advice: creating a video game

[Gary_Robson]

Lest these answers scare you, please define for us what kind of game you’re talking about. Something with the relative complexity of a late 70s arcade game is a pretty easy task using Gamemaker. A programmer who understands the fundamentals of event handlers, object properties, and sprites could reproduce Space Invaders in a week, and make it better than the original. I reproduced Pac-man in a day.

On the flip side, an immersive 3D FPS or MMORPG would take a team of designers, programmers, sound techs, modelers, artists, and more.

[Crowbar_of_Irony_3]

There has been advice on managing expectations, what is it like and the need for passion, and all those I agree with. I guess I just go with some concrete steps.

First, decide which aspect of games development you are going to take on. Long ago, it is possible to be the programmer, the artist, the musician, the sound effect guy, the marketer and play-tester all at the same time. Nowadays independent games have to be polished, and even a Flash game need enough draw for people to stay on before they move on to something else.

I can only speak for programming, but I do know some game artists, and both disciplines require one to put in gruelling hours of practise and mistakes.

For programming, there’s Game Maker and Multimedia Fusion; those are drag and drop based authoring software, though Game Maker has the better scripting IMHO. As introduction to programming, some of the other platforms are DarkBASIC and Blitz Basic.

Stay away from engines which promise “no programming required”. If you use those engine, you will forever 1) not know how to create your own logic and 2) be at the mercy of the engine’s developers. The biggest offender here is 3D Game Studio.

Another route is to do modding, so that you can get familiar with the pipeline. For level design and modelling, Unreal / Crysis Sandbox are cool, particularly Unreal if you stick with its visual programming language.

The usual hardcore approach to learning game development is to pick up a language, understand how a computer work, learn a graphical API and finally get down to work. This is a process which could take years. Something which would allow you to roll out something fast is Flash ActionScript; you may not publish anything with ActionScript, but you can get to know the various aspects.

The traditional approach is C++, OpenGL/Direct3D and finally, game engine. However, a full-fledge 3D game involves lot of components which usually require an understanding in physics and other esoteric computer science discipline to code, such as collision detection, physics, geometry, computer graphics, artificial intelligence and etc.

Which is why there are libraries, so that helps with lots of pain. There are also beginners’ library/engine, such as XNA from Microsoft; many are not intended for beginners.

Okay, I ramble a bit; so here’s the summary: learn programming, learn game development theory, pick an engine, code, rinse and repeat. I would recommend against anything 3D or multi-player to begin with - however Unity3D is a great engine for experienced programmers moving to 3D or wishing to try a high-level engine which has great scripting support.

Good luck, asante!

[LSLGuy]

@Indistinguishable

… Ideas are cheap. No one has any interest in buying undeveloped ideas and then doing the work of developing them, no matter how good you think the idea is. Having ideas is not the hard part of making a videogame; anyone who has ever had any interest in videogame development can fill books with all the ideas they’ve had. But if you want anyone to take it seriously, you will have to do most of the hard work developing the idea into a playable game yourself (or with a team of friends or other like-minded hobbyists).

(These are all quite common naive attitudes among those wanting to start videogame development, incidentally; your posts remind me a great deal of myself and many of my friends when I was younger. Luckily, you seem to have the sense to recognize that those of us with more experience aren’t just crushing your dreams maliciously, and that we are just trying to be helpful by telling you the cold hard facts. Just out of curiosity, how old are you?)

I have zero experience with gaming development. I do however have experience with general ISV work, startups, and entreprenuerial business in general.

You can take what **Indistinguishable **wrote above and replace “gaming” with any other area of human endeavor and it’ll still be spot on. Bright ideas are dirt cheap and dirt common. It’s execution which separates the dreamers and the bankrupts from the winners. And execution takes far more money and far more time and expertise than most bright idea people can comprehend.

Doesn’t matter if you’re trying to launch a satellite or a taco stand; it’s a lot harder than it naively appears.

[Gukumatz]

On a side note relative to age, remember that Chris Metzen was 24 when he was the lead designer on Starcraft. And he was only 21 when he worked as a fully fledged designer for Warcraft 2: Tiders of Darkness.

Age is only relevant assuming a normalized curve of learning. And the OP hasn’t said he needs the game to come out tomorrow. Yeah, it’s implied and yeah, when we’re young that’s the way we think, but still, if the game that’s in his head comes out in 6 years from now, that’s not bad. (Hey, considering the continuous developments in technology, it’ll probably be awesomer than it would be today.)

[The_Hamster_King]

@Gukumatz

… if the game that’s in his head comes out in 6 years from now, that’s not bad.

Absolutely. The best way to learn how to design games is to jump in and start doing it, and the sooner you start the sooner you’ll get to the point where you can do professional quality work.

Don’t worry about making a game that will sell. Make something for the pure joy of making it. You’ll learn more from working on a labor of love, and the game that results will probably be better too.

[Khendrask]

For an excellent introduction to the world of games, Tom Sloper’s guides are the place to start. He is pretty direct about what you can expect to experience in all aspects of game design; just be warned, it can be discouraging.