Hi guys, I'm new here and im wanting some help. So tbh i really dont know how to go about this but just a slap of direction would help. Ok beggining i would like to make a FPS or a third person shooter( dont know which one is better to do lol.) It will be a "fun" type of game just like a muck around i guess. I would like to have Cartoony looking people one small and fat one tall and skinny and one small and skinny just to show the diversity of the game because the game im going to make is a meaningful shooter that will include lvls, ranks, outfits/costumes. But i dont know how to go about this...Do i need to learn some type of code (C++?) .I've got the design and everything looking great but coding is my downfall....please speak to me in English not in computer Science because im slowly learning very slowly lol. I've just downloaded UNITY to help me understand a bit more. It will be an online game only for PC, no campaighn etc. If needed what type of people do i speak too? I have interested donators on Kickstarter.com as well so pay shouldn't be an issue.
Need some direction for FPS developing
First, have you read the Forum FAQ?
Second, there is a lot you haven't written. And that's okay, some rules still apply:
You can do it yourself. Learn everything you need to make a great game. Most of the big games you see require teams of sometimes twenty people, sometimes fifty people, sometimes hundreds of people, to build the game. You won't be making any of those games by yourself. Go take a look at games from the early 1980s. That level of complexity is achievable by a single individual in a short time. Tools like Unity can help you build beautiful worlds faster, but much of the game logic will need to stay at that complexity if you hope to finish it by yourself.
You can get a job in a game company and do it from the inside. That means somehow getting a job doing game development (the most typical career paths are through programming, modeling, animation, and art) and after a few years on the job working your sales pitch to have your company develop the game you wanted.
You can pay a group of people to do the job. You mention kickstarter, which I suppose may be possible. You might also be very rich through other means. Remember those teams of twenty, fifty, sometimes hundreds of people? You'll effectively be hiring that many industry experts needed to build the game and becoming a small business leader. Salaries for those people over the development process is going to cost multiple million dollars.
You can make online pleas to people to build your game for free. Generally these are not industry experts, usually they are beginners who have no real knowledge of how to develop great games. This path usually fails, but occasionally succeeds at building something to show off to friends and families, rarely succeeding to the level of commercial project. It happens.
So without knowing anything about your game other than having "lvls, ranks, outfits etc.", those are the basic ways to get it done.
frob gave you lots of useful information and directions to take, but given to what you wrote in your OP, he was playing good cop here. As you might need that to prevent your from a huge amount of frustration and wasted hours down the line, let me play the role of the bad cop for this thread.
1) You state you have no expierience whatsoever (at least in programming, and you didn't mentioned any other discipline so I guess that means you are a complete beginenr everywhere)...
Yet you state FPS /TPS, online game, many advanced features in the same post.
Do you see the error here?
If not, I will break it down for you: Making games is hard! It takes many tousands of man hours to create an AAA level game, and given your feature list up there, you are not far below AAA levels of effort.
Now, if it takes trained professionals in multi-disciplanary teams years to complete a similar game, how do you think you as a lone beginenr will fare?
As you didn't state if you are intending to assemble a Team or pay others to do it, I will drop this point right here and there and assume you plan to pay other to do it, which bring us to point 2.
2) You talk about Kickstarter. Do you have an already running campaign? If yes, how much money is already in the pot? Because you will need most probably upwards of 50k$, rather 100k$ minimum to just built enough of the game you described to have enough for beta / early access.
If you don't have a campaign running, how do you know there are enough people interested? You will need a hell of a lot people to pay for the FULL dev cycle for this game, so are you certain you can attract enough?
Do you already have a plan for a campaign, a game design document that will show your "investors" what they will paying for.
More important, you need a working prototype to generate some videos, or failing that, at least very good concept art to attract any kind of interest on Kickstarter... do you already have that?
3) If you intend to gather a team, do you have any expierience in leading a team? If you intend to outsource development, are you sure you have the money to pay for it?
If you are looking for people that work for free, do you have a plan on how to attract them and keep them motivated?
Hi guys, may i let you know im a 14 yr old boy and im inspiring to do it, so yeah its a long run but man tbh im prepared to do the hours. I will be going to university for Game Development thank you for your posts but may i say this is just a dream, that will one day become a reality.
Hey, just trying to be honest with you here...
Your OP was really vague, so I (And most probably also frob) tried to guess the meaning and intention of it. And seeing how most newcomers come to game dev with completly unrealistic goals, some reality check does never hurt in the beginning.
If you are prepared for a long journey, don't expect your game to be finished next year and start making the big bucks a month after that, then by all means, "just do it"(TM)
Game development is incredibly hard and challenging, but can be very satisfying. If you manage to push through the rough times and get something working, and then continue and FINISH it, you can revel in the sheer fact that few people on this earth made it this far.
To be a little bit more helpful besides my reality check post, in your case you can go one of two or maybe three routes:
1) learn to program, start from scratch... write your own small text adventures, move over to simple 2D games like Pong or Tetris, work up the complexity tree until you reach 3D games... then at some point when you have learned enough after some years, decide what you want to do with that knowledge (maybe write your dream game from scratch? Or start using an existing engine?)
-> This is mostly useful if you plan to become a game programer down the line. The more you know the low level stuff in this case, the easier you will find it to work as a programmer (or find work as a programmer 
)
2) Download an engine like Unity or Unreal Engine 4. learn how to build simple games in it. When you understand how to use the engine, learn to program in it. Find out how to do art or where to aquire art from, sounds, and so on. When you feel ready, start to create your dream game....
-> less useful for a game programmer career as you skip some steps that would help giving you a well rounded profile as game developer. On the other hand, given time you will need to learn most of it anyway even if you use an existing engine, at some point the built in shaders will not be enough anymore, or maybe you even start tinkering with the engine code to get around an engine limitation (IF you have the source code)...
But you will get to building SOMETHING 3D much quicker, even though it will still take you a lot of time until you can build anything less basic.
3) If you are not set on programming, and cannot imagine being a game designer or Indie game dev, but ar rather talented as an artist... why not lay that game idea to rest for now and polish your art skills?... when the time comes, and you are an expierienced artist with a good game idea, maybe you can pay someone else to take on the programer duties while you yourself concentrate on what you can do best... art.
Anyway, you are 14, no need to push yourself or anything. If game development interests you, give it a try. If you like it, keep working on your skills. Plan your future career around it, if you want to. Work on your own games, for fun, as portfolio pieces or learning opportunities... Maybe one of them will be good enough to sell or create enough splash on Kickstarter to get you some funding...
But keep your goals realistic, and don't let grades slip because of your hobby. At your age, finishing school is more important than developing a game.
Like others say, you might be, scratch that, you are biting off more than you can chew at your age.
I see you have mentioned a kickstarter, but please, for the love of all that is holy, BE CAREFUL WITH THAT. While the process for getting one doesn't seem to be difficult, and the bare minimum needed is apparently a concept, remember that Kickstarter is NOT a donation service. You can actually be held legally accountable for defaulting (Meaning failure to deliver). While Kickstarter themselves might not uphold any legal action to you, you can actually be individually sued by every member whom had backed you, which can be significantly worse for a middle schooler.
So concider these options.
If you do need funding, please take a smarter approach for your age, and access to resources. Develop some small simple games and sell them as Apps or something. Play your cards right and you can make a substantial profit. I can guarantee you that very few professionals will jump in your pocket when you don't have much of a skill set that can contribute. That's the called the "idea" guy, whom is generally avoided. If you don't want to learn programming, story writing and art is also an incredibly useful skill, but harder to compete with.
Get a background by joining a modding team. This is actually harder to do than it sounds by the way. Usually most well established modding teams will require you to hold an intermediate knowledge of a language. Provide samples of your work. And do a time slated test. I'm currently a member of one at the moment, and what was just said here was my experience.
And finally, and this is the most important one. FINISH SCHOOL. We aren't picking on you because of your age. It's because game design is far more technical than it's actually portrayed in popular media. Even as an artist, if you do not have a basic understanding of algebra, calculus, literary tropes, psychology, history, physics, and just about every other "useless" subject in high-school, your chance of lasting in the industry is going to be an asymptote. Meaning infinitely getting closer to zero. Not saying it is impossible. Just highly unlikely.
Also, try to avoid Game University Schools. You will be a one shot rifle from that point on, and you won't have much of a back up plan. It is better than an art degree, but only by a small amount. Yes, you may have a better chance of getting into a game company. But at the same time, remember that game developers might not be full time. You may end up being hired on a commission basis. And it's certainly not where the money is at, unless you are smart enough to exploit a human's irrational sense of addiction and visual attraction with a game that is clearly a copy and paste of another. *cough* Angry Birds *cough*. Or you happen to be one of the engine developers, or back end programmers. I think L.Spiro can enlighten on that.
Hi guys, I'm new here and im wanting some help. So tbh i really dont know how to go about this but just a slap of direction would help. Ok beggining i would like to make a FPS or a third person shooter( dont know which one is better to do lol.) It will be a "fun" type of game just like a muck around i guess. I would like to have Cartoony looking people one small and fat one tall and skinny and one small and skinny just to show the diversity of the game because the game im going to make is a meaningful shooter that will include lvls, ranks, outfits/costumes. But i dont know how to go about this...Do i need to learn some type of code (C++?) .I've got the design and everything looking great but coding is my downfall....please speak to me in English not in computer Science because im slowly learning very slowly lol. I've just downloaded UNITY to help me understand a bit more. It will be an online game only for PC, no campaighn etc. If needed what type of people do i speak too? I have interested donators on Kickstarter.com as well so pay shouldn't be an issue.
You're essentially dabbling into elements of character and game design, as well as 3D modeling. Search the Unity Store for 3d models, the rest you'll need to do on your own. You'll either need to find a coder, or buy a fps kit. Why not use UE4 instead? It's more specialized for FPS', and has Kismet.
