Business
A quick overview of the business side of things.
Due to the whole COVID thing there is still much uncertainty in the market. Especially on the freelance / consultancy side. And since I am a single developer with no profitable game released yet, my money comes from savings of the freelancing I do in business software development.
My idea is to put as much time in my game ‘Manage the Universe’ as possible before having to put that project on halt and doing some freelancing to get the finances to do another take on ‘Manage the Universe’.
For this reason I’m looking for a new freelance project starting in December 2020 / January 2021 with a duration of 3 to 6 months. If you do happen to know someone that can use my skillset, please let me know.
I’m looking for:
- A full remote project all over the world, or partially remote if it is max 2 hours driving from Zwolle (Netherlands), or on-site if it is max 1 hour driving from Zwolle.
- Or a C# Unity project, or a C# .Net (Core) project.
- Hourly rate is negotiable depending on travel and working conditions, seniority required, using an intermediate party, etc. Range is 65-80 euro/hour (ex btw).
What do you get:
- An expert developer of C# .Net with a lot of experience on back-end heavy projects. Experienced in both full-stack as in solution/enterprise architecture. I have 10 years of professional experience, besides building software as a hobby for over 22 years now.
- People recommend me because 1) I love my work and I naturally inspire other developers, 2) I can be build upon and deliver what I promise.
- My expertise shines when doing technically heavy projects or being in a complex environment. Very skilled at dividing workload, solution architecture, databases, (multi)threading, networking.
- Technologies used recently: .Net Core, Azure services, MsSql, Message queue’s, Azure DevOps, Azure IAM (AD/OpenID), Unittests, Postman.
- Methodologies used recently: Agile, Scrum, CI/CD, Dev(Sec)Ops, TDD.
- Languages: Native Dutch speaker, work level English.
- For my full resume see https://www.linkedin.com/in/diederikjohannesderoos/
I am open for companies that want a long term relationship with small projects or assistance on a 1-2 days/week basis. With work like this other contract types like payment on a project base are possible.
Manage the Universe
With the commercial talk out of the way, here is an update on ‘Manage the Universe’, the game I am currently working on.
The major progress is on the ‘galaxy’ overview. If you watched my socials I did put this on my twitter:
As mentioned in previous updates this game is going to be a strategy game. The hexagonal style is communicating this very well I think. And the hexagon tile enables me to simplify the game mechanics.
The game has several levels of gameplay. To sum those up:
(By the way, layer 3 has the most appealing looks yet. That is because I started with layer 3, did some work on layer 2, more on layer 1, and then re-imagined layer 3. When I get the other layers another pass they will look a lot more appealing and consistent.)
The hexagon and gameplay levels system ties in into the progress. The idea is to unfold it like this:
The whole galaxy is generated from a seed. That is where another benefit of the hexagon comes into play: it makes for an easy building block system.
Where to work on next?
I’m still deciding on the art direction. A lot of the 3rd person level 1 planet view is depended on assets being made, and with the art direction not clear yet I don’t think that is where I will be working on next.
But the level 2 region overview of the planet is something I’m comfortable to make a few decisions on. I’m thinking about making it a holographic representation like thing, to emphasize the strategic element of it. With it being a representation only I can use a few shortcuts like non-realistic building placement and low effort assets. It would be cool if in the next 2 weeks I can get to the point where I can show off buildings, units and unit command.
GameFeelings 