There are a few general options you probably have:

Use an authorware package to create your game:
This option is generally the easiest and can often allow you to get something working quite quickly. The price you pay for this is that you'd be limited by whatever package you chose to use. There are plenty of packages out there and I'm sure you could find plenty with a quick Google search, but a couple that might be suitable for your idea include Game Maker or Adventure Game Studio. If you're interested in this option but don't think either of those are suitable I'll leave it up to you to either search for additional options yourself or ask for more recommendations.

Mod an existing game to create your game:
This is sort of an intermediate option between using authorware and creating 'full' game yourself from scratch. Once again, this is faster and easier than developing from scratch (but harder than using authorware), but limits you; you'll find it difficult or impossible to create anything too different from the original game. Unfortunately I don't really know of any games I could recommend for this in the RPG genre (although I'm sure there are some out there that others may know of or you could search for), so the best I can offer is that you might be able to do something with Battle for Wesnoth (which is actually a turn-based strategy game).

Create your game from scratch:
This option is what a lot of people consider to be making a 'real' game. It's also the most difficult and time consuming. You'll need to program your game using a programming language - if you've already got a programmer, talk to them about what language you'd be using. You'll also need to produce your own graphics, and and sound and/or music you'd like to use, or if you're unable to do so you'll need to find additional team members who can help you out.

So, how could you find additional team members? First of all, people are unlikely to be impressed just by your idea - everyone has an idea, and if they're going to be helping work on yours that means they wouldn't be working on thier own - so you'll need to convince people you're worth working with. To do this, you can create a design document (see these articles) to explain your idea in detail. You can create concept-art, or if you've already got an artist start producing actual art that will be used in the game. You can get your programmer to start developing so you'll have development screenshots to show off, or perhaps even a basic demo. The basic idea is that the more you've got to show off that you're dedicated and worth working with (and to show off your cool idea!), the better luck you'd have finding help.

Alright, so let's say you've written up a design document, got some concept art, started programming your project, etc. Where can you look for additional help? Well, we have a Help Wanted forum you can advertise in (you must use the layout in this thread if you post in Help Wanted) to ask for help, and there are other similar forums on other websites that you can advertise on if you have a search for them.

If you just want advise, you can post in the relevant GDNet forums and people will generally be happy to help you out as long as it's clear you're putting in effort yourself. Game Design is an excellent place to talk about the mechanics of your game with others and get suggestions or advice, Writing For Games can help you work on your story, Game Programming can help figure out problems with code, etc.


What skills do you and your friend already have, and what experience does the programmer have? Also, if you're attending a game design school they'll probably be able to offer you additional advice and resources. Let us know if you'd like advice for anyone to learn additional skills (such as if another of you wanted to learn to program) too btw.

Hope that helps, feel free to ask more questions. [smile]

The most common answer you going to hear here, is learn a programming language and write it yourself. You could post in the help wanted forum to see if anyone wants to write it for you, but thats a major job.

Do you have a design document or anything else writen done?

Oh, and:

Quote:Original post by Natrone19
(sry if my typing or grammer skills are not up to par)

Grammar. But don't worry about it, we're generally pretty nice as long as you seem to be trying. [smile] If you ever decide to make a Help Wanted post it'd probably be a good idea to run it through a spell-checker though - you're trying to impress people in that case.

Having a complete design doc (I'm not talking about 10 pages...) is probably your best way to convince a programmer to work with you. Ideas are a dime a dozen and there are MANY wanna be designers, so if you want to convince someone to work with you, you better be well prepared :)

Good luck with your project