r/GameDevelopment

I'm just starting my journey as a solo game developer, and one of my biggest challenges is figuring out how to balance game development with work.

I work from 8 AM to 5 PM, and occasionally have to work on Saturdays and Sundays too. By the time I get home, there are still other things to take care of, so I'm wondering how to maintain a consistent development routine without burning myself out.

For those of you who've been through this, how do you manage your time? I'd really like to hear from people who are trying to build a game while holding down a regular job.

How do you keep making progress over months or even years and actually finish your game?

I made a very small F1 reaction game based on race starts.

Hold the clutch while the five lights come on, then release it as quickly as possible when they go out. Release too early and you jump the start.

My current time is 0.235s. Curious how low people here can get.

Play: https://playchasingp1.com/minigames
(No signup, takes about 10 seconds)

Hi

Anyone build any games that were successful or moderately successful but then died out? What was the reason?

Hi

I'm new to this sub and I'm new to game dev. I have ZERO prior experience I have very minimal coding experience other than Python in my school days 6+ years ago. I want to ask, does anyone have any advice for me to start learning. Obviously game development can be daunting to a newbie such as myself but for those of you that have been in the industry for a while do you have any good sources for learning. Obviously following youtube tutorials will likely be a relatively highly suggested approach, but the thing i want to avoid is learning to copy a tutorial. I can complete a tutorial but i want to make sure that i have the best chances of making the game ive always thought of, not just being able to replicate a game from a YT tutorial. I have a fully written story ready to go but as aforementioned, i have no game dev experience and this isnt something i want to rush. Its going to be a Long LONG term project.

My desire to go into game development as an indie dev was kickstarted by the story of how Expedition 33's development went. I dont know how many of you had the same feeling but it really pushed me to want to make a start and make my own stories.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

**I am going to be working over the next 4 days so replies may be slow. Apologies in advance**.

I saw this video about people using AI to reverse engineer demos to get the full game. I personally have a demo but also lock some content. Other than creating a whole new project, is there an easier way to have the demo not include files when building? I'm using Unity.

I'm still learning game development and trying to become a better game developer

I'd love to learn from people with more experience. What are some things you wish you knew when you first started making games?

I'm interested in anything that genuinely helped you improve whether it's good practices workflow tips common mistakes to avoid, game design or ways to make development easier and more efficient

I am an engineering undergraduate student.

I want to know about game development.

I like playing games and also I am interested in their mechanism like I want to know more about how they work.

I know a little bit of web dev but I want to shift my domain to game dev , since web dev is a very common domain for software developers.

Can someone guide me or just help me with the sources from which I can know more about this particular field.

Any help is appreciated.

If anyone is interested in becoming a tester for my android game , it's currently in the testing phase, and I would appreciate some testers to give me feedback about the game and to reach the requirements of google to be able to publish it publicly. (ps: this is not a recruitment I'm just looking for people to do it for the love of the game and I would truly appreciate them)

if you wanna be a tester dm me , Thank youu.

What's your philosophy for what a demo should be?

Or what a demo should include? Does it depend on the game?

I've never released a game before so I'm trying to figure out how much is too much for a demo.

My game has three environments so I'm making my demo start in one and the transition to the other environment is where I plan on stopping the demo.

I have a complicated version of that transition and a simple version... do I leave out the more complicated version OR is it maybe the thing that makes the demo great?

I think the environment for the demo has plenty of 'mini games' included so I think making the transition simpler isn't as big of a deal since people should enjoy that level gameplay itself.

Unreal Engine - Retro RPG Pre Rendered Graphics (NO AI!)

For a long time, I’ve been obsessed with capturing the exact feel of classic late-90s infinity engine RPGs like Baldur’s Gate II especially that timeless aesthetic of 3D characters traversing handcrafted, pre-rendered background art that Obsidian Entertainment managed to revive.

This look was achieved by baking complex lighting, shadows, and environment details into flat 2D image slates, using collision meshes and depth layers to handle character sorting. Recreating that hybrid pipeline inside Unreal Engine 5 while keeping it dynamic and modular has been a real technical puzzle for me but i made it work!

P.S. that wall and 2 props are there because ue5 bugs on calculating the from the depth pre rendered map there.