Lightbulb Games Studio

 Greetings,
  Being a young teenager who's passionate about game development, I started alone and self-taught. Game development can be as easily as well as hard. Developing a full game all alone can be exhausting, but challenging. If you are a one person game developer then these tips will definitely help you out!

 First of all, you must learn a programming language for your games.
for example Java & C# is a multi-platform programming language because they both run on virtual machines. Javascript & HTML5 is a great way to make web games or mobile games.
C++ is a good way to make windows games.
There are also python, ruby on rails, etc..
Choose whatever you feel comfortable with and that is needed for your platform

 Start development early, especially if you haven't got into college yet. Starting younger means more years of experience and time to practice before you get into college. If you like to learn, start immediately and don't be afraid to try! 

Game engines or Game Studios saves development time. There are three main category of game engines and three subcategory to me. The main categories are 2D engine, 3D Engine, 2D&3D Engine. The sub-categories are visual coding (coding free), and needs coding, and library engine. Library Engines are just files that can be used to program faster and more efficient whereas the other engines are more easier especially the visual ones.  You can surf the net and you'll find there is plenty of them. The most popular 3D game engine is Unity 3D. Unity 3D has been used to make the game Bad Piggies by Rovio

The key to be a good developer is to PRACTICE and A LOT! try to spend weekends and free time on programming and developing games. create demo projects or apply a tutorials from online websites. There are tons of tips and tutorials out there. Malcom Gladwell a famous author who wrote Outliers  : Story Of Success Focus on his book about the 10K hours rule. It says in the book that to reach master level in any job, a person must put  at least 10K hours of practicing. he also mentioned that practicing is something you do to good, not once your good. To read more about this theory read this small article : www.wisdomgroup.com/blog/10000-hours-of-practice/

Is your games are going to be web games, PC games, console games, or mobile game? Specify and choose the platform you are focusing on. It's OK to publish and create games for different platform but focus on one platform

Every game studio or every game development team has it's main genre. Focusing on one main genre helps building stable fans and followers, since it can know immediately  that the studio X makes games for the X genre. For example Rovio focuses on casual games while Saga focuses on puzzle and online games. This way they built a fan base that is mostly stable and gained reputation at that genre.
You can also make another games of different genres, there are always exceptions!

Best way to practice game development is to try to make clones of games. Game concept can be very difficult and sometimes challenging. As you are a one developer and there is no full team to make a huge brainstorming, try to make clones that you see yourself capable of. Remember you can make clones and projects that is a bit higher than your scale, but not too much, like not a newbie game developer who wants to develop a game like GTA alone. It is truly impossible! unless you spend 20 years of your life developing it. One of the most simplest and the most addictive game is Flappy Bird. 

Download free open source projects or buy cheap ones, then break them into small pieces of code and try to understand them,then from the info and conclusion you have got, make the same game but in a different way.
To know more about reverse engineering read this Wikipedia's Reverse Engineering.

Big studios and game development have specialist in each part of the game development process. There are sound engineers, graphics designers, game designer, game programmers, and sound artists, etc... Too much for a one person to handle, thus you will feel that you are good at one part, but weak on another. If you want to save time use free assets from the internet.
Here is a couple websites for free sound effects and art :
Open Game Art
Kenny Assets
Free SFX

We must be clear, you can't use free assets forever! Free assets are limited, because they are not well made and they are all the same. To have a good graphics you have either three choices: buy assets, hire a graphic designer, or learn on your OWN! Making graphics can be a fun process and it helps develop your creativity which is also useful for game design. There are many software that you can use to make your game graphics. for 2D games you can use Adobe Illustrator , Adobe Photoshop or Inskape. 
I prefer Adobe Illustrator because it is easy to use and efficient. I recommend it.
While as for the 3D games, you can use software like  Blender, 3D Max, Maya, etc...
Or you can use built in software for 3D art with the 3D game engine.

If you want to keep your position as a one developer studio,  you can do a freelance job. Work for others or give them non-exclusive licenses for your games as will as exclusive, or you can sell your work for other developers.

• Envato Market is the best way to sell your game, artwork, soundtracks.
  
• Odesk - hire freelancers & get freelance jobs
  
• Freelancer - for freelancing jobs

Creating and publishing your own website helps people, players, fans, and our fellow developers  to check your work and see your latest things. You can build a full website or a portfolio website or a blog website, anything that you need to represent yourself and your work! If you are not an experienced web developer (like most of us)  you can use any free website builder. Here is some few ones:

1. Weebly
2. Wix
3. Jimdo
4. Yola

Full list can be found here: 10 Top Website Builders

Managing a Facebook page, Twitter Account, and etc... Can helps your fans get connected to each others. For example fans would like to know the latest news about your games or because they like your games they might give you a like. Mostly recommended is to make Facebook pages for the most successful games, it is better than having only one page since same fans might like different games of yours, not all them. Be active, share with your fans, connect with them and try to be friendly. 

Hope it helped you to become a better indie one developer!

Kinds Regards,
Lightbulb Games Studio

ONSA means orthonormal system application , and this application was fully developed for intermediate students who want to visualize their work on screen. This application helps them to plot and create lines and find midpoints and save and edit and clone systems and drawings. This can be also used by teachers for fun and fast view of work. This project is a open source project and is made up of 4 classes in Java and over 1000+ lines of code! Thus this project is not for beginner programmers. If you are good experienced programmer just click this link to get source files!