Need some advice on self promotion / distribution

The Partridge Family were neither partridges nor a family. Discuss.
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John73 John
Posts: 14
Joined: August 6th, 2020, 7:16 pm

Need some advice on self promotion / distribution

Post by John73 John » November 19th, 2022, 7:40 pm

Okay, so, I made a thing. Fits the definition of "game" within normal parameters. I think it's pretty good. There's a lot more I'd like to add, but I'm at the point now where I'd like to let people start playing it and see what they think.

The first thing I did was investigate what's involved in distributing a game on Steam, but that seems like a long, complicated, and scary process and I'm not confident enough yet to go through something like that.

As this is my first project, I don't mind giving it away for free. Or possibly "free but you can donate if you want to support me" type of thing. What I'm thinking about now is to set up a discord server and just put a download like there along with sections for bug reports and suggestions and so on. I've set up a private discord a couple of years ago for my online RPG group, but I've never done a public one.

I guess what I'm asking is, is that a good idea? And what's the best way to get people to notice it?

albinopapa
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Joined: February 28th, 2013, 3:23 am
Location: Oklahoma, United States

Re: Need some advice on self promotion / distribution

Post by albinopapa » November 29th, 2022, 8:59 am

If you aren't opposed to making your first attempt open source, you can use GitHub to host the source code. This would allow you to just give the link to your repository, and accept pull requests from anyone willing to help if needed as well as an issue tracker. Once you have done that, I would post on here and on the planetchili discord. This will get you started. From there, once you have gotten feedback and fixed any issues that came up if any, maybe upload a video on YouTube showing off gameplay. If you want to self publish, you could make a website where people can go to download the precompiled version.

The reason I suggest going this round about way is there might be distribution bugs like missing assets or binaries associated with the project that not everyone is going to have. Especially the msvc runtime dll.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

John73 John
Posts: 14
Joined: August 6th, 2020, 7:16 pm

Re: Need some advice on self promotion / distribution

Post by John73 John » November 30th, 2022, 4:52 pm

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I went to the library this morning and tried to run it on one of their computers and your concerns were justified, I'm missing a few of visual studio's .dll files. I'm going to try to correct the issue myself once I get home from work, and I'll get back to you on that.

I would prefer not to be open-source though, if that doesn't cause too many problems. Once I'm through the early-access beta I might decide I do want to charge money for it, and any random dude can make an account here and get access... you know what I mean?

John73 John
Posts: 14
Joined: August 6th, 2020, 7:16 pm

Re: Need some advice on self promotion / distribution

Post by John73 John » December 1st, 2022, 5:57 pm

Okay, so I narrowed down the missing files, and I put a zipped folder of the finished build and all assets on the discord I started last week:

https://discord.gg/Ddy8VbY2

Feel free to give the game a try, I found in playtesting that it can be kind of addictive :)

Right now, installing the game means copying those files into Windows\System32. I did about 4 hours of research and experiments yesterday, but I couldn't work out how to compile in such a way that this isn't needed... does anyone have any advice I missed?

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