[quote name='thatguyfromthething' timestamp='1308965576' post='4827427']
1. You should not waste any time learning anything that won't be used for your project.
2. this place is full of incredibly terrible advice.
1. That is incredibly terrible advice.
2. See #1.
[/quote]
For me, game play is always important to hold in a standard, keep it comfortable. And what i really mean is to be sure it adds to the flow of the game rather than makes it convoluted or boring.
But truely in the end, the story is the most important part. if you have some crappy anime story, with no real conceivable plot then its going to fail miserably, Take a really bad anime for instance. no story, just lost of action does not intrigue anyone but little slimy troglodytes who cant conceive emotion or plot points, because its to complicated for them. Those same people probably crowd around terrible carbon copy FPS shooters.
They want a few head shots because that's all they care about...
So i say, If we want a good story in a game, what do we do? well the first thing i would do is ask yourself really tough questions. like Why the hell is this cool? what makes this cool, and why and how can this work.
Another example: Anime, 1st episode, no story, just a big fight scene and a few concepts that they are on another planet and there's some politics and bad guys. Nothing is connected, its unfinished. a story cant be about fighting aliens alone, there needs to be more substance than that.
Why are they fighting aliens, (we'll continue this plot) Because they threaten the existence of man! Okay, cool. Do they aliens look like stupid Unreal 3 style small headed large muscle idiot monsters? And why is that cool to have that in your game? are you joining the massive circle jerk of testosterone addicts in the world of Modern gaming? hell no you are not, get screwed. make an interesting alien.
What are your favorite stories? find that out and try to make your story better than they could. Starwars? Stick with the first 3 movies, and your better than George lucas, because the prequels stunk right?
The very fact that i am harshly crtitical of other things and analyze this, is why and how you create a good story, and find the faults and the good parts of a story.
______ Here is a short story i will write now.
"Mankind predictably wipes itself off planet earth, only to find home just around the globe out of the reach of the planets gravitational pull. Before the pollution could overtake the planet in a hideous smog, mankind used all its greatest minds and most admirable tactics to gather what was needed to survive decades in space around Earth. At this time space vessels and space stations were a normal thing, but there is no way that man would leave his home. So they terraformed the planet after vaporizing the atmosphere, and letting machines smooth the planet over. All the work of all the past, documented in files, samples, historical containment facilities. Earth would be beautiful again. But because of our habits, we must start again, and lose everything we had known. our children will know only the metal corridors of a sterile space station, and now moments away after years and years. The Planet is ready sustain life once again. Earth is habitable, and the cloning of it's children will repopulate it. Were making history."
Obviously this isnt an unheard of idea, but speculative fiction is incredibly interesting. I plan to use this in a revision of a particular story line of which non need be talked about. its only a base on how mankind refines itself and moves into a new era. In the past, pollution smogged the skies, and the only option was to maticulously gather every living things that we could find and store the dna and substance of those things in cloneing, and of course in that day, 2600 maybe, this was legitimate and possible. The smog now gone, and the story bassis is set. now it would be horribly boring depending on how you do it. to play a game.
Maybe if its about rebuilding the new earth? interesting concept for a RTS. But im much more of a hands on kind of action adventure person. so we move into something totally crazy, which it takes place thousands of years in the future. Where maybe history begins to repeat itself again with pollution, due to new fuel forms, i guess every so often we need a restart, yeah?
Anyways, now were in a blade runner future, picture buzzing hover cars, gritty rusted massive building either being maintained by ant sized in perspective, human beings welding away with futuristic equipment to repair the buildings or build new ones, Lights like a whole wide city, scaling up the massive towering building. And all this is explained and is going on, and players are entitled, privileged in fact, to know the state of the world, the way of the universe in this storytelling. THEY NEED TO KNOW basically. I hate to get nazilike but you absolutely must be forced to see this. that the "scifi world" was in decay, and that its history is important to even concieving why this adventure is so great.
To see whats happening, how the world is working, and how the character fits in, i cant stand something that is to small scale, or simple. Because all stories have to break the line between good and evil. and bleed the colors into grey. They have to tell stories of characters who may have done bad things, or have had hard times, heroes and thieves, Poets and scoundrels.
Where are the stories that are this grand? who will make them? Who will write the engaging dialogue?
And the game producer of a higher up company says "Eh, we'll get bob to do it... he used to write for the high school paper right? yeah itll be fine, besides, its not like a story holds the game together or anything. lol..... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA RIGHT GUYS!?"
SO there, my rant. Game writes suck really bad very often. Am i the guy to help? maybe not, but i like to dream about stories and adventures, and of a world different than this, imagine imagine imagine.
To me, you have to be a dreamer to write, or at least give a picture of something beautiful and adventurous, which is needed in an rpg.
(P.s. not stealing my story example. i think its neat and it mine, lol. If you want it, get me to write for you.)
For me, game play is always important to hold in a standard, keep it comfortable. And what i really mean is to be sure it adds to the flow of the game rather than makes it convoluted or boring.
But truely in the end, the story is the most important part. if you have some crappy anime story, with no real conceivable plot then its going to fail miserably, Take a really bad anime for instance. no story, just lost of action does not intrigue anyone but little slimy troglodytes who cant conceive emotion or plot points, because its to complicated for them. Those same people probably crowd around terrible carbon copy FPS shooters.
...
"Mankind predictably wipes itself off planet earth, only to find home just around the globe out of the reach of the planets gravitational pull. Before the pollution could overtake the planet in a hideous smog, mankind used all its greatest minds and most admirable tactics to gather what was needed to survive decades in space around Earth. At this time space vessels and space stations were a normal thing, but there is no way that man would leave his home. So they terraformed the planet after vaporizing the atmosphere, and letting machines smooth the planet over. All the work of all the past, documented in files, samples, historical containment facilities. Earth would be beautiful again. But because of our habits, we must start again, and lose everything we had known. our children will know only the metal corridors of a sterile space station, and now moments away after years and years. The Planet is ready sustain life once again. Earth is habitable, and the cloning of it's children will repopulate it. Were making history."
Maybe if its about rebuilding the new earth? interesting concept for a RTS. But im much more of a hands on kind of action adventure person. so we move into something totally crazy, which it takes place thousands of years in the future. Where maybe history begins to repeat itself again with pollution, due to new fuel forms, i guess every so often we need a restart, yeah?
...
SO there, my rant. Game writes suck really bad very often. Am i the guy to help? maybe not, but i like to dream about stories and adventures, and of a world different than this, imagine imagine imagine.
To me, you have to be a dreamer to write, or at least give a picture of something beautiful and adventurous, which is needed in an rpg.
(P.s. not stealing my story example. i think its neat and it mine, lol. If you want it, get me to write for you.)
I think almost any beginner starts out like this. Some story and vision that sounds awesome in your head, and this is what gets them started in game development. Your imagination is a good place to get your motivation, but to create a game you will need to add a lot of discipline, and you will need to compromise. An epic storyline like this one is of the scale of mass effect, and that needed quite a lot of people to complete. It might be doable in 2D, but it will take a lot of time with people working on it fulltime.
You say yourself that it is not entirely original. One of the ways I like to work is by putting constraints on myself to work with. So let me try and put some constraints on you . Try to figure out a story and gameplay that takes place in one location, for example a small mansion or maybe even in an interrogation room, or a hangar. Then try to work with only 5 characters in your entire story, and make it a story that can be completed within two hours.
Now, let me explain the constraints. It is the equivalent of a short film created by movie students. A 3D or 2D house can be created in a matter of days, maybe weeks. Creating 5 characters is also a matter of days to weeks. So what you have is a small playground to test your ideas in. You can also do tons of cool things in a small area with a limited number of actions. Let me give you some quick example of small storylines:
- A story in an asylum where it is unclear to the player if what is happening is really happening, truth and lie interconnect a lot.
- A story in a hounted mansion, where in the end you turn out to be the ghost instead of the things you think are ghosts.
- A story where burglars invade your house, and you need to try and save your family and escape the house.
You see, all these stories are small, but it allows for interesting gameplay to emerge and it can be very fun for players to play such stories. This might be an easier road to take, but I think many gamedevelopers (me included) have the tendency to try and create something epic and big.
[quote name='ageshero' timestamp='1308988444' post='4827492']
ima go on a random rant. lol.
For me, game play is always important to hold in a standard, keep it comfortable. And what i really mean is to be sure it adds to the flow of the game rather than makes it convoluted or boring.
But truely in the end, the story is the most important part. if you have some crappy anime story, with no real conceivable plot then its going to fail miserably, Take a really bad anime for instance. no story, just lost of action does not intrigue anyone but little slimy troglodytes who cant conceive emotion or plot points, because its to complicated for them. Those same people probably crowd around terrible carbon copy FPS shooters.
...
"Mankind predictably wipes itself off planet earth, only to find home just around the globe out of the reach of the planets gravitational pull. Before the pollution could overtake the planet in a hideous smog, mankind used all its greatest minds and most admirable tactics to gather what was needed to survive decades in space around Earth. At this time space vessels and space stations were a normal thing, but there is no way that man would leave his home. So they terraformed the planet after vaporizing the atmosphere, and letting machines smooth the planet over. All the work of all the past, documented in files, samples, historical containment facilities. Earth would be beautiful again. But because of our habits, we must start again, and lose everything we had known. our children will know only the metal corridors of a sterile space station, and now moments away after years and years. The Planet is ready sustain life once again. Earth is habitable, and the cloning of it's children will repopulate it. Were making history."
Maybe if its about rebuilding the new earth? interesting concept for a RTS. But im much more of a hands on kind of action adventure person. so we move into something totally crazy, which it takes place thousands of years in the future. Where maybe history begins to repeat itself again with pollution, due to new fuel forms, i guess every so often we need a restart, yeah?
...
SO there, my rant. Game writes suck really bad very often. Am i the guy to help? maybe not, but i like to dream about stories and adventures, and of a world different than this, imagine imagine imagine.
To me, you have to be a dreamer to write, or at least give a picture of something beautiful and adventurous, which is needed in an rpg.
(P.s. not stealing my story example. i think its neat and it mine, lol. If you want it, get me to write for you.)
I think almost any beginner starts out like this. Some story and vision that sounds awesome in your head, and this is what gets them started in game development. Your imagination is a good place to get your motivation, but to create a game you will need to add a lot of discipline, and you will need to compromise. An epic storyline like this one is of the scale of mass effect, and that needed quite a lot of people to complete. It might be doable in 2D, but it will take a lot of time with people working on it fulltime.
You say yourself that it is not entirely original. One of the ways I like to work is by putting constraints on myself to work with. So let me try and put some constraints on you . Try to figure out a story and gameplay that takes place in one location, for example a small mansion or maybe even in an interrogation room, or a hangar. Then try to work with only 5 characters in your entire story, and make it a story that can be completed within two hours.
Now, let me explain the constraints. It is the equivalent of a short film created by movie students. A 3D or 2D house can be created in a matter of days, maybe weeks. Creating 5 characters is also a matter of days to weeks. So what you have is a small playground to test your ideas in. You can also do tons of cool things in a small area with a limited number of actions. Let me give you some quick example of small storylines:
- A story in an asylum where it is unclear to the player if what is happening is really happening, truth and lie interconnect a lot.
- A story in a hounted mansion, where in the end you turn out to be the ghost instead of the things you think are ghosts.
- A story where burglars invade your house, and you need to try and save your family and escape the house.
You see, all these stories are small, but it allows for interesting gameplay to emerge and it can be very fun for players to play such stories. This might be an easier road to take, but I think many gamedevelopers (me included) have the tendency to try and create something epic and big.
[/quote]
I hear Walt disney said, that if he didnt get someone to find fault in his project, He figured it wasn't good enough of a scale in his opinion, lol I am a huge scale kind of guy, Most of my comic stories are planned to connect. i have a lot of plans to write novels and connecting story plots. intertwining things. And yes of course, a story can be short and simple. But there's something about adding that extra depth, its as if your staring into a 3d painting as apposed to something more 2d.
I have some simple plots, and other game ideas, Just the rpg that i have been discussing has been the big dreamy Game only, concept that i had next to a few others.
I like to wrestle all the spectrums, all i need is the knowledge on where to get it, and the motivation to do it, and im sure i could be pretty patient. lol.
But this place is full of incredibly terrible advice.
Really?
You should not waste any time learning anything that won't be used for your project. If you learn to make games that way, you will waste years and be no closer to making a real game.
It's not really less work to make it in a 2D engine than 3D though probably doesn't require as much programming skills
With 2D engine you probably need to program it yourself so you are making both a game and an engine.
Just look for the tools you need first, in this case an engine.
Realistically you can count on making an RPG in C++, though. You will probably fail utterly in any other method of development unless you have a very limited scope game.
Most of the engines out there provide very poor support for any game but a shooter.
The ability to make complicated data driven GUI just isn't there.
If you listen to most people here you will get nowhere.
An engine like Unity that only really works with games that could be played on a cell phone easily.
Plus the damned thing [UDK] just isn't stable.
If you start off making connect 4 or RPG maker you simply won't ever get started on your real project let alone complete it.
A team is actually very easy to get together if you have anything to show.
[quote name='toony' timestamp='1308862910' post='4827004']
Focus on the vision! Cross [s]no budget[/s] out and you should be fine! If you have the time, and if you can forget the fact that programming same old console apps gets boring, you should be fine with learning to code.
That's what all your games will look like while you're learning C/C++
[/quote]
pygame would be good for what he wants would it not i seen them all over the net like how he described written in python useing pygame . would not anyone agree with me on this statement?
google pygame rpg and you will get the pygame engine and some open source games if you look hard
and for the comment above mine srry but thats what every first time game looks like (my first game was tic tac to) because you need to learn simple programs like this to advance to bigger one (like the game he wants to make).
(no offence attended
p.s.it seems to me though he a writer and an "artist" and should realy look to see if he can get a programmer to help but i guess since good programmers ask for money and his no buget thing i say good luck.
I don't know at what point something here will really stick out for the OP, or at what point all this will become INFORMATION OVERLOAD. What I do know is that there has been alot of good advice, and a bit of not so good advice, but this post seems more like a cry for reassurance, something that many, if not all of us, had before we started "making games" That is something everyone here CAN and SHOULD give you. With realism thrown in, of course, but here's the truth of the matter in game development:
1. EVERYONE here has a passion for games. Mostly, some stage and form of developing them. That being said, everything begins with...
1.a IDEAS IDEAS, PASSIONATE, EXCITED, IDEAS.
2. You have an idea and a desire to make a great game. The first step, which you probably have by this point, is start small to learn.
3. FIND YOUR NICHE. What about the games stimulates you? Do you have a desire to create beautiful things that will make a game (graphically) what it is? Does the art inspire you? Maybe you want to bring things to life. Programming is a safe bet if you do, because, for 2D games especially, there is art available, even just stock graphics, that can give you some gratification without hiring an artist.
4. Prepare for some form of burnout. This is important, because as you learn everything that goes into making a game, you will inevitably become overwhelmed with something at some point. This adheres to the Rome wasn't built in a day. Imagine if one man decided to build Rome himself... he might get as far as getting the tools and supplies, and even erecting a building before realizing... HOLY SH** I'M TRYING TO BUILD A CITY. You will learn about the process, and it can be very overstimulating, but with lots of experience, you will learn to pace yourself and prepare. Don't give up.
5. Yes, choose your tools wisely. I will not go into this here, there are many other posts on this, and it sounds like you have some idea anyway. I would say using Gamemaker or the like to prototype at least is a safe bet, because it provides quicker gratification than, say, C++ could afford you. That being said, I doff my cap to everyone who insists on learning things like C++ first and only, as I know a good many of those people who suceeded.
6. Yes, you can make a game by yourself. What kind and how big, I truly belive that is best left for you to decide by just doing it. You will quickly learn what your limitations are, much more quickly than for you to digest all the pages we here at Gamedev have written.
I don't know at what point something here will really stick out for the OP, or at what point all this will become INFORMATION OVERLOAD. What I do know is that there has been alot of good advice, and a bit of not so good advice, but this post seems more like a cry for reassurance, something that many, if not all of us, had before we started "making games" That is something everyone here CAN and SHOULD give you. With realism thrown in, of course, but here's the truth of the matter in game development:
1. EVERYONE here has a passion for games. Mostly, some stage and form of developing them. That being said, everything begins with...
1.a IDEAS IDEAS, PASSIONATE, EXCITED, IDEAS.
2. You have an idea and a desire to make a great game. The first step, which you probably have by this point, is start small to learn.
3. FIND YOUR NICHE. What about the games stimulates you? Do you have a desire to create beautiful things that will make a game (graphically) what it is? Does the art inspire you? Maybe you want to bring things to life. Programming is a safe bet if you do, because, for 2D games especially, there is art available, even just stock graphics, that can give you some gratification without hiring an artist.
4. Prepare for some form of burnout. This is important, because as you learn everything that goes into making a game, you will inevitably become overwhelmed with something at some point. This adheres to the Rome wasn't built in a day. Imagine if one man decided to build Rome himself... he might get as far as getting the tools and supplies, and even erecting a building before realizing... HOLY SH** I'M TRYING TO BUILD A CITY. You will learn about the process, and it can be very overstimulating, but with lots of experience, you will learn to pace yourself and prepare. Don't give up.
5. Yes, choose your tools wisely. I will not go into this here, there are many other posts on this, and it sounds like you have some idea anyway. I would say using Gamemaker or the like to prototype at least is a safe bet, because it provides quicker gratification than, say, C++ could afford you. That being said, I doff my cap to everyone who insists on learning things like C++ first and only, as I know a good many of those people who suceeded.
6. Yes, you can make a game by yourself. What kind and how big, I truly belive that is best left for you to decide by just doing it. You will quickly learn what your limitations are, much more quickly than for you to digest all the pages we here at Gamedev have written.
GOOD LUCK WITH CAPITAL LETTERS!!!
Interesting for sure. thanks for the input and inspiration, though i may end up not programming as much as i would like to be alittle more dependent on my own skills.
Can anyone list some popular 2d games and what engines they were made with, if not their own.
. Try to figure out a story and gameplay that takes place in one location, for example a small mansion or maybe even in an interrogation room, or a hangar. Then try to work with only 5 characters in your entire story, and make it a story that can be completed within two hours.
