Online game-hands amateur. History

Yes Yes. I was not sealed and was not mistaken. In this story, I will tell you how many years ago I had the idea to open my own online game, despite the fact that all my knowledge in this area came down to two things: 1) online games are played via the Internet 2) they are hosted on a mythical server and are created harsh programmers. And I am a ballroom dancing teacher (conditionally).



I collected all the bumps that I could, made all conceivable and unimaginable mistakes. Now, many years later, I understand that now, from Moscow to Kaliningrad, the readers of this article will put a hand to his face and quite rightly call me naive (in the mildest formulation, of all possible). But I consider it a crime not to write it, because for a number of reasons, partially covered in this story, I stumble every day on young, and not so much, people who are suffering to build their game of mud and cones. Maybe my habrapost would open their eyes to what game dev is for an amateur.

')

This article is filled with tube memories, flavored with a small pinch of self-criticism, and in many moments completely devoid of common sense. If, nevertheless, you are interested, then welcome under cat.

Stage 1: Denial. Or the thump of an idea about a skull

Long ago, while still a senior student, I first learned what a browser game is. A dial-up connection at that time did not give anybody any room for 3D pysch-pysch, and therefore my first game was the well-known browser-based space online strategy from the German publisher at that time. She, like the first love experience of hundreds of generations of men, seized me head over, made me not sleep at night, commit madness and, as a result, as expected, broke my fleet heart. Of course, after it there were other games and other follies, but the first meeting has already left its indelible mark on my memory. And this trail began to bleed after many years.



On a somber evening of 2008, while playing another shooter for beer in the evening, I realized that this type of games does not give me anything except the blank letters WSAD on the keyboard and the corns on my index finger. I have to, no, I have to create my dream game. I have to reject this boring 3D fashion and give the world something great. Of course, with korovanami and guards. This idea seemed to light up my mind from above. She was a revelation sent down from heaven, she was a gentle whisper of angels who promised me wealth, fame and a place in history. Of course, now I understand that these were the machinations of Satan and just foolishness in the empty head of the next sucker, who thinks that the system must be overthrown in excess of the dose of his transcendent uletnosti.



So my story of game devs began with an indisputable truth. Gamedev, like a startup, begins with an abstract idea and high expectations. And life eventually puts everything in its place.

Stage 2: Anger. Or analysis of resources and costs required to conquer the world

Since I already knew that an online game requires a server and programming skills, I firmly decided that at first, my personal PC would be the server, and I would learn programming in a month. And I will get the finished game in about two months. Yes, at that time I was far from 18. Yes, my expectations did not come true. But do not rush to break your face with a fespalm, dear habrovchanin, otherwise by the end of my story it will turn into a solid hematoma. Plus, as a miserable and absurd excuse, I ask you to make a discount on the fact that no units and frameworks were yet accessible to the masses.



Of course, for the year of my labors, I mastered only basic knowledge of HTML. Yes, yes, and yes again! I thought that it was HTML needed to develop the game, because I went around a dozen different browsers and all of them were displayed to me as an HTML page.



All my knowledge of server administration came down to installing Denver on a computer and sharing it on the Internet.



A blow struck me from where I was waiting for him. From the depths of the treacherous Internet. I just drove into the search box "create your online game for free" and was stunned by the abundance of topics in various forums. There were hundreds of archives with ready-made server scripts for the clone-games "BK" and some incomprehensible trabia (then I read the name that way). It was as if to find out that a magician flew into the yard in a blue helicopter and actually distributes gold bars to everyone for nothing. Of course, I immediately downloaded all the archives with games and began to study them. It was during the study of the archives that I realized that the wizard was a perverted sadist, a blue helicopter was a broken bucket from a garbage dump, and gold bars ... err. Not gold and not bullion at all.



The analysis took about three months of my time and revealed two things to me:

1) Browser games are often written on PHP-MySQL-Flash bundles.

2) Everything that is ready on the Internet is garbage, which is not worth even the soles of the homeless from the gate.



The discovery in turn brought awareness of the following things:



1) We must begin to learn three new web technologies;

2) It will take years;

3) I do not pull.



It terribly upset me, because I realized that after so much time, I essentially did not move a single step towards the game of my dreams.



So I got the second important lesson: if you consider yourself cooler than professionals, before you start building a house, carefully study how others do it. And what tools they use. That is what will save you from death under the rubble after you build a foundation from wallpaper and insert a sand-gravel mixture into the window frames.

Stage 3: Bargaining. Or money decides that everything

Awareness of my mistakes led me to realize that I could not pull the project alone. But it also revealed the knowledge that I am not alone. So I needed like-minded people. It is advisable to do all the work for me, but of course, under my leadership. After all, only I carry in my head the image of the very game that will conquer the world. A reader will ask me: “Etishkin forest! What game did you come up with in your head? What did your sick mind give birth to !? ” It was this question that I received at one thematic forum in the topic, where I began recruiting adherents to the ranks of my team. And I realized that I can not say anything concrete. I knew that the game should be browser-based, cool and exciting. But I have not seen beyond the light of this dazzling concept any details. Of course, on the forum, I tried to hide this fact behind the cover of the fact that this is a terrible secret and I am afraid that more enterprising igrodels will steal the idea. That everyone is simply obliged to work well for me now to swim in dollars and rays of glory sometime later. However, I could not lie to myself. I sat down and began to describe my dream game on paper in detail. The result is the same space browser game that I mentioned earlier, but only with a hundred different whistles from above. I heard the theory that women are looking for a partner with the features of her father. I heard the theory that a man is looking for the features in his wife that his first girlfriend had. I do not know how true these theories are, but I can say for sure that any game you want to create and consider innovative and revolutionary has already been implemented in one or another, even the most embryonic, degree before you. You just need to submit it as no one thought of it.



But I got distracted. Let's go back to my brainchild. Having laid out my vision of the game and received a couple of dozens of unflattering feedback from members of the forum, I realized that no one was eager to work in a team for an idea. Especially if you do not see her prospects just as you see. Of course, everyone wants fame and money in the future. But the stomach asks for food now. At that time, I had already formed a source of stable income from my main activity and I boldly decided to use this money to implement my game idea. I hired freelance programmers, paid muddy types on the forum for gaming scripts that are supposedly so cool that they are kept in the bins of the Templars, so long as they don't get to such carriers of light as me. I was ready to pay my mythical forum team, but there, in fact, there were only sofa Mummins advisers and great theorists. Which in the words of Leo Tolstoy, but in fact zilch simple. I lowered a lot of money and got a public script browser with a couple of hundred crutches. But nevertheless, it is no more functional than the original game that I wanted to beat. On the way out, to be honest, I learned a lesson: no one is eager to work efficiently for money if he does not share your idea.



So, after another year of fruitless efforts, the circle closed for me. Then I decided that I need to buy a finished product and wrote a letter to the company that owns the very browser that was my first love. Years later, I want to return to the time machine at that moment and give myself a mind. Like Scary from a fairy tale. Of course, I received no answer. And I decided to buy another game, similar in functionality, but already active and ready for completion by a file. It was a deal with conscience, bargaining with the original idea of ​​how I see the game of my dreams. But it was better than stopping and dropping everything. There is only one little thing left - to find that very different game. I began to crawl through all the space browsers that even remotely resemble the very same one. I played them to understand how raw or quality this product is. But each of them was all the same holey buckets from the public, just put on crutches. They were not worth a ruble.



The conclusion that I made from this stage of the game is: one should not just have an abstract idea, one should formalize it and implement it at least as a concept with a reasonable investment of forces and means. The first pancake will almost certainly come out lumpy, but you will gain valuable experience if you don’t resist with a horn and do not perceive the collapse of the concept as a collapse of the idea as a whole.

Stage 4: Adoption. Or how I met that one

After all the adventures described above, which I heroically created for myself, it was already decided to throw the idea into a distant box, but then fate turned to me with an elastic ass and invoked it. In the course of sorting through all the space browser games that I could reach, I came across one game project that was worth attention. It was a browser that one wrote very stubborn and, probably, like me, stubborn, enthusiast. However, he, unlike me, possessed programming skills. There were few players in the game, the admin’s attitude towards the players reminded me of the concentration camps of the Third Reich, and its design made the eyes bleed. But there was almost everything he wanted from the game of his dreams. I stubbornly played the game for a month and once again visiting the game forum I learned that its owner distributes the engine completely free of charge under the GNU / GPL license. I realized that I could not find a better engine. But the approaches to the game aspects that the programmer implements do not allow me to write him into the category of my like-minded people. So I made the biggest, and perhaps the most correct step. I firmly decided that my programming skills for creating a dream game would never be enough. It is necessary to take the best of the tools or opportunities available by the means and means here and now, not expecting a better tomorrow. Sometimes even contrary to the ideals. After all, tomorrow will always be tomorrow. But getting a tool or base, you need to squeeze it as productively as possible.



The lesson that I learned from this stage of my game-dev: like-minded people will surely be found. You just need to understand where to look for them. If they are not there, then the creation of his game is an unattainable peak for a person who owns only an idea and desire, but does not own knowledge. Even with start-up capital.



Looking ahead, I will say that with that same enthusiast, we joined forces a couple of years later. But that's another story.

Stage 5: Depression. Or the sound of crystal dreams

It was 2010. Having received a game script that suits me, I broke a piggy bank, bought a cool hosting service and a sonorous domain name. After all, the game of my dreams is worthy of the best. I hired a good programmer and he installed the engine for me. And now, this moment has come. I entered the game as an administrator. I was a demiurge who would sculpt a new world out of this clay. I will be Shiva, from the edge of which the game will be born, which is destined to shake the foundations of the universe. There was only one problem. I was alone. Alone in the endless space of my game and my own ambitions. And, as time showed, there were still too many sawdust and rainbow bubbles in my head.



The conclusion that dumbfounded me at this stage: to invent and create a little game, it should be made attractive to the player. And to show the player the charms of the fifth size, which your game can boast of, you need marketing channels and advertising. Without this, your project is just your personal toy.



Here, in brief, and all my way, from the birth of the idea to the desired result.



The most important stages - the promotion of the game and getting financial buns, I will describe in the next article, if someone is interested. There, the number of pitfalls and fakapov just rolls over. No wonder, because the release of the game into the light is like the story of a tadpole's life, which must go a long way until it becomes a frog. And around is full of predators and undercurrents.



I beg the indulgence of the habrovchan for the fact that he could somewhere miss the threads of some events. All the same, the path was long, and something could be forgotten. Perhaps supplement the article in the future.



I am pleased to answer your comments or make grammatical changes to the article. Again, if at least someone will be interested



Part Two: Online game by amateur hands. Part 2: The Tale of PR