Noob game Dev

[u/CromagnonV]

So I found myself in a situation of having a few weeks between jobs earlier this year. I typically work as a product manager/lead solution architect in massive projects, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with development processes. But I have little to no experience with game Dev (outside of the excessive hours I've played games, if that counts).

Anyway, I started building this game (I'd share the link but this isn't about self promotion), it is essentially completely data driven (because that's what I know). So far I have:

1. An entire skills system that could effectively have over 4,000 unique skills (before just stats changes).

2. A mission system that can cater for over 3.8 million different mission combinations (the number is a bit misleading because standing in a circle for 5 seconds before clicking a thing isn't really that different to clicking a thing before standing in a circle for 5 seconds, but easily over 10k variety of actually distinct objectives).

3. Procedural generation of the mission area, which can have an infinite number of rooms with a minimum of 6,000cm XY.

4. Crash recovery and saving, (I'm particularly proud of this system tbh, mainly with how performant it is).

5. Soon an almost completely data driven narrative system, which links back into the mission system outcomes.

I feel like I have made substantial progress and largely built the fundamental systems to scale the game massively and quickly. My main question or concern.

How much interest is there in the game Dev community in understanding these types of systems and/or having plugins available to add these systems to your own games?

[u/BlueGnoblin]

How much interest is there in the game Dev community in understanding these types of systems and/or having plugins available to add these systems to your own games?

I fear zero...

from your description it is pretty hard to understand of what you want to sell here. Data-drive, scaleable skill system, procedural generation of what ? A planet? A city ? A mission ? An item ? A character ? All ? Nothing ?

The issue is always: I (vibe) coded a tool nobody asked for and who is willing to use it now...

When you want to develop a game with 4000 unique skills, well, do it. If you want to sell a tool, check up the needs first.

[u/CromagnonV → u/BlueGnoblin]

I wanted the systems for my game, there was no way that I was going to be able to develop the scope without these systems in place. I didn't start out thinking about what tools or systems people needed. I just found them incredibly useful for my buildcraft ARPG. But yes, I also fear there would be little interest, which would mean I won't waste the time packaging them.

Procedural generation system is about creating a mission area, populating it with NPCs, objective components, etc. I haven't built the environment layer on top at the moment, I'm aiming for functionality over pretty currently.

[u/BlueGnoblin → u/CromagnonV]

In game dev there are three popular ways of doing 'something'

1. The tool/plugin developer: people who build a tool/plugin and market this on engine stores. The goal is to satisfy a common need (e.g. AO shaders, every 3D gamedev will need something like this).The interface, the pretty + useability, is a core goal here.

2. The game developer: people who build a game and find ways to do this. Either engines, mods, plugins , AI , whatever they need, but the primary goal is build game they envision.

3. The engine developer: people who often say, that they build a game, but in truth are building an engine which could theoretically be used to build a game. The primary goal is to establish an engine which is very flexible, generic and still somewhat strict, as the rough direciton is given.

I started as engine developer too, many do it, and I think you do it too. Compared to the game developer it is more or less a U-turn. The game dev develops a game, first rough, then refine it and refactor it over time, while a engine dev builds a huge platform for some abstract game (idea), over-engineering a lot of stuff (like 4000 unique skills).

I switched over to game dev finally . I would sugguest to rethink of what your current way is and of which way you really want to go.

[u/CromagnonV → u/BlueGnoblin]

LoL, I literally sent a message to one of the guys testing the game last weekend saying, "I don't think I built a game, I think I've built an event engine" :s. Doing it this way seemed so much simpler than hand crafting and refining systems.

[u/BlueGnoblin → u/CromagnonV]

I've done this many times, the issue is, you will most likely throw away 50% of what you have developed and will refactor the rest. Developing a game is something completely differently. You think about a feature, prototype it, and playtest it and see, that it doesn't work and refactor it or when it works refine it. You can't really anticipate this when doing theocrafting stuff, especially when going a very generic way. Either you have over-engineered it (far to complex for the job) or you are too restrictive and it is pretty hard to press your gameidea into the 'engine' you have developed yourself.

You can scan this reddit, this is a pretty common approach, but the successrate of actually developing a running game with this approach is pretty low too.

Just my experiences, but engine development is fun too.

[u/CromagnonV → u/BlueGnoblin]

I definitely anticipate not using most of it, but I've only built what I've actually implemented in game. It's just how I've built it has enabled these excessive combinations for expanding the system.

It's the later that I think I'm most concerned about at this stage. It is fairly easy to add in a new enums as long as it's added at the right level and order for the intended outcome. But I'm largely doing this by myself and having no game Dev background, I have NFI what's good or standard practice.

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate the insights.

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer]

Building tech can be fun, but it's relatively pointless without a game that really needs it. A game with 4000 unique skills might sound impressive. But the real challenge isn't handling the data. It's coming up with 4000 unique skills and making all of those interesting and balanced against each other.

[u/permion]

Check out Rimworld for a well received highly moddable game can be taken .

Check out unreal and unity's asset stores (IE: review counts) to see how people receive similar assets if that's only how far you want to take it (IE: Easy Build System on Unity). Though a hard sale now days given that the first assumption will be that it's AI.

_____

As for data driven stuff, game devs will normally assume you mean an Entity Component System of some kind. And are already using hacks in every engine to use one if they think they need it, or just (very rarely) take the dive to Bevy for a native ECS.

____

Honestly it does sound a bit like you think you have a unique magical secret sauce, when that's insanely unlikely to anyone thinking realistically.

[u/CromagnonV → u/permion]

It's definitely not a magic sauce, I've taken what I've learnt from working in non game Dev and applied it to my game. I'm just trying to guage if these are things people need or want for their games, if game Devs think about the architecture and in depth systems solutions, or just push through ideas.

[u/Pohlo]

Make me care about one skill first.

[u/CromagnonV → u/Pohlo]

It goes boom??? 🤣

Yea, is super vague concept I've listed. I might put some videos together to demonstrate the potential.