Bit Blot Forum
Bit Blot => Games => Topic started by: Land Whale on April 11, 2007, 01:47:30 pm
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I would like to thank Derek & Alec for not only making Aquaria, but proving that the little guys can make it.
That said, how would I make my own video game? I don't have a computer degree, and I've dropped out of college, where can I start?
I want to start small first. I want to make a 2D game that's a throwback to the ol' days, like Raiden or Sonic The Hedgehog. Maybe later, if I build my rep with the small games I make, I hope to move on to bigger games in the near future.
Are there any software or engines that I can start with to make my first games? Torque from Garage Games (http://www.garagegames.com/) looks tempting, but are there any alternatives?
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Its hard to recommend one place to start... There's some pretty good short summaries on this TIGForums thread (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49.0) about various options for now.
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Are there any software or engines that I can start with to make my first games? Torque from Garage Games looks tempting, but are there any alternatives?
For a 2D game Torque isn't really suited. You'd be better off with software like Clickteam's Gamesfactory 2 or their Multimedia Fusion software. http://www.clickteam.com/eng/index.php
I'm going to assume you have zero experience with programming too, so you'll need to learn a lot before anything you make will look or play good. If you're not good at making art, you will have to learn this too. The problem is, the smaller the team, the higher your qualities must be to accomplish anything. It's not a bad idea trying to find a team you can join, get some experience and figure out what part you like most and focus on that.
It's a long way from zero to something and you're first dozen 'somethings' will be pretty bad. I don't want to be pessimistic, but it's the truth, it's not as easy as it looks, but with enough willpower and a bit of talent anything is possible.
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It cost' money, but if you can buy it and learn how to use it, try Dark or Blitz BASIC.
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Seconded on the Clickteam stuff - if you just want to jump straight in and start making fun, straightforward 2D games, it's a good place to start. It's limited, but very intuitive.
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For 2d games you may want to look at fenix:
http://fenix.divsite.net/index.php?opcion=1&lang=en
It supports a wide range of platforms (windows, osx , linux) and is fairly easy to program with.
There's a guy on the gp32x forums who's getting some great results with it.
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Sorry for bumping this topic but I'm struggling with the same problem: Where do I start?
I already have a (very) basic understanding of BASIC languages and some scripting languages.
The main problem is, I'm really terrible at making art, does anyone want to give me some directions?
For example, which programs can I use best? Do I need a painting tablet? With what kind of art should I start?
Thanks in advance,
Tom Brouws
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I would also like to add to the qustions! I hope this pertains to the topic.
I am very curious as to how the team coordinated making such a game over the internet. I've heard it and seen it done before with great results! I know big companies do it all the time. But what kind of organization does it take to make a collaborative team effort, even if you never see each other in person?
Also would you say it's best to start with story or gameplay ideas?
:) Thank you!
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Sorry for bumping this topic but I'm struggling with the same problem: Where do I start?
I already have a (very) basic understanding of BASIC languages and some scripting languages.
The main problem is, I'm really terrible at making art, does anyone want to give me some directions?
For example, which programs can I use best? Do I need a painting tablet? With what kind of art should I start?
Thanks in advance,
Tom Brouws
Don't worry about graphics when you're starting out; if you can differentiate one object from another, you're basically alright. You don't need a tablet or Photoshop or any of that kit, any more than you need canvas or gouache or sable brushes to make art. What you do need to do is practice. There is no magic Not Suck button, just lots and lots of drawing. If you just want to make art for your games, well, pixel art is a good place to start; it's easy to render with a mouse and you can do it in virtually any paint program. There's a decent Pixel Art 101 over on Derek's blog (http://www.derekyu.com), and more if you have a wee Google search.
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I used to play around with the Clickteam tools. Great fun, even though I made but one complete game in about... 7 years. You can literally get things moving on the screen in seconds. And you can get a basic playable game running in minutes. Takes some learning, as with everything. There is no programming as in written code, instead you use a strange GUI-based logical system of events and actions. It is pretty intuitive, the commands you lay down read in generally jargon-free natural language. Has a nice picture editor too, great for pixel art. Actually I don't know what the new one is like... I'd recommend it to any non-programmer, just remember it's Windows only. I'm not sure what the demo (http://www.clickteam.com/eng/demo.php)is like, could give that a try.
If you know a bit of C/C++ and want a nice graphics/input/sound/etc lib, I (with all the authority of one who's been fiddling with it for a few hours...) recommend using Simple DirectMedia Layer (http://www.libsdl.org/). I'm using/learning it right now. It's pretty easy to get stuff up and on the screen. It's cross-platform too, and somehow works with a bunch of other languages like Java (and Haskell lol?). And it's free. There are some excellent tutorials online, like this one (http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/lesson01/index.php) that tells beginners step-by-step what to do to. Certainly helped me.
And pixel art is super cool, everyone should do it. MSpaint is good enough. GraphicsGale (http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/)is a better power tool, specifically geared toward pixelage. Right-click for colour grab is love.
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EDIT: Gah, just noticed you were interested in Sonic the Hedgehog style games. If that's the case, I'd heartily reccommend:
http://sfghq.emulationzone.org/
Sonic Fangames HQ - Basically a big load of sprites, games, tutorials etc all making use of Clickteam (And other) game creation methods based around Sonic the Hedgehog. T'was where I started :D (THat and STOS Text Adventures but that hardly counts)
Depends on how complicated you want to go:
If you're up for making 2D games with a kind of Drag-and-Drop sort of deal, various things I can recommend are anything from Clickteam (There's plenty of sites with various templates, examples etc available), you could try progging simple games in Flash (Like half the internet :p Occasionally a decent attempt does show up), Dark Basic and Torque are possibilities, but if you want to release anything with Torque you'll be handing over monies.
Failing that, You can go the coding route - C/C#/C++ and what have you. Ideally? I'd recommend a book (Which are often pricey). Failing a book, the Internet is a close second if you know where to find tutorials. GameDev's a good site for all round articles on game making, though many of them are a bit advanced.
There''s thousands of engines out there, many are free to use with limited licensing, one I've used is OGRE, which is geared towards 3D but can also manage 2D with no problems... Failing that you could just mess around in OpenGL until everything works (nehe.gamedev.com is a good place to start with that)
I second Clickteam's stuff is great for PIxel Art & Animation. Simplest editor ever but works fine and allows sprite animation to easily be classified (Stopped, Walking, Running, Jumping etc). Coding is done by scripting simple conditions with simple menus (if Bullet collides with Man, Destroy Man, Create Explosion, add 500 points etc.)
With Story? Sure you can read through various sites and what not on how to right a good story but often the best tract is simply to read lots of books, comics, stories, short or otherwise. Play games, see how the story progresses, how characters are introduced, how dialogue is written etc.) Also, try writing your own :) THe tricky part is avoid directly copying anything that comes before, but make no mistake chances are you'll probably subconsciously borrow from your favourite stories and that's more or less ok - Just make sure your version still comes across as fresh.
Gameplay comes into a thousand and one different categories. Obviously, don't make a FPS :p Aquaria takes the best elements from Castlevania/Metroid and Ecco the Dolphin and blends them expertly, and that's often where the best games shine. Take elements you loved from your favourite games and combine them, but don't go insane. If you *do* want to come up with something truely original you're in for a harder time (We're talking a "define your own genre" here) - My advice is to do what many games in the Indie field do: Go back to retro concepts that made gaming simple, fun and addictive and try your own hand at it. 2d PLatformers and Scrolling Shoot-em-ups are quite popular these days :D
If all else fails, go back even further and do what everyone's doing these days and remake Snake, Asteroids or Pong :P
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There's obviously a lot of high-quality Flash games around these days, but I have to say, after a decade of Clickteam products, I cannot get my head around Flash's scripting language. This is entirely my fault - as soon as anything that looks like Actual Code enters my perception my brain shuts down entirely.
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Flash is easier than it looks. You can learn it well enough in one our two month's practice. I started it with minimal knowledge in programming, and got quite fine within a year, then AS3 came out, and I have to start over again :)
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Flash is easier than it looks. You can learn it well enough in one our two month's practice. I started it with minimal knowledge in programming, and got quite fine within a year, then AS3 came out, and I have to start over again :)
Flash is a great technology, but when it comes into games - you won't create anything good with flash. Flash is nice to understand the basics of game cration - action script is quite intuitive but also well messed up so it takes some time for begginers to understand anything. I won't doubt there are lots of great productions made with flash, but there has to be a reminder, that flash was mainly created as an interactive web and animation technology.
Don't also waste the cash on good programming books - they are good, but to far expensive (as the writers would preasume, that everyone who read it will become a good game programmer/creator and earn a lot of cash), and the bad thing about them is that they teach you how to understand games in forms of clear, mathematic and intelectual way. The other thing is they are also very unclear in the ways of game crating and doesn't teach anything practical. I don't say books are needless at this point, but it's way much better to play different games and go deeper to understand what technics weere used to create them, than read philosophical treatises on how to create them.
The best way now to create a game is by starting with simple applications, like mmf or other clikcteam tool, or by starting to learn a programming language like C++ (the best one, nearly all games are written in it nowadays). It's damn hard, but nobody said game crating is only based on happy freelance creating. Game creation is tears, hours of time spent beside the screen and lots of sacrifices. It's hard to become an indie game creator - mostly because it's connected with working alone or in a small group of people so there's also a big need of other skills. Most of indie creators are the former computer scene creators - they are good graphicans, trackers, programmers with lot's of knowledge about different workstations and programs. Though, everybody has to start from somewhere. I believe the best way to create a game (if you started this thread it means you're in love with that - you were playing the games as far as you can remember and want to become on from them, show something from yourself to the world. You should know what games are and what the most successive games have) is to start with simple projects! Go and try make a pong remake with multimedia fusion. Try to understand the programs you will use to create games. Try to add something innovative. Most game developers have years of practice, creating different, various titles but all of them started from scratch. Try to raise a bit your drawing abilities - you will mostly need it, as the graphics are mostly 50% of a game. You will propably need also sound and music, but don't forget - the game engine is the most important part of it. Most of great games contain many innovations, have simple and intuitive controlling and intersting game story (yes, you have to be also a good writer). But for the God's sake - don't try to copy anything from modern games - they have mostly beatufiul art, graphics music and sound but lack a good storyline and this make's them flat. It's better to look at older titles - in days past, the computers had limited capabilities, games were created by small groyps of people and because he graphic and sound veren't that good, they mostly focused on storyline and ways of getting the player involved into the game world. As for the beggining, start from a simple project, write down everything you think about your project - storyline, background, characters, enemies, power-ups, important facts. And most important - never, ever give up your work. Most of games die in this stage. If you're through with that, you will have an opportunity...
Hope this helps, good luck with your projects! ;)
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...or by starting to learn a programming language like C++ (the best one, nearly all games are written in it nowadays)...
I would actually recommend against C++ as a first language. It's a tricky one to use right, and the performance gain over using a more friendly scripting language are probably going to be negligible for your first few programming projects. If you learn another one, most of the tricks are going to carry over fine, and you can figure out pointers and templates then.
If you're looking to learn a programming language, I'd suggest Python (http://www.python.org/); the extension PyGame (http://www.pygame.org/) seems to be fairly popular for making simple games. You could also learn some of the tricks by modding Aquaria with lua; I don't know of any specific game libraries designed around lua, but it's often embedded as a scripting language in games.
Don't think I dislike C++; it's my language of choice and I'm currently over 2000 lines into a project written in it. But it was my first language, and I didn't really understand how to use it properly until ~5 years later.
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C to C++ is a good jump, but since working with C# I've realised how incredibly chaotic C++ is :p
Reguards to another aspect of game programming, there's often a lot of maths/geometry involved for things like Movement/Collision Detection. Granted Clickteam hides all this away but if you're interested it's worth brushing up on your Vector Math (Metanet's N has some good tutorials bit they may be a tad advanced, failing that there's sure to be plenty of that on the web)
http://oos.moxiecode.com/ also links to some decent tutorials on tile based flash games if you know a little actionscript
http://www.clickteam.com/eng/tgf2.php For the Games Factory 2. Not too dissimilar to Torque's 2D Game Engine, but possibly a little easier to use (Never used Toque myself, but I'd recommend downloading as many demos of these things as you can and trying each out)
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I started with QBasic, text-only. My first graphic was a hardcoded smiley face (each pixel with its own PSET call) that you could move around with the arrow keys. I had tried to pick up C++ and DirectX since, but I wasn't quite ready for it yet. Since then, I've learned VB, Java, and C#. A year and a half ago I discovered XNA, which is what I'm using today. The first app I made with it was a boat race screensaver (a line of boats race around the screen). I've since learned a ton of what goes into a video game. XNA allows you to pass over some of the nitty-gritty details and get straight to the game without sacrificing too much capability. And it's great for sprite-based 2D.
XNA is C#-only (I believe). C++ is best performance-wise, but in my mind performance isn't a worry for newb indie devs like you and me, so C# is plenty good. C# trades performance for convenience (less coding) and increased stability (less user-errors on the dev's part). It's easier, but that doesn't mean it's a toy. Unless you're a mainstream game developer, the tradeoffs are small (aside from OS portability).
If you're looking to dive a little deeper than flash or Clickteam, but not straight into C++ and DX or GL, I'd highly recommend C# and XNA. Note, however, that XNA (and C# for that matter) is Windows-only. Nevertheless, I find that a small price to pay for such a great tool, especially for an amateur like myself. Anyway, good luck with your efforts.
wwarnick
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Well, I started making my own game about 8 or 9 months ago... The first thing you're going to want to do to get started is decide what game you're making. Each type of game requires different things, so it's best to know that first. Are you making a game like Aquaria, Breath of Fire or F-Zero? How ambitious are you willing to be? Do you have experience with this kind of thing already?
What are you good at? What do you enjoy?
Try to come up with a solid concept with a lot of details. Make yourself look like a pro. The more planning you have under your belt when you first get started, the less likely you'll get halfway through something before you realize it can't be done the way you're trying it.
Then you'll need to think about team members. Are you able to solo it? If not, what sort of resources do you need? Will you have to pay for them? Can you program, draw, make music? If not, who can you find to help you with those things and how much will it cost?
For me, I knew right away I would need a LOT of artwork, programming and music that I wasn't able to make myself. I picked up some extra hours at work so I could afford what I needed, then I started asking every person who seemed talented that I could. Be warned, it could take you DOZENS of tries before you pick up a full team you're happy with. It took me almost 7 months to get my team together. Just try and be patient and don't get discouraged if it's more difficult than you might have anticipated.
The creators of Aquaria were lucky they fit so well together and, between just the two of them, they could do everything they needed. That's rare and it's why games that come out as well as Aquaria are rare. My team is 7 people, including myself.
That's how you get started, I think. Decide what you want to do, figure out how to make it happen and then do everything in your power to get the ball rolling. The first few months are some of the hardest when you're starting out from scratch. ANTICIPATE that so you don't lose hope right at the beginning.
Patience is the name of the game here. Don't rush ANYTHING. One of the wisest things I've ever heard is "More speed, less haste." Remember that when you're getting started. Impatience will kill you ever time.
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Hi there!
I'm thinking of recreating that arcade feel of shoot-em-ups like Raiden. Is there an engine or program that I can find?
The best I can do for now is drawing. Is it enough, or are there any more I should learn?
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You can't make a dang game just by drawing! There's plenty of sound advice in this thread already, but I'll reiterate my personal preference for Clickteam's stuff, which is intuitive, easy to get into, and pretty much perfect for arcade shooters if you just wanna make a fun little game without learning an asston of code.
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I hate to barge in butttttttttttttttttttttt.... I'm interested in making a mmorpg similar to runescape me and about 5 or 6 of my friends have been working on storylines and art the last few months but none of us can script and i need a nice program that'll do it for me because....well frankly i don't have the time/patients to learn to use c++. So can you help me out any at all?
:(
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I hate to barge in butttttttttttttttttttttt.... I'm interested in making a mmorpg similar to runescape me and about 5 or 6 of my friends have been working on storylines and art the last few months but none of us can script and i need a nice program that'll do it for me because....well frankly i don't have the time/patients to learn to use c++. So can you help me out any at all?
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My first tip: Don't make an MMORPG.
It'd be way better for you and your friends to do something you can finish in say a few months, rather than a few years. (if even) Especially if you don't want to learn programming.
FYI Its become kind of a running joke on game development forums to see people coming in wanting to make an MMORPG and generally having no idea how to do it. Here's an example of such a thread (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=121.0).
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*wipes spit of face*
Try making another awesome game, and I wonder why you come here in all with a 3D MMORPG while this is a 2d game, not online, not massive multiplayer and has a total of NOTHING to do with Aquaria.
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Well I guess its because we're independent developers and we've been there in a sense.
I tried to make a console style RPG for the longest time. Even that takes an incredible amount of time and dedication. I never managed to finish making it. So imagine how much more work it would be to do an MMORPG.
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You should really focus more on the tools (guides, tutorials, references, real world examples, development environments, libraries, debuggers, etc.) rather than knowing the language. There's a reason why programmers have instruction books for their programming languages. They're really not just there for decoration or for sentimental value.
For kicks, this is the progression I learned languages in:
HyperTalk (and essentially AppleScript) • BASIC (many varities) • Visual Basic • Java • C++ • C • Perl • PHP
Yeah, I grew up on HyperCard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard). It was great. You could actually make some decent stack-based games. Hell, MYST was made in HyperCard!
If you can't tell, I love scripting languages. They are much win. (But, for making games, they are much fail.) Yeah, I should learn some Python. I'm so lazy. I guess that's next for me.
C and C++ are probably the best to know from a knowledge standpoint, as people have said before me, but ...
When creating games, I believe it's actually less about the languages you know and use and more about applying the tools for creating your work. What libraries do I need? What engine am I going to have? And, how do I use them? These are probably things best thought about even before choosing a language. And in some cases you may be programming in multiple languages, too.