clyde

Amateur Game Making Night

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I get the impression that I am only one of many people on these forums who want to include the computer-game craft in their roster of hobbies. I'd rank myself as a second degree amateur, now that I've used Game Maker to craft something where a little man with two frames of animation can walk horizontally (though he cannot turn around). One of the circumstances which has aided me in getting to this skill-level is playing games that didn't have millions spent on them and weren't necessarily made by 15 year veterans or prodigies. I've been playing a lot of the recent stuff from http://www.freeindiegam.es
Much of it is barely playable, many of them don't seem to be complete. I want to make barely playable, possibily not complete games. I need the taste of success to push me forward. Complete, polished, innovative products are kinda intimidating right now.

Would anyone else on the forum be interested in helping create some sort of Idle Thumbs Games Work-shop? I don't know exactly what form it should take. It could include game-jams, but also encourage projects that may take a little longer. I am imagining scenarios like someone saying "Aggg! I hate my art-assets, I can't draw a spider riding a horse!" and someone else posting that on their own accord for the pure enjoyment of doing so. It could also be a way of showcasing games that don't really deserve being showcased. I'm thinking that this may be an opportunity to use this community to encourage some amateur attempts. Low expectations are sometimes useful.

Edit: Blambo has created a Google Hangout for collaboration.

Hi guys! I've created a permanent Google Hangout link for people to pop in to screenshare their work, chat, and look for partners and stuff whenever they have the time to. It's probably not necessary but I feel like this sort of gathering is pretty interesting especially in a creative context.

 

Edit: Twig set up an IRC channel.

 

All right, if you want a super simple web client, HERE:

 

http://webchat.quakenet.org/

 

Choose your nick (though be aware that your nick may already have been taken somewhere else on quakenet) and type "idlethumbs" in the channel name. Click Join Chat. Voila!

 

I prefer to have a dedicated client, but YMMV. This is convenient for accessing from places you might not have said client, too. At any rate, I can pretty much guarantee I'll always be idling in here, though I may not respond immediately (or maybe even hours). That's just how I IRC, yeah? Hopefully, if enough people get in on this, there will always be at least one or two people present and active. And then we can have our big scheduled Google Hangouts for awesome show and tell time on top of this.

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A development subforum up there along with the multiplayer networking and strategy space would be cool. 

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What we do over at TiGSource is have a thread with a link to a Google Hangoutin the original post, and whenever someone pops in they post in the thread

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I love this idea.  I've also been dabbling around in GM (so far I've made a shitty Galaga clone) but I think I'd be much more motivated with a community that I already like and respect for reasons that don't involve making games.

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I would love to find a partner or something to work on games with. I get super discouraged when I work on my games by myself and just end up stopping.

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maybe... it has been quite a while since I've dabbled in game development

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I certainly need the kick up the bum to actually make something. I am also in.

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What are the advantages of subforums?

 

I think it would be nice to have a space to show work to like-minded people who we know would have interesting opinions and useful criticism. Though I suppose there's no reason we couldn't do that in Video Gaming.

 

Maybe we can just start by making a thread for people to post their game-like things that are perhaps too small to warrant their own thread? Maybe it can just be this thread?

 

I have a few small/semi-broken things that I would totally love to share at the moment, and I would really like to see things that you all have been working on as well.

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I subforum would be nice because then we could create individual threads for different kinds of things instead of cramming everything into this thread or taking over the general video game threads.  But for now I think we can see how it goes here.

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A amateur dev subforum could be a place to post questions, progress reports, arrange play tests, etc. Just thought it might get crowded if it's mixed in with the rest of the gaming threads.

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I don't know this is something for me, but I'm very interested in finding out. I would like to try this.

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Have dabbled in XNA and UDK in the past but haven't made anything proper for ages, need a little kick-start so it would be pretty cool to see what others are up to, need to give Unity a shot at some point as well. Hopefully it could keep me coming back to the forums also!

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I'm totally in but I don't want to work with any of you losers, how about you get me in touch with some pros? Thanks guys.

 

Actually it's weird. Right before I got the email saying "we're going to offer you a job", I was super motivated and working on something, and then suddenly I get that email and my motivation dropped to zero. So what I'm saying is, yeah, let's do it, I think?

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My advice is start with a dedicated single thread to gauge interest and if it bursts at the seams move to a sub forum. This is awesome.

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Yes, that's my thinking too. First see how it goes and if it proves popular and sticks (and grows), then get a sub-forum for this. And there's something nice about the idea of having it contained to 1 thread for now. I think we have the right amount of people for this to not lose oversight and devolve into complete chaos.

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It's also very easy to move up to a sub forum at basically a moments notice, but more difficult to scale down from a rarely used one with success.

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I have a small game I am working on, with two people it could easily be done in a month or two.

 

If anyone is interested in working on it with me or just hearing about it we could skype or something.

 

or I could explain it on hear if anyone is interested.

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I have a small game I am working on, with two people it could easily be done in a month or two.

If anyone is interested in working on it with me or just hearing about it we could skype or something.

or I could explain it on hear if anyone is interested.

I want to hear about it. I am interested.

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