Any Volunteers

JPDev@programming.dev to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 1350 points –
154

The Chicken and the Pig

The fable of the Chicken and the Pig is used to illustrate the differing levels of commitment from project stakeholders involved in a project. The basic fable runs:

A Pig and a Chicken are walking down the road.
The Chicken says: "Hey Pig, I was thinking we should open a restaurant!"
Pig replies: "Hm, maybe, what would we call it?"
The Chicken responds: "How about 'ham-n-eggs'?"
The Pig thinks for a moment and says: "No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved."

Damn, that's a lot fucking darker than I'd thought it'd get on reading the title of the fable.

It was actually in my management textbook XD

I heard of it from a Reddit comment about an easter egg location in Diablo 3 called "The Fowl Lair." It's filled with chickens and a single Greasy Pig.

I know it's not the point, but I love the completely arbitrary bit where they're walking down a road together, and has absolutely no bearing on anything the happens.

It has one bearing: it puts them in the same location together

Substitute “walking down a road” with: “having dinner at a conference”, “chatting over lattes at the local coffee shop”, or “at a neighborhood cookout” as makes sense.

He already did the hard part! Why won't you lazy fucks implement his great ideas?

It is, in fact, very easy to code a game!

from pygame import game
game.load_player()
game.load_enemies()
game.load_audio()
game.run()

I'm glad that there's no micro transactions nor loot boxes.

That's in game.load_dlc() we opted not to include that until our game is already beloved on steam.

Make sure to add mandatory EGS accounts later.

EGS? Oh, no. We don't do that here. We're more along the lines of:

if date.today() - RELEASE_DATE > timedelta(days=90):
    try:
        game.prompt_user_to_connect_3rd_party_account()
    except PlayerRefusal:
        sys.exit(0)

I’m writing this down. Fuck, my first game!!!

You can't do that, you're committing copyright infringement! Change gameto mygame though, and you're golden.

Ah see I knew it would be too much work after all

Just have ChatGPT do it then. Not so sophisticated AI after all, huh?

As a software dev who's participated in a couple of game jams and several group projects,

  • I'd say that anyone that claims to be a designer but has no programming experience is typically incompatible with any project
    • and it's due to the disconnect of understanding just how difficult it can be to translate certain design tasks into functional code

It's like scope creep, but where the demanding client is also your boss/coworker.

Hey there, champ! I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I'm afraid I have to disagree with your statement. Game development with effort or coding skills? Today I'm gonna show you how to do it without any effort, it's like becoming an astronaut by watching the big bang theory!

Let me break it down for you. You see, creating a video game is as easy as pie. Typically, you would use lines of code. But what if I told you that you can gather a bunch of random images from the internet, throw them into a a computer, and voila! You've got yourself the next "Call of Duty" blockbuster. Going by standards nowadays people will be lining up to buy your game, guaranteed!

Who needs coding when you can just use a magic wand and poof your game is magically coded? Just like that! Forget the coding aspect of it, you can make a game effortless! How do I do this you ask me? Well, If you really want to master the art of game development without lifting a finger, I have the perfect solution for you. Introducing my revolutionary course: "Effortless Game Development Masterclass"! In this course, you'll learn the ancient secrets of game creation without any pesky coding skills or effort required. You'll be churning out awards winning games in no time, all while lounging on your couch and eating Cheetos. 😎😎👊 Dm me if you want more info for the affiliate link

You absolutely nailed it LOL. Those flashy courses with absurd prices and "funnel techniques" prey on idea-people who are scared of code like whale sharks on plankton.

Oh god have had people try this exact thing with me before.

I got asked by a team of first timers who have never done any professional coding or design if I wanted to chip in on a competitive MMOFPS they want to make.

That's not going to happen. Between the rise of cheating, the insane hardware and optimization requirements of an MMOFPS, the general lack of interest in the genre (most have died due to low player counts), and the sheer amount of time and effort involved in designing and balancing the game even after it's largely feature complete? Forget it, I'm better off buying lottery tickets than hoping for anything to come of that.

No joke, I once met a guy like this in an indie game developers meetup, and on top of that he was extremely vague about his idea because he told everyone he once managed to get a coder on board and "that rat wanted to take advantage of him and his idea", literally.

I had a guy whose pitch was "Ok, you're the president."

That was the game idea. The whole thing.

There are probably a ton of incredible banger games out there that don't exist because the person who thought of it just doesn't know how to code

"games out there that don't exist" how high r u rn

Yeah man, didn’t you know. We have thousands of cheap and effective treatments for cancer that don’t exist.

I can code but I can't do art. I can make a game, but it will look ugly as fuck.

Build a MUD.

I do want to make a sci-fi Dwarf Fortress clone with just ASCII representation.

Do it dude - if you're passionate about building a rich simulation game then there's a good chance you'll create something awesome. We've seen huge successes with Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld - those sort of complex simulations can be both fun and dazzlingly interesting in terms of their emergent game play.

It's relatively simple to get started, just simulate one thing or render one simple 10x10 grid, and work your way up. Remember that video games take a lot of effort and set reasonable goals and milestones to recognize your progress... DF originally played on an, essentially, fixed map with no z-plane - wildlife was non-existent and sieges were just pre-planned events.

If you have an idea in your soul go for it!

Same boat... But I had some success with low poly 3D models which I found are pretty easy to make. Learning a bit about color theory, how to match colors, as well as learning a bit about level design goes a long way. You can make a great looking game this way.

But my dream game is 2D pixel art, and I really suck at it.

But I had some success with low poly 3D models which I found are pretty easy to make.

Same. I find that for non-artists 3D is easier than 2D because:

  1. You get things like depth and shadowing for free.
  2. Animations are easier. Or, at least, it's easier to keep them consistent and to control their pace.
  3. 3D software has much more tools that non-artists can somewhat grasp.

Of course, my 3D models still look like crap - but it's better looking crap than my 2D sprites...

And also, you can sort of brute force things to look good it with shaders.

This is why AI has been a boon to creators.

I've generated some great pixel art that required a tiny bit of Photoshop to get it in a good state.

Especially if you just need placeholder art you can use AI to drop in general ideas and later replace the art by a partner or contractor.

If you get a demo off the ground with "alpha" graphics and look decent you can market it better and maybe build a team.

I think a big benefit for this is also motivation. You no longer have a blocker due to missing art or issues with an artist.

Uhh.. need a character design for the mayor. <> ok now text... <> ok now code...

No more excuses!

You mean like an MMO where different maps are arranged in an infinite hexagonal pattern that's randomly/procedurally generated based on different biomes, that also keeps track of how many players have entered/completed each hex and begins scaling down the difficulty in said hex and evolving it into a more peaceful zone, that way the higher traffic areas eventually form safe zones/towns for low level characters while low traffic areas encourage high level characters to visit and explore, with the highest level characters able to survive unexplored areas and expand the map for all players, all while having developer tools to specifically add unique dungeons/events/items directly to tiles so that the game doesnt feel a mile wide and an inch deep but instead as if the whole world map is alive and constantly changing?

Yea... That'd be cool.

Definitely some cool ideas there but how do you deal with the long term effect of the map becoming too big?

The bigger the map the more the defs would need to stretch their resources to adding cool stuff.

Also, at some point, the inner hexes will be essential all complete cleared and new players will have to wander for a while as soon as they level up a bit.

Unlocking a new hex would be fun at the beginning but how fun will it be after 100+ have been unlocked and any more just will inevitably just feel same-y because even the best defs will eventually run out of ideas

You have found the Wayne's World dungeon.

Welcome to Wayne's World: The Game You find yourself in Aurora, Illinois, the hometown of Wayne and Garth. You're on a mission to help them prepare for their biggest public access TV show yet. Scene 1: The Basement You're in Wayne's basement, surrounded by music gear, posters, and a comfy couch. Wayne and Garth are brainstorming ideas for their show, but they're stuck. They need your help to come up with a killer opening segment. Do you: A) Suggest a musical number with Wayne and Garth performing a duet of "Bohemian Rhapsody" B) Recommend a comedy sketch parodying a popular movie or TV show C) Propose a special guest appearance by a local celebrity D) Suggest a "Top 10 List" segment, à la David Letterman Choose your response:

....

You have found the Encino Man Dungeon.

Encino Man: The Adventure Begins You are Brendan Fraser's character, Link, a caveman who has been thawed out and is trying to navigate modern life in Encino, California. Your goal is to make it through each scene without getting into too much trouble. Scene 1: The Thaw You wake up in a block of ice in a backyard. You're confused, hungry, and thirsty. You see a garden hose nearby. Do you: A) Drink from the hose B) Try to break out of the ice C) Look around for food D) Take a nap Choose your response:

LLM to generate ideas, history to check uniqueness

Nah.

That's like saying a lot of banger songs could exist but the person doesn't know how to write music.

Absolute delusional bullshit.

Verifying the idea is good is also part of the process. Play testing, making hard decisions, smoothing out jank, juicing up the experience... The whole implementation can make or break a game.

It's like saying there are so many great novels out there that we have never seen because the authors can't write for shit.

Not "great novels" but great "great world building". I've seen some absolute bangers out there where the concepts, characters and even the overall plot blew my mind away. However, the authors couldn't write decent dialogues or a coherent chapter of their life depended on it. So, most people wouldn't be exposed to their ideas.

I had to learn that the hard way, but with a comic/manga idea I used to have.

Long story short: I worked way too long on an idea (almost 10 years), all while my taste etc. changed. It would have been way too hard to get it working after a while without a complete revamp of the whole idea, so I ditched it completely, maybe reuse elements and character concepts in other things, including video games (yes, they're easier to make, unless your comic's artstyle is stickmen figures).

(X) DOUBT

I had a cool idea that I completely gave up on because I tried to learn how to do it and realized what I was asking was so insanely complicated and time consuming that I couldn't do it. I play a lot of games, I know what would make a good one, there's just a gaping chasm between knowing and creating.

The problem is that this complexity isn't just a one-off thing you need to get through. There's a ton of details which matter, which you will not have thought through as part of your idea.

Many of these details, you will encounter as you write code. As in, you've just worked for three weeks on a feature and then realize a glaring problem in one of the details. Then you spend another week trying to find a solution. And worst-case that solution is to rip out that month of work and start fresh.

This has been my biggest learning from dabbling in gamedev for a while: Make a stupid paper model first.

Even if you spend a week glueing sheets of paper, and you don't really even get that close to your actual idea, the more of these details you think of upfront, the higher your chance of getting anywhere (or scrapping your idea without wasting months trying to put it into code).

Well, and the other big learning was: Holy crap, gamedev is hard.

I know how to "code". I'm a senior developer and have worked on multiple large-scale software projects.
The scope of the game I was trying to create, was laughable in comparison. As in shitty 2D, tile-based, turn-based.

I encountered performance problems like I've never had to deal with in my career, because it turns out the whole games industry is fueled by smokes and mirrors.
Know how ray-traced lighting is the craziest new technology? Yeah, that's literally just a matter of hardware being strong enough that we can simulate lighting in the way it actually works. It's conceptually simpler than the ever more sophisticated bullshitting we did beforehand.

The inability to detail the idea all the way down to the level were something concrete can be made from it kills it well before the lack of coding skills.

It's like what separates having an idea for a book and writting an actual book that is enjoyable to read: there is no "knowing how to code" barrier in there and yet most people can't actually pull it off when they try or it ends up shallow and uninteresting.

This is actually one thing I've been thinking AI and deepfake tech can potentially do good. Let's say you have an idea and can code.. You have an idea for music but no instrumental talent, so the best you can do is hum it. You can't afford voice actors or other professionals.

Or maybe you're artist with an idea who can storyboard but not code. Maybe you can make 2d designs but not 3D models, or aren't great at animate.

But... there is software that can take what you say and change it to a different voice. It can animate a model to match the words. Similarly, software that could generate instrumental sounds from humming is possible. An AI can generate interactive dialog. It could also provide assistance in the generation of music, debugging of code, and eventually more advanced 3D modeling.

A lot of game design software is much more a GUI to an environment/model and triggers etc than stuff like writing hardcore backend C++ code etc. AI could take that even further.

Then add VR. Drop somebody into a blank-slate where they can create a whole world with a word, a gesture, and a great idea.

One day, that might be a reality.

The creator still needs to know "what" to ask and how the pieces fit.

As a coder, I'm constantly taking whatever AI gives me and rewriting it. AI is just a better lorem Ipsum generator.

have you ever smoked weed? ideas are cheap - even ones that seem good. ACTUAL good ideas are only proven good when they are implemented AND become successful.

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Y'all remember that post about the "science-based dragon MMO" that topped the gaming page of...that other site...? If not, I'll include the title and image below, because it's got the same energy as this post.

Dear internet, I'm a 26 year old lady who's been developing a science-based, 100% dragon MMO for the last two years. I'm finally making my beta-website now, and using my 3D work as a base to create my 50+ concept images. Wish me luck, Reddit; You'll be the first to see the site when it's finished.

The comments were surprisingly constructive considering she basically pasted zsphere sketches over a generic background and announced she had been solo developing the most ambitious dragon fucking game the world has ever seen. It's been 12 years, I wonder how she's doing?

You know what's ironic about all this is, as someone who has seen game dev pitches (not good ones), they arguably had their shit together more than most aspiring game devs. Looking back at the skeletals, ya know they actually may have had a chance of getting somewhere. They knew absolutely nothing about the technical side, but hardly any game devs actually do. They probably still stand a better chance today of developing this than some game studios asset-mashing in Unity or Unreal. That's the true state of game dev.

I remember this post like it was yesterday, and she didn't have her shit together at all.
All she had was a Z-sphere dragon in ZBrush poorly photoshopped on top of a lumion render, and an overambitious idea

Let me reiterate: I have seen worse.

In fact, Disney once paid a lot of money for a game with even less concept art and design. Unsurprisingly, this game was never released and very little record of it remains. And when I say it was worse. For those who think they know: yes, I'm talking about the viking bears.

As a person that has a lot of ideas and no coding or art knowledge, it sucks because I know I can't expect someone else to do it for me and I don't have the time or mental capacity to learn. I guess I can just have AI do it for me now /s

I envy you in some ways, recognizing your limits is something I wish I would have done. I came from a coding background, spent like 2 years learning unity, then eventually realized much of the cool stuff for games happen on the art side. So I learned blender... the whole pipeline- modeling, sculpting, materials, animations, each piece had it's own challenges and quirks.

It's been like 15 years since I started, I still haven't released a game... but I do have a collection of neat prototypes that no one has played. I often wonder if I've wasted my time with the whole thing. If I could go back, I'd choose one niche, specialize in it and find a team to collaborate with, but there are trade offs with that too like giving up a lot of creative control.

I think it's probably better to have taken action as you've learned a lot. People like the person you replied to and myself "know" our limitations but then we don't do anything so you're 15 years more advanced in your knowledge and I'm 15 years stagnant no better than I was from the start.

Yes this is what I tell myself to keep from going insane, I learned a lot. Unfortunately the majority of these skills I've acquired are not applicable to "pay the bills" work. By trade, I'm still building web forms and streamlining internal business processes - what would it look like I spent those years on perfecting that craft instead? What if I didn't block out my evenings and sacrifice time with friends and family? Life is always a series of trade-offs, I suppose.

Hey buddy, your value is not what capitalists are willing to pay for your time.

FACTS.

Some days it's harder to remind yourself of this than others. Thank you.

In an ideal world we'd all be encouraged to take on creative pursuits and have the ability to do so, rather than feel guilty for them. Maybe someday, right?

Stopped myself before I got in as far as you but realized my roadblock is art. I can't solve this one: I lack the creativity and patience to do the art, and naturally nobody will ever work for free, nor should they.

I wasn't really sure how to proceed so I started studying for various tech and cloud certs instead. Might as well put my skills to use somewhere.

Heh I can relate, a proper artist - someone with a creative mind and vision - will still run circles around me. I often rely on references and "copying" previous work. I also never learned to draw, instead jumping straight into 3d modeling. Drawing is basically the quickest way to experiment with concepts and designs and that knowledge gap has become a glaring issue over time. There's no "fix", just 10,000 more hours of practice...

Do you have the prototypes hosted anywhere?

Nah, call it a mental block or creative fear or whatever, but publishing is an open invitation for criticism and negative feedback. If I'm crossing into that, I feel a need for it to at least be a complete package I'm presenting. This is just my experience, most devs will advise you to get your work in front of an audience as soon as possible and iterate quickly.

You can have someone else do it for you. You just need the money. Give yourself Executive Producer credits, tell them your vision and pay them to make it happen.

And that's how we (eventually) got Kingdom of Amalur!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios

Sure would've gone a lot smoother if moneybags knew jack about making games though, that's for sure.

I believe I read this story in detail in "Blood, Sweat, and a Pixels" and it was exceedingly painful.

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Same here, I have one idea for a simple 2D game that I would like to make just so it exists. I even got myself Unity (before they stopped being cool) and tried to do some tutorials, but I just don't have what it takes.

If you still want to make the game despite that, I'd recommend watching some of Pirate Software's youtube shorts for motivation. He's got some great gamedev advice.

This one that he uploaded today feels relevant: https://youtube.com/shorts/TBxhiw-Hpxc

I'll hold myself back from sharing more for now, in case you don't care. And also because it's 3 am.

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fuck idea guys. an idea is worth nothing until you actually put the work in

I have this idea of how to solve the world's energy problem...ok ok just hear me out... nuclear fusion....just need some smart science nerd to figure it out. Any volunteers?

Sharing ideas can definitely be worth something when it leads to something actual original/concrete/useful, but on another level.

Most ideas these "creatives" come up with are neither of those + they are not willing to put in some effort to solidify the idea themselves.

Put it on GitHub and some tryhard will do a bunch of free work on it. Source: am tryhard

Sure as long as you donate 100,000 USD a year to my bank account.

I've had game and software ideas swirling around in my brain, but for the longest time I couldn't program them. But now, I have enough knowledge to build parts of my grand deckbuilding game idea: An arcade style deckbuilding game with strong meta-progression. It's playable at superspruce.org.

As for some other ideas, including the simple idea of a weighted shuffle music playlist where each song has its own weight, they are still currently out of reach, mostly due to trying to access the filesystem and whatnot. Better than a month ago, where within the last month I found out how to make the browser play music

Cool game but it is missing a lot of features, most importantly tutorial and art.

On the technical side: Do you self-host or in the cloud?

It's hosted on GitHub, but I really want to self host one day.

What other features are missing? I'm still pretty much a beginner so it can be very tricky to implement things.

I once read an article about a guy, whos just doing this. He is selling gaming ideas to studios. But to be fair, he did develop some indie game by him self. He just realized, that he is not good in developing and the hates the whole programming and design part. He only has good ideas.

Lol I was legit surprised to find it's an actually written (satirical) article! The other ones had me rolling too, like John Cena coding "Banjo Threeie" LOL.

If you're this guy, You've gotta be a really good writer and you gotta write it first.

"Ok, I did the overall plot. Who's doing the dialogue?"

Sounds like you have a small fraction of a game Idea that could be generated by an AI trained on tvtropes.com.

Great idea, how about you describe it in so much minute details it bores your goddamn mind? Can't do it? Sorry, then you're not cut for being the idea guy, you're fired.

If the fucker can't do the above, he's what programmers call a client: an asshole who thinks too highly of himself and his ideas and will annoy everyone every time he changes the goals.

i mean, provided you actually want to put in effort that's called "being a game designer", it's perfectly valid to not write code or create assets.

Asking for and/or expecting unpaid volunteers is most definitely not valid.

If he wants to pay them properly, then I would agree.

It ws only like a decided ago when I had multiple amazing ideas for games and other software, only to have nearly none when I actually started to do some programming for fun.

I think there's only one game I would like to try making where I see it may have some success, but the idea is very vague and devil is in the details and execution I guess.

This reminds me of a legendary thread in the forums of the German gaming magazine GameStar:

https://www.gamestar.de/xenforo/threads/world-of-warcraft-2.337502/

Me: reads the comment

Me: reads "German gaming magazine"

German

Still me: clicks the link and is disappointed when it's all in German

For some reason, I click it, and Google translated it for me?

Hello,

me and my team (we are atm 3: me and 2 school colleagues) started a pretty big project last week. I know it sounds crazy, but we are working on a successor to WoW. Please don't say we can't do it anyway, because we are very ambitious and are very experienced WoW players. I'm posting here to find more people for our team. We have a modeler (me), a musician (for the background music and sound effects) and a community manager. We are still looking for a programmer to bring the whole thing to life. If you would like to apply, please post what experience you have so far with game programming and what programming languages ​​you know (we want to write the game in Java because we already learned a bit of Java at school last year).

Our goals/motivation: Wow is now a few years old and Blizzard doesn't seem to be thinking about a successor. Instead, they create one extension at a time. The graphics are quite old and WoW2 is supposed to look much better (my models are almost photorealistic). The quests should be more exciting (don't always kill XY, get XY). >There will be epic battles with up to 500vs500 fighters. We have invented two new classes: Necromancer and Hobblings. But I don't want to tell you everything here and save it for later. I will send a project plan to anyone who is interested. ^We can't pay for the work, but when we publish it, for example, we share the subscription fees we get ($10 per player).

Greetings. Wow2

The OP replied a few time as well, reiterating that this is a serious project. They even uploaded some of the "photorealistic" models, but the pics are offline, sadly.

I don't think it was ever truly revealed whether it was an elaborate troll or just a spark of adolescent folly.

Clearly adolescent folly. I too remember thinking making a video game would be very easy.

@JPDev Then again, that's how a few free software games actually work

I can't think of any FOSS games that would invite an idea guy to drive the project. They're made of volunteers, sure, but FOSS game teams still expect tangible contributions. Otherwise it's just another feature request and will get picked up if the team thinks it's worth it.

More specifically with FOSS projects, whoever puts in the work makes the actual decisions.

Like, if there's a change that one person wants and the others actively disagree with (and it can't be made configurable either), then that won't happen.
But usually, there's hundreds of features that make sense in principle. And if someone scratches their own itch, i.e. implements the feature that they're missing, then that obviously won't be rejected, even if it's not the most requested feature.

So, yeah, such an idea guy would need really good ideas and present them so well, that others selfishly want to implement those ideas (and moreso than all their other ideas).

Such as?

Science-based dragon MMO

Is this the current version of that game? is the 100% science lady involved in this?

https://www.pcgamer.com/i-think-i-love-draconia-the-only-mmo-about-dragons-peacefully-collecting-seashells/

is the 100% science lady involved in this?

Not gonna lie I also have the burning curiosity to find this out, but it's after midnight and could initiate a hyperfocus rabbithole time warp....

... But I think that'd be pretty wholesome as heck if that turned out to be true!

It's been years since the last time that I've seen this referenced lol

Funny thing is, it's actually not that hard to get additional volunteers for an ongoing project if you're competent enough, only recent issues are YanDev messing up a lot of things (both his game and life) which might create some skepticism towards indie devs looking for such volunteering, and people not understanding how solo indie development works and fetishizing successes without truly understanding them.

I actually wish this mentality kindof existed for hobby projects (although it doesn't seem to, but please prove me wrong), like "looking for a programmer for X project to do Y" type posts where us programmers can more easily find projects to participate in (and they can find good people too) that we have a great interest for, rather than hunting sites like up-for-grabs for single feature requests to fulfill or starting completely new projects on our own.

I tried setting up something like that, back in the half life mod days. Had lots of people submitting help , never got anyone with help offered.

perhaps things might be different this time around? wouldn't hurt to try.

My first thought was, "Have you talked to the Fallout modding community?" They're huge masochists and love being shit on, even though they create such amazing things and deserve nothing but praise and monetary rewards...

After success with my senior project, developing a real game with a team of 15 that we're releasing on Steam, which I feel really good about, I crave the experience of working in a team to develop a game. But of course, my hobby project is a nonprofit endeavor so I can only expect volunteers, and even though I feel I can get the coding down mostly on my own, I feel like I might be asking too much by hoping for an artist or few to join with me... maybe I just need to change up my approach, and offer equal shares of creative control, that way it's not "help me make my game" so much as "join me and we'll make our game."

Just coding, 3d modelling and art. But the idea is great!

The same damn attitude of some “open source” projects looking for free labor, as if paid labor isn’t exploitative enough