6 hours ago, Maybachfanest said:

Wow, I'm on your path and want earn living money with creating creative and addictive games: I would probably follow this thread cause I already see good answers and huge value people share here

Thank you

5 hours ago, mr_tawan said:

If they find something wrong with it, then they will take action against. I don't know whether or not the people mentioned in this video have violated the EULA of Unity or not. However if you value your privacy (unlike myself :P) then you wouldn't want to use Unity, at least the free license.

I haven't watched the video, but is it compliant to Europe's GDPR? In Germany privacy is super important, e.g. the governmant can hardly install any cameras in public areas for this reason.

4 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Yet people have different drives. I have seen hobby developers switch from custom engines to commercial engines and every game they make from there is horrible, they blame the engine and when you show them how to do something they just say that the way the engine does it is dumb.

Even so I will still recommend trying a engine, even if only to make yourself angry. Sometimes just seeing how different, how dumb, someone's approach was to something can be eye opening and even life changing.

Using another company's or person's game engine is definitely something good. The purpose of this thread was not to choose what is better: Creating your own engine vs. Using someone's engine. The question was if I should switch in my particular situation. I am very sure that game engines have their value and if someone wants to create a game he should not be forced to write his own engine. When people build their own car in their garage they normally do not build the engine, transmission or tires by themselves. ? If the profit is well enough at the end of the year, I will continue making games and then I'll decide whether I switch or not. If I don't switch I am going to put my game engine online so other people might find some inspiration (or not..).

1 hour ago, GalacticCrew said:

The question was if I should switch in my particular situation. I am very sure that game engines have their value and if someone wants to create a game he should not be forced to write his own engine.

I took a moment this morning to have a look at your screenshots you have in your twitter and followed the breadcrumbs onto steam.

To be honest, i'm not sure what you would get from changing approach right at this moment. In your case I think you have enough of an engine and product that you're in the 'polishing' stages of your engine - there are still a number of features that you will likely like to implement, but the core is there. There is a lot of investment in making the things work that you would have to expend a bit of effort to port to another engine if that was the way you're going.

You've mentioned that you're looking to do a 2d art styled game for your next project, what functional differences do you foresee between the 2d and 3d systems you've used in terms of making the game? The challenge moving from a 3d engine to a 2d engine is more in the thought process changes in how you might reference space, fighting with renderers and sprite layering, and the functional difference of sprite animation over 3d object animation - if indeed you go down the sprite path.

This however depends on how you approach it, Its easy enough to modify a 3d system to make a 2d game -  you could take a cell shading approach to make the 3d object look like a 2d one. I couldnt see if you have animated textures - but i'm sure its on your radar.

I will however pause, the game you have on steam isnt complete - and perhaps its worth finishing and polishing up a bit more before moving on - especially at the $20 price point that you've set (at least in my region). At $5 consumers are more likely to accept a product being de-prioritized by a developer within a year, but at $20 in early access there would be an expectation you'd get to 1.0 at some point.  $20 puts you out of the band where a number of people will be willing to roll the dice and not really care if it delivers.

Consumers are also known to look at the other offerings a developer has before committing to buy a game, so when you release your next game, people may look to your older ones and see how well or poorly you supported it.

Focusing on the video (noting this could be old - if it is, update it), you have issues where shadows are moving dependent on the camera (00:09-00:15), shadows thrown at wrong angles (appears to be a point light ~20m from the ground in the middle of the scene - or just behind the camera), the cave scene being very bright even though you're under ground. Your ship to ship combat looks very static, basic broadside and no real movement. Its obvious that the engine you've built has a lot of effort into it, but perhaps needs a little more before being put down?

I wouldn't change the game engine anything for this project! My initial question targets my games that might come in the future.

The second game is already in production and will be announced in the next weeks. I have a large collection of different video game concepts and I selected something I can create at the same time as Galactic Crew. Since the engine is the same, I instantly had everything from basic game features, settings, UI controls, input management, asset management, pathfinding, state machines, etc. It wasn't much to add before I had a playable mock-up. The main work of the second game is done by freelancers (2D artists, screenwriters, level designers, etc.). This way, I can manage both projects at the same time. I also wanted to start a second project while Galactic Crew is still in development, because it will make sure I can continue my work next year! Like most Indie games, the sales of Galactic Crew declined in the first year. If I want to continue to make games next year, I can either abandon the game and start something new or need a second source of income. I expect the upcoming Steam Sales to be as good as the last ones (the numbers are pretty constant), but this won't be enough to finance an entire year of development after I paid my taxes (they are pretty high in Germany...)!

As one can clearly see in the Steam discussions, I care about every single player and issue. Bugs are normally fixed within hour if possible, almost all requested features were added within the next two updates and so on. I also get a lot of very positive e-mails from players who enjoy the game. It isn't done yet, but I improved the game and its engine dramatically over the past 10 months and I will continue my work.

16 minutes ago, GalacticCrew said:

I wouldn't change the game engine anything for this project! My initial question targets my games that might come in the future.

i'm not suggesting you would.

1 hour ago, Stragen said:

To be honest, i'm not sure what you would get from changing approach right at this moment. In your case I think you have enough of an engine and product that you're in the 'polishing' stages of your engine - there are still a number of features that you will likely like to implement, but the core is there. There is a lot of investment in making the things work that you would have to expend a bit of effort to port to another engine if that was the way you're going.

I believe that your engine appears to be going along well and that you probably wont benefit significantly by going to a commercial engine for the next project, beyond that i'm not going to speculate. I'm encouraging you to extend on what you have, build in your 2d components and further improvements to the engine you have. As you said above, you already have various systems implemented - you would have to re-implement those sorts of systems if you changed for your next project.

16 minutes ago, GalacticCrew said:

I also wanted to start a second project while Galactic Crew is still in development, because it will make sure I can continue my work next year! Like most Indie games, the sales of Galactic Crew declined in the first year.

Almost all games experience a decline after the first year - there some exceptions - but it comes down to market cycles, advertising, and no longer being on the 'new' list. You may find you get a bunch of sales when you exit early access and end up on the 'released' list. Right now being in early access for $20, with the screenshots and video you have, you may be turning away potential buyers.

The discussion is drifting away from the topic. I was thinking about not answering your last thread, but this would've made a false impression. You are free to contact me via PM to discuss anything unrelated to this topic.

2 hours ago, mr_tawan said:

I'm not really an expert on GDPR (although at work I'm expected to know :P), but I think the law also ban the deny of service when the user choose not to be tracked by the service. That's why many services just stop servicing the people from Europe (as they can't just force the user to accept the personal data tracking by EULA). That's why I think this would violates GDPR.

I switched my website from Wordpress so old school HTML, because Wordpress itself is not GDPR compliant and I always live by the rules. Call be boring, but I don't want to risk anything, especially in business.

2 hours ago, mr_tawan said:

Also later in the video, there's another person that claims that he got contacted by Unity as they suspect this guy making more than 100K. He said he's just a hobbiest who doesn't make a dime from his game (though the game does look pretty good). 

The great thing about Unity is that you make things look good very easily. I used their environment for some time to check out how things are handled their and what they offer. Back then, I decided to stick with my own game engine. The more answeres I read here the more I am sure I will stick with my game engine.

2 hours ago, mr_tawan said:

Unity responsed that they use automated system analyze the user usage and reports that which user might violates their rule. Personally I don't think you can calculate the income by using usage information alone. They might be using other sources as well I guess.

I was not aware of that. This alone would be enough for me not to use Unity for my business. Do you remember the shitstorm after players discovered the Redshell component in some games a few weeks ago? This might be even worse. Before I launched my game on Steam, I had 70 test players that were given an early Alpha version that included metrics like play duration, bug reports, when players lose, etc. This information was sent to my servers as soon as the game was closed. However, every single player signed a document in which he agreed to this data collection and it listed all things I monitor. I wouldn't even dream about adding any form of data collection to any of my games. It would be very useful to me to see how long players play my game or which updates let players return to the game. But this would violate my player's privacy. I wouldn't do that! I also don't want to be monitored by other companies. In my last job we had a time tracking software we had to use to write down all our activities for each day. This is fine to me, because my boss paid me to do work for him and he deserves to know what he is paying for. But other companies should not be allowed to monitor me...

On 8/16/2018 at 4:46 AM, Scouting Ninja said:

Using game engines is just like working with a team.

What happens when you report breaking bugs to said 'team' and they take two years to fix it? Or worse still, don't fix it.

I have been in that situation and it has totally killed my relationship with one smaller company in particular. They now openly dislike me, I openly dislike them.

18 minutes ago, lonewolff said:

What happens when you report breaking bugs to said 'team' and they take two years to fix it? Or worse still, don't fix it.

I have been in that situation and it has totally killed my relationship with one smaller company in particular. They now openly dislike me, I openly dislike them.

In my last compay we used a software component from a small but specialized company from Finland. We made a contract to buy several licences for their product under the condition that we gain complete access to the source, if the company runs out of business or reported bugs don't get solved within a certain time. We never had to use this clause, but it is something that's stuck with me.

I have to say again, the more I read your replies the more I am convinced to stick with my own game engine. I worked on both games today (like every day) and made great progress and I sometimes forget what I've already achieved. My thoughts were circling around the question how much time it takes to implement the new visual features (fire, water, smoke) I need and I forgot all the basic stuff I did, like the Translation framework integrated in all my engine components. Clicking a button and the entire user interface is translated in real-time for example.