How to make computer game?

[Melynnd]

I think mobile games are made differently from computer games (but not sure), so in the title ive specified "computer" games. I like gaming but honestly who wouldn't want to make his own game? Well I always wanted, at least. But not sure how to start, i dont really know coding... Also I was doing some coding tutorial but i think it didnt bring me closer to game development.. Any advice?

[jamesmerleck]

You need experience in a variety of different skills to make a video game. There is far more to it than simply coding. Unless you're making something very simple, you'll likely need a team to help you make it, because it's very difficult for a single person to master all the different skillets required to bring a video game to completion. You may also require startup funds to purchase those things that you or your team cannot fulfill with its skillset. Last but not least you need lots and lots of time dedicated to making a game. Game development is extremely time consuming.

 

Here are a few of the basic skills you'll need to look into for game development:

 

- 3D modeling and animation

- PBR texturing

- Visual effects artistry, lighting and graphic design

- Sound effects, music

- Programming, scripting, artificial intelligence

- UI design

- The game engine of your choice in order to build levels and put all these things together

 

You CAN do it yourself, if you're planning to do something relatively simple. It's been done before. It just takes lots and lots of time and dedication. Look into these programs and look up tutorials for them if you're serious about it:

 

- Blender (3D modeling and animation, free)

- GIMP (PBR texturing and graphic design, free)

- Unity (C#) or Unreal Engine (C++) (both are free)

 

There are also lots of resources out there that are free and royalty free, I suggest taking advantage of them when appropriate. However if you use only free resources in your game to avoid learning the skills needed, I'm afraid your game may come out very low quality and you won't really be able to make the kind of game you want, and people who play it will definitely be able to tell.

Edited January 30, 2020 by jamesmerleck

[kthompsen]

Step 1) Acquire around 10,000,000 dollars

 

Step 2) Hire only naive kids who work long hours for free

[Rabbit1251]

Step 1) Acquire around 10,000,000 dollars

 

Step 2) Hire only naive kids who work long hours for free

Step2) Or you could hire a crack team of programmers for around $20,000 dollars a year. And that would be cheap.

 

You must also consider that it will take two or three years for development and playtesting.

 

 

The Rabbit

[Deleted54170User]

 

Step 1) Acquire around 10,000,000 dollars

 

Step 2) Hire only naive kids who work long hours for free

Step2) Or you could hire a crack team of programmers for around $20,000 dollars a year. And that would be cheap.

 

You must also consider that it will take two or three years for development and playtesting.

 

 

The Rabbit

 

Money isn't the only method of exchange for services rendered.

 

I miss those people who would accept beads, clam shells. I read that some people made beads. They literally wore their wealth as jewelry. One of those necklaces had enough valuable beads and shells to pay for a lot of goods.

 

Those ways were used the way we use paper money and coins. Crafters who were sharing a hostile worked to receive regular meals.

 

Trading for room and board. I did the work on a person's yard for a few years and had room and board covered. Bathing room, recreation room, living room, entertainment center. I miss those people, but we all go our different ways when we become so skilled that we are sought out by some who want our ability working for them.

 

So find a few people who are close to you, that are really into the idea of creating a prize winner; and the rest will follow. Holding your team together once you've all started getting attention from other interested parties is a common problem.

 

A more complete list of tools is at this link https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Category:Tools which is part of the modding community services.

[Gravers1955]

I think mobile games are made differently from computer games (but not sure), so in the title ive specified "computer" games. I like gaming but honestly who wouldn't want to make his own game? Well I always wanted, at least. But not sure how to start, i dont really know coding... Also I was doing some coding tutorial but i think it didnt bring me closer to game development.. Any advice?

 

Nowadays you make games using a game engine. Creating a game in them is easy but selling them or getting players is what is hard.

 

As indie game developer you would have to know all of these things: creation of any kind of assets, designing the gameplay, coding it, and after youre done - promoting your game...

 

Its still possible but will you succeed? The reason why I didnt start making my own game when I was 15 (Im 10 years older now) was because I was sure that i will fail. Now im finally makking my own game, but if i started 10 years ago, i would certainly be profiting on it right now

[hunic]

its really very difficult to make a video game for PC.

first of all you have to knowledge about 3D gaming and most important is coding.

coding language is so difficult to understand but if you are qucick lerner so it'll be very easy for you.

and i suggest you to do some course for coding on 3D animation and gaming

and start with some small thing to build..

many courses are available for this..

thank you

[JimmyRJump]

Start with looking around for a gaming engine that's free like the Unreal one. Educate yourself on how to use it.

[Vagrant0]

The long-short of it is that making a game when you have few skills to build from is going to take time and effort. Anything of reasonable complexity is going to take an extremely long time even when you know what you are doing. You can still hold onto your grand game idea, but will need to start seeing it as several million tiny milestones instead of being a thing you can just put together (at least until you become well versed in a game language and it becomes only a few million milestones). Even something simple, like a minecraft clone, has hundreds of components just to allow a player to walk around a generated world and place/remove blocks. The key to not becoming overwhelmed is to try and work on each of these components one at a time whenever you can.

 

Although I would say that Unity is probably the easiest 'mainstream' engine to get into, for the person who is completely new to any kind of scripting/coding, I would actually suggest looking at Twine/Sugarcube. It is a platform typically used for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type content, but also allows conditional states, objects (things that have properties), and supports Javascript, among other things. It's something you probably havn't heard about but is not without its merits for the fresh-faced coder. The advantage with this is that it is fairly easy to put something like an escape room together by making use of conditionalized text and passages. The other advantage is that in addition to being able to run in any recent browser, most of the things made with Twine can have the coding opened and looked at to see how an already existing game does a thing. The disadvantage is that you deal with a mess of artsy/unusual stuff as it is a completely free and open platform. https://itch.io/games/made-with-twine/tag-twine

 

Additional links:

https://opensource.com/article/18/2/twine-gaming

http://www.adamhammond.com/twineguide/

 

The point of all this is to get you into a mindset of taking one part at a time, dealing with variables, conditions, and be more familiar with being able to look at code which can be spread between multiple places to see how things work or construct new things. Even at the end of everything, Twine can end up being useful for other things since you can quickly throw together an outline or set of storyboards for larger projects done in other engines.

 

Or if you want to just try jumping into Unity.

https://learn.unity.com/project/john-lemon-s-haunted-jaunt-3d-beginner

https://learn.unity.com/

https://www.udemy.com/course/learnunity3d/

Sebastian Lague's Youtube channel

 

Don't get caught up in needing to learn how to make your own resources... The hardest part of any game development is learning to code and make those resources function. There are also plenty of free resources out there designed just for use by people learning to make games. Yes, it may look like garbage, but it is your garbage.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Vagrant0