Since these are the early days of Handmade Network, I want to explain where we want to be headed.

Public Beta

It's been one month since the Handmade Dev Team made this site public in order to get feedback. The praise has been great, but so has the amount of bug reports and feature requests. After careful review, we don't anticipate moving from beta to stable release until mid-June. If you're new, the bug list is here, and to submit feedback, go here. We also have major plans to do significant design improvements with the help of developers who just so happen to be professional designers (more on who they are on future updates). For expert people to volunteer their time suggests Handmade Network has some appeal. Which leads me to our next item.

What Handmade Network (HMN) is About

HMN wants to be the de-facto home for caring programmers. That is to say, programmers who are dedicated to learn and share. Programmers who test and re-test, and who try all possibilities themselves. For those who ask all questions and put the given answers to the test until they feel they have real data on which path is the best or simplest one to meet their goals. Goal(s) could be optimal performance, exceedingly pleasant UX, easy-to-deploy builds or easy-to-configure libraries. Programmers who develop metrics that, to their understanding, meet these goals. Programmers who know to test their approaches against these metrics and—you guessed it—redo everything if necessary. Programmers who don't settle for the first answer given by a search engine because they don't know if, out of all the known solutions, that that's the right one for them. Their project is less about a job and feels more like a handmade endeavor.

Anywhere else, developing software is either a greedy business or some strongly-held ideal from the early 90's. Those who host their software here, though, are interested in providing the best possible game or application through very personal metrics, and they do so for the sake of what that program provides as an end-result. The software is not self-conscious, it just is whatever the programmer made it to be.

If you are that kind of programmer, we'll go out of our way to give you a platform, version control tools, forums, blogs, chat system, and all the support necessary to make your project a success.

To summarize,

  • If you want to make a game as fast as posible to make some money, try a gamedev subreddit.


  • If you want to make a game that attempts to be the best in some specific axis, and you're willing to do the research and engage with a community of hard workers to make it happen, you're welcome with open arms (whether you're a beginner or not).


    • Notice I'm not narrowing "handmade" to good performance because, although obviously encouraged, there are too many dimensions to programming and not everyone values the same thing. In fact, the projects on the site right now are already heavily focused on improving very different aspects to software.

    Everything I've said is a little vague on purpose as to allow as much diversity of content as we can (e.g. different languages, platforms, software genre, etc.) What we won't accept is someone who is not mindful or wants the easy way out while developing.

    Handmade Dev Foundation

    This "software craft mall" has resonated with kindred spirits, and people will crave caring applications as software becomes even more commonplace or bloated. This is why I am working on founding Handmade Dev: an independent organization established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Handmade Network is a non-profit project and the crowning jewel of Handmade Dev, but I see the Handmade Dev Foundation pursuing other initiatives such as educational outreach some years down the line.

    What We're Looking For

    We're looking for more projects to add, and the method is to currently e-mail me at [email protected]. This week I'll provide a simpler way to do this, and after the end of our public beta we'll actually have an automated system here on the site. Regardless, myself or staff will always review the submitted project and it's possible that it'll be rejected. This is to prevent HMN from becoming a GitHub repository. We want to have handmade projects with an individual or team behind it. It can't be anonymous, and they must be programming something uniquely their own.

    We're also looking for volunteers and moderators in the future, because we don't want assholes. I am OK with being the asshole that kicks out other assholes to keep the nice guys happy, but notice that nice != softy. Negative feedback from a nice member on your specific project is potentially more useful than a feel-good lie.

    Anyway, e-mail me if you want to support the site somehow!

    Patreon

    Speaking of support, the simplest way you can help us is by pledging on Patreon. A dollar helps us upgrade our services or make development go faster.. I provide any monthly leftovers to the staff as a "Thank You" for their work, so the more money that comes our way, the more compensation I can provide to those making this site a reality.

    Phew!

    Thanks for reading! And thanks for supporting us, truly.