Hey just looked up your game after hearing about it on Therapy Gecko. I'm not great at platformers but enjoyed this :) Love the sound effects lol. I'm also a gamedev and thought I might share some thoughts as I have a little more experience with it than the Geck. I started out solo but am now doing it professionally. I went to community college and got an associates with an emphasis in game dev back in 2014. Community College is a good way to learn a little bit about a lot. You can get your feet wet with programming, image editing, 3D modeling, etc. It can also be an economical way of gaining knowledge. Not sure what assistance programs they have by you, but when I was going, they had a couple that greatly alleviated the financial strain so I'd suggest looking into those if community college is what you decide to do. Again, it will give you a little bit of knowledge about a lot of different aspect of the gamedev pipeline. It can be a good platform, but you won't start gaining real knowledge until you get out there and push a game across the finish line (which you already have, congrats!) All that being said, making a living as a solo gamedev is next to impossible. After I got my associates, I had the option of transferring to a four year but was eager to start the gamedev journey so spent the next 6 years trying to make it as an indie. It was simultaneously extremely rewarding and EXTREMELY hard. It's a monumental amount of work, it can be very hard on the ego, and the likelihood of getting an ROI that's enough to keep a roof over your head is very slim. If you decide to go that route, make sure you have a good support network. I would have never made it without the help of some very good friends and family. I spent 4 years making a game and it's an experience I wouldn't trade for anything but the amount of money I made off it though was laughable. It was total flop and that was heartbreaking, but the game was an excellent portfolio piece and landed me my current job. So now I'm an employed gamedev by day, and an indie by night. Having experienced both solo gamedev, and solo gamedev by night while being employed during the day, I would say that the latter is a far better situation in terms of quality of life. So I'd recommend keeping your day job and continuing gamedev as a hobby/side gig. I'd also suggest taking night classes at the community college. You're a young guy and you have plenty of time. I didn't even start learning about gamedev till I was 25. Last thing I'd say on community college is to not worry about getting the gamedev degree or certificates as they're basically useless. Nobody as ever asked me about mine. Just take some classes in stuff that you're interested in/think might be useful. Good luck!
CWDgamedev
Recent community posts
Hey Brian! Chuck here from the meetup. I was just trying Darkour again and found it to be a little tedious that you have to "Press A to Retake" and then "Press A to Commence Testing" again every time you die. For someone who dies a lot, like me, this is pretty disruptive to the fluidity of the game. Rather than say "Press A To Commence Testing", I think you should show the title/level identifier of each new level once (when you first enter it) and then fade that out after a second or two. And then, whenever the player dies, just fade the screen to black (or your bg gray color), restart the level, then fade back in (also over the course of 1-2 seconds). Just my two cents, but I think this would make the experience a bit smoother and more enjoyable overall... At least for players who can't ace the game in 10 minutes ;)
Also, I found the cause of that exploit you discovered. It was just an old piece of code I forgot to remove so it was an easy fix (at least it appears that way for now). Super important though so thank you again for your assistance!