Soldato
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I used to go to Climbing Unit, not been for a while.
mid_gen's Launch a Game Studio Thread
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I used to go to Climbing Unit, not been for a while.
I climb there a lot, few months back I overheard some of the guys from Bulkhead saying they'd just been let go, and one of em was starting their own thing. Reminds me I should see how he's getting on!
Good luck dude. I genuinely hope this takes off for you
Cheers!
Studio name...... Moth Empire Studios, or Moth Empire Games. Not sure which.....have registered mothempire.com. Why the name? My grandad was a scientist and big cheese in the moth world, gave me a moth trap which I used to use a fair bit as a kit. Got a prominent moth tattoo on my forearm too.
Plus I find the idea of an empire of moths kinda amusing. Got some logo ideas I've been knocking about with in Canva but think that's going to take some time to get right, main thing is I have the name.
Soldato
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- 2 May 2011
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Hah, not sure I want 'finger' in the name
My main YouTube channel is rock climbing stuff so already got my brand for that (Pulp Friction Climbing)....and the domain, but I don't think I'd ever make a living off it!
Was faffing around with FreeFileSync for a bit this evening then got fed up with it and just used Claude to write a powershell script to run robocopy and keep a second rolling copy of the previous, and got task scheduler running that nightly.
One more job done, just trying to chip away at things whenever I have time. Maybe in a few weeks I can actually get started on a game idea
but everyone loves a finger.
On game ideas, a follow up to Black & White. That was such a cool game. Same sort of thing as From Dust, by the looks of it
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Definitely like those sort of AI heavy 'building' style games.
Busy morning!
- Bought my domain, configured the domain on my shared hosting service.
- Nightly backups of source control from my server to my NAS worked fine last night, checked them
- Created Backblaze account and configured HyperBackup on the NAS to do a nightly backup onto Backblaze an hour after the backup to NAS runs. That's my 3-2-1 backup sorted. 3 copies, 2 local (server + NAS) and 1 offsite (Backblaze).
- Started documenting services and infrastructure on my WikiJS
- Booked a tour of Arc Spaces coworking in Notts later in the week.
Still need to learn how to backup these Docker containers. I guess I need to backup the docker-compose.yaml, then shut down the containers, and backup the volumes? Will do some reading.
Good luck! My major piece of advice: get a business advisor specialising in the industry and look into grants funding new businesses with them. You can unlock literally hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding this way. Some friends of mine started up a game company, which I worked for as a contractor for a few years, and I remember talking to them about this stuff: that was their main piece of advice. There's just too much around starting up a business that you don't know and will wish you found out about earlier.
Yeah one of the benefits of the co-operative group I'm in is that we're sharing information on the various grants and funding available (other members already have already been through the process), I'm aware of stuff like video games tax relief and how to apply for that. Plus the startup I'm in I've been exposed to a lot of the general investment things that go on like EIS etc.
Soldato
- Joined
- 2 Aug 2016
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Good luck!
Chucked a landing page up. Just gonna be a playground for me to try out the branding for now.
This is not a concerted attempt at it btw, just ticking off the little jobs, one at a time.
Moth Empire Games
Moth Empire Games - Independent game development studio. Coming soon.
www.mothempire.com
This is not a concerted attempt at it btw, just ticking off the little jobs, one at a time.
If you need branding/artwork I highly recommend Fivver - Got some amazing stuff done /; branding / logo's for my business 2 years ago for next to nothing.
Wanted to support local businesses but when they are quoting x10/x20 times the price of Fivver it was hard to do anything local.
Decent enough domain, annoyingly (I've found this when searching for brand names myself) good two word ones often get snapped up by hugedomains these days.
Take a look at current AI solutions too, it's come a long way now, nano banana pro is excellent, for logos specifically there are AI logo generators - they don't necessarily use the latest base models but perhaps diffusion models from a generation or two ago albeit with some additional post training and focused on the task of logo design - you can get SVGs etc. out of them. Ironically fivers themselves offer one too (much like Uber looking at self driving cars!
)
Take a look at current AI solutions too, it's come a long way now, nano banana pro is excellent, for logos specifically there are AI logo generators - they don't necessarily use the latest base models but perhaps diffusion models from a generation or two ago albeit with some additional post training and focused on the task of logo design - you can get SVGs etc. out of them. Ironically fivers themselves offer one too (much like Uber looking at self driving cars!
)
Maybe the logo could have something to do with a light bulb or something along those lines, as moths love the light. Probably a terrible idea though
I've not read all the details but I've been involved with a lot of mod projects and some smaller studios over the years, and watched from the sidelines some others, the big issues are project organisation (keeping everyone on the same page and contributing to progress) and the translation and understanding between "great ideas" and what (a) actually works with the medium vs on paper (b) is actually feasible and achievable with the technology and skill set available.
I've seen so many promising projects fall apart because everyone is expecting someone else to take point/tell them what to do in the grand scheme, or pumping out ideas but without a process and plan in place for those with the relevant skills to know how to to turn those ideas into reality and just sort of expecting people to work from the ideas themselves.
I've seen so many promising projects fall apart because everyone is expecting someone else to take point/tell them what to do in the grand scheme, or pumping out ideas but without a process and plan in place for those with the relevant skills to know how to to turn those ideas into reality and just sort of expecting people to work from the ideas themselves.
Yes the main difficulty comes from getting a large group of people to collaborate for an extended period of time on a quite subjective and dynamic medium. You need a really strong team of directors (Creative, Design, Tech, Production, at least) who can all work well together and are all pulling in the same direction and can bring the rest of the team along with them. It's not a coincidence that the only AAA game I've worked on that actually shipped, had that quality core leadership team.
Yes that's one of the options. One of the reasons for that name is that there's a strong visual image there for the logo. Plus it's memorable, easy to spell and pronounce, the domain is available etc. Reminds me I need to pinch the socials for it too.Maybe the logo could have something to do with a light bulb or something along those lines, as moths love the light. Probably a terrible idea though
I have been tinkering around in midjourney and Canva. Nothing I'm happy with yet. Tbh I'll probably see if I can pay one of the graduates off the course I was teaching on earlier in the year to come up with some ideas. Which also reminds me, I need to chuck a director loan in the company account to keep it going until I invoice next month.Decent enough domain, annoyingly (I've found this when searching for brand names myself) good two word ones often get snapped up by hugedomains these days.
Take a look at current AI solutions too, it's come a long way now, nano banana pro is excellent, for logos specifically there are AI logo generators - they don't necessarily use the latest base models but perhaps diffusion models from a generation or two ago albeit with some additional post training and focused on the task of logo design - you can get SVGs etc. out of them. Ironically fivers themselves offer one too (much like Uber looking at self driving cars!
Today I'm just changing around my version control....I was trying this Ark VCS, which kinda works in a basic way, but it's just a guy's hobby project and it's missing some CLI features and a decent Unreal integration....so I'm switching back to Subversion for now. I may have to bite the bullet and go Perforce at some point, but Subversion is technically capable, very mature, and there are nice perpetual licensing options for visual SVN server. I am *really* keen to keep my monthly outgoings to a minimum. I don't mind paying for stuff but if you just go for all these cloud options you can really ramp up your burn rate very quickly.
Just consider whether you want to include an actual moth in the logo too, otherwise I might punch my monitor by accident
