Hello everybody!!

[example_user]

Hey! I'm Pepdeveloper.

 

I've always been creating mini-games, play with unity, andengine, libgdx... At the end of 2016 I published my first "serious" game (Ylao, available on kongregate, play store and more) and I think it's time to start making money. I know it's not an easy road, but I know it's not impossible either. I do not need the money, thank God, but I'll try to make a transition so I can live on this, which is what I like, after all. In almost all the places where I have looked for information I have been told about this forum so here I am.

I use libGdx, so my games can be in all possible sites. Do you think it should change to another framework / engine? Which do you use?

Regards!

[mwissink]

This question comes up a lot with game developers, and usually people say use whatever you're comfortable with. Once the game is published, nobody is going to care whether you used libGDX, Phaser, GameMaker or Unity. That being said, if you want to get serious with game development, certain engines, tools, frameworks can ultimately help or hinder you, and some allow you to have more control over your game. Usually developers don't run into these kind of issues, so I would suggest just working with what you already have.

[Nellykey]

One of the parameters that I use when choosing the engine is the size of the community because it easier to find an answer for some technical question if you are using some popular engine

[b10b]

On 2/7/2017 at 8:46 AM, pepdeveloper said:

I think it's time to start making money.

Find an audience, ask them what kind of game they want, design the game, develop the game, choose the best-fit framework, solve execution issues.

Not the other way around

[example_user]

@mwiss

Thanks. I will then continue with libGdx for my projects while I "test" others in my free time. I have heard that playCanvas is doing great. Although I would like to try with phaser. For many years I haven't touched Unity (The last time was about 5 years ago), but the overpopulation of users using it, makes me keep it in mind too

On 8/2/2017 at 8:12 PM, b10b said:

Find an audience

And that's the hard part =)

[scheffgames]

Hi and welcome to the community! You'll find this forum an invaluable resource for what you're looking for - making good HTML5 games and making a profit.

 

On 2/7/2017 at 6:46 PM, pepdeveloper said:

I do not need the money, thank God,

Lucky fellow!  

I've also tinkered with lots of techs and projects over the years but zero money at the end of the day until I stumbled upon this reddit post which kind of opened my eyes. I've also found two sources of inspiration - TrueValhalla (check out his blog - or should I say read every post, there's a trove of info there and also check out his book. Also he's very active on this forum too and if you're lucky maybe you'll even get an autograph  ) and devmidgard (was inspired by TrueValhalla - you can see that from his Norse nickname. You'll see smaller income reports and that should teach you that it's hard at the beginning ). 

I have no experience with libgdx whatsoever but I can honestly say that in terms of performance and ease of use for a Javascript beginner Phaser is a very good transition to make. Unity sadly it's not because altough it exports to html5 it only uses the WebGL renderer which is not supported well on mobile - ergo not supported by publishers who (hoppefuly) will buy your games.

However in the end it doesn't matter the tool as the final result - TV (that's True Valhalla) uses Game Maker, other (masochistic) people use Pixi.js (which handles rendering very well) and deal with the rest of game related much needed utilities (like event handling, physics, input), there's also a bunch of Phaser alternatives (Haxe, Babylon, etc) and there are even some decent engines (here's a huge list) but like you said you should probably choose something well documented and with an active enough community.

Your main focus IMO should be high quality and polish. This means good looking art, polished UI with the whole shebang of transitions, animations and tweens, particle effects, etc - this  and this are some good examples. The gameplay is also important but not as important as the first if you want to sell your game to sponsors.

Here's a list I published of sponsors and how to contact them - note that not all may be active but looking at what games they have may offer you some inspiration. 

 

[example_user]

@scheffgames Waoh! That was a very elaborate response. Thank you very much!

In fact, I have read from top to bottom the whole blog of valhalla and midgard. They are without a doubt THE inspiration in this field. I also read PatFlynn regularly and many others who live making money with "wifi", that's why I know that anyone can live making money on the internet. There is always a common pattern: Constancy.

I have not been programming in Javascript for many years so I will go testing phaser.

Regarding quality, I couldn't agree more. What is sold is the showy, that's why art is one of the things I'm trying hardest to learn.

Again, thank you very much for your help. It has been very useful