I’m going on 30 myself, and as I dig deep into networking solutions such as photon, I find it kind of mind blowing that a kid was able to add such mmo style networking tech to his game.
There is a conspiracy though that there is a dev team working under the table posted here:
Does anyone know what networking he uses and why am I twice his age and not even able to produce something that he can after I’ve been using Unity for years!? Sure makes me feel like I wasted my life!
Unturned:
Another cubic character early access shooter? Sigh.
When you were 16 all the tools and toys and frameworks that available right now didn’t exist.
Right now you could just grab something like this:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/26912
use it as a base of your project, reskin it, and you’ll get yourself a game.
Don’t know what you’ve been doing those years, but you definitely should be able to produce something like this by now - given enough free time and determination.
The trick is that it is probably way simpler than it looks.
When I was 16 I was happily rummaging around asm and performing feats of heroism. When you get older and your arse sags, you find that things are less snappy than before. Don’t worry about it. Soon your hair will fall out and you’ll at least appear wise.
But like other people have said, it’s actually pretty easy to snap together a game from parts these days. Not so easy if you want to make a big blockbuster though or even something fun.
I just wish I could be making a living doing what I love. I mean unturned makes over 1 thousand per day even though its a free game! Although I’ve been more of a 3d artist for over a decade, I will admit I’ve been using unreal engine, but now seeing how easy steam is to link steamworks with unity and the asset store (well is it really easy?) I just feel really jealous of this kid! Maybe some of us are just born smarter and capitalize on it sooner…
Well it seems like unturned was actually released on steam before UnitZ was which does make me wonder
Unturned: Jul 7, 2014 Free
http://steamspy.com/search.php?s=unturned
Unit Z Originally released: 2 January 2015
Well your imagination is your strongest asset. The forest was done first with playmaker, so they just clicked that together. But after I guess, they were able to afford dedicated programmers. It doesn’t change the fact that even complex games can be snapped together if coding is too much of a chore.
Interesting, but I’m not even sure how I would apply steamworks.net to have a functioning multiplayer game. For that project it says it uses Unity Networking (RPC) with network view concept. How would I have all movement and animation from characters synced through steamworks instead? And stats for deaths/kills? How could I use my existing non-networked AI & vehicle projects with it? Or the ability to create and save characters to the players steam account? Even if I use inventory and shooting systems from the market, how would I make them multiplayer with steamworks?
I read through this guide www.steamworks.github.io but it doesnt show how I could create these elements of an online game with it. I guess using steam is better than creating my own database since databases are subjected to hackers right?
No offense, but the things you listed is common run of the mill programming problem solved by reading documentation.
I do not understand which part of it is supposed to be complicated. Programmers deal with this kind of stuff all the time while programming - you need to do something, you don’t know how to do it, so you look it up learn and implement it.
The kid - assuming he is a kid, there is a kid and he implemented it himself - most likely just used simplest approach possible without thinking about it too much. I’d advise to do the same. Instead of asking “how would I implement X?” just implement X. If you can’t do that yourself, hire someone who can.
Well first kids can certainly be pretty sharp. And they generally have far more discretionary time available than adults do.
When I was a teen I spent hours and hours building game engines and just learning. By the time I graduated from high school I had already developed in several different languages BASIC, Assembler, Pascal, Comal and several others that I do not even remember now. The point being I had a lot of free time compared to now. I had time to play football, basketball and so forth with my friends for a few hours each day and still spend a massive amount of time focused on this stuff. I mean we’re talking about Thanksgiving break, Christmas through New Year break, months off in the summer, 1/2 days and full “teachers in service only” days here and there throughout the year.
Kids still have that kind of free time. A lot of them just spend it playing games or “hanging out” with friends. However, I’m guessing many of them are now substituting game dev for playing games and “hanging out”. Imagine even just the workday time available. Like say you go to work at 7:30 and you are home by 3:30 or so. And you have basically nothing to do except wait for dinner. After dinner basically nothing to do until you go to sleep. Having a lot of time available makes a huge difference. You can learn much faster (counting by a days or weeks basis) and have far more time to develop.
Now, if you’re saying you have that kind of free time available then maybe you are just blowing it on other stuff? Watching tv, playing games and so forth?
EDIT: I agree with @neginfinity about the just doing using the simplest way possible. I’ve mentioned this before in other threads. The people I see who are really producing a lot and even making the hits are generally not the most skilled people. They are just the people who are focused the most on getting it done. I’m not saying this person is not skilled. He might be a very skilled developer for all I know. I am just saying I have seen it over and over again throughout my life the people who build businesses and otherwise just “get stuff done” the “movers & shakers” so to speak… they are not superhuman, the most experienced, the most skilled, the smartest… they are just the most focused. Focused only on getting this (whatever they are doing) done in the easiest and quickest way possible.
On the other hand you’ll have people who strive to build the perfect architecture, the perfect systems and so forth and pour the bulk of their time into that stuff which greatly slows down the actual game development progress. Or they put the bulk of their focus on the graphics just redoing the graphics over and over.
I don’t think this striving for near-perfection is absolutely wrong because I value a good architecture a lot too and many people love superb graphics. But quite simply if I didn’t spend as much time on this stuff I would be much more productive as far as actually making games goes. If I got a 3rd party system, library etc and I just used it for what it did best and if it didn’t support something or had a bug and I just said “to heck with it” and dropped that feature instead of trying to build a wrapper or otherwise fix the problem that would make me more productive as far as actually completing the game in a timely manner. So I will just say striving for near-perfection is wrong when you are trying to get things done. They are conflicting goals. We have x hours of time. Do we spend it working on something that pushes our games closer to completion or do we spend it here on the foru…er… I mean or do we spend it rewriting systems, battling with bugs or redoing the graphics that already exist? The answer will determine to a large degree on how productive we are as far as actually building and releasing games.
And if you really take a look out there on Steam or wherever you will see these kinds of patterns in play quite often. “Yeah I know about that bug and will fix it in a later update”, “I really don’t know how to do multiplayer (or whatever) right now but I’d love to add that later”, “yeah the graphics are not too good but we’ll redo those later”. See these people getting things done aren’t trying to do everything right now. They aren’t making it all perfect right now. They are just getting stuff done.
lonelygirl16 ploy
He’s probably ten times as good as you. Game dev is an industry for prodigies. Especially indie game dev.
He may be actually worse than OP, with exception of avoiding one big mistake.
When people want to make a project, they sometimes start THINKING about it. “How would I do this, or that, and what if that other thing happens, etc”. Instead of THINKING about their project they should often just start MAKING it.
As they say “A long road starts with a single step”, and the time spent thinking about that single step is the time wasted not making that step.
The 16 year old brain is far superior to the 30 year old brain. When focused properly it can learn things at a pace that far outpaces yours. Add in the plethora of free time that a 16 year old has and you have a recipe for success.
The main problem is that the 16 year old (male) brain generally wastes all of its time and effort thinking about sex and rebelling against authority. I don’t have experience with a 16 year old female brain, but it seems to be determined to think about boy bands and giggle a lot, like a furbee.
This asset didn’t exist yet and “asset flipping” wasn’t a thing back then!
So it’s not “another” cubic like Minecraft survival game. It was one of the first ones to do this.
The difference is that he was motivated and determined to complete a project he has started.
Even teams may quit their project because they weren’t determined enough.
Being skilled and experienced is half the battle.
Dreaming won’t make your dreams come true, regardless if you’re a veteran or a beginner.
The dev didn’t complete the project yet. It is still early access. It will be complete when early access tag is removed.
Did you play the game? Do you think it took him several weeks, with no motivation and determination to make the game as it is now? Do you seriously believe that Early Access game instantly means it’s made by a lazy developer who wants to make instant bucks?
Sure there are TONS of these type of games out there, games “with potential” but abandoned in the early access state because developer wanted some quick cash.
I am not blaming nor challenging your views on Early Access games because, a year later since it was introduced, people are rolling eyes when they see an “Early Access” label on the game, marking it as a failure due to the bad reputation early access games. I saw that and I feel the same way about that.
But it couldn’t be said to a game like Unturned…or ARK: Survival Evolved…or Rust…or The Forest.
You see that some developers, are dedicated to completing their game to remove that “Early Access” label. 
That’s also determination!
Obviously features are yet to be added and bugs to be fixed, but games (including Unturned) are playable and enjoyed by thousands if not by millions of users.
Finished or not, making this type of game is not a piece of cake.
Unless you’re the one who made the game, I don’t know what you’re getting worked up about.
“early access” pretty means that “my game may die horribly tomorrow”. It also may indicate incompetence in financial aspect of making a game.
There were couple of quite promising projects that drew plenty of attention. It was fun coming back to them few years later only to find them abandoned, unfinished or full of negative reviews.
Star Forge was a nice example of that. I actually paid for that one.
Yes, it can be. If you skim over review section for those, there will be plenty of complaints about griefing, glitches, etc.
This type of survival game enjoys a brief fame for a while and then they start fading into obscurity. I haven’t heard even one mention of rust on the internet for about half of a year, I think.
The determination and working hard doesn’t matter, what is important is ability to deliver the product. That includes removing Early Access label. Most people fail to do that. The maker of Unturned is just halfway to the finish line. It is way too early to celebrate success.
Of course, devs can always ruin the product even after removing “Early Access” label, but that’s different story.
Nobody said anything about piece of cake, but there are people like the OP who seriously overthink/overestimate complexity of this kind of project.
When creating something, it is very easy to fall into “overthinking” trap. It happens when you start searching for “proper” or “perfect” solution from something. Those kind of solutions take a lot of time, and people who just grab simplest solution that (sorta) works finish their projects much faster.
Once again, I agree with this statement. And like I mentioned previously, there are exceptions.
Without determination, nobody can deliver anything.
Because those games are EARLY ACCESS! People (who reviewed the game) have to understand that a game this stage should have bugs/glitches.
Griefing could be anywhere! CS:GO, being a finished game, struggles with cheaters since it went live 3-4 years ago.
Up to this day, Rust ships bug fixes and updates. Last update was on November 17.
Most people don’t want to work on the project anymore because they 1) lose interest 2) they earned enough money
It’s too early to judge either.
Doing the wrong thing with determination will not produce desired results either.
Should’ve been more specific.
One REALLY alarming thing reviewer might say is “the game feels like developers abandoned it. They are not fixing bugs that existed for a year”, for example.
Or “it is very easy to hack so every official server has people with aimbots”.
Frankly, I don’t care about Rust and the whole “survival game with crafting” craze.
All I’m saying that there was a lot of noise about it months ago, and now nobody talks about it.
Besieged had similar fate and many other titles.
They have some moment of fame, and then people forget about them, but the game stays in early access forever.
Generally, if the game is in development for 5 years and is still unfinished, that means some sort of trouble.
Not really. In case of any title in development It is fairly safe expect disaster until the game is finished. At least that way you won’t be disappointed, no matter what happens.