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Introduce Yourself! (April)
Hey! Welcome to gamedev!
This is the introduction thread to break the ice :)
Who are you, what do you do, what do you want to learn and why did you join our community?




Who are you: Anton.
What do you do: I'm from Sweden and currently studying my last semester of Informatics. In my free time i run a small company with a friend creating apps and games. I'm currently working on a 2d co-op platformer game in Unity.
What do you want to learn: I'd like to be able to make some decent pixel art, but haven't really had the time.
Why join: Well, why not? I love community participation regardless of the subject and i think this place might grow into something beautiful :)
I'm so addicted to these right now. Nothing beats playing with a few friends until you forget what time it is and what time you were supposed to start working. Do you have a link to check it out?
I started pixel art this year and found these tutorials super helpful: http://www.andysowards.com/blog/2012/80-epic-pixel-art-tutorials/
I mainly use the livepaint method in Illustrator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3mm-ITC29g) as you can easily keep and edit past designs as templates and speeds up production by quite a bit.
Illustrator huh? I gotta give my respects for you. I used to work with an older Illustrator. Maybe I'm just inept, but it frustrated me often haha.
You're definitely not inept. I hate Illustrator so much. I have my work routine down, but any deviation makes me want to kill myself. stupid illustrator...
Who are you: Matt
What do you do: Founder of a mobile game company. I started last year and was able to quite my corporate job and become a FT dev.
What do you want to learn: Learning how to implement multiplayer and a social media app
Why join: Want to share what little I know because I thought quitting the 9-5 was impossible and am psyched to be free and want to help others escape.
Who are you: Luis.
What do you do: I'm currently a student, and in my free time I make designs (icons, simple illustrations, UI), compose music and run a blog (well, not much lately). I'm learning web & iOS development.
What do you want to learn: what I said above, basically. JavaScript, Swift, Objective-C...
Why join: This community has a lot of potential! And I'd love to try out game development in the future.
Welcome Luis! I was a project manager for a design firm shortly before jumping to game design. It sounds like you're on a good path! Having UX experience is something a lot of first time devs really miss out on, so whenever you jump into the game dev waters, I'm sure you'll rock it :)
About being a designer... Because of starting on iOS development, I felt the need to create mockups of UIs and design my own icons, so that's what got me into that. I obviously think a lot about UX, and I'm always testing my mockups to make sure the user experience is the best it can get.
Thank you!
UX and UI design is something I always struggle with in my games...those two things are more important than some people might think :/
Who are you: Rachel
What do you do: I've recently graduated as a 3D major in Animation Arts. I'm currently a Concept Artist. I create fanart during my free time and random doodles.
What do you want to learn: I'd like to learn more about unity engine or just any game engine in general. havent had the opportunity to work on games or exposure to how things work.
Why join: To grow and learn. Expose myself to how game dev works. :3 I like games
Who are you: Aric
What do you do: I'm the creative lead and level designer for a small indie team - currently working on a proper, stand-alone successor to our multiplayer mod for Doom. We're quite excited about it.
What do you want to learn: Geez, I'm not sure. I'm a bit all over the place picking up some basic skills to compensate for the gaps in our team. Ideally, I'd like to get a better grip on modeling so I can fill my levels with meshes without nagging our one artist. :D
Why join: I'd like to be part of cultivating a game dev community that isn't jaded to practically everything.
Welcome Aric!
It seems like many of the most successful games started as mods - good luck man, excited to see the final product :)
Edit: aand holy crap that mod sounds awesome! Multiplayer murder mystery game? I was crazy addicted to The Ship back in the day. Double hyped to see this now.
That's usally the case, isn't it? Natural Selection 2 is a fine example of a retail title that began life as a mod for goldsrc, the modified id Tech 2 engine for Half-life.
Modding existing games are great for prototyping projects, I find. There's actually quite a few people that use the Zdoom engines to plan out the basics of their game.
That's such a smart, efficient way to break in. It seems like the Killing Floor 2 and Team Fortress just print money. I think Minecraft started as a mod for Infiniminer?
I wonder if having a good idea of your fans core expectations helps reduce feature creep during production of the final stand-alone product, ensuring you're developing a stream lined beast. I've only done 2D, but am looking at eventually getting into 3D and I'm thinking a mod might be the way.
It does! We have a clear idea of what we want and what we want to improve. We've taken to calling our current work "What we wanted to make", and UE4 is a huge weight off our backs.
Backstabbing before? Run a script that fires when the player attacks with the knife, cycling through every player on the server and marking their locations and facing; then find the one closest to the attacking player. THEN check if they're facing the right direction - if all criteria is met, have the knife weapon enter a diffirent logic state that deals diffirent damage values.
Backstabbing in UE4? Check actor in [collision box], get actor facing and type, do backstab. ezpz
Hello! I'm Tivy. I work a day job, so afterwards I get to put a few hours into making my game. I do about 80% art and 20% learning Unity. I joined here because I feel it would be really exciting to see where this community can go!
working a day job with artwork and unity on the side is definitely tough. respect.
i was always struggling while working on paperwork and "menial" tasks when your brain's still high on creativity
Luckily I have a job that allows me to think to myself a lot. Whenever I get an idea I'll pull out my weeb themed app on my phone or open up trello. I'm pretty greatful, having this work allows me to work on art and games in the first place since I'm not good enough to make money off it.
I'M ALEX. I'm graduating with an electrical engineering degree in a month, and I make video game music on my free time. I also talk about video game music on the internet. I want to learn more about the game making process and see what kinds of things people need. I'll help anyone out who needs it, with software or music.
;)
whooo! Congrats Alex! Awesome of you to offer to help out too :)
Thanks! I'm super excited to get into the real world and live the 9-5 life everyone complains about
lol. maaannn. if you're in electrical engineering, I think you'll have less to complain about then some of us peasents fighting for scraps. no complaints for you!
:( You probably have awesome days though! Working with a team you really like making games you invented.
but not straight out of school, man!
Haha, you've made a great career choice sorry for joking around - I'm sure you'll have tons to complain about too ;)
Real talk. Game dev is feast or famine, just because things are going well, you still have to keep one eye on emergency funds and keeping them healthy. One weekend the games will do so well you'll think you can retire, and the next sales are inexplicaply dead. I occasionally miss the steady 9-5 and never having to worry about long-term.
The dev who made A Dark Room earned $700k (i think) his first year and still had to go back to his day job after that income died out.
It's always a hustle, good on you for shoring up that backup :)
Who are you: I'm charlie, aka @bigblueboo.
What do you do: I make games, gifs, and various experiments. I've been independently publishing my own stuff for years. Nowadays I'm doing some VR stuff - here's a trailer of my latest lil' project. (I just made the trailer today.) It's a game about rescuing cute things...in VR.
What do you want to learn: I'd love to up my design + 3d pipeline game. But I'm also trying to figure out how to better market my work.
Why join: It's fun to trade ideas and insights.
There's so much to do and learn in game production. How do you smoothly transition from walking to idle in a quadriped animation? How does an AI plausibly siege a castle? How do you take a photo of the sidewalk for use in a game texture? Why does this button have a flat color, but that one has a rounded bezel?...to think there are rationales behind (just about) every little decision into the worlds we create!
O haiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
Who are you: Jessie H.
What do you do: Producer and Writer. Helped ship a few features into League of Legends (Team Builder and Custom Item Sets were my faves) and I've contributed to 2 unannounced games at other (sadly still secret) companies, but these days I'm working on an Indie title with just one other developer! Our code-name is Project Blush and it's a 2D Visual Novel experience being dev'd in Unity. I also am a community liaison here at Imzy and run the Diversity in Gaming community.
What do you want to learn: Tons of stuff! These days I'm looking for all the Unity pro tips. Honestly, I'm also writing a book about how I became a young game developer, in hopes that I can help others become devs, so I'm keeping an eye out for more areas I might be able to assist young devs.
Why did you join our community? I'm always looking to learn more and become a more well-rounded developer. I also love chatting with other devs and collaborating in our academic space! I'd love to see more devs join Diversity in Gaming as well!
Interesting, why did you guys choose Unity for Project Blush? Did it have some features that stood out to you?
Yeah we found the free version for indies has everything we need for 2D Dev and we didn't want an engine with tons of stuff we weren't using. (Sadly, UE4 didn't work out for us though we've both got experience with UE in the past).
Ah! Cool, well I wish you luck. Keep the community updated on your progress!
Aw thanks! Will do. We're currently banging our heads against motion blur for some of our more-often seen backgrounds. Seems like a simple integration on the surface but these things are never as easy as they look! Lol
Who are you: Michael.
What do you do: I'm a Computer Science student and self-taught programmer. Most of my coding right now isn't game-related, but I tinker with game-y bits here and there and hope to someday ship a full project.
What do you want to learn: Like @awnton (will that work on Imzy?), I'd like to pick up some pixel art skills.
Why join: "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter." 😉
it's the self-taught one's that are the most dangerous... all that "initiative" and "gumption". tsk. tsk. very unpredictable. ;)
Who are you: Sylvester
What do you do: I'm lead programmer at Nixxes, working on a yet to be announced title. Nixxes is a Dutch company of which game conversion ("porting") is its core business. We've brought several big titles to various platforms (consoles and PC), such as Hitman, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the recent Tomb Raider games.
What do you want to learn / why join: Although there's no particular field in which I'd like to expand my knowledge, I find it's always useful to communicate with others in the industry and learn from them, as well as pass my own knowledge on to others :).
Welcome Sylvester!
Mad respect for the porting work! I only work on mobile and have contemplated suicide just porting between simple mobile platforms. Brutal work all around - the Netherlands should make you king.
I send this vid to some fans who don't understand why we can't launch on all devices, all platforms, with multiplayer, at the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QverR9hgpX4.
Who are you: Andrej
What do you do: I'm a full-time indie dev and translator (JP,EN,DE). I've just released my latest Android game JettyCat Towers in which you have to guide a jetpacking cat through several stages without touching the walls. I'm also working on a 2D platformer and some projects intended to teach people Japanese.
What do you want to learn: I'd like to get into lower-level engine stuff, but since I'm a one-man team it's hard to justify the time. My pixel art could also use some brushing up. No pun intended, I think.
Why join: Gamedev is more fun with others!
Who are you: Kirby (@kirbdee)
What do you do: Currently I'm a Software Engineer at Yahoo.
What do you want to learn: Mobile Game Dev
Why join: Looking to join in the Game Dev community to absorb knowledge and connect with others
Who are you: Just an ordinary guy :P
What do you do: I'm a senior in highschool. Currently about to go to UCSC, hoping to major in CS there. Currently working on a game that I hop to publish soon.
What do you want to learn: A lot of things. I love programming, and I want to know everything about the subject, but art, music, and writing are handy skills to have too.
Why did you join our community: Well, I'm subscribed to /r/gamedev, so why not be apart of the community here?