Forem: Nicolas Ramy

Nebular Express - devlog #4 - This is the end of the beginning

Nicolas Ramy — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 09:39:57 +0000

Hi,

I started this game for the Minigame a month - FEBRUARY 2024 Game Jam.

Unfortunately, I didn’t finish it on time and I’ve been ranked 88th over 95…

What went right?

I got motivated by participating to this Game Jam
I have defined a clear plan to create a game
I started to dive seriously into GameDev

What went wrong?

I lost a lot of time watching video tutorials for versions of Godot that I’m not using.
I lost a lot of time polishing minor elements instead of working on the game mechanics.
Even if I didn’t fall into the «scope creep», the initial scope was too large for a beginner.
I didn’t dedicate enough time to work on this game.

What I learned?

I have a lot to learn before participating to a Game Jam.
I had a clear vision of what the game should look like and for a beginning, I had too high expectations based on my skills.
Communication is the key, I should have take more time on Marketing to engage more potential fans and have more feedback.
I should used the same processes I use professionally to stay organized and transparent to gamers.

Next steps

For me it’s just the end of the beginning, I wanted to start GameDev as a software engineer and I think this goal is reached because I want to finish what I have started.

I’m sorry for people who try this game and didn’t have the fun I was expected they have by playing this game.

If you accept, I’ll be please to have a second chance to finish this game with a reasonable and realistic timeline. I’ll share with you more informations on the next steps

Thank you all! Stay tuned, see you soon 👋

Originally publish on Itch.io

Nebular Express - devlog #3 - Try to improve

Nicolas Ramy — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 09:31:31 +0000

A major release, a lot of small tasks done to make the game more interesting…

A lot of quick improvements to make the game more gorgeous. A main menu (only start & quit work for the moment)

Stay tuned, see you soon 👋

Originally publish on Itch.io

Nebular Express - devlog #2 - Show your work

Nicolas Ramy — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 09:19:17 +0000

Today is the second day I worked on this project. I continue to set up my models in Godot in order to create a scene for each object.

There are some changes I’ve done due to the deadline of the Game Jam and the amount of time I can block on it. For example:

no more voxel, too complicated for me for the moment
less complex shader effects, I didn’t get the understanding of shaders yet
fly only in one plan XZ (Y=0)

I also try to deploy/release the game. I’m surprised I have to download an extra package of 850MB to be able to export my game in Godot, in fact, the real Godot size is clear to 1GB rather than 50MB. What is the purpose of creating a game if you can’t export it 😅

The butler tool is pretty good and everything work well. This gives this devlog and new version of the project page

Stay tuned, see you soon 👋

Originally publish on Itch.io

Nebular Express - devlog #1 - Let the journey begins!

Nicolas Ramy — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 09:11:50 +0000

Let the journey begins!

I create this new project in order to test the Godot engine and my ability to create a video game.

This project is a simple racing game in space like crazy taxi for the jam Minigame a month - February 2024

I’ll do my best to log and share everything about my journey, that means I’ll publish content about the game lately.

prepare the game design document
organize my Godot project inspired by different best practices
prepare all my assets (some blender edits)
bootstrap the ship movement
bootstrap the environment

Originally publish on Itch.io

What it takes to create a sustainable application

Nicolas Ramy — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 15:00:24 +0000

Summary

Introduction
What is an application?
Why adopt a product-driven strategy rather than sale-driven strategy?
The Product Market Fit
The Secret Sauce
Conclusion

TLDR

It takes courage and discipline
It's multi-disciplinary, so it's not easy to do it alone
Ability to demonstrate rationality and imagination
Document yourself, take the time to do research and studies
The secret sauce is personal, you have to know how to ask for help and know your limits so as not to crack under pressure

Introduction

During my career and even before, I wrote, maintained and improved applications. I mean almost all kind of applications on every platform: mobile, web, desktop and server.

I think I finally understand what it takes to create a sustainable application. On paper, everything seems simple but in practice, alone or with people, it's difficult to follow the plan and easy to fail.

We have to be honest to ourselves, we all have brilliant ideas and the will to create successful applications. Share our ideas, communicate, investigate, ask for advices to someone, everyone or no one. You are free to choose how you want to design your application or new features for it.

But in practice, if you want to succeed, you will need support, no one succeed alone, otherwise, we will all be successful application creators. Isn't it?

Regardless theses points, once you started an application, how to make it stay sustainable for years?

What is an application?

When I talk about applications, I mean softwares. Pieces of computer program executing a task. Mostly in order to help human to do an activity (write text, edit audio files, draw, communicate, etc...) or helping another application to do an activity.

In 1950, Companies sold hardwares with own softwares. Some people started to create their own softwares.
In 1960, the beginning of Hacking culture.
In 1980, Open Source has helped us to create and share knowledge around applications creation.
In 1990, the Internet
In 2010, web 2.0
Tomorrow, web 3.0?

The Garage doesn't work well anymore nowdays, the industry has changed exponentially. In the Opinion, Press, some companies and founders still continue to spread the legend of the one-man-army behind successful application.

It's not only one person who create an application or a product, it's always the result of a long explicit and implicit collaboration of everyone from the industry.

You have easily and cheaply a large set of tools like no-code or lo-code, contents, tutorials, guides. You don't have to create them to start.
But remember that you don't own the platforms, you have to adapt everyday to any change from the market, providers or your customers.

From an article, which I can't find anymore and explaining it perfectly:

We all share the same standards, we don't create new programming languages each time we start a new application, we follow the same conventions, use the same tools, apply the same best practices. And the fact that large companies in the industry have released for free their processes, their story, their experiences and their tools show us that the true value is elsewhere: our personality, our engagement.

If you want to create a Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, you should absolutely follow the 12 app factor to create a sustainable application. Even you try to compile resources on your own, you will finally focus on this 12 points or think to consider them in a near future to create your sustainable application. This manifesto summarize perfectly the best guidelines to maintain and manage technically an application in time.

Why adopt a product-driven strategy rather than sale-driven strategy

When you start to create an application,you have to choose carefully your orientation, what does really drive your business?

Product
Sales

If your goal is to stay for years, small advice: choose product driven strategy for almost all cases.

When you focus on sales, you can't plan a long term strategy, you will unconsciously block inputs from the market, the providers and the customers. A gap will naturally appears and the more you stay in this position, the harder it will be to keep your application sustainable.

At the beginning, Apple started with a product-driven strategy with the iPhone. The first goal of Samsung was to be the number 1 for the number of smartphones sold. Everyday, history shows us which one drive the market.

If your application really help people in doing their work or entertainment. If they also take pleasure of doing it.
Your product will sell it self.

Your goal is to make people use your application, it is its fundamentl purpose. If it's difficult or impossible to use it properly, why will you continue to use it?

The more you will get users, the more complex will be the usage. And new topics have to be considered:

Community
Engagement
Promotion
Market

The Product/Market Fit

Unfortunately, money runs the world.
Regardless the quality, the time you spend on it, without money, you can't go very far.
Fortunately, you will have 3 kind of revenues:

donations
sales
monthly or yearly subscriptions

I'll take more time later on this topic.

To summarize, you have to attract customers, be seductive. Customers compose multiple communities, some will give you feedbacks, others could be ambassadors to future customers.

To tend to perfection, you have to respond to your users needs and will. Lots of tools can be used:

Customer Behavior Analysis
Audience Measurement
Surveys
Market Analysis

Try not to assume you understand the market even you've created it. Always keep an eye on your competitors, regulation changes or technology changes. Consider all theses points as a whole.

Regular market researches and competitive intelligence will make you competitive and make you still exist. Without customers, it will be complicated for an application to be sustainable. If no one buy it, why should you spend money on maintenance and promotion?

Independently the position and the market share, an invisible engagement will spoon between maintainers and users. Keep it better and stronger to permanently scale up.

The secret sauce

Organization: A simple way, to organize the work on your application, is to follow the triptych: Conception-Monetization-Exploitation. The name talks from itself.
Planning: The global organization will tend towards agility. The trend: SCRUM or Kanban
Identity: Depending on the team, the geographic, economic, social, societal situation, an application always takes on an identity that is carried by one or more people. And since it is often publicly carried by one person, success is misattributed to that person. Steve Jobs was not alone, he was part of a team.
Promise: In the context of an application, we are talking about performing an activity. The promise is relatively simple but as our perception is unique, it's not easy to fulfill this promise for everyone. And even more if we multiply the number of platforms.
Values: Each team carries its values, which color the application's identity. They must be unifying as much as possible because the abandonment of the project due to lack of maintainers or internal discord means that the application can no longer continue to be maintained properly and sometimes can lead to its complete shutdown.
Incarnation: And for the incarnation, it's up to you...

That's the problem with the secret sauce, I don't have it for your application and it's something personal you live in the present.

Conclusion

It takes courage and discipline
It's multi-disciplinary, so it's not easy to do it alone
Ability to demonstrate rationality and imagination
Document yourself, take the time to do research and studies
The secret sauce is personal, you have to know how to ask for help and know your limits so as not to crack under pressure