Exactly. They have a website and a trailer for the game. Yet you haven't heard of NightSky. yet...

---

Added on January 12, 2011, 12:54 pmWhat were they posting about? It's those ridiculous user made videos.

This post has been edited by frags: Jan 12 2011, 12:54 PM

I meant I was disagreeing with UserU when he said NOPE to you. Not disagreeing with you frags.

Yeah my point is that the big sites like Kotaku started featuring them a lot because of the viral user made videos. Completely out of the hands of the developer. You could argue that maybe the design of Minecraft accommodated such viral videos, but I know even Notch never expected all this.

Not agreeing or disagreeing with you. Just adding to the conversation.

Point is, marketing your game is very important. Just as important as designing and coding an awesome game.

Perhaps I should have said "easier" it certainly isn't easy to master, but designing has lots of things to do, but almost anyone can do designing, just how good it is. From what I've seen, my programmer friends took quite a while to learn the language, but once it sets off its fairly easy to code properly provided you have good coding habits.

---

Added on January 12, 2011, 2:55 pmoh and notch made a decent game and just happened to be lucky
And maybe he attracted people who liked to spread the news?

---

Added on January 12, 2011, 2:57 pmAlso, I'm certain Notch has a connection with magazines like PC Gamer, causing them to repeatedly talk about minecraft all day long

This post has been edited by justinlee999: Jan 12 2011, 03:01 PM

He's just lucky to have his game going viral, people test to see the hype. Get hooked, Notch gets profits.

My few cents.
From what I know, try starting small with the games by experimenting from codes to how the game behaves and what type of game segment you're aiming for. You can have 2d RPGs, 2d action shooters and some storyboard games like Sam & Max, who knows maybe later you may be one of the guys who made some big azz titles.

Development of the game needs alot of analysis and requires you to do alot more homework than before. From financial point of view to time, resource and skills which is obvious.

For coding, using the right prog language is important in my opinion. Bugs usually cause by human error though.

For Marketing, depending on what audience are you aiming at. Hardcore or casual or super casuals ? Having lots of ads for the game doesn't prove much success when the market is full of the type game you have to offer.

It doesn't necessary to be like big budget titles.

Personally I'm not very good at any prog languages (learned C++, Java), never good but decent also I'm more of an art guy.

However this doesn't stop me from making new maps with home-brew functions on it for games since these days you can easily find editors or getting free SDKs to make your own stuffs with a little of coding knowledge.

What made a programmer very happy? 1, manage to solve a problem. 2, people actually using his software or playing his game. Dont talk about money but when I do program, this 2 is what that make me super happy and especially when people give comments about it and when some people say thank you, I can smile the whole day.

I dont know what makes a good game but if there is people actually playing your game and like it, its enough for me. That is how we programmer get our spirit to continue coding, coding ,coding xD

There's alot of people who is money minded and they don't care whether you do it for passion or the love of doing it.
They just want money from the stuffs you do else they'll paste a "wasted time" over your back just because it's their opinion, which is sad.
But then again, doing programming for getting food on the tables is another matter, money really matters here though.

The bolded part: Programming language, just like our normal everyday language, gets trickier & more complicated the further & deeper you venture. Perhaps your friends find it easy to code properly later on due to the fact that they were just using the basic functions such as "for" looping & so on? I'm pretty sure it gets more intense when it comes to big projects, since I've experienced that during my final year project & industrial training.

What you mentioned there are stuffs that you'll normally experience when you've just completed a workable program / game. However, the headache comes when you're squeezing your brain dry trying to come up with improvements & additional stuffs that can make the program / game better.

i'm pretty sure UserU wrote that in response to [bold+underlined]
programming language (in my case is C++) for start is pretty easy, but it went hard as i'm learning it and implementing it. essentially programmers/devs should be someone who can stay calm in various situations, have critical and analytical skills, experimental , will/eager to learn new stuff, open to suggestion and critism, realistic, good personal and interpersonal skills, stress tolerant..etc etc.

i'm agree with majority whom reply here saying that ambition and ideas alone wouldn't survive in gaming industry, especially if its a small time dev. both two combined with programming skills are essential. one also need to understand the flow of how games are created from scratch to 1 solid software. then comes the capital and marketing strategy along with that.

long short story, a (game) dev should be a master in >2 dev aspects and at the same time knows as much as possible in every other aspects. one wont come out as a master right away, it took time, effort and exp.


as for TS, learn 1-2 language. start with simple cmd games, then slowly implement GUI. dev multiple genre of games..one with words and texts (hacking games for example), puzzle games. then slowly add new rules and ideas to yours games. see and feel how it grows. 1 year should be enough to acquire those skills. from that point, expand skills to even broader aspect. mix and match them all. learns as much language, libraries and softwares during this time period. enjoy it, and it'll be fun i promise



p/s: i stop at C++ midway and thats the only programming language i learn.

This post has been edited by Invince_Z: Jan 15 2011, 11:42 AM

So very hard to get job even if you have game dev degree?

hi there , I'm from local Indie Games Development team Ammobox Studios. I'd like to share a bit of my 2cent about games development in Malaysia.

I think it is a bit misrepresented that Malaysia only have Gamebrains and Codemasters or that Phoenix Games Studios ( creator of Fung Wan ) has 'closed shop'.

Firstly, Malaysia have many other games/animation related company, just to list you some ( other than codes/gamesbrains ), Streamline Studios, Sage, Titoonic ( now Citizentree ) , riverwalk, Cubiinet , Igloo,
there are a bunch of other more.

I don't particularly think it is hard to get job in any of those company as long as you have a solid skill that you're confident with . Be it programming or art , or sound.

However, if you want to make game, you don't have to work for a game company. Of course it helps by providing you more experience and contact, but bear in mind because you work for games company doesn't mean you get to work on a game that you like.

The statement that it is impossible to go into gaming industry in Malaysia is a bad idea is such a wrong statement. Always remember this, starting indie team in ANY part of the world is same. With internet available we are equipped with the very SAME knowledge that is available to any americans, Europeans, or anyone else for that matter. Everything that can be learn there can be learn here. Most indie development teams have no studio experience. I can testify to that as half of our development team at the moment are not from Malaysia and they work on our game because it is a game that they like and they believe in the team behind it. None of them have studio experience.

It is true however that Malaysians are suffering from Brain drain, everybody knows that. There are better paying job in other countries, thus they're all being leeched internationally.

However, to get back on topic, for those who really want to start their hands into the games development industry. Picking up a specialization , and joining and indie team is the best way whether it is a modding team or a commercial team. Don't be trapped by the idea that Indie team are a bunch of hobby-ist having too much time in their hands and are people who live with their parents up to 30 years old. Indie teams are not just that, some indie teams are seriously capable of producing AAA quality games today due to the tools that are available at very low cost.

One of the team that I know is
http://www.interstellarmarines.com/



so well.. that's my 2 cent.

What! Didn't know IntMar were created by indie guys..I got one question, if now i take Bsc in computer games development, will i be accepted by big developers when i graduate?

matters on your work quality and also matters on your dedication.

There are no BIG developers in Malaysia other than Codemasters. Unless you want to go into 3D art production or thinking of going overseas, you'll have to look for smaller local companies. You can also get a job in other industries so it's not much of a detriment to the course itself. Corporations just want people who are good at coding. You can find a job anywhere if you're good at that.

Will the local devs be able to be like Square-Enix one day? I have always wanted to work there.

not quite true, Streamline Studios is enormously big too, they did artwork for UE3 and plenty of other big titles. It's just that they're an art outsource company. But then again , the local codemasters here are also focusing on art-only too.


Regarding areszues92's question,
it all depends on how good your coding is and what are the work that you have done. I'd dare to bet if you have several indie titles in your portfolio that the interviewer can actually play; doesn't matter whether it's commercial or not, it'll worth many times more than a PhD. I'm very very sure, the industry is always looking for quality people, people who ALREADY know what they're doing and can jump right into production. I just doubt they're willing to spend time to train. IMHO, That's how the graduates are now suffering from Lack of Experience ---> No Job ---> Lack of Experience ---> No Job .. it's a spiral. I can't exactly speak for the whole industry, but as for us, when we were hiring some time ago, we realized there is hardly any room for 'junior' programmers in the team. Lead Programmer got no time to train, it's faster to do it himself than to train. There is hardly any grunt coding to do . Time cost too much in the development. Next thing, we were even taking unpaid interns. And the worse thing is, the cost of time ( for training them ) isn't worth the little work that they are producing. It isn't like traditional software development where you can do smaller modules. End up we simply cannot take inexperienced programmers ( which most fresh grads are) . That's because we tend to have a very Malaysian mentality of 'study first, work can come later'. If you're really interested to get a job in big companies, the ULTIMATE leverage is having a playable game which demonstrate your ability to work right away.

Ok ic..

This post has been edited by areszues92: Mar 10 2011, 05:12 PM

anyone knows where streamline is located in malaysia?

i have to disagree with that, because when i met and spoke to ivon smith from codemasters(technical art trainer) he actually said that they are recruiting people who are competent enough to design game's, people who are able to learn and be thought and are able to change their art styles, he even mentioned that they will train new graduates/new comers who have some skill set in games development. He said this after someone asked if we need to be able to produce AAA quality before applying, he strongly disagreed with that, even went as far as to say that if your portfolio is decent enough they might even hire you.