[newn]

Hi everyone. Since our recent post - http://www.dreaminco...gopid__1168102&, about an argument with my friend and the give answer by Oler1s, a thought crossed my mind:
I'm a beginner game developer (if I can call myself like that, best my creation was a not bad quality Ping Pong, except the ball movement, so yea, not sure, if I should call myself a programmer yet.), and I've a lot of ideas, but not capability to make them live yet. One of the next games is going to be a side-scroller.
So anyway, since I'm getting more and more capable of working with C++ better, slowly though, because of real life problems, but I'm getting better... I'm starting to think: where will this lead me?
There's no game companies (There's been one, which bankrupt, because we are a poor country. Even though their products were pretty cheap.) in my country. I don't know a single person in this country, who would be interested in programming, except web development, which they know html and css only, and that not so good... Which means, that I won't be able to find a team, nor I will be able to get a job around here. I won't even be able to study programming better than Pascal, and Delphi.

So my point being... What can I do in such situation? No job and no teammates in my country. I've lots of ideas, which most people likes. I've no money to go to another country. Work trough internet or something? If so, that's quite dangerous for a guy, who would spit the ideas and write the code, isn't it?

Thanks for your answers.

[no2pencil]

This is for console development :

If you develop your own game, but it's missing items such as sound, graphics, effects, load screens, or whatever, you can submit your game code to a 3rd party developer whom that has certifications for publication & distribution, & most importantly certified developer kits required to legally sell the published game. Most likely you'll have to front money (I'm thinking in the thousands) for their time to finish your game & make it publishable, but they would legally produce your game, & you would earn a portion of the revenue from sales.

The other option is to not only do everything yourself, but you would need to meet the requirements of game console companies (such as Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, & so on) in order for them to even consider licensing you a developer kit.

Nintendo is the only link that I know... feel free to search the others. My advice, it's easier, & more likely to go with a 3rd party They've already been accepted, & did all the leg work already. One could waste years to only get denied.

[aaron1178]

Well, im sorta into game development but, you could always produce more games then approach a gaming company. I mean a small one that is willing to help improve your skills. It also depends on how well you work in a team.

Who knows, maybe you could find your own team, remember there are a lot of site floating araound that want help, do some freelance and all that.

Thanks Aaron1178

[newn]

Well, I can say, that consoles wouldn't be my thing, I've no money to buy one, and I've never had one. Same goes with investments - no money.

So, the only thing, what's left is freelancing? But don't you get pennies out of that? I mean, I've looked at some website, and there's been jobs like to create a program, which would have a build-in database, network connection, remote database and places to enter a lot of information, also sorting of the information... And for this kind of programs, they said, that you will get like 100-200$. I mean, to create this kind of software, it would take a few weeks, maybe a month, if not more.

[WushuMonster]

It's pretty difficult to make money in game development, even living in a wealthy country with lots of opportunities. XNA game development is probably the easiest way I can think of to get a game up quickly to a very visible marketplace for sale (on Xbox 360). Free for initial development, but $100 when you want to publish something I think. Also would have to learn C# too (should be easy after you get good with C++). I don't know how much those guys typically get for a quality game though. There's also sites where you can sell indie games for PC (like garage games). Working through the internet can be a decent way to get experience, but it's pretty hard to co-ordinate a team of unpaid strangers separated by hundreds or thousands of miles for anything intended to be for profit. You might have to find a way to make money in something other than game dev and just save up. Maybe attend school overseas or something. What country do you live in?

To be realistic, you are asking on a forum populated by a bunch of people who haven't really broken into the industry ourselves ;-)

With freelancing, I imagine you have to be able to sort through the more unrealistic offers. Lots of people ask for you to create the next Facebook or something ridiculous like that for $50.

[WushuMonster]

Oh, I see it's Lithuania. Maybe contact the people behind this: http://ltgamejam.org/

Also: http://www.ud7.com/
and there's some Lithuanian programmers who worked on the well known Unity 3d engine: http://unity3d.com/c...eople/team.html

So it's not completely hopeless in your country :-)

[shrik450]

Don't despair. There's Steam Greenlight and other indie distribution systems from which you can earn well for the games you make. I myself want to be an Indie programmer without all the publishing hassle. The only problem is that you cannot publish on consoles ( except the 360, which requires some front-end payment ). Indie gaming is the next in-thing. Look for inspiration from Mojang, Derek Yu, Frictional Games etc. Mojang, for one, earns millions from Minecraft. Go for Indie. Indie YEAH! There's no need for any investments. Just work on your programming, and when you're done, look for Indie Publishing.
PS: Just realized, Greenlight has Front end payment too. But that's for charity, and it's a 100$.

[ButchDean]

iOS development is about as best exposure you are going to get as an indie developer. It does mean that you will need a Mac of some kind and learn Objective-C, but it really is your best shot.

[Coding123]

Game development is hard to start from. I do not think it is best to pursue it fully if you have $0 balance. Reason for it is because you have to spend cash to buy graphic assets and sound assets unless you are the one covering all the areas(unlikely).

[shrik450]

ButchDean, on 02 December 2012 - 12:48 AM, said:

iOS development is about as best exposure you are going to get as an indie developer. It does mean that you will need a Mac of some kind and learn Objective-C, but it really is your best shot.

AFAIK, Objective-C is easy, and you can Install Mac OSX on a Virtual Machine. Would definitely try that out if I wanted to start out with iOS programming.

[Coding123]

shrik450, on 05 December 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

ButchDean, on 02 December 2012 - 12:48 AM, said:

iOS development is about as best exposure you are going to get as an indie developer. It does mean that you will need a Mac of some kind and learn Objective-C, but it really is your best shot.

AFAIK, Objective-C is easy, and you can Install Mac OSX on a Virtual Machine. Would definitely try that out if I wanted to start out with iOS programming.

You can try, but I can tell you that it is not suitable for serious development. My opinion is that it is just too unresponsive when running Mac OSX on virtual machine. I ran Unity editor on it and well... I was not pleased with performance results

[ButchDean]

shrik450, on 05 December 2012 - 12:38 PM, said:

ButchDean, on 02 December 2012 - 12:48 AM, said:

iOS development is about as best exposure you are going to get as an indie developer. It does mean that you will need a Mac of some kind and learn Objective-C, but it really is your best shot.

AFAIK, Objective-C is easy, and you can Install Mac OSX on a Virtual Machine. Would definitely try that out if I wanted to start out with iOS programming.

Obj-C takes some getting used to, but you will need a proper Mac to get your apps signed for distribution to the AppStore. A Hackintosh is out the question if you want to make money.

Coding123, on 05 December 2012 - 12:46 PM, said:

shrik450, on 05 December 2012 - 05:38 AM, said:

ButchDean, on 02 December 2012 - 12:48 AM, said:

iOS development is about as best exposure you are going to get as an indie developer. It does mean that you will need a Mac of some kind and learn Objective-C, but it really is your best shot.

AFAIK, Objective-C is easy, and you can Install Mac OSX on a Virtual Machine. Would definitely try that out if I wanted to start out with iOS programming.

You can try, but I can tell you that it is not suitable for serious development. My opinion is that it is just too unresponsive when running Mac OSX on virtual machine. I ran Unity editor on it and well... I was not pleased with performance results />

This is total nonsense. My studio before the last one released games on iOS that I also worked on and performance was great. Lots of studios do iOS development, I have no idea what you're on about. Using Unity on Mac is no reason to write off iOS development, it's a reason to write off Unity.

[modi123_1]

Butch - I think s/he was referring to running iOS in a virtual machine to do game programming.. that, in a VM, it was slow and not quite responsive as having your own physical box.

[ButchDean]

Using a VM never is. Maybe the post should be clearer.