@Charlie Malmqvist well I had a feeling you'd've done it the simplest way possible, though I thought you would've at least used a database as the one piece of complexity in there. But given the scope, I suppose it would be unnecessary.

@Lucas Eklund This, and musicians too if there's anything different for them. Also how to find a good artist (in terms of them not scamming you) and what should be in the contract. I've ran into many gamedevs who've been screwed over by artists in the past (but they've had good luck with musicians for whatever reason). Although knowing a fair price would be good not just to avoid overpaying, but not underpaying because on the flipside I've seen artists/musician who feel screwed by some gamedevs' rather low "indie budgets" and finding good artists/musicians who both want to work with you again and you want to work with them again is very beneficial for both parties.

@Sam Virgona The Q&A is at 4am where I live so add my 2 cents here. I've spent a lot of time thinking about different game object systems, and I've learned it really wasn't worth spending that much time on. However, it does somewhat matter since it'll affect how you write your game code, or if you really need peak performance on a million entities. TLDR: My recommendation is to start with the mega struct, add ecs-like stuff on top later if you need performance. First let's look at what an ecs is. There's two types: sparse-set based ecs and archetype based ecs. The quick description is: sparse-set has one array per component, archetype based breaks everything into multiple arrays grouped by which entities have the same components. Sparse-set makes it easier to add/remove components, archetypes make complex queries faster (I'd say more about the differences but this reply is already going to be long, so google if interested). Now these ideas can be applied to the mega-struct when needed. If there's in your mega struct that only used by a couple of entities, you could put it in a sparse set (Especially if there's an O(n^2) operation on them, O(n^2) when n=5 is better than n=500 when iterating over every entity and doing needless "if" checks). Or if your game has distinct entity types (which many do) you could just have a separate array for each different struct, which are just different archetypes (e.g. maybe in a shmup have separate arrays for the enemies, enemy bullets, and the player's bullets). Also if you do mega-struct + a side of ecs, you probably won't need to make a crazy C++ template entity system query api like the ones the different ecs frameworks provide (imo, the main reason to use a framework if doing ecs), since with the few sparse-set components or archetypes you're making, the only "queries" needed are a for loop (e.g. for(auto& ent : on_fire_sparse_set) or for(auto& ent : enemy_archetype) instead of q.each([](flecs::entity e, BaseEntityData& base, EnemyData& enemy)) or just looping through the mega-structs with a bunch of if statements for the non-performance critical stuff.

@Ted Bendixson Honestly, this is the most sure fire way, especially for those coming from software engineering. Although it's kind of hard advice to give because if someone has a really good job and is good with finances it's almost the obvious thing to do, and people who don't have an as high paying job want to switch to gamedev before they're almost ready to retire. I will add that the runway doesn't need to be as long when you consider the "plan b's" or what "failure" could look like, since in the worse case you're building a decent portfolio (unless you really didn't know what you doing before quitting your job) that can get a job in the gamedev or even just a more interesting software job. I know of a "failed" gamedev who did a lot of cool graphics/gpu compute stuff in their game engine and when he ran out of money, he got a nice job at AMD. Sure, that's the best case scenario, but you probably won't end up homeless. If I make $0 I can go for about 4-5 years (even if I just make a little, it'll stretch that out a lot). It would be more if it wasn't for the tech layoffs, but I'll take it as a sign from God that I should just go for it. Also, according to Indeed, my C++ gamedev experience doesn't mean much these days if it isn't paired with professional experience in Unreal, or high-frequency trading, and I don't want to be stuck writing android apps in java/kotlin. So if failing to making it on steam just means I get to put the things I want to do on my resume, I'll take it.

Hello everyone! I'm located in NY, at least for now. Working a 2d metroidvania with some time rewind mechanics.