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Have You Ever Tried To Make A Game? (whether Successful or Not)

765 views 30 replies 12 participants last post by  Kiriel 7 
#1 ·
As the title says...have you?

I'm going to be learning programming later this year with the intention to try to make a few bad games (I'm a realist...they won't be great).

If you have tried to, whether successful or not, what were they about?
 
#2 ·
Not a full game, only a total conversion mod for me. I made all the maps, scripted all the events and AI, but used pre-made models and effects and textures. I used Amnesia's engine and toolkit, quite convenient overall though it's always interesting to learn the limitations of certain game engines. So, as you can imagine, it was a horror mod, and I actually made it for a school project so I'm not particularly proud of it. The story does actually branch out in two different paths though, based on player choice, which I've never seen in another mod for this game.

It's not really hard as long as you devote time into it. You should also use an engine that's rather friendly to newcomers, like CryEngine or Unreal Engine or Unity. These engines all have forums and plenty of guides. These SDKs tend to come with a selection of objects, textures, and models, in case you don't have 2D and 3D artists at your disposal.
 
#3 ·
Sounds interesting, I have Amnesia in my library waiting to be played.

I bought the GameInstitute programming course, so I'll have a look at that later in the year when I (hopefully) have some time on my hands.

Making a game would be a dream, but even a mod would be a fantastic achievement.
 
#4 ·
I never found programming courses to be really useful. Free online tutorials (specific ones for the engine/language I'm working with) along with trial and error are what I recommend. But I hope that comes in handy for you.
 
#5 ·
About 2 years ago I downloaded the Crysis 2 SDK and setup cell soldiers wandering a large area with cargo containers. This section would come after traveling a jungle area at night like in the original crysis and took place on an Island with an active smoking volcano. I was gonna have a river area but then got bored and tired. But I used the preexisting assets, setup snipers on cliffs, set 1-2 AI paths and ammo caches and grass and trees. Also I set the Time of Day to be more realistic, as in really dark nights and a not oversized moon. (I spent too much time perfecting my time of day and moon and stars and colors for sunsets/sunrise.)

Not sure if I still have that thing in cryengine. But yeah that was the extent of my level design.

Oh I also took blue prints of a how I wanted to build my future house on a lot, used Google sketchup but had to use the 3.5 Cryengine SDK (for some reason you couldn't import anymore in further builds). Anyway, I imported my future 3d house into cryengine, scaled it and started shooting stuff from within and also got to see how it would look from a first person view. No textures tho.

Sorry if this is really off topic. I just wanted to share.
 
#6 ·
Yes, and like you implied, making anything half decent takes a TON of time, effort and skill.

I started with Crysis 1 modding, which essentially got me started in the whole 'game dev' thing. After working with that (a few maps) as well as dramatically improving my skills in asset creation (total trash to somewhat decent) I managed to get myself a job on a small team doing some environment simulation stuff (in Unity 3D - terrible choice), and that was great for about 2 years (left due to better/current job). During that time, I worked on my own stuff in CryEngine EaaS, which really improved my portfolio and skills (and helped me get to where I am now).

Depending on where your skillset is now (either in programming or asset creation), I'd recommend either Unity 3D (if you're very new) or CryEngine (either freeSDK or the paid EaaS). Unity is great due to its ease of use - scripting is easy, getting assets in is even easier, and overall, getting a working game won't take very long (there's TONS of tutorials). However, you won't get amazing results (at least until Unity 5 is released). The rendering engine is massively outdated, and the engine on a whole relies extremely heavily on pre-baked data (no other engine does this).

CryEngine is definitely harder to use, but getting great looking results isn't an unrealistic dream. It can take a massive beating (5m+ poly, 100s of lights w/ shadows, still 50+ fps on my rig), which is great if you're not targeting low end (Or just making screenshots / art). However, for anyone new to 3D work, the asset importer will be a massive headache (cryptic errors), and in general, it sets the bar exceedingly high for assets (most 'new' users quit due to this).

Programming is also a lot more challenging than in Unity. While CE has a flowgraph system, it's not useful for lower-level stuff (do not make gameplay systems with it). To do anything well, you'll need to dive into the programming manual, deal with VS and C++ (Java, C# are not supported), and if you're working on a proper stand-alone game, even .dll compilation.

However, even with all those requirements, it's still a great engine - I've tried switching (Unity 3D, Unreal), and nothing else really has the raw power that CE has. With enough skill and effort, you can quite literally accomplish anything.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by boredgunner View Post

I never found programming courses to be really useful. Free online tutorials (specific ones for the engine/language I'm working with) along with trial and error are what I recommend. But I hope that comes in handy for you.
I'm kind of similar; I used various online resources to learn how to produce music, but I just thought that in this instance some structured learning may help me make the most of my limited time, you know?

Can you recommend any free resources to add to my favorites, though? That would be really useful
smile.gif
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnSantina View Post

I'm kind of similar; I used various online resources to learn how to produce music, but I just thought that in this instance some structured learning may help me make the most of my limited time, you know?

Can you recommend any free resources to add to my favorites, though? That would be really useful
smile.gif
Depends on the engine and languages you'll be working with. For CryEngine 2 I used this, along with Crymod (now Crydev) forums. Here's a newer one for CryEngine 3. Unity's website has all that you need, and Unreal Engine has lots of help:

https://www.unrealengine.com/resources

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Videos/index.html

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boinz View Post

About 2 years ago I downloaded the Crysis 2 SDK and setup cell soldiers wandering a large area with cargo containers. This section would come after traveling a jungle area at night like in the original crysis and took place on an Island with an active smoking volcano. I was gonna have a river area but then got bored and tired. But I used the preexisting assets, setup snipers on cliffs, set 1-2 AI paths and ammo caches and grass and trees. Also I set the Time of Day to be more realistic, as in really dark nights and a not oversized moon. (I spent too much time perfecting my time of day and moon and stars and colors for sunsets/sunrise.)

Not sure if I still have that thing in cryengine. But yeah that was the extent of my level design.

Oh I also took blue prints of a how I wanted to build my future house on a lot, used Google sketchup but had to use the 3.5 Cryengine SDK (for some reason you couldn't import anymore in further builds). Anyway, I imported my future 3d house into cryengine, scaled it and started shooting stuff from within and also got to see how it would look from a first person view. No textures tho.

Sorry if this is really off topic. I just wanted to share.
These sound really awesome.

Shooting stuff up in your dream home also sounds cool as heck.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by doomlord52 View Post

Depending on where your skillset is now (either in programming or asset creation), I'd recommend either Unity 3D (if you're very new) or CryEngine (either freeSDK or the paid EaaS). Unity is great due to its ease of use - scripting is easy, getting assets in is even easier, and overall, getting a working game won't take very long (there's TONS of tutorials). However, you won't get amazing results (at least until Unity 5 is released). The rendering engine is massively outdated, and the engine on a whole relies extremely heavily on pre-baked data (no other engine does this).
Thank you for your reply.

If I learned Unity 3D could I transition to other options? I believe so, but...just checking. Yes, I'm that stupid.

If so, it might be a good starting point.

Thanks for your help.
 
#13 ·
I've made quite a few games. Started out making your standard console based adventure / rpg game, then moved on to a few browser and flashed based games, and have started on several 2D side scrolling games but never finished them. Start messing with a 3D game once but never got further than basic character model, movements and a plain flat world to walk about in.

If I were to ever get enough time to work on them again I probably would. And I've thought about contributing to some of the open source games already out but finding one I'm actually interested in that has a good team in place already isn't exactly easy.
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnSantina View Post

Thank you for your reply.

If I learned Unity 3D could I transition to other options? I believe so, but...just checking. Yes, I'm that stupid.

If so, it might be a good starting point.

Thanks for your help.
Yes, but a lot of the stuff you'll do in Unity won't really make sense in other engines like CE. For example, Unity works via "projects" which require a database of all assets to work. That database is automatically created, but can take a long time and can cause a lot of problems later on - this type of system doesn't exist in any other engine. Similarly, Unity requires a lot of 'baking' (pre-computing) to work at its best. For example, shadows can be baked to increase performance and quality, and occlusion MUST be baked to work at all. Engines like CryEngine don't even offer this functionality, because it can all be done in real-time (and often in higher quality).

Other than that, there's a lot of similarities, and a lot of the skills you learn in Unity will transfer over to other engines like CE. Like I said before; it's a good starting point, but it's not an engine you want to spend all your time working on.
 
#15 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shrak View Post

If I were to ever get enough time to work on them again I probably would. And I've thought about contributing to some of the open source games already out but finding one I'm actually interested in that has a good team in place already isn't exactly easy.
Well, if you find one and need a musician/sound designer for some original sounds, I'd be willing to waive all fees if it is a good project.
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by doomlord52 View Post

Yes, but a lot of the stuff you'll do in Unity won't really make sense in other engines like CE. For example, Unity works via "projects" which require a database of all assets to work. That database is automatically created, but can take a long time and can cause a lot of problems later on - this type of system doesn't exist in any other engine. Similarly, Unity requires a lot of 'baking' (pre-computing) to work at its best. For example, shadows can be baked to increase performance and quality, and occlusion MUST be baked to work at all. Engines like CryEngine don't even offer this functionality, because it can all be done in real-time (and often in higher quality).

Other than that, there's a lot of similarities, and a lot of the skills you learn in Unity will transfer over to other engines like CE. Like I said before; it's a good starting point, but it's not an engine you want to spend all your time working on.
Thank you for your help, very useful. I have bookmarked this thread so I will come back to it and evaluate my options.

I am a realist and know that I'll be making old games like Pong for a long while if I decide to go down the raw programming route (and very bad Pong clones, at that!), but it is something I am very interested in.

I taught myself how to program websites with HTML (which is almost a dead language for web design now it seems
frown.gif
sad times!) and also how to make music, so I know I am capable. If only there was an extra day in the week to give me the opportunity, eh??
 
#17 ·
I have contributed to a few school game projects, both of them used the Unity Engine. The first project was (a Lemmings-clone) also released for Android as well, but it never got finished as the course ended. The second game was also ported for Unreal Engine. I didn't provide any code for these games, I only created testing documents. I kind of hate programming, so in future I don't believe I would participate to any game project unless it's a school project.
 
#18 ·
I made a custom map in warcraft 3. A TD.
I also made tetris in XNA.

Thats about it. I want to make more but im so lazy at home.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnSantina View Post

Thank you for your help, very useful. I have bookmarked this thread so I will come back to it and evaluate my options.

I am a realist and know that I'll be making old games like Pong for a long while if I decide to go down the raw programming route (and very bad Pong clones, at that!), but it is something I am very interested in.

I taught myself how to program websites with HTML (which is almost a dead language for web design now it seems
frown.gif
sad times!) and also how to make music, so I know I am capable. If only there was an extra day in the week to give me the opportunity, eh??
HTML is not dead! It's just not used on it's own anymore. But nearly every framework for web development uses HTML in some way. Here is the default homepage for a ASP.NET project created in Visual Studio for example:

Code:

Code:
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Home Page";
}

[B][SIZE=15]ASP.NET[/SIZE][/B]

ASP.NET is a free web framework for building great Web sites and Web applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

[URL=http://asp.net]Learn more »[/URL]

[B][SIZE=14]Getting started[/SIZE][/B]

            ASP.NET MVC gives you a powerful, patterns-based way to build dynamic websites that
            enables a clean separation of concerns and gives you full control over markup
            for enjoyable, agile development.

[URL=http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=301865]Learn more »[/URL]

[B][SIZE=14]Get more libraries[/SIZE][/B]

NuGet is a free Visual Studio extension that makes it easy to add, remove, and update libraries and tools in Visual Studio projects.

[URL=http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=301866]Learn more »[/URL]

[B][SIZE=14]Web Hosting[/SIZE][/B]

You can easily find a web hosting company that offers the right mix of features and price for your applications.

[URL=http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=301867]Learn more »[/URL]
 
#19 ·
You just made my day lol. My friend is doing a university web development course and he has basically said CSS> HTML and that HTML is dead, so everything I've learned is basically mush.

He did say I could transition over to CSS, but I have enough on my plate at the moment.

Glad to see it still has its uses!
smile.gif
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnSantina View Post

You just made my day lol. My friend is doing a university web development course and he has basically said CSS> HTML and that HTML is dead, so everything I've learned is basically mush.

He did say I could transition over to CSS, but I have enough on my plate at the moment.

Glad to see it still has its uses!
smile.gif
HTML and CSS are nearly always used in combination.
HTML is used for the markup and CSS is used for the layout.
Maybe he was talking about layout in HTML. You can do both markup and layout in HTML but it's almost never done anymore because CSS is much better for layout.
 
#21 ·
30 years ago in high school computer science class I played a bit of a practical joke on some classmates in the grade above me.
It was on the apple 2E so it was very rudimentary programming , but I managed to make a splash screen that looked very impressive for it's time. It consisted of a submarine and some ships moving across the screen with torpedoes coming out of the sub and blowing up the ships as they crossed the horizon. After the splash screen I had some bogus settings screens pop up , the last of which was " In order to determine the difficulty level to set the game at, please enter your I.Q. After the player entered the number, I had it stall for a bit and then display this message " This simulation has determined that you aren't smart enough to play this game".

I had my classmates brag it up to the guys in the class above me , saying it was a lot of fun to play and that they should give it a try . Usually the teacher would give us about 10 minutes at the end of class to "experiment" etc. so that would be their chance.

In the days that followed I was pestered quite often by the upperclassmen asking questions about just how to get the game to work, to which I would shrug off.
wink.gif
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by cssorkinman View Post

30 years ago in high school computer science class I played a bit of a practical joke on some classmates in the grade above me.
It was on the apple 2E so it was very rudimentary programming , but I managed to make a splash screen that looked very impressive for it's time. It consisted of a submarine and some ships moving across the screen with torpedoes coming out of the sub and blowing up the ships as they crossed the horizon. After the splash screen I had some bogus settings screens pop up , the last of which was " In order to determine the difficulty level to set the game at, please enter your I.Q. After the player entered the number, I had it stall for a bit and then display this message " This simulation has determined that you aren't smart enough to play this game".

I had my classmates brag it up to the guys in the class above me , saying it was a lot of fun to play and that they should give it a try . Usually the teacher would give us about 10 minutes at the end of class to "experiment" etc. so that would be their chance.

In the days that followed I was pestered quite often by the upperclassmen asking questions about just how to get the game to work, to which I would shrug off.
wink.gif
That's an awesome memory
smile.gif


Do you still make games or mods or anything?
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnSantina View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by cssorkinman View Post

30 years ago in high school computer science class I played a bit of a practical joke on some classmates in the grade above me.
It was on the apple 2E so it was very rudimentary programming , but I managed to make a splash screen that looked very impressive for it's time. It consisted of a submarine and some ships moving across the screen with torpedoes coming out of the sub and blowing up the ships as they crossed the horizon. After the splash screen I had some bogus settings screens pop up , the last of which was " In order to determine the difficulty level to set the game at, please enter your I.Q. After the player entered the number, I had it stall for a bit and then display this message " This simulation has determined that you aren't smart enough to play this game".

I had my classmates brag it up to the guys in the class above me , saying it was a lot of fun to play and that they should give it a try . Usually the teacher would give us about 10 minutes at the end of class to "experiment" etc. so that would be their chance.

In the days that followed I was pestered quite often by the upperclassmen asking questions about just how to get the game to work, to which I would shrug off.
wink.gif
That's an awesome memory
smile.gif


Do you still make games or mods or anything?
I still grin about it , it's true.

I had a couple other projects, but to be honest , the shenanigan listed above is the only one I remember.
smile.gif
 
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