Trying to improve my drawing and learn how to develop games. Any advice?

[Glace]

I once bought and played Aquaria, but I lost the key with an old email address back when my parents used AOL. Still, during the time that I played the game, I liked the story and gameplay a lot, but one of the things I remember the most about the game, besides it's music, is the art style and aesthetics of the game. It gave a nice feeling to the game, a kind of nice "air", I guess some would say.

Now, I've recently gotten excited about an idea for a 2D side-scrolling sandbox game that I want to make. A game that would have art style and aesthetics similar to Aquaria and Wakfu, survival aspect, alchemy, enchanting, and a unique crafting system kind of like Minecraft, building, exploration and character creation like Terraria, machines, vehicles, combat, terrain style, object physics and water physics like Clonk Rage and OpenClonk, and an option for block physics like K.A.G, that is, buildings may require support at certain parts to keep them from collapsing, which can make fort wars rather fun and interesting. But the block physics aren't necessary, and I could just leave that chaotic fun up to the game K.A.G. itself. My one game can't have it all.

I originally planned on possibly being the one who would design everything in the game and also design the levels and entities, and have someone else program the engine for the game, unless there's already a game engine for 2D games that supports things like destroyable terrain that drop dirt particles and have flowing sand, liquid physics (water, lava, potion liquids, oil, etc.), wind physics, object physics, ragdoll physics, and block physics. But recently, I've been getting myself in the mindset to prepare myself for having to learn some hard coding for the sake of making this game, and since 2D side-scrolling games will usually mostly require Algebra at the most, or at least that's what someone on the Minecraft forums told me, I'm willing to learn how to program, especially when I go to college, if college is necessary for it, since I'm 17 right now.

You see, the main reason I wanted to learn how to draw and be the artist for the game in the first place was the fact that drawing and painting seem to be fun and unique. That, and the fact that I don't have confidence in my math skills, though I think I can improve my algebra greatly for something like this, so my mind has changed a bit. Another reason why I want to be the artist and modeler for the game is to make sure the character and world and object style of the game would remain consistent to how I want the game to look, and while I have no doubt that both coding and art are hard and that it will possibly take several years to get good enough at either of the two to make this game come true, from what bit I've heard and seen about coding, it SEEMS complex, boring, and not really up my alley.

Still, I think I can at least try coding once or twice. I think part of the problem is that I don't even know what coding is like, nor do I know what it takes to be a good coder or a good artist. I don't even know if I should use a combination of computer and paper, or use the computer only.

Someone told me that some people use a sort of vector art approach: That is, they draw the outlines for characters, machines, buildings and so forth, and then use a scanner to put the outlines on a computer, and then color and shade it all in on the computer.  As someone who stopped drawing half way through his childhood, I don't have a lot of drawing experience. I don't expect everything I draw to look really even and professional, especially since I haven't been practicing until recently, but every time I try to draw the shape for the gold helmet that will, hopefully when finished, look like a sort of norse-style helmet with a similar style to a Foggernaut's head from Wakfu, or in a sort of pill-shape, it's like I keep getting the proportions wrong or something. Either the helmet is too wide, too high, too short, and so on. However, I did have some success with drawing a kind of full-helmet like the Mecha Knight head from Spiral Knights.

Now, it's not like I want the game to look TOO fine, either. I want to keep the quality low enough to where it still kind of feels like a game and doesn't require TOO much fine drawing. I'm not really doing this for the art, though I do want to make sure it's beautiful. If I can even get at least HALF as good as Derek Yu or whoever draws for Wakfu, that would be IDEAL for my game!

I kind of prefer the idea of drawing on the computer and only on the computer, though hand drawing feels more natural and less cold. Mainly because if I use a computer software for drawing, a lot of tools will already be there for me to use, not that I mind running up to an art store to get supplies. That is, when I get my driver's license. And although my drawing is horribly inaccurate with a mouse, there are different little tools that let me quickly make different shapes and lines, though they require a bit of accuracy as well.

Do most drawings for great sprites and models look childish and amateurish before shading is added? Is there some trick I'm missing, or do I just got to keep at it? What does anyone recommend? Vector art method, pure PC, or some other style I don't know yet? Is there already a game engine that supports several types of physics? Maybe at least a few? If not, what is it like to code an engine? Does anyone think coding is for me? Would taking software engineering in college help with game coding?


Whoa! I 'm sorry if all that text and hammer of questions at the end isn't appreciated. I can try to clean it up, but it's a bit difficult to ask questions in proper order when things keep popping up in my mind and so-forth.

[False.Genesis]

Huh, yours is a difficult post to reply. Many, many things at once and I'll probably miss a ton.

(Disclaimer: I am 24, doing some game coding here and there, but just for fun and not for a living. I suck at art so I hope someone else will answer that part.)

From what I have seen you'll be lost trying to do everything yourself. Unless you're a really awesome  genius, or you have *lots* of time, or your game idea is reasonably small, then this should work out. But usually at least 2-3 people are required to make something cool: One does music, one graphics, and one the coding.

But don't start out too big. Sure you have great ideas and all that, but do something simple first, to learn. I mean really simple, even if it isn't fun at first.

Did you write any code so far? From the way you wrote your post I assume you did not, but please correct me if I'm wrong.


From the perspective of a coder, let me tell you the following:

Yes, for game coding you need math. Lots of it, and the more you know, the better. Trigonometry is essential, and you should know vectors, matrices, and all this stuff. If you don't or you forgot, not a problem, you can look it up easily and with a bit of intuition it's not that hard to learn. For 3D, things get more complicated but I can't tell you much about this because I've stayed with 2D so far.
College is not necessary to learn to program, actually it's impossible to learn coding in college, you can only learn it yourself. But college might be really helpful to get into coding. You can get advice and pointers and whatnot, but in the end it's you who writes something and figures out techniques to solve problems programmatically. This is what matters even more than math: You want to do something specific, and you need to figure out how to do it. Getting this 'eye' for how to map problems to code is (from my experience) very difficult for beginners.

No, unless a problem is really difficult and picturing it with lines, circles, etc, helps understanding it, you will not need paper to code.
Coding is like writing a text in a weird alien lanaguage that does not have any context, and everything is too logical to understand easily. When you are done writing a few lines they will usually not work.

Whether coding is boring or not depends. I personally find it very enjoyable unless something doesn't work and then still doesn't work after trying to fix it for 4 hours. But in general it depends on the type of person you are; so you need to find this out for yourself.

Then, game coding is not equal to game coding. It really depends whether you use a pre-made package/engine/whatever where you can throw something together with little effort and after a few hours you have a working prototype, or if you decide to do things the hard way and handle sound, input, everything yourself and also pump every single pixel to the screen yourself.
You really need to try and figure out what fits best for you, but I definitely recommend starting with something easy where the gruntwork was done by others for you.

Lastly, don't give up early. If you have too many great ideas you might start project after project and finish nothing in the end. Stay focused, don't aim for perfection because it's impossible to achieve that, and listen to feedback/advice/whatever from others. Find out early whether your game prototype works and is fun, or if it's not worth to continue and move on with another idea.


Again, take everything I say with a grain of salt. I might be wrong. It's a highly subjective topic.


[Side note: If you lost your Aquaria key but still have the installer, check out the links in my sig to get it working again.]

[Glace]

Lol, I didn't think I would need paper for coding. I meant for drawing sprites and models for the game.

While I now feel a bit less concerned about coding math-wise, it still sounds like a boring and complex slog. Even though it's essential in making games what they are. I'd rather just do the part of making 2D models and textures for things and, if it doesn't involve coding, designing levels, designing the GUI, as well as composing music and creating, finding, and using sound effects.

Also, I got a bit confused when you said "game coding is not equal to game coding". I assume you mean game coding is not the same as game design? Am I getting the terminology confused? Either way, I'd prefer a game engine that's already made and that lets me throw in textures, sprites, models and other custom things, if there is an engine out there that supports that.

Also, just to make sure, and I can easily google this so don't worry about answering it if you can't, what are the different roles in designing a 2D game like this? I know there has to be someone who can write the story and dialogue, but this game isn't gonna have any real story. It might have a bit of myth or maybe a hint at some of the lore of another game I might make, but besides NPCs saying some basic things, there won't be any dialogue nor any story, so having a writer on board won't be necessary. If it is, I can write.