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[TeleDwarf]

I am a career programmer, and gaming is my hobby. I decided to create a very cool and feature-rich cross-genre game (RPG/Strategy/Management/Adventure) in the setting of ancient roman monarchy/early republic.

So form you, community, I want some advice about how to do this management-wise. How do I build my own community? How do I advertise my efforts? What are pros and cons of various revenue schemes? How big should be initial release and how long iterations should be?

Please not that I can use google, so I want your own opinion based on your own experience or analysis.

[Shook]

Well, i can only say a little bit about community things, and that is to post a thread about it on every forum you frequent, and keep them updated. If people like what they see, they'll stick around, and at some point, enough people will stick around that you could probably form an independent community (read: i haven't reached that state yet, at all). If need be, you could also find new indie-related forums and post on them (tigsource.com seems like a relevant place, although i'm personally a bit scared to go there).

Also, regarding update speed, i've found that to be a very flexible matter (because i'm horribly slow and irregular), even though people have expressed a bit of impatience in the "dude i can't wait!!" manner. Possibly because they realize i'm doing it for free and for fun. :U
I can imagine, however, that if they have paid for it, they might be a bit more impatient. Given that i don't earn any money from it, i can't talk revenue, unfortunately. It's nice to be able to work at my own pace, though!

[Shadowgandor]

In case this is your first game, it's good to start small. Designing a fun game can be a lot harder than it seems, so creating a few prototypes imitating small parts of your game and having them playtested can be of tremendous help. It'll help you see whether a game mechanic is actually fun.

Some companies even use Pen & Paper to create prototypes and "play" those games to see if it's fun.

[Parsely]

Never give up, because it will get hard.

[TeleDwarf]

Thanks. That really helps.
GUNINANRUNIN, thanks, I'll try my best to finish the project regardless of hardships.
Shadowgandor, thanks, your idea with releasing mini games is golden. I can imagine a lot of mini games in that setting.
Shook, thanks for your advises. They are really great. a followup question about community building: do you think it will be possible to have an "independent community"(I mean community that can grow by itself) using mini games suggested by Shadowgandor alone? As you see, the setting I am aiming at needs A LOT of research. It would be awesome to use community for that kind of research.  I know that some companies managed to do it, like Paradox. But Paradox has a really big community and before "outsourcing" research they have made dozens of games, big games.

[Gornova]

as hobby developer, my IMHO advices:
- start small. Create pong, finish it, for real, get feedback (online, from friends, doesn't matter)
- start small. Create pacman, finish it, for real, get feedback (online, from friends, doesn't matter)
- learn more than a language/framework (java, c++, c#, as3 and so on), using little games
- focus on build a game, not a framework (I mean: don't build another library - I've done it.., nice library, but I could be done another game in same time)
- play other game of your genre: don't copy, observe, learn,
- your aim

I decided to create a very cool and feature-rich cross-genre game (RPG/Strategy/Management/Adventure) in the setting of ancient roman monarchy/early republic.

is too much. I challenge you to finish a game like these, because I want to play it. It's involve so many thins: UI (difficult, see DF UI!), graphics, animations, AI (most important stuff, so much to learn!) and settings (do you know well a settings like this ?)

my 2 cents and my 2 cents games: http://randomtower.blogspot.it/ to see what I mean.

good luck!

[Avo]

Get a piece of paper and map out all of the features you're going to need in a tree map style view with the ones that require no other systems to be implemented at the top and the ones that rely heavily on everything else near the bottom. If you're capable of doing the artwork the game requires you'll want to make a list for that. By fleshing it all out before hand in as extreme detail as possible you can keep yourself from getting stuck or your project being overun by feature creep.

[Aptus]

Guild Banks!

[Mongol13524]

Buy 30 Flights of Loving and Gunpoint: Exclusive edition if you don't already have them, both have great dev commentary (and are tons of fun).

The main points to take from them, if you don't feel like spending $35 based on my whim:

Limit your ambition
Get as much feedback as possible from everyone on everything
Don't be afraid to throw away stuff that doesn't work