Finding the Right App-rotunity: Hunting the Wild Coder

[hustlertwo]

Here's the thing: You already have. Comfort level and community notwithstanding, the moment you posted here for advice, you were also simultaneously advertising to potential partners on this forum or among the friends of those in this forum. It's quite plausible that you consider this identity completely quarantined from your professional identity, and speak in a way completely unlike how you would in a more "real" or "professional" persona. However, it's equally plausible that you're one of the many people who, for various reasons, do not. Some people don't like the idea of having different personalities in different situations. Others might see it as more beneficial to leverage your ten years of reputation online as hustlertwo at the OotS forum than your real life CV.

Another reason not to worry about speaking in a professional tone in this thread. I considered it a terrific, but highly unlikely, outcome that I would find someone through the original post. It's a bit of a generalization, but most people who participate in roleplaying games do so because they have stories to tell, either as a DM or as a player. People with stories to tell who are interested in making independent games are much more likely to tell their own than that of someone else, ja? Particularly someone like me with few other gamemaking skills to bring to the table.

Also, no sense putting on airs on a place where at a click anyone can see your post history and how you dance when no one is watching, so to speak. If anyone was interested in seeing my writing style, how I interact with others, anything like that, they can (and almost certainly would) do so before ever speaking a word to me directly. They would be able to tell for themselves whether I come off awkward here because it's a subject in which I am so painfully out of my depth, or just because I am a giant tool. No doubt a case could be made for either summation.

I don't know that I have a whole lot of reputation to bank on, anyhow; this place is too big to get to know people quite that well, and with the exception of a brief resurgence last year I haven't played regularly in some time. I was fortunate to have a few characters become well-liked enough that people who weren't even in the games contacted me about how much they enjoyed reading them, characters which even managed to end up as NPCs in the games of others. But I highly doubt Paul Ticker or Wilstaff and Bennett are still in use by anyone these days. Not even sure if the threads could still be found.

[Trekkin]

As for your presumptions toward my character, I suspect if those who know me saw them they would be quite amused. I have a lot of character flaws (which is why I got to take so many feats, of course), but not any of the ones you attribute to me.

Glad to hear it; as I said above, this was both the most likely and most preferable case. In which case it might behoove you to bear in mind that anything you say online can be traced back to you unless you take considerable care to anonymize it (like, say, not linking to other parts of your online presence); as Xyril said, degrees of compartmentalization and their consequent expectations vary. Yet again, I'm not calling you a monster.

I'm simply saying that part of your unfamiliarity with these enterprises is cultural, and that can come back to bite you when people vet you (as they will) and find things that can be (mis)interpreted in an unflattering way.

This is a particular problem for you as an artist, because there aren't really metrics of the quality of your work that can be applied prior to release. We can debug and unit test and valgrind out problems in code across platforms and versions to make sure -- well prior to release -- that, on delivery, the software will do everything the programmers say it does. There are far fewer tools to validate writing a priori, so people will give more weight to their validation of you. Incidentally, this would hold true even if you had a portfolio of successful novels or similar; game writing works very differently from writing for non-interactive media, and the translation is a lot fuzzier than going from, say, desktop software to apps. I know what making that jump looks like; given a sense of someone's existing skill set, I can make a reasoned if not wholly objective evaluation of how much they'll need to learn in order to pull off what I need from them. Doing that with writing is much fuzzier and much more subjective, because sales numbers are the only hard numbers we get.

Which brings me to my other point. This:

But I figure I'll write it first and worry about plugging in the crunch later.

is a very dangerous way to write for anything involving machine processing, because it requires you to make assumptions about what the software can do under the hood that aren't necessarily validated by programmatic reality. The last thing you want is to put forth all the effort to write everything out and then find out that some idiosyncratic character limit or other tiny quirk of formatting or variable assignation or goodness knows what else means you need to rewrite parts of it; as a general rule, these things are written for ease of use by the people who pay for them on the assumption that you'll put up with it if the money's worth it for you. Such quirks can easily cascade into massive rewrites and literally, schematically invalidate large parts of your work for something as simple as using the wrong kind of quotation marks.

This is already an adjustment; you no longer have a linear reading order and all its associated guarantees that the reader has read everything on page X before they turn to page X+1. You can imagine how hard foreshadowing and character arcs become when the reader not only can but is probably required to skip chapters. Having to condense the reader's choices to something that fits on a navigation button is also tricky; it's surprisingly easy for someone to feel cheated because they read something different into those little blurbs than you did, but you have to ride that line if you want anything to be a surprise. All this is in addition to what is arguably the biggest wrinkle: for at least one character, the player expects to essentially be you and dictate what's in their head, with the concomitant paradigm shift in what constitutes a reasonable expectation of relatability. Pronouns are only the tip of the iceberg, which brings us back to why you will want to start with the code: even something as simple as substituting in the correct pronouns to refer to the player character is going to necessitate a grasp of how to handle that syntax in whatever tag schema you're trying to use, and the limits of that schema as you understand it dictate what you can and cannot write.

If you want to write outlines and so forth without looking at the code, that's an entirely reasonable approach, but you definitely want to at least understand the tools at your disposal before you write anything the player is supposed to read rather than trying to retroactively fit your work into an unknown.

Good luck!

[Xyril]

Also, no sense putting on airs on a place where at a click anyone can see your post history and how you dance when no one is watching, so to speak. If anyone was interested in seeing my writing style, how I interact with others, anything like that, they can (and almost certainly would) do so before ever speaking a word to me directly. They would be able to tell for themselves whether I come off awkward here because it's a subject in which I am so painfully out of my depth, or just because I am a giant tool. No doubt a case could be made for either summation.

I'm not trying to say that what you're saying is untrue, because it sometimes is. I simply want to point out that what you're saying isn't always or almost always true, which is what you seem to be presuming. You stated before that "only an idiot" would speak the same here as an a more professional setting--I simply wanted to point out that many non-idiots have their own reason not to.

Now you're stating that anyone who wanted to see your writing style would "almost certainly" check all your previous posts to see the kind of person you are. Again, this is not true. The vast majority of people aren't hunting the internet for a partner to do creative writing. What is more likely is that they'll judge you based primarily on the first posts they read from you. It is only after you pass this initial test (which, as you state, is unlikely to have such stringent standards as a job interview, but will nonetheless have standards) that they may decide to give you thoughtful advice, or recommend you contact a friend, or--as you say--spend a lot more time doing research on you before deciding how to proceed. Especially since, in today's world, creative people don't always get judged by their creative works in a vacuum, no matter how much they might wish it were so. Steve Jackson makes great games, and that is the primary reason for his success, but a sufficiently offensive gaffe on social media could easily overshadow the quality of his work.

[hustlertwo]

Glad to hear it; as I said above, this was both the most likely and most preferable case. In which case it might behoove you to bear in mind that anything you say online can be traced back to you unless you take considerable care to anonymize it (like, say, not linking to other parts of your online presence); as Xyril said, degrees of compartmentalization and their consequent expectations vary. Yet again, I'm not calling you a monster.

I'm simply saying that part of your unfamiliarity with these enterprises is cultural, and that can come back to bite you when people vet you (as they will) and find things that can be (mis)interpreted in an unflattering way.

This is a particular problem for you as an artist, because there aren't really metrics of the quality of your work that can be applied prior to release. We can debug and unit test and valgrind out problems in code across platforms and versions to make sure -- well prior to release -- that, on delivery, the software will do everything the programmers say it does. There are far fewer tools to validate writing a priori, so people will give more weight to their validation of you. Incidentally, this would hold true even if you had a portfolio of successful novels or similar; game writing works very differently from writing for non-interactive media, and the translation is a lot fuzzier than going from, say, desktop software to apps. I know what making that jump looks like; given a sense of someone's existing skill set, I can make a reasoned if not wholly objective evaluation of how much they'll need to learn in order to pull off what I need from them. Doing that with writing is much fuzzier and much more subjective, because sales numbers are the only hard numbers we get.

Which brings me to my other point. This:

is a very dangerous way to write for anything involving machine processing, because it requires you to make assumptions about what the software can do under the hood that aren't necessarily validated by programmatic reality. The last thing you want is to put forth all the effort to write everything out and then find out that some idiosyncratic character limit or other tiny quirk of formatting or variable assignation or goodness knows what else means you need to rewrite parts of it; as a general rule, these things are written for ease of use by the people who pay for them on the assumption that you'll put up with it if the money's worth it for you. Such quirks can easily cascade into massive rewrites and literally, schematically invalidate large parts of your work for something as simple as using the wrong kind of quotation marks.

This is already an adjustment; you no longer have a linear reading order and all its associated guarantees that the reader has read everything on page X before they turn to page X+1. You can imagine how hard foreshadowing and character arcs become when the reader not only can but is probably required to skip chapters. Having to condense the reader's choices to something that fits on a navigation button is also tricky; it's surprisingly easy for someone to feel cheated because they read something different into those little blurbs than you did, but you have to ride that line if you want anything to be a surprise. All this is in addition to what is arguably the biggest wrinkle: for at least one character, the player expects to essentially be you and dictate what's in their head, with the concomitant paradigm shift in what constitutes a reasonable expectation of relatability. Pronouns are only the tip of the iceberg, which brings us back to why you will want to start with the code: even something as simple as substituting in the correct pronouns to refer to the player character is going to necessitate a grasp of how to handle that syntax in whatever tag schema you're trying to use, and the limits of that schema as you understand it dictate what you can and cannot write.

If you want to write outlines and so forth without looking at the code, that's an entirely reasonable approach, but you definitely want to at least understand the tools at your disposal before you write anything the player is supposed to read rather than trying to retroactively fit your work into an unknown.

Good luck!

That is how I have to write it, though. This is a big undertaking for me. If I try to write and insert code simultaneously, I will have too hard of a time getting even the slightest bit of flow going. But by doing it this way I am at about 4,600 words for my first two full days of effort. I know full well I will have a ton of extra work to do to make up for doing this way. The site even says that writing in a word processor program leads to bugs, and here I am using Google Docs because of multiple devices. But if I can get my mojo flowing, I might actually finish this with enough time to then unsnarl everything that is screwed by me doing it this way. If I try to work in all these words of fiction while simultaneously teaching myself how to code it, I will not succeed.

However, I am not flying completely blind. I have the Hosted Games titles I bought/downloaded here to show me the engine in action, to help me understand things like the ideal number of choices, word count per page, good penalties for failed checks. I have restarted Lost Heir several times to study it, and gone through that free version of Zombie Exodus too. Probably download more in order to get a feel for how different authors approached things. And my typing has notes about what goes to which choice, the stats involved, and so on. I just had to avoid commands and such right now, for my own good.

[Xyril]

That is how I have to write it, though. This is a big undertaking for me. If I try to write and insert code simultaneously, I will have too hard of a time getting even the slightest bit of flow going.

I don't speak for Trekkin, but I don't believe that is what he is suggesting. There's a lot of daylight between writing while coding, and going in completely blind. Having an idea of what engine you'll use and taking a bit of time to learn generally about its structure and limitations can be tremendously helpful in providing rough guidelines as to how to avoid writing in a way that would create substantial implementation issues either, but would still allow you to concentrate on scripting without adding code yourself.

For example, if you choose to use a basic CYOA engine, you might learn that it can't keep track of variables--thus, you'll know that you'd have to do extra work if you want to script the game to respond differently based on how many MacGufffins you've collected.

Just as an example, a long time ago a friend of mine asked me to script some events and zones for a MUD he was working on. I had no idea how the code worked for the engine, and I still couldn't make any meaningful changes to it if I tried. However, he did take me through the basics of how the code worked in terms of how it might interfere with something I might try to implement--how the game engine parsed global (player) commands versus commands only implemented in that area, how objects are treated, how scripted events might conflict with other aspects of the game. The work of actually implementing my idea in code and testing them for bugs all fell on him--but because I started working after getting an idea of the limitations, I was able to work in a way that didn't create a lot of extra hassle for him. (That, or he was just too nice to complain.)

[Trekkin]

I don't speak for Trekkin, but I don't believe that is what he is suggesting. There's a lot of daylight between writing while coding, and going in completely blind. Having an idea of what engine you'll use and taking a bit of time to learn generally about its structure and limitations can be tremendously helpful in providing rough guidelines as to how to avoid writing in a way that would create substantial implementation issues either, but would still allow you to concentrate on scripting without adding code yourself.

Xyril's got it.

Step zero for anything like this is to get the proper tools together. That means, at bare minimum, a text editor that can output files their software can read; if they tell you not to use a word processor, there's a good reason why not, and my guess is it's a formatting issue that you really don't want to deal with for tens of thousands of words. Personally I'd use emacs or vim for something like this, but nano or gedit might be more familiar to you. You say you have multiple devices. Fine; you can learn either git or, if you really must, svn. You will want proper version control anyway and you might as well use one that works across devices.

Then, whether or not you want to actually insert your tags now, learn their syntax, paying special attention to their escape characters and how they handle things like newlines and tabs and all the other little formatting details that can absolutely destroy the engine's ability to put your story together for the judges to look at. How the engine works "in action" is completely immaterial to how it parses your work. It's good to know the ideal number of choices. It's vitally important to know what character the engine will think starts a tag, because that could well trigger a segfault if you casually use something like parentheses or quotation marks and forget to properly escape them. It only takes one to turn 100,000 words of work into a score of 0.

So no, you don't have to learn the commands before you start. You should, however, work in a way that will produce as few headaches as possible for you later. Part of that is the software I mentioned, which you can easily customize to catch any formatting errors you may accidentally commit and easily fix them. The rest is an awareness of what will trip up the engine -- and naturally you can't learn that from looking at working games because they obviously don't include any of those errors. There's all sorts of workarounds to them, but they have their own syntax, all of which is never displayed to the player. This means you cannot read it, let alone emulate it.

Basically, the more you write now, flying completely blind -- and yes, if all you've seen are working games you are flying completely blind right now -- the more your post-writing workload is going to increase exponentially as bugs propagate through the system. Debugging is already going to be a monumental task for you, both due to the sheer size of the work and because of your unfamiliarity with the kind of custom IDE that would make this easier; don't make the mountain higher by digging yourself a hole to start in.

[danzibr]

As Grinner said, GameMaker: Studio can do what you're after (make the game and export to various platforms, if that's the word). It has a bit of a learning curve, but is extremely powerful. If you're curious, I can send you some links to get started.

Also, Grinner I went to send you a message but it said your inbox is full.

[Goodkill]

i'm living the dream! i collaborated with a friend of mine on the game which has come to be known as "The City of Scales". he helped me with quests and other game design elements but i did 90% of it. (btw i didn't read the whole thread up till my post, just the first third or so...am unapologetic.)

i didn't work for large swathes of time and it has taken me almost 5 years so far. i have a more or less complete blueprint but i still need to finish the coding and art. and i am a computer science student ... i learned most of what i know on my own but the programming classes i did take were maybe indispensable ... there's a lot of things, basic things, that wouldn't occur to you that you need to learn. (i'm thinking now that the right book might be able to teach you those things though ... i have read a few that i will talk about further down.)

i tried several different game engines including Game Maker. now I'm using Unity. you actually have to know programming to use Unity, but it gives you a lot more control than Game Maker for example. RPG Maker i wouldn't even consider. you need to know Java or C#, but probably C#, in order to use Unity. there's a book called "Learn C# in a Day and Learn it Well" by Jamie Chan and another called "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. i think between these two books you could get a lot of insight into programming and C#, and they will not take you long to read, unlike working through a textbook.

if you do everything on your own, it might take you several years at least. (my game for example is not so huge, and it is in 2D; and i have had a one track mind when it comes to finishing it.) the problem with taking so long is if you want to come up with something you can make money off of the scene is competitive, and other people can think of ideas as well. like Newton and Leibniz both inventing calculus, somebody else without parenting duties and whatnot might have beat you to finishing the game. that doesn't mean you should give up on your idea, just maybe don't view it as a money-making venture. i'm not trying to make money off of my game, at least not directly - i'm using it on my resume instead and hoping any success it achieves will sweeten the resume pot for me.

[danzibr]

@Goodkill: I went from RPGMaker to GameMaker because you can do so much more with the latter. Now you say in Unity you. And I even more. I'm curious what this could be (other than maybe 3D: I have no interest in that).
I might make the switch from GameMaker.

[Goodkill]

@Goodkill: I went from RPGMaker to GameMaker because you can do so much more with the latter. Now you say in Unity you. And I even more. I'm curious what this could be (other than maybe 3D: I have no interest in that).
I might make the switch from GameMaker.

i quit Game Maker because i ran into problems with my inventory system. Game Maker is a good engine with a few flaws and can do a lot of useful things automatically. i think it's good for smaller games. for more complicated games i would choose Unity because you have more control and you don't have to rely on a buggy scripting language. C# is pretty easy to learn. so far the only coding difficulties i've had have had to do with bigger systems, like a 300-line long state machine for example. but that's a problem with my coding ability, not Unity.

[hustlertwo]

i'm living the dream! i collaborated with a friend of mine on the game which has come to be known as "The City of Scales". he helped me with quests and other game design elements but i did 90% of it. (btw i didn't read the whole thread up till my post, just the first third or so...am unapologetic.)

i didn't work for large swathes of time and it has taken me almost 5 years so far. i have a more or less complete blueprint but i still need to finish the coding and art. and i am a computer science student ... i learned most of what i know on my own but the programming classes i did take were maybe indispensable ... there's a lot of things, basic things, that wouldn't occur to you that you need to learn. (i'm thinking now that the right book might be able to teach you those things though ... i have read a few that i will talk about further down.)

i tried several different game engines including Game Maker. now I'm using Unity. you actually have to know programming to use Unity, but it gives you a lot more control than Game Maker for example. RPG Maker i wouldn't even consider. you need to know Java or C#, but probably C#, in order to use Unity. there's a book called "Learn C# in a Day and Learn it Well" by Jamie Chan and another called "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. i think between these two books you could get a lot of insight into programming and C#, and they will not take you long to read, unlike working through a textbook.

if you do everything on your own, it might take you several years at least. (my game for example is not so huge, and it is in 2D; and i have had a one track mind when it comes to finishing it.) the problem with taking so long is if you want to come up with something you can make money off of the scene is competitive, and other people can think of ideas as well. like Newton and Leibniz both inventing calculus, somebody else without parenting duties and whatnot might have beat you to finishing the game. that doesn't mean you should give up on your idea, just maybe don't view it as a money-making venture. i'm not trying to make money off of my game, at least not directly - i'm using it on my resume instead and hoping any success it achieves will sweeten the resume pot for me.

Congratulations! Later in the bread I decided to temporarily abandon my original idea and I have since moved on to creating a choose your own adventure style game in ChoiceScript for Hosted Games/Choice of Games. Despite being an unpopular choice here, I am writing the text first and then I will retype it and start including the code. I would rather type 100,000 words again than mess with my current story flow. Currently 12,500 and counting! Hopefully it will move even faster once my two main characters come together, as that should allow a little more redundancy. Right now I am writing two largely disparate stories which can be tough to keep straight.

[Goodkill]

Congratulations! Later in the bread I decided to temporarily abandon my original idea and I have since moved on to creating a choose your own adventure style game in ChoiceScript for Hosted Games/Choice of Games. Despite being an unpopular choice here, I am writing the text first and then I will retype it and start including the code. I would rather type 100,000 words again than mess with my current story flow. Currently 12,500 and counting! Hopefully it will move even faster once my two main characters come together, as that should allow a little more redundancy. Right now I am writing two largely disparate stories which can be tough to keep straight.

a character driven game is a good idea, like how OOTS is character driven. my game is more plot driven, but then again it's more like a short story of the video game genre. having kids doesn't mean you can't follow your dreams, just that you might need to compromise a little

good luck and may you create something that's a fun experience for somebody!

[danzibr]

i quit Game Maker because i ran into problems with my inventory system. Game Maker is a good engine with a few flaws and can do a lot of useful things automatically. i think it's good for smaller games. for more complicated games i would choose Unity because you have more control and you don't have to rely on a buggy scripting language. C# is pretty easy to learn. so far the only coding difficulties i've had have had to do with bigger systems, like a 300-line long state machine for example. but that's a problem with my coding ability, not Unity.

Thanks!

Right now I'm taking a course in Udemy, and my biggest unknowns (which the course covers) are combat and inventory. No problems with basic stuff like movement, animations, vehicles, whatever, and intermediate stuff like party system and stats and saving and whatnot, but those last two... we'll see.

When I complete this course (end of July hopefully) I should know whether or not GM can do what I want it to.

[hustlertwo]

a character driven game is a good idea, like how OOTS is character driven. my game is more plot driven, but then again it's more like a short story of the video game genre. having kids doesn't mean you can't follow your dreams, just that you might need to compromise a little

good luck and may you create something that's a fun experience for somebody!

Thanks muchly! Having children is awesome, but it is also true that it is one long series of compromises from who you were and what you liked to do before they came. Hopefully this one will work out. And while competition for the contest is fierce, if I should manage to place I will already make more than the average first-time app before it even releases! A fun dream to strive for over the next half year.

Good luck with your game, that is a long time but as long as the end result is what you wanted, what does it matter how long it takes? Better six years on a labor of love than two on something you're ashamed to release.

[hustlertwo]

I don’t normally cast True Resurrection on an old thread, but I want to thank all of y’all, especially Fri, for helping me realize the best way to get something to happen was to make like Thanos and do it myself.

Thanks in part to this thread, Nuclear Powered Toaster will be released by Hosted Games on iOS, Android and the Amazon App Store on October 25th. Completely written and coded by yours truly. I’m already about 1/4 of the way through with a second title as well.