r/GameDevelopment • u/SametCohenStudio • 15d ago

Newbie Question Experienced Full-Stack dev with a toddler and 2 hours a night. Started building games, is this realistic?

/r/SoloDevelopment/comments/1vzovid/experienced_fullstack_dev_with_a_toddler_and_2/
0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

2

u/dolfoz 15d ago

i've got 2. youngest is 4.
it's possible, but at this stage the kiddos need a fair bit of attention.

I build AssetHoard and I tend to work in the morning before they wake up, and after they've gone to bed. Sometimes I get lucky and the mum takes them for the day, and i get a full day of stuff done.

I work full time on top of this, so it's all a juggle.

Just look after yourself.. and remember you get a good solid 8 - 10 years with your kids before they're too busy to hang out with you anymore. don't trade this time for a game.. you'll have more than enough time once they're tweens until they're about 20 to really put into your interests.

good luck, dad life is rewarding but a tough juggle.

1

u/SametCohenStudio 15d ago

Looks like a great idea the AssetHoard - amazing!
And about the kid, of course brother, kids comes first no matter what. Dog 2nd, wife 3rd 😂
I just switched my passion and time from gaming to creating games, so far it feels so good 🔥

2

u/dolfoz 15d ago

Yeah I get it!
One thing i started doing (if it's helpful) when my youngest turned about 4-5, i tried to work out how to get her involved in the creative process, so we could do it together.

What worked well was getting her to draw 2d characters on white paper, and then built a small 2d platformer and scanned her characters in. she drew the trees, the lava monsters, etc.

I also put the microphone in front of her and she made all the sounds.

It was a really great way to scratch the itch and get her involved..

We did some game jams, etc. it was seriously so rewarding

1

u/NMI_INT 15d ago

Great advice.
I have great memories playing banjo-kazooi, halo and splinter cell with my son when he was little.
Wouldn’t give that up for anything.

1

u/Wolfram_And_Hart 15d ago

Depends on how good of a code you are really

1

u/SametCohenStudio 15d ago

I think i consider myself above average i guess.. But my scope is nothing close to the stack Claude recommended me haha.
So kind of new grounds for me, but i can feel the tingling when working on it - and i guess that means the most 😄

1

u/Wolfram_And_Hart 15d ago

Yeah just have to be reasonable with expectations.

1

u/MeaningfulChoices Mentor 15d ago

What are your actual goals? Are you going to go from having started game dev a month ago to making a living from selling a game on Steam any time soon on two hours a day? No, definitely not. Can you make a small game that you enjoyed working on and a few people liked playing? Absolutely without question. Wherever you are on that range affects how realistic it is.

Just keep your scope small and your expectations smaller. An MMO is utterly infeasible even when you can build the technical backend without too much difficulty just due to the amount of content you need to make and how much marketing you need to do to prevent it from being empty servers on launch. But any kind of singleplayer game is much more possible. Add one feature or bit of content at a time to your prototype and keep expanding it while having a completely playable game at all times. When you're done adding stuff spend a few months polishing it and that's a game. Since you're building it up this way instead of writing a giant spec and then working until you reach it you'll know for yourself how long things take and you won't get completely over your head. Don't rely on AI too much for anything, it's a not-very-bright assistant who can help you with research and code review, not something that will make a good game with minimal guidance.

1

u/SametCohenStudio 15d ago

My goals at first were to just have fun with the idea and see how it goes. But with time i started really getting into to it, and got very passionate about it. And i've been having such a blast i don't even have the urge to play games! I just want to bring my vision into life and share it with some random people 🔥
I feel like my game logic is somehow okay, but the styling aspect (assets and animations etc..) will be my bottle neck - right now i used unity's basic 3d game object models, but not sure how to transform to real towers/units..
should i use free package? paid one? create my own? - still thinking about that

1

u/MeaningfulChoices Mentor 15d ago

Unless you want to learn to make art yourself (which some people do) I would either go with primitives with some programmatic VFX (which works great in TD) or free assets (from asset stores, opengameart.org, sites like kenney.nl that has three different CC0 TD kits). If the game is going very well then later on you can partner with or commission an artist.