I didn't know about it, thanks for the link :)

That's a good point yes. It might even open publisher's doors, I've read that it was way easier to sign if you proved that you could ship something before.

The vertical slice could be an idea too, but you'd loose the possibility of building visibility over multiple steam launches I guess.

Oh I didn't know that, nor did I know it was them who made Defcon! Thanks for pointing that example :)

Well I actually have software engineering experience so I've built everything I could in the most modular way possible, and took care to make extensible choices as much as I could. Since nobody's putting pressure on me the code isn't a spaghetti plate (yet? :p).

Good point about the self-branding too. Though I feel like following this strategy and being a "good dev" doing it could be good on that side too.

I've been doing software for 6+ years so I know how projects balloon and get out of scope all the time and I do my best to constrain myself with proper project management to avoid it. But yeah it's very probable that I miss the mark haha

It's not like I'd make a puzzle using the small games as pieces, nor would those small games be exactly independent, more like I'd use what I made during the previous lapse of time to build a small game.

For example now I have an almost working full economy system with buildings that buy and produce goods, pops that buy it and consume it and work in the buildings, and I'm in the process of making a nice procedural planet generator. After that I'll work on autonomous traders that go from one market to the other to profit of the arbitrage between goods. In the end I also need a way to set up specific player-defined trade routes. Well, if I do those two and modify them a bit, they make for a good basis off which making a trading game. Said game can enjoy the work I've made for the "big game" and I'll obviously have to make specific features for it to be worth playing by itself, but half the game will simply be the core features of the "big game", so I get to polish and improve them while working on the mini trading game.

It's true that I have to be careful with modules management though.

Yep, I feel like you're right in your last points. Thank you for your input :)

Hey there, honestly I'm not a Lemmy power user, I just posted in the .world because it was the one with the most people subscribed. I have no particular attachment to any specific instance.

I don't get much what reviving entails, just posting somewhere?

MEIOU & Taxes may help you wait if you never tried it. It seems that EU5 takes a lot of ideas from it, so it's kinda EU4.5 haha

He never fails to make me laugh :)

Thank you for the link, I didn't know the inner workings of it :)

I'm using Ubuntu myself to develop actually so I'm kind of doing that all the time. The problem is, my machine isn't everyone's machine, my drivers aren't anyone's drivers, and so on.

In the end I think that I'll try to give Linux builds to testers to see if they report a lot of bugs or not and decide at that moment if it's too much work or not.

Haha problem is I have a kid to feed, and I fear that cutting myself from 90% of my potential player might be a bad play if I want to be able to continue feeding him

Yes my bad haha I had trouble to find another way to write that title which wasn't too long but would mention Steam

I was going to do it anyway, but your answers gave me even more confidence in how important it is! Thank you :)

Well, that's what I'm doing, I'm not writing for Windows specifically, and I'm using an engine that works well with any OS. But there is a difference between making the build and supporting it, it's an actual commitment. Like others said here it's a bad experience to try to use a native build and have it being bad or worse than a Win build that goes through Proton.

In the end I think I'll make builds and try to find testers for every OS, and try to estimate the viability of having a specific build using their feedback.

Well, it's not a quick game made in 3 months and then I go on to the next. I fully intend to support it and give my players the best experience I can. So it's not as simple as "click the export button", I have to actually commit to support the builds.

Well, I'm using Godot which can target all three big OS, though clicking on the export button and actually supporting a platform is not the same.

In the end I think I'll try to make builds for all OSes and have testers for each platform, and estimate the viability of the builds from the amount of bugs they give me back.

I didn't know there was such a demand for GOG. Thanks to this post, your and others' answers, it's on my radar now :)

Haha maybe EU4 is good though, it happened to my with Vicky 3.

You're welcome, thank you, and welcome aboard :)

Glad to count you aboard then :) don't hesitate to subscribe to the newsletter (https://uncharted-sectors.com/) to be informed. It also registers you to have an access to the closed beta

I've found some communities on Lemmy indeed, I'll share progress when I'll have interesting things to show