Ask HN: Should I open source my video game?

5 pointszadkey5mo ago4 comments

I've been working on and off on a video game in C# and raylib for a while.

It's like a vampire survivors like game. There are no true art assets. Everything is text. That and 32 colors and no mouse. In a sense, retro. Having fewer colors made it easier to decide what color to use.

Anyway, I've worked on it on and off for well over a year now. At this point, my passion and inspiration has left me. Maybe with time and resources I could finish it. But working in the shadows as a solo dev with no support isn't very fulfilling. (maybe that's the issue? would love to hear from others)

Right now it's complete enough to be considered a game. There's choice of characters, races, attributes, leveling up, spells, music, sound effects, enemies that spawn, and the framework for designing waves of enemies.

It could still use actual levels (instead of a just a big open grassy area), score, and unlocks.

It also includes a little bit of a tool chain for designing 'assets' (C# classes and methods that overlap text from raylib) and exporting files that and be used and included.

4 comments

laurentlb5mo ago

What's the downside of open sourcing it?

zadkeyOP5mo ago

Honestly, I'm not really sure.

I assume regret. Perhaps someone else will take it and finish it release it on steam and make bank. Who knows.

Part of the reason of asking the question is I was hoping to hear from other people who have done something similar so they can share their experience and feelings on the matter.

fuzzfactor5mo ago

What if the game was completely done? To your satisfaction, which you are entitled to change, but you've been the only judge so far.

Whether you open-sourced it or not your next step might be to start building a community to allow for enthusiasts' input.

That would be pretty much of a major change without additional coding required.

This would not be the same game effort from you compared to coding it all by yourself any time you have anything to do with it. Like it has been so far.

You would have to be very careful about the community you keep, but it should be about the opposite of isolating.

Now back where we started, OTOH what if you were simply "done with the game", but the game itself is far from done?

I estimate you've got more major milestones in mind and that would mean a lot more of the same kind of effort.

As you are considering, opening it up could give it continued progress whether or not you contribute any more yourself, also whether or not it's you who builds a community.

But it might be a unique opportunity to build a pretty similar community as if the game was far more complete.

Starting right now without having to wait.

Could be the least isolating your progress has been since the beginning.

And community building or participation could be just the thing for a breath of fresh air, and you were probably going to do it sooner or later anyway.

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