I'm no expert, but it seems like the gaming community is turning away from 2D engines like Allegro, SDL, Godot, and more to point and place editors like Unity and the Unreal Engine and such. gamedev.org is quiet these days, I don't know of any other good forums, besides CodeBlocks but that's for CB.

It's up to Matthew. He'll have to speak up if he agrees with anything.

Hi People. Thanks for the replies .

I myself make 2D games with SDL2; I also do some reviewing of such hobbyist games on my blog and a good part of the non-comemrcial departement is still 2D - but I think it is noteworthy that there are many Unity/Unreal/Godot-Games that "breath the same spirit" - they are done by people who want to realize their ideas and often pump a lot of work, thought and time into it.

In my opinion it is a problem that hobbyist gamer and small to medium commercial games were melted into the one big category (Indie-Game); for us who are into hobbyist games (be it as dev or as player) it is quite hard to connect and to exchange, or to find each other. Creating some common meeting place(s) (not limited to an engine/framework/platform) is my current idea to improve on the situation. Dunno if it'll work.

Some thoughts about the existing communities:

• FreeGameDev has some activity (although not much), but the community is split into a new board and an outdated BB. I'm a bit active on the new incarnation, but since the majority of the community won't accept it (for good reasons, it is technically insufficient for real - the old board, however, has technical problems) it is a rather small pond. That to say, I at least had some discussions about games there - more interaction than on the most bigger sites.

• TIGSource has still activity but is used by commercial devs and has a defunct registration (next to impossible to get the activation mail. Tried a second time 2 weeks ago, then joined their discord and contacted their admin - no reply. A community that has no way for new members to join is, in my book, doomed).

• Reddit: The boards about "indie-gaming" are imho more or less big ad-drop-zones. Nearly no interaction about games, and nearly no interest about hobbyist productions. Since there are no dedicated spaces, even ambitious hobbyist projects will often just vanish there unnoticed.

• GameDev: Looked into it a few times over the past years. To me, they seemed obsessed about the production but not about the game - I checked out some of their tutorials (some of them quite good), but never saw a good, finished game posted there iirc (might err here, it wasn't one of the places were I usually checked). Now it seems to be down (since April I believe?).

• Mastodon (using the fitting tags): Much showcasing, few interactions. Better than Reddit in this regard, but most people there will click links or view screenshots, nothing more.

• Lemmy: Very much dead. I consider it to be a possible place to gather, but I'm a bit critical towards the imitation of the basic principle of reddit, that is - in my opinion - flawed.

• Twitter/Youtube/TikTok/Facebook: Corporate shit. If you want to get visibility or exchange with people there, you better invest more time into their platforms than into your projects. Or pay for ads there. Neither of these options is in my book valid for a honest hobbyist dev.

-_-_-_-_OT-_-_-_-_

Very true. Game Jams are the condensation of this on developers side: Tons of (often unripe) games that are done, gushed out onto the platforms, and that mostly aren't played by anyone. For what? Do the participants find fulfillment by doing roughly made games under time pressure based on a core idea that isn't their own? Doubt it. Most of them hope to get some attention by winning these contests; usually only works for semi-professional developers.

The counterpart on the players side is the speedrun-culture: Imagine this with literally any other medium - contests who is fastest in reading a book, in watching a painting, or seeing a movie. Speedrunning-Culture doesn't percieve games as a form of art that is fun to interact with - they see it as a product that you work through as fast as possible, even if that means that you don't see 99% of the thing itself. Isn't this absurd?

Afaik, Minecraft was not developed for a jam. But there are examples of good games that were prototyped for jams and eventually were made into full fletched versions (a prominent one would be "Celeste").
However, these are a minority. I dug through many smaller games, and unfortunately the information that the game was made for a jam has often (not always!) proven to be a red flag for low quality content. And I suppose that the same people could have made much better games if they wouldn't have rushed it.

About the speedruns: You are right that the people who do them often know the games in and out; but their viewers? I'm under the impression that the popularity of "Awesome Games done quick" and the likes is the result of a culture that doesn't perceives games as a form of art.

However, I'm fully aware that these are more controversial views of mine (maybe even a result of a bias I have), - if you (or anybody else) is having fun with doing or watching gamejams or speedruns don't listen to me in this case, but listen to me about the importance of consolidating the hobbyist gaming scene .

Nice to hear. Will ask around at the different communities. Would you prefer a bb or a communication channel more oriented at modern social media? (Like, for example, Lemmy?)

Well, didn't he said this himself? No problem about lurkers; a text finds fulfillment through being read .

Would you be interested to participate in another community that is about hobbyist gaming, and what are your thoughts about an apt software?

I fully understand if you want to stick to it; I'm myself quite a bit nostalgic about burning board culture and regard them (and their ability to enable communication) as superior over most of the "modern" social media. But maybe that's me.

I have written something like a essay about my idea of a hobbyist scene.
https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2023/06/08/underground-games/
Maybe you find it agreeable? If not, just shout out - I intend to to community building, not to establish a dictatorship. If you want to stick to this board (as long as possible), maybe it is possible to increase - if you guys here want to do so - the exchange with other communities.

It all comes down to the will of Matthew Leverton, our Supreme Loser here at allegro.cc. If he wants to pass it on to someone, he will, and perhaps by being here you are making yourself a candidate for it. If he wants to share his DBes he will. Not really any point me making a decision about anything.

I will gladly support the best the internet has to offer that interests me.

Because,

I do it
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For Teh Lulz

@Edgar: Very oldschool. I would try to parry, but my memefolder went on some backup drive a few years ago

@Specter: I'm doing some asking around at various communities atm. Lets see what I can come up with.

I had quite some interactions with my ideas, but I refrain from just hosting a BB or Forum (the BB users would mainly like to stick to BBs, others prefer lemmy or "Discourse") for now as I believe that some woulnd't register on a completely new platform.

As a first step, I created a community on Lemmy:
https://lemmy.ml/c/undergroundgaming

If you want to partake, join there!

Indeed it is a start; if the need arises we can switch over to a real board.

I know SeaMonkey; are you sure it was caused by the browser and not by Lemmys current server trouble?

I think what I am looking for is to at least not downgrade from allegro.cc.

Allegro.cc has the best forum of anywhere around. It's got embeddable audio and youtube clips. It's got code formatting, which is essential for a so called hacker underground. It supports images through basic xml tags and other html support for formatting inside of posts.

Then there's Discord, which is ranking a solid #2. It has a ton of lurkers but not much actual discussion, and the discussion there is fragmented like IRC. Discord's ideas of threads and forum posts is kind of skewed. It looks like it was tacked on to appease old bb members.

#3 is IRC, which is still alive, but quite random and does have some allegro support for searching the manual using alledos.