Need guidance for first game

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4 comments, last by Almiro 6 years, 3 months ago

I have a lot of time in my hands and I really want to make something special out of it

I don't have a lot of experience in game developing, I did some maps for Americas Army : Proving Grounds and that's all.

So the idea is to make a story driven 2D game, the gameplay would be something like Undertale or FNAF's minigames, I can't seem to find the suiting game engine for me, Unreal engine really seems appealing but so does Game Maker Studio 2. My main issue is not knowing how to program and I will definitely learn that however I can't just sit down and learn from websites or youtube tutorials, I have a different approach when learning new skills, more project oriented, and a lot of finding out myself otherwise I won't understand it all and won't learn a thing.

Blueprints really are appealing, I can find a thing here and there on youtube and documentation but is this the right or approach? Or should I force myself to learn it the hardway (coding)?

For the game art, I am a pretty neat drawer but that's about it, I would like to know how most of you do your game assets, do you do it by yourself or is it outsourced? or even both?

I really just need someone to guide me a little bit, I have the story all played out in my head and some of it even written down, I really just need to dive in but I want to avoid feeling drowned...
I want to apologize if this doesn't fit the forum and would be more than pleased if moved to the right one.

Thank you

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In my not-so-experienced-in-finishing-2d-game-projects opinion, Unreal Engine is overkill for what you're doing.

Game Maker Studio 2 sounds like a good idea. You could try out free/open source  2D game engines before though:

Godot Engine https://godotengine.org/

Torque2D https://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-2d

CoronaSDK https://coronalabs.com/

Cocos2D-x http://www.cocos2d-x.org/

"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ"

My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator

48 minutes ago, Prince Ejassa said:

Blueprints really are appealing, I can find a thing here and there on youtube and documentation but is this the right or approach? Or should I force myself to learn it the hardway (coding)?

Blueprints is coding. It's not a easier or harder way to learn, but if your a visual person it does help see things clearly.

I made this to explain it:

Spoiler

This is a Unity game script. It prints: 120  followed by 1 2 and 0.



using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class TheUnityVersion : MonoBehaviour {

	int AddTwoNumbers(int NumberA, int NumberB){
		return NumberA + NumberB;
	}

	void PrintEveryChar(string InString){
		foreach (char Character in InString) {
			print (Character);
		}
	}


	// Use this for initialization
	void Start () {
		string TempString = AddTwoNumbers (100, 20).ToString();
		print (TempString);

		PrintEveryChar (TempString);
	}

}

This is the blueprint version of the exact same code: prints 120  followed by 1 2 and 0.

UnrealBasic.thumb.jpg.3c6b0bed5c5d19a6eff149c008cc0e46.jpg

 

Look at the above example and decide what is easier for you to understand.

55 minutes ago, Prince Ejassa said:

Unreal engine really seems appealing but so does Game Maker Studio 2.

Unreal does have nice UI tools and 2D tools but gives you nothing special for 2D game development.

Considering how hard Unreal is to learn, the best reason to use it for 2D games is because you plan on using the Unreal engine in the long run; so you do it to learn to use Unreal.

 

Unity is my 2D engine of choice(it's 3D is meh), it use to be Cocos2D but knowing Unity and Unreal makes my work as a artist easier; as they are the most used engines. Game maker is also great, I started on it.

1 hour ago, Prince Ejassa said:

For the game art, I am a pretty neat drawer but that's about it, I would like to know how most of you do your game assets, do you do it by yourself or is it outsourced? or even both?

Don't worry about the art. It's easy to make a full game from start to end just using placeholder art.

Then later if your own drawing doesn't look good you can hire a artist. It's much easier for us artist to create art when we can already see from the place holders how things should work.

 

1 hour ago, Prince Ejassa said:

really just need someone to guide me a little bit, I have the story all played out in my head and some of it even written down, I really just need to dive in but I want to avoid feeling drowned...

Write things down as they pop into your head. Everything you write down, any idea you draw, any action you make towards the game allows it to progress.

You can try starting from the main menu and design it as players will play it; but most developers don't like working like this. Honestly there is no starting point for making games.

Making a mistake is much-much better than doing nothing. So when you don't know what to do to progress do anything.

 

Making games is like a never ending ocean of concepts and principles. In the end you really won't find a clear starting point and all you can do is dive in and start.

I have to agree with Scouting Ninja on Unity. It has a pretty solid 2D engine and I've played with it a little. However, personally I'm leaning heavily towards Unreal Engine and OpenGL after leaving DX11. But that's because I only do 3D. So, I would not recommend any of that unless you want to do 3D. From what I've seen, Unreal doesn't do 2D all that well and Unity has really built a lot of capability into their 2D engine. I think Unreal and Unity are very similar but one of the differences is I think Unity has done more with their 2D engine. So, if you want to focus on 2D, you might find Unity to be a better choice.

Unreal does scripting in C++ (actually from what little I've done in it it seems like it may actually be compiling it into machine code, rather than just scripting, but I'm far from certain on that as I'm just getting started with Unreal). Unity does scripting in C# and I think it supports JavaScript scripting as well. So, you probably want to learn C# programming before going that route. You don't need to be a C# expert; if you just read a single book on C#, that would probably be enough to get started.

For a whole lot of stuff you want to do, you can probably find code examples you can pretty much copy and paste.

 

I use Unity since 2010 and I think its a great tool for solo development.

You could start with the 2D Roguelike project (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/tutorial-projects/2d-roguelike-29825).

There you'll learn about Unity's 2D features and also the C# programming required by the project. Start by changing the art assets to adapt to your story and, when you feel confident, mess with the C# scripts to change the game's mechanics.

Dont forget to keep opened Unity's Manual and Scripting Reference webpages (https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html). They can solve all your problems.

And if you want to try other game mechanics, check the Unity's Asset Store. There are many free templates that allow you to learn by example without much headache.

Good luck!

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