Hi,

Few months ago i started writing storyline of game I want to make (some tactical rpg/strategy a bit similar to xcom series). The thing is that i know programing (i work as ABAP developer for over 6 years, also having some knowledge of C#, VB and pascal programming), so i know how to make a logic of a game, but graphics, textures etc, are quite a different story (last time i did something with graphic in my coding was 2d platform game in pascal language like 10 years ago).

So I wanted to ask You guys, how you solve this? Where do You get animations, textures etc? Are there some freeware databases or You cooperate with some other ppl that can do graphics? How this can be arranged etc. Also is it better at beginning of making games to use some freeware game engines (if so, does anyone know some nice isometric game engine?), or to write it from beginning?

there is http://opengameart.org/ which has some art, and artists who do custom requests.

I personally have huge problems, and its one of the reasons i have no games to show atm, with textures / animations. my art skills are non existent, so as a rule, i try to stick to things which are easy to make (E.g. Squares, and other such basic primitives). In terms of animation, i stick to programmatic transforms (E.g. moving with vectors, rotation etc. in code) or use the vertex / pixel shaders' to manipulate to my own ends.

How this can be arranged etc. Also is it better at beginning of making games to use some freeware game engines (if so, does anyone know some nice isometric game engine?), or to write it from beginning?

This depends on how complicated your game is, code wise. If it is simple, you could start 'from scratch'. There are libraries like SFML that will help you deal with the low level stuff like drawing images, playing sounds, getting input, play music, and the like. You would have to write all the functionality like collision detection and the UI and all that though. It's good for learning since you have to swathe through it all yourself and will help your understanding of what goes on. It will also insure everything works just how you want it to from the get go, for better or worse.

As for graphics and what not, there are free sources, and there is always 'programmer art' (which is a kind of tongue in cheek term heh). It doesn't have to be pretty. It just has to represent what you want it to. You can use this as a demo of sorts to recruit a real artist to make the final images for you.

I would also recommend starting off in 2D. It is much simpler and 3D opens up a whole can of worms and complicates things much further.