Lemma Soft Forums

I found these articles and thought they were interesting, especially to VN devs like us. I mean, a lot of VNs are all about branching conversations, so I figured I'd link them for reference.

General Development

• Overview by PixelProspector
• Getting Started Guide
• The Big List of Game Making Tools
• The Big List Of Indie Game Development Forums
  Branching Conversation Systems and the Working Writer Series:
• Branching Conversation Systems and the Working Writer, Part 1: Introduction
• Branching Conversation Systems and the Working Writer, Part 2: Design Considerations
• Branching Conversation Systems and the Working Writer, Part 3: Building a Conversation Tree
• Branching Conversation Systems and the Working Writer, Part 4: Key Principles
• Branching Conversation Systems and the Working Writer, Part 5: Arts and Craft

Graphics:

• Overview by Pixel Prospector

Sound/Music

• Overview by Pixel Prospector

Accessibility

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• The #A11y Project

Selling your game:

• Where can I sell my Indie PC game?

Business:

• Overview by Pixel Prospector
• Indie Legals 1.01: Starting an indie game company
• 5 (Avoidable) Legal Mistakes Made By Games Companies

Taxes and Credits:

• Don't miss out on extra cash from R&D tax credits
• Video Game Software Development Tax Incentives Part II: the R&D Tax Credit

Crowdfunding

• The complex ethics of funding a game via Kickstarter
• The Art of Asking(Great resource for people interested in Kickstarter and Pay What You Want model)
• The man who made $50 million ditching Kickstarter
• The cure for indie game failure

Being a Full Time Indie Dev:

• A playbook for cutting the corporate purse strings
• How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit [Youtube Video]

Working in Teams:

• The Game Outcomes Project, Part 5: What Great Teams Do

Testing:

• Different Testing Approaches for Mobile Games

Marketing

• The Marketing Guide for Game Developers
• How to Successfully Market Your Indie Game on a $0 Budget [VIDEO TUTORIAL]

Distribution:

• Direct Distribution via a Free File Hoster
• Indirect Distribution via a Free Games Portal
• Direct Distribution via a Payment Processor
• Indirect Distribution via a Digital Store
• Companies that produce Merchandise, CD’s, Books, Box Sets…

Feel free to add any knowledge or articles you've come across and I'll add them to this post.

Thanks for the links!

I'll dig up some of my favorite articles when I get home from work tonight.

I've only skimmed the first one, but they look like they'll be helpful for me. I'll read through them in more detail later - thanks for sharing! ^^

Found some more helpful resources in the form of videos:

The complex ethics of funding a game via Kickstarter
The Art of Asking(Great resource for people interested in Kickstarter and Pay What You Want model)

I'll also add these to the main post

i want to point out that both pixelprospector and gamautra articles dont help at all, there just adding popular answers it helps no one.

firecat wrote:i want to point out that both pixelprospector and gamautra articles dont help at all, there just adding popular answers it helps no one.

Thanks, I guess?
Is the information completely useless because it's popular? Or does something else disqualify it? Why is it popular if it provides assistance to no one?
If it's so unhelpful, I'll be sure to remove such a futile resource, but I'll need some convincing...

Do you have a better resource to add to back up your claim? It'd be nice if other people contributed, because I clearly have put up articles that don't help at all, and that's a pretty bad mistake on my part. I feel like a fool now.

I mean, I found pixelprospector useful/interesting, but that could just be me. Maybe I was mistaken because I am an amateur.

Anyway, if you couldn't tell, my previous words up until this point were rather scathing, and I'm sorry if that seems immature on my part, but I can't stand it when people don't back up their points.
If you don't have something better to contribute and can't use basic spell check/grammar, I'll have to discredit your opinion.
Come up with well-rounded reasoning and I'll comply with your opinion.

we already have a thread about helping developers and it has better resource for anyone.

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =4&t=29825

pixelprospector and gamautra, they both only review games not build games so none of them have experience building a game

wikipedia search on gamautra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamasutra

pixelprospector rise to fame,
http://indie-games-ichiban.wonderhowto. ... s-0129033/

so without a doubt the articles are not useful for anyone, google just made them top search it does not its helpful.

[not relevant anymore]

firecat wrote:pixelprospector and gamautra, they both only review games not build games so none of them have experience building a game

I can't speak for PixelProspector, but anyone who thinks Gamasutra isn't useful for VN devs hasn't actually read Gamasutra. It regularly features technical, business, creative, and personal articles related to game development, and is not limited to games with moment-to-moment interactions (i.e., it's inclusive of VNs.) There's also regular post-mortems on games where developers reflect on what they did over the course of their game's development: what they did right, what they could've done better, what surprised them, etc. It most certainly is not solely a review site — critics, journalists, industry devs and indie devs alike are regularly featured. Among those devs are producers, game designers, artists, programmers, musicians, foley artists, marketers, and so on. A great deal of useful advice is available on Gamasutra and there's a (usually) well-moderated comment section on articles which often ends up being an informative supplement to a given article itself.

firecat wrote:so without a doubt the articles are not useful for anyone, google just made them top search it does not its helpful.

On the contrary it is your opinion which is unhelpful. The extent of research you did on Gamasutra before declaring it a review site shows that you're one without anything useful to offer. Seriously all you have to do is go to the home page (or better yet, visit one of the articles on branching narrative that Morighan linked which is directly relevant to visual novel development) to see that's not true. The featured article right now is titled, "7 things I have learned from designing This War of Mine" — funny, that doesn't sound like a review to me.

Also, there's a distinction between this thread and the other one: the thread by Dragonstar89 links to discrete, highly specific resources. This thread links to resources that are more holistic and instructional in nature. They're both useful but mixing the two would create a mess IMO.

A friend pointed out this article, and I was rather impressed. I'll add it to the main post with the hopes it might inspire some of you.

The man who made $50 million ditching Kickstarter

Adding these for reference:

Different Testing Approaches for Mobile Games

The Game Outcomes Project, Part 5: What Great Teams Do

The cure for indie game failure

I found this recent article to be very interesting!

This is specific and useful enough to warrant a Sticky topic in our Creator Discussion forum.

Taleweaver wrote:This is specific and useful enough to warrant a Sticky topic in our Creator Discussion forum.

Oh, hey thanks!

These are hella sweet articles, can't wait to read all of them.