the first comment. But yes, you can learn game dev at 40. Just don't rush to quit your day job.

[@tamassebestyen9922]

E

[@JokuTurhake]

E

[@Definitelynotcharliebear]

E

[@ПророкМухоед]

Kinda sad that your wife refers you as "partner".

[@LoganFaulkner-mv2qg]

Shut up boy

[@The-Kenny-Show]

@softiboiled Thank you for the new video.