Indie developer forum

Someone I know on Facebook has started a forum for Indie developers. Unlike other forums which are filled with beginners and/or recruiters this is meant to be for serious developers. If you’re interested go and sign up here. I’m hoping to find some time in the near future to contribute an article or two. If you have any requests for a topic you’d like to have covered, leave a comment here.

 

Using the asset store

One of the best things about Unity is, of course, the Asset Store. However if you’re not careful you can soon find your project cluttered up with lots of files that you then have no idea as to whether they’re being used or not. It’s for that very reason I use a separate project for downloading anything from the asset store. I copy over the relevant files into my working project and leave the rest alone. This is particularly useful for things like particle FX packs which come with many textures and effects that are of no immediate use . I’d rather keep them out of the game project unless they’re really needed. It also helps reduce the size of the build which is important for mobile devices. Having had to spend time on more that one game stripping assets from a build so that it comes in under 50 Meg (and thus not be a WiFi only download), I wanted to make sure from the outset that it didn’t happen on the current game.

 

AAA to Indie

Okay I suppose I’d better write something about what I’m doing….

I started working professionally as a game developer in the mid-90’s and decided to try my hand at going down the Indie route a little while ago. I’m still working full time at a development studio so this is very much a side project that I’m doing by myself (for the moment). I can honestly say I’ve had a lot of fun so far as it’s a big departure from working at a normal studio. Working on a team with many other people has its ups and downs. Almost everyone I’ve worked with has been very talented and passionate about games and the game we were making. However being part of a team means that you can’t (and shouldn’t!) get your own way about how the game is built and what the game plays like.

Working by myself has been very liberating in that I have been able to architect every piece of the software, created and tuned the game play mechanics and had to design and build levels from scratch. Normally I would leave level design to someone more competent at that sort of thing but I really wanted to try and make as much of the game myself for this project.  I will definitely need some help with textures and graphic design before I release it so expect everything to look more polished. Screen shots of my first game, “Codename: K.I.T.T.Y.” will be up shortly.