Any indie videogame developers out there?

[TheRealMattKain]

Sort of an obscure question, but with the recent renaissance of indie game developers on the Xbox, PC, and other platforms, I was wondering if anyone else out there shares my hobby. I've actually started a little 2-man operation with my brother and we'll be releasing our first Xbox Live Indie Games title hopefully by first quarter 2012. So, anyone else dabble in game design in their spare time? Or is there anyone here that follows the indie game scene on any platform?

 

MattKain

[nate82]

I don't do any though I wish I could. Never could really understand the programming part of it. But as a business standpoint the Xbox Live Marketplace, PSN, Steam, etc... are probably going to be the way of the future for games. The indie video game scene is probably one of the more lucrative business operations out there as it doesn't take as much money to put together a game as it does for a blockbuster title. Most of the sales is profit as most of the indie game designers are college students. I actually like the indie video games as they can be a change of pace and be rather fun in interesting ways compared to the big blockbuster games. I love the Toy Soldiers: Cold War game that is so much fun probably the most fun I have had playing a video game in a long time.

[TheRealMattKain]

I don't do any though I wish I could. Never could really understand the programming part of it. But as a business standpoint the Xbox Live Marketplace, PSN, Steam, etc... are probably going to be the way of the future for games. The indie video game scene is probably one of the more lucrative business operations out there as it doesn't take as much money to put together a game as it does for a blockbuster title. Most of the sales is profit as most of the indie game designers are college students. I actually like the indie video games as they can be a change of pace and be rather fun in interesting ways compared to the big blockbuster games. I love the Toy Soldiers: Cold War game that is so much fun probably the most fun I have had playing a video game in a long time.

If you're ever interested in trying to throw something together but don't want to get too into the programming there are some good game development apps like Stencyl or GameMaker that work well for the non-programmer. As far as making money, the scene is really hit or miss. Something like "I Made a Game with Zombies in it" was all done by one guy (art, coding, and the amazing soundtrack that he sang himself) and he made a fortune on it. On the other hand, I'm shocked at how many little studios or indie developers put a year or more of their life into a great little game only to see the game get buried and only sell a few hundred copies at a buck a piece.

 

Anyway, here's a few of my current favorites indies:

 

I Made a Game with Zombies in it

 

Dead Pixels

 

Kung-Fu Fight

 

Canabalt

http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

 

MattKain

[TheRealMattKain]

If anyone's interested, here's a couple of pre-release trailers for the game titled "Fist Puncher" that we're working on:

MattKain

[Houlie24x]

This is a very interesting topic. What are some of the popular forums for discussing stuff like this?

[RightFieldCoder]

I'm a software developer that has dabbled in game programming. I have done some C++ in the past, but it would take some practice to get me proficient again. Working in C#/WPF for the past year, I've been studying XNA. I won the 2nd XNA Challange at DreamInCode.net. Of course, I was the only one to complete and submit a game in time. If anyone wants help in their projects, let me know. I've wanted to get involved with something but haven't found anything I'm interested in yet.

[TheRealMattKain]

This is a very interesting topic. What are some of the popular forums for discussing stuff like this?

There's a lot of discussion in the comments section on gamasutra, but I don't think they have a dedicated forum.

 

IndieGamer has a nice forum:

The app hub forum for Xbox dev is pretty popular:

I know there are some very active sites where people discuss indie game dev on classic consoles as well. AtariAge.com for example has a large community of individuals making new Atari 2600 games (cart and all).

 

I'm not sure what else is out there.

 

MattKain

 

 

[TheRealMattKain]

I'm a software developer that has dabbled in game programming. I have done some C++ in the past, but it would take some practice to get me proficient again. Working in C#/WPF for the past year, I've been studying XNA. I won the 2nd XNA Challange at DreamInCode.net. Of course, I was the only one to complete and submit a game in time. If anyone wants help in their projects, let me know. I've wanted to get involved with something but haven't found anything I'm interested in yet.

Congrats on the win! That's awesome. We just submitted our game, Fist Puncher, to the Independent Games Festival. We don't expect to win, but the act of submitting is a success in an of itself. How do you like XNA? I've been learning it too. The biggest hurdle that I have is spending 40-50 hours a week working in Visual Studio for my day job, and then coming home and trying to jump back into the same environment for "fun" coding. Not easy.

 

MattKain

 

 

[RightFieldCoder]

That is exactly why I haven't gotten into game programming much. As much as I like programming, I need a break from it when I get home at night.

 

I like XNA. It just took a bit to get the mental hurdle going from WinForm's event driven programming to XNA's Update/Draw cycle style of programming. Once that was done, it's just like any other C# I've done.

[TheRealMattKain]

That is exactly why I haven't gotten into game programming much. As much as I like programming, I need a break from it when I get home at night.

 

I like XNA. It just took a bit to get the mental hurdle going from WinForm's event driven programming to XNA's Update/Draw cycle style of programming. Once that was done, it's just like any other C# I've done.

Just out of curiosity, what sort of software do you work on for your day job?

 

Figuring out the gaming workflow is definitely tough. It's very counter-intuitive to normal Windows programming. I first went through this issue when I was learning Flash actionscript programming. I had to wrap my mind around a model using a game-action-update state-machine that was triggered on the framerate. The good thing is this seems to be the model used by many game engines so the learning can be transferred to new environments.

 

MattKain

[RightFieldCoder]

Right now I'm working on custom in-house software to be used on forklifts. The old way of doing things was for an office worker to print out a list of what product needed to be loaded on trucks. The forklift driver had to find pallets in the warehouse to fill the order and put them in the truck. The driver had to remove a sticker from every pallet and put it on the paper list. When it was filled, he took the paper back to the office where the worker had to type in all of the pallet numbers. This was the only way to know exactly which pallets went on which trucks.

 

We bought 10" mounted XP computers and put them on the forklifts. I wrote a program in WPF C# to run on the computers. This is in combination to a new warehouse management system that was installed. Now conveyors and machinery automatically store pallets in racks. The office worker "ships" an order. The system automatically picks the correct pallets and sends them down conveyors to within 15 yards of the truck doors. My software connects to a web service using a proxy. The web service (also in C#) interfaces with several databases to pull the relevant information. It will show the forklift driver which conveyor to pick up pallets and which door to take it to. They then use a barcode scanner to scan each pallet and the door they take it to. They no longer have to use paperwork and the office workers don't have to spend so much time printing out paperwork and typing in pallet numbers. The office workers don't like it because they are now in charge of the warehouse management system, so they have as much work as they did before.

 

I'm currently working on stage two of my project. The warehouse system also stores raw finished goods. After waiting several days (for QA testing) they are called out of the system. A forklift driver then takes them to a line that labels, boxes, and makes pallets of finished product. The driver then takes the pallet back to the system. Right now they need to take the peel off sticker from the raw product pallets and the finished goods pallet. Then someone needs to type those numbers into our ERP system. Only when someone hand enters them (which sometimes takes a couple of days before they get to it, and human error causes some to never be entered) does the ERP system know that the finished goods exist. I'm adding on to the forklift software to have them use the barcode scanner for all of this. Then they aren't worried about stickers, and the ERP gets updated instantly.

 

I work at a factory (obviously) where my title is "IT". We all share hats around here, so I'm also responsible for pallet printers, phones, vendor laptop problems, terminating ends, etc. I am the only person hired as a programmer who is learning networking on the fly. Everyone else are networking people who learned programming on the fly. I'm the only one working on the forklift project. That suits me, because the other IT "programmers" had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned break points and stepping through code. They write to the event logs to debug their software.

 

What about you, why do you stare at VS every day?

[TheRealMattKain]

Being the lone "true" programmer must be pretty neat. I'd imagine it gives you quite a bit of freedom and latitude when working on projects. Based on your description, I assume your job requires interfacing and planning with people whose computer skills may be all over the board (office people, warehouse workers, management, etc.). Do you find this challenging?

I work for a company that writes bio-tech and medical imaging research software. I've worked on a bunch of different projects in varying fields (confocal microscopy, fluorescent imaging, cancer research), but I currently focus on storage, retrieval and analysis of imaging modalities for cardiology (IVUS and OCT being the 2 big ones). We're a small company, so like you I have to wear a variety of hats (I might be coding on Monday, making a tradeshow banner on Tuesday, and writing technical documentation on Wednesday). My job also has many travel benefits. We sell world-wide so I've been lucky enough to travel around North America, Europe, and Asia on the company dime. Overall it's good work with many pros, but it's also a tough, competitive market with a ton of red tape (lots of regulatory and QC stuff that slows the process down). It sounds silly to think that I'd trade my current field to do videogames, but I guess I'm a dreamer.

MattKain

[TheRealMattKain]

For anyone interested, my brother and I competed on a new IGN/YouTube reality show called The Next Game Boss. The show is basically an elimination challenge between indie development teams who have to design and implement a video game. We even managed to sneak in a not-so-subtle (and cheesy) shout out to Wisconsin and the Packers. The show was a blast and the final product looks pretty slick (I was worried about what a show centered on a bunch of scruffy game devs would look like, but it was all put together by Reveille, the company that does the Office, the Tudors, the Biggest Loser, and a bunch of other stuff). Anyway, we're TEAM FIST PUNCHER. Check it out and feel free to poke fun since, come on, it's an internet reality show about making video games.

[RightFieldCoder]

Pretty cool, I can't wait to see the final version of your game. I hope you made/make it far enough to finish it.

 

I like how the YouTube site for The Next Game Boss lists the year "2012-2036". Now that's confidence. But what happens if 2036 comes around and they're the biggest thing on the net? Will they end it because of some intern's joke from 25 years ago?

 

Ah, the questions we ask in the first world.