How to create a basic game?

[Varine]

You have provided me a great excuse to not give a shit about my Russian homework for a bit, as I really do not want to do it for some reason.

My team (and myself) are still amazed by Minecraft's success. We CANNOT figure out why anyone is paying for that stupid thing, but apparently there is a large market for even that insulting mass of simulated autism. I can't even imagine releasing something that looked like that. Even at alpha, my game's can't be as bad as I find Minecraft to be (or it wouldn't be alpha). I honestly do believe that the guy who made Minecraft took a few weeks off work and bought Java for Idiots and is now making fun of everyone. And yes, I am slightly mad I didn't do it first, however in my defense I've been preoccupied developing actual applications, and probably would have too much pride to put my name on something like that anyway. Now that we're talking about, I'm tempted to take Minecraft, remake it this summer with better graphics and improved functionality (as if it would be hard....), and release it for free to make my point even more solidified. I'll call it Cavecraft. Or DugDig.

There are various engines that have web deployment capabilities if that's how you want to do it. The only two I know of are ShiVa and Unity, as that's not a feature I look for or care about. But really you could do pretty much everything you said with almost any engine (as you can with most games).

I would recommend looking into this a lot more. Not meaning any offense, but with the lack of basic knowledge on how things, such as game engines, work, you will likely not get very far and you won't get there very fast. Pretty much every game is built using an engine. It's basically the tools required to build the game. The World Editor for Warcraft or the Galaxy Editor for Starcraft are, in a sense, game engines that compile something that runs using Warcraft or Starcraft respectively. Only they compile standalone products. Level editors, scripting, compiling, etc, are typically done with a game engine. They take years of work (the one we're working on isn't expected to be remotely done for years - I'll likely be done with my undergrads, which is like three or fours years, and possibly nearing completion with my graduate work, which is like six years). Designing game engines are where knowing a lot of math comes in handy.

There isn't a 'step by step' guide that you're going to find to make an actual game. There are examples, but most of the games that you'll find in tutorials won't sell for anything - otherwise someone already would have done that. They're usually small projects designed around something specific for the lesson or whatever. You're probably going to have to do some programming - most engines will be built with CPP. A couple are built with Java, but those are going to run slower and Java blows (unless you don't know CPP, in which case you're probably not a very good programmer anyway). Some older ones are written with C (Quake III was I think, it's ridiculous). Most of the time they'll have a proprietary language (like Warcraft had JASS) that you'll use for most of the game programming, but if you modify the source chances are you will need to be really good with CPP or you will probably get totally lost in a few minutes and have no idea what you're even looking for.

You will also need a modeler - even if those models amount to 12 tri cubes, you'll need someone to make them and deal with the UVW's and textures. Blender is open source, there are a couple of others that are free to use but it's unlikely they're worth the effort. Professional tools like 3DS Max/Maya are ~$3500. Or someone to make sprites if it's 2D.

3DBuzz has some tutorials on basic programming and modeling. There are plenty of other references as well - CGsociety is a fairly large forum for CG work. There are a lot of forums for programming, and game design in general I'd imagine, to ask questions. This isn't really the best place for help with game design.

 

[BANANAMAN]

Think of your skills in Game development this way as a lvl 1 warrior or something similar. You know several basic programing concepts for your given language along with some basic math skills (Math is needed for games such as pong).

Let's say you know basic C concepts such as if else and switch statements along with basic math skills you can make pong in basic C. To advance to higher type games such as 3D pong you'll have to level up your skills.

Also you will need time. And lots of it.

 

[Lyzet]

You have provided me a great excuse to not give a shit about my Russian homework for a bit, as I really do not want to do it for some reason.

My team (and myself) are still amazed by Minecraft's success. We CANNOT figure out why anyone is paying for that stupid thing, but apparently there is a large market for even that insulting mass of simulated autism. I can't even imagine releasing something that looked like that. Even at alpha, my game's can't be as bad as I find Minecraft to be (or it wouldn't be alpha). I honestly do believe that the guy who made Minecraft took a few weeks off work and bought Java for Idiots and is now making fun of everyone. And yes, I am slightly mad I didn't do it first, however in my defense I've been preoccupied developing actual applications, and probably would have too much pride to put my name on something like that anyway. Now that we're talking about, I'm tempted to take Minecraft, remake it this summer with better graphics and improved functionality (as if it would be hard....), and release it for free to make my point even more solidified. I'll call it Cavecraft. Or DugDig.

There are various engines that have web deployment capabilities if that's how you want to do it. The only two I know of are ShiVa and Unity, as that's not a feature I look for or care about. But really you could do pretty much everything you said with almost any engine (as you can with most games).

I would recommend looking into this a lot more. Not meaning any offense, but with the lack of basic knowledge on how things, such as game engines, work, you will likely not get very far and you won't get there very fast. Pretty much every game is built using an engine. It's basically the tools required to build the game. The World Editor for Warcraft or the Galaxy Editor for Starcraft are, in a sense, game engines that compile something that runs using Warcraft or Starcraft respectively. Only they compile standalone products. Level editors, scripting, compiling, etc, are typically done with a game engine. They take years of work (the one we're working on isn't expected to be remotely done for years - I'll likely be done with my undergrads, which is like three or fours years, and possibly nearing completion with my graduate work, which is like six years). Designing game engines are where knowing a lot of math comes in handy.

There isn't a 'step by step' guide that you're going to find to make an actual game. There are examples, but most of the games that you'll find in tutorials won't sell for anything - otherwise someone already would have done that. They're usually small projects designed around something specific for the lesson or whatever. You're probably going to have to do some programming - most engines will be built with CPP. A couple are built with Java, but those are going to run slower and Java blows (unless you don't know CPP, in which case you're probably not a very good programmer anyway). Some older ones are written with C (Quake III was I think, it's ridiculous). Most of the time they'll have a proprietary language (like Warcraft had JASS) that you'll use for most of the game programming, but if you modify the source chances are you will need to be really good with CPP or you will probably get totally lost in a few minutes and have no idea what you're even looking for.

You will also need a modeler - even if those models amount to 12 tri cubes, you'll need someone to make them and deal with the UVW's and textures. Blender is open source, there are a couple of others that are free to use but it's unlikely they're worth the effort. Professional tools like 3DS Max/Maya are ~$3500. Or someone to make sprites if it's 2D.

3DBuzz has some tutorials on basic programming and modeling. There are plenty of other references as well - CGsociety is a fairly large forum for CG work. There are a lot of forums for programming, and game design in general I'd imagine, to ask questions. This isn't really the best place for help with game design.

Wow, thanks

I believe the reason that minecraft became porpular, is for several reasons.

1st he released it for free, (The classic version) and people got a hang of building and being able to craft whatever you want.
Then he updated it, and released it for a fee, and at this time people allready knew the game.

2nd the game has its charme of its graphics, i have no idea why anyone would play with those graphics (Seriously, gives me headache) but obviously it has hooked alot of people.
It is a game that is basicly perfect to play in school hours, for some time killing, or just for the lulz.
The multiplayer offers alot of flexibility for 2 friends to create the world of their dreams.


Allthough, i must admit after i went half trough your post, i got a bit confused, since you do mention a couple of words im not exactly clear about.
So, if i have an engine, i dont need much knowledge to create a game? or did i understand something wrong?

And wich free/cheap engine is best for some kind of Roleplaying game, with leveling and stuff?

Again, thanks for taking your time to explain me this, i appriciate it.

Oh and every piece of knowledge you give me, you are a part of the evolution of my brain.

(Sounds wierd? yeah)

Was a poor try at making you feel better for helping me

 

[Slapshot136]

And wich free/cheap engine is best for some kind of Roleplaying game, with leveling and stuff?

the engines are to help you with 3-d environments and physics, you would do all of the leveling/stuff by yourself

 

[Varine]

Well it's still not 'easy' with an engine, but it's a significantly different ballgame when you're doing everything via programming. You need to be aware of what you're doing, which gets easier once you start to understand the jargon, but really you don't need to fully understand it. I'm having trouble thinking of the appropriate words, but with an engine, basically it takes care of a lot of the work for you.

For instance, in the game we're working on, I do very little work on it in reality as I'm busy with the engine and some other things. No one else on the team probably understands things like gravity, wind, 6DOF trajectories, etc. I mean they understand the basic concept of what they are, like I'm sure you know what gravity is, but it's unlikely that they know how to describe that mathematically. They have no need to. They are all somewhat good at math, you'll need to know basic Algebra and Geometry, and of course anything you don't know you can look up fairly easily, ask questions on the forums somewhere, etc. They don't need to know that on Earth, the gravitational forces cause objects to accelerate at 9.80665 meters a second and could absolutely not care less about the equations I've written based on that for gravitational systems. You'll have a lot harder time looking math like this up. I mean you can look up everything about it, but unless you understand the symbols in it (which no one but math majors do because they try to make mathematics like an incredibly elite club and if you don't understand the secret language you're not gonna get it. Then they define those symbols with different symbols). It makes no difference to them how the rendering engine works or how the format that I use for models and texture maps works, how the data is saved. All that matters to anyone else on the team is the simple fact that it works. Likewise, these are things that have absolutely no effect on you. All you need to know how to do is change the number in the box that says 'Gravity' to make things fall faster and be pulled to the ground with more force (well more than that, but I'm exaggerating to make a point - it takes more effort, you'll have to think a lot. You seem fairly smart, so I'm sure you got it). You've got things like "Do this if this key is held down." Do you care that you're basically typing in thousands of W's to walk forward? Probably not. Likewise, you tell a character to move say fifty feet forward and pick something up. Do you really want to figure out how to make it simulate three dimensions so that when the character walks away, it appears to get smaller on the screen? Probably not, you want a character to walk forward and pick something up, not spend a few thousand hours working on getting things like this to work. This is why the really goods ones sell for upwards of a quarter million dollars. I'm not even that good at this comparatively, and it literally takes about ten seconds for someone to go from being kind of excited to hear me talk about what I do, for their face to turn to a look of absolute confusion and possibly a sudden, passionate hatred for me if they don't particularly like being confused. From time to time people will just walk away.

Game engines are literally what they say: they're engines, platforms, for you to build a game on. What's left is filling in the blanks with what you want, basically. You will need to think logically, and work at it because of course something is going to wrong. Say you follow a tutorial to build an inventory, and then change a few things slightly as you go, but forget about something else. You're going to need to be look at something, and understand what's happening to an extent, but not necessarily all of it. When you play around with it, you will likely start to understand how to manipulate it a little bit, make it work for what you want, but you likely won't be able to remake that again without help.

I would recommend that you use something like UDK (udk.com), which is free to use until you publish something commercially, at which point it's a hundred dollar license and royalties after you make an initial 50 grand (if your game is being released for free or not being released at all, the engine is free to use). There are forums, a lot of support, the Unreal engine has insane amounts of documentation on it, really there is pretty much everything you need. The engine has a standard FPS template applied to it, but that can be changed/modified fairly easily. 3DBuzz has some video tutorials on it, there are a ton of them on YouTube, they're everywhere. We're currently using UDK, although I want to use C4 (I was outvoted on that the one time we took a vote. Typically everyone seems to just do what I say, with exception of that). It has a fairly large community as well, with people new to the scene coming in all the time. It also has Kismet, which is like a GUI programming thing kinda that is pretty easy to use, and uses UnrealScript for programming, which is unfortunately fairly similar to Java (I just really hate Java. It's not that bad of a language, although the API can go to hell, but it seems totally useless to me and it has a bunch of sycophantic fanboys who jump to it's defense way too aggressively. I would only use it for prototyping because it's too slow, but then I just use Python because it's quicker to get done than Java. It's slow because it runs on a virtual machine; basically when you compile code in high level languages like Java, it is compiled into code that the virtual machine then converts for the computer hardware to understand). It's pretty easy to pick up, although you likely won't have much use for it for a while, until you're more familiar with what you're doing. It also has tools like SpeedTree, which basically just makes procedural models of trees (because, trust me, modelling trees is a fucking pain in the ass), Scaleform (basically allows integration of Flash for things like menus), and a few others that I can't remember. Which you would otherwise have to purchase. It's also being updated regularly.

It does have some things missing, most notably I think is VO/IP unless they put that in a recent build. However, there is something called DLLBind, which to an extent lets you attach third party programs to it, without giving you access to the source code (so you could use DLLBind to put in VOIP software), which is what they make most of their money on (I think a full U3E license starts at 300,000, it might be lower. Usually when you see prices like this, it's for commercial projects with funding. People don't often realize this I don't think, but some of these game studios are throwing more money around than big Hollywood movies. It costs almost a million dollars a year for a ten person staff getting average starting pay, which is a fairly small studio, most larger projects with funding will have at least 25 employees).

It will take some time to start understanding what everything does, but I mean really you actually need to know that much. A lot of it's learning the engine, they all have different interfaces, different languages, etc. Especially for what you want to do. Obviously if you intend on getting a job in the industry at some point, you'll need a lot more experience than you currently have (especially programming), but for the time being you'll probably be fine. You will need to learn more than you currently know, you'll have to know the difference between a diffuse and normal map for instance, you'll need to know what tools you need to use, etc. But really, most of what you need to focus on, beyond the basics (which are kind of confusing at first, but really they're pretty simple. Just odd to think about, you'll probably have those moments where you feel like a moron because you realized what something is, like a diffuse map is just the color that you see. I honestly could not figure out what a diffuse map was for months. Someone even told me once but I didn't understand the explanation but also didn't want to look stupid so I didn't get it clarified), is learning the engine. You'll pretty much pick up the process of 'game design' from that. Some things are applicable to different engines, but a different engine likely does it differently, so even if you know what you're talking about you still might not have any idea how to do it. Be it because something is a feature that doesn't exist for the other engine, or because they decided to put it in a different spot (like when they change the interface for 3DS Max, it'll be like five buttons moved to the left or something, maybe a new menu or bar with new things that didn't exist in previous versions, people will freak the fuck out over it for months). Chances are you'll see people talking about things that are just going to be way over your head for a bit, you can't really avoid that (especially if you look at some of the threads for something like a shader, those can get confusing real quick).

Anyway, as I said, I would recommend you check out UDK. Here's a link to it's page: http://udk.com/

Forums: http://forums.epicgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=366

UDN Start Page (documentation, I'm not sure what UDN stands for. Unreal Development Network or something, maybe?): http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitHome.html

 

[Slapshot136]

tldr;

I don't think that you should start with a full 3-d game with an engine as your first game.. making a 2-d game with networking should be a stepping stone first

 

[Sevion]

I agree. 3D games will be too difficult as you have an entirely new axis to work with as well as models, lighting, etc.

Start with 2D as you can find sprites much easier.

 

[Lyzet]

Ok so, again thank you varine!

But if 2d game is the best to start off with, is there any engines that makes it easier for a programming newbie like me, to make a game? btw 2d is minecraft right? or is that 1d?

 

[Varine]

There is this one called Game Maker that I used a few times for school if you want to check it out. It's made by YoYoGames or something. And if I don't leave in like five minutes I'm going to be late Russian (and apparently I already exceeded the amount of time I'm allowed to miss so my professor is becoming a time tsar and if I fail this class I will probably get kicked out of school), I'll write more about it and give you seem links later today.

 

[Slapshot136]

Ok so, again thank you varine!

But if 2d game is the best to start off with, is there any engines that makes it easier for a programming newbie like me, to make a game? btw 2d is minecraft right? or is that 1d?

no, minecraft is 3-d

you shouldn't really need an engine for making 2-d stuff.. just draw some stuff on the screen and manipulate it

 

[Lyzet]

no, minecraft is 3-d

you shouldn't really need an engine for making 2-d stuff.. just draw some stuff on the screen and manipulate it

Minecraft is 3D? to me it looks like everything is made with a duplicated square.

Well making a game with worse graphics than minecraft wont be something im hoping to have to do

@Varine awesome! thanks

 

[Slapshot136]

Minecraft is 3D? to me it looks like everything is made with a duplicated square.

cubes, which have height, width, and depth, and you can check this by rotating the camera

 

[Varine]

Yeah enjoy doing those manipulations without being able to see what they actually do without compiling it every time. It's a pain in the ass. Less so than with larger 3D games, but still... huge pain in the ass.

Minecraft is 3D. You could accomplish it with a 2D engine by doing some manipulations with how the objects are drawn (similar to Doom), but it would be kind of a pain in the ass and stupid to do. It's much easier to do it with cubes, which really is basically just twelve triangles (a square is 2 triangles as you should probably already know). Games almost always use triangles, not larger polygons (squares, pentagons, etc, will be divided into triangles). I'm not sure about other tools, but 3DS Max has Editable Poly, and Editable Mesh, and people ask about the difference all the time. You'll typically want to make it using polygons, as the toolsets are usually newer, have more advanced options, and can have n-sided polygons. The editable meshes are made up of triangles. They have a slightly lower overhead than polygons, and that adds up when you have three million of them on the screen. You don't usually need to convert between the two ever, exporters will almost always do it for you when they convert to the new filetype.

My advice is do not start with a 2D game unless you want to end up with one. It doesn't provide much of a benefit beyond a slight introduction into the field, but a lot of it isn't really useful beyond some introduction programming experience, which you can get using a 3D engine working on what you actually want to. Plus most 2D engines suck anyway. I've never had the desire to use one (and can't think of a reason I would use one unless I just wanted to make some simple little game for fun and had no possible use for the expanded capabilities), as you can render sprites with a 3D engine just fine, and will have WAY more flexibility. And sprites are a pain in the ass to make. I mean it's just pointless, really. The added dimension doesn't really make it harder, it's all of the new things you can do now (ten years ago, what we have as graphics in games today would damn near pass off as CG for movies. Motion capture wasn't mainstream, and I think virtual displacement just starting to come into play). It's harder to learn the engines, but you'll have to get around to doing that at some point anyway. Might as well just jump into it, instead of playing wannabe for a few months developing a 2D prototype that barely even does what you're envisioning. If it does at all.

Anyway, something like Minecraft is fairly easily achieved. All you really do is add and remove blocks, so basically you would just make the object come in and out depending on if it's clicked on (you can use a instant hit style weapon design, whatever box it hits is deleted. Likewise, whatever box it hits when you add one, it simply adds that box adjacent to the side it hits). It's all fairly simple, a lot more simple than my explanation is I think. Which I can see someone not understanding so tell me if you don't get it and I'll try and rewrite it better. I don't know how much more complex you want to make it, but that is basically Minecraft's core. I don't know what other 'features' it boasts either, so I can't go into any more detail on it than that right now.

Is there more that you want to do with it? If you don't want to say it's fine. You said you wanted to eventually sell it, and likewise I don't talk too much about what I do in the fear that someone might steal the concept (which isn't a very realistic fear at this point for either of us, but at the same time it's YOUR thing and you're allowed to take a lot of pride in it's concept and soon to be design and therefore wish to keep some of it as a surprise). Well I probably would if someone would let me because I love talking about it, it can be a lot of fun (it's homicidally stressful at times too, especially at your stage), but typically people get bored.

Also, just as some advice on programming so that you might keep your head up better than I did when I first started learning: there are some concepts that you simply will not understand at first. My biggest issue originally was pointers, I mean they're pretty simple (they literally just point to somewhere in memory), but I could not for the life of me understand them. They made no sense to me; I was a couple years younger than you (15 or so when I started doing real programming like that, not stupid DarkBASIC programming), and I stopped for a while because I decided I didn't want to do programming anymore and started doing some art and animation (I can't draw by hand at all still though... I'm really upset about that because now I need to find someone to help me draw my tattoo. It's literally just 'AED', I just want to make it a little cooler and cannot do it. Can you draw?). Then I picked it up again, and it took all of about twenty seconds for it to just hit me. Then you feel really happy for a while, then kinda depressed because it took a long time. But yeah, I mean it gets frustrating. And chances are it will be something so stupid that you almost don't even want to ask for help. But you'll figure it out, just gotta stay positive about it and remember that at some point everyone was there (that's the hard part. When you ask for help, and the person just assumes that you know more than you do as happens frequently because experience levels are subjective, it's almost more depressing when you don't understand their answer).

Or I'm the only one that's had these issues and a lot of other people lied to me about it so I would feel better, in which case it should be smooth sailing from here. That seems a little less likely though.

If you're really feeling motivated you can try sit down and try to figure out how to visualize four dimensional space. See how that goes.

 

[Lyzet]

Yeah enjoy doing those manipulations without being able to see what they actually do without compiling it every time. It's a pain in the ass. Less so than with larger 3D games, but still... huge pain in the ass.

Minecraft is 3D. You could accomplish it with a 2D engine by doing some manipulations with how the objects are drawn (similar to Doom), but it would be kind of a pain in the ass and stupid to do. It's much easier to do it with cubes, which really is basically just twelve triangles (a square is 2 triangles as you should probably already know). Games almost always use triangles, not larger polygons (squares, pentagons, etc, will be divided into triangles). I'm not sure about other tools, but 3DS Max has Editable Poly, and Editable Mesh, and people ask about the difference all the time. You'll typically want to make it using polygons, as the toolsets are usually newer, have more advanced options, and can have n-sided polygons. The editable meshes are made up of triangles. They have a slightly lower overhead than polygons, and that adds up when you have three million of them on the screen. You don't usually need to convert between the two ever, exporters will almost always do it for you when they convert to the new filetype.

My advice is do not start with a 2D game unless you want to end up with one. It doesn't provide much of a benefit beyond a slight introduction into the field, but a lot of it isn't really useful beyond some introduction programming experience, which you can get using a 3D engine working on what you actually want to. Plus most 2D engines suck anyway. I've never had the desire to use one (and can't think of a reason I would use one unless I just wanted to make some simple little game for fun and had no possible use for the expanded capabilities), as you can render sprites with a 3D engine just fine, and will have WAY more flexibility. And sprites are a pain in the ass to make. I mean it's just pointless, really. The added dimension doesn't really make it harder, it's all of the new things you can do now (ten years ago, what we have as graphics in games today would damn near pass off as CG for movies. Motion capture wasn't mainstream, and I think virtual displacement just starting to come into play). It's harder to learn the engines, but you'll have to get around to doing that at some point anyway. Might as well just jump into it, instead of playing wannabe for a few months developing a 2D prototype that barely even does what you're envisioning. If it does at all.

Anyway, something like Minecraft is fairly easily achieved. All you really do is add and remove blocks, so basically you would just make the object come in and out depending on if it's clicked on (you can use a instant hit style weapon design, whatever box it hits is deleted. Likewise, whatever box it hits when you add one, it simply adds that box adjacent to the side it hits). It's all fairly simple, a lot more simple than my explanation is I think. Which I can see someone not understanding so tell me if you don't get it and I'll try and rewrite it better. I don't know how much more complex you want to make it, but that is basically Minecraft's core. I don't know what other 'features' it boasts either, so I can't go into any more detail on it than that right now.

Is there more that you want to do with it? If you don't want to say it's fine. You said you wanted to eventually sell it, and likewise I don't talk too much about what I do in the fear that someone might steal the concept (which isn't a very realistic fear at this point for either of us, but at the same time it's YOUR thing and you're allowed to take a lot of pride in it's concept and soon to be design and therefore wish to keep some of it as a surprise). Well I probably would if someone would let me because I love talking about it, it can be a lot of fun (it's homicidally stressful at times too, especially at your stage), but typically people get bored.

Also, just as some advice on programming so that you might keep your head up better than I did when I first started learning: there are some concepts that you simply will not understand at first. My biggest issue originally was pointers, I mean they're pretty simple (they literally just point to somewhere in memory), but I could not for the life of me understand them. They made no sense to me; I was a couple years younger than you (15 or so when I started doing real programming like that, not stupid DarkBASIC programming), and I stopped for a while because I decided I didn't want to do programming anymore and started doing some art and animation (I can't draw by hand at all still though... I'm really upset about that because now I need to find someone to help me draw my tattoo. It's literally just 'AED', I just want to make it a little cooler and cannot do it. Can you draw?). Then I picked it up again, and it took all of about twenty seconds for it to just hit me. Then you feel really happy for a while, then kinda depressed because it took a long time. But yeah, I mean it gets frustrating. And chances are it will be something so stupid that you almost don't even want to ask for help. But you'll figure it out, just gotta stay positive about it and remember that at some point everyone was there (that's the hard part. When you ask for help, and the person just assumes that you know more than you do as happens frequently because experience levels are subjective, it's almost more depressing when you don't understand their answer).

Or I'm the only one that's had these issues and a lot of other people lied to me about it so I would feel better, in which case it should be smooth sailing from here. That seems a little less likely though.

If you're really feeling motivated you can try sit down and try to figure out how to visualize four dimensional space. See how that goes.

I really dont have any idea why you want to put this much time into helping me, neither the less, i appriciate it!

First of all, no i cant draw, sorry, allways wanted to before i had the dream of programming, but never really been able to draw anything else than stick men

Second of all, i agree with you about people answering and they dont know exactly how much you know, so i have no idea what they are talking about when they answer, sometimes. There are again some words i dont quiet know in your posts, but i think those words means less.

I have had an idea in my head for years, i've allways imagined when i played all those huge games, how much better the game would have been with the ideas i had, and how i would have improved the gameplay, wich is why i am sooo dedicated to get to make my own game.

I've seen the minecraft creator earn about 500.000$ every day, wich makes me think, if i could develop, a simple but time consuming and funny game for a starter, wich will be the ground of my whole concept, and then hope for this small game to put in some money, that i can use to go further with the sequel, a much bigger and better game, the continuation of my first one. I have allready written a 50 paged lore for my concept, sitten up every night, and putted all my ideas into text, how the whole roleplaying world works.

And you say its not like worth it to do 2d, rather than 3d, but something i dont quiet understand, if you can explain it for me.

How can 3D be Minecraft, when 3D is also something like Unreal Tournament? the graphics are clearly DIMENSIONAL different, so to speak

Thats what makes me confused now, since me and my friend would like to make a game, that isnt horrible graphics, but not awesome too, bad computers should be able to play it.

And if its possible, i rather not have it take more than 5 years to develop, since then i am nearly educated, and at that time i probably wont spend time doing a bad graphics game.

Wich is why i want to do something now, i have time to work on a game for atleast 2 hours every day (i still have school, a girlfriend, and a dog to take care of )

I dont really know what else details to give you, for you to help me more in this matter, but ask me anything and ill tell you, all though i wont completely leak my whole idea/concept

thanks again!

 

[UndeadDragon]

As for the 2d/3d confusing: 2d means 2 dimensions (X and Y), so it is a flat dimension. 3d means 3 dimensions (X, Y and Z), therefore you can add depth as well as the standard X and Y.

 

[SerraAvenger]

I don't want to be rude, so please don't take any offence, I just want to be honest. I think you're wasting your time with this "wet dream" of yours. Just look at the facts. Minecraft is a four head team and all of them have a lot of experience. They know about waterfalling and agile, stuff that you have no clue about. They have been doing whatever they're doing at minecraft for years before. And still they have been working on it for two years now. And they're probably commiting to it 9/5. You far do you think you will go with a 2/5 schedule, NO experience whatsoever, 2 guys? Forget about it. Or you'll regret it later.

 

[13lade619]

TLDR.

Short answer: Yes, you can create something without having to go for school for it.

But the downside is that you have to learn by yourself WHILE
taking up different stuff from what you go to school for (course/major).
Meaning extra work.

If you go to school for programming,
then game dev is just a derivative/application of what you're already taking up in school.
So you're not taking that much time learn new stuff outside of school.

 

[BANANAMAN]

lol Blade my current course IS Game Dev. And basically I can sum it up in 3 things.

Math
Art
Programming

Yeah We have to learn to be artistic while at the same time learning how to program.

 

[Lyzet]

I don't want to be rude, so please don't take any offence, I just want to be honest. I think you're wasting your time with this "wet dream" of yours. Just look at the facts. Minecraft is a four head team and all of them have a lot of experience. They know about waterfalling and agile, stuff that you have no clue about. They have been doing whatever they're doing at minecraft for years before. And still they have been working on it for two years now. And they're probably commiting to it 9/5. You far do you think you will go with a 2/5 schedule, NO experience whatsoever, 2 guys? Forget about it. Or you'll regret it later.

Aww well first of all i want to correct you there.

1 guy made minecraft, only 1 and after the breaktrough he hired 3 people to work for him.

I didnt expect any game to be out in a couple of months, i were thinking if we started researching and learning a bit now, we could have a game out in a couple of years, atleast before im done with my education.

But i guess your right, maybe it is hopeless.... arg

 

[azareus]

Be optimistic
With the right engine, and possibly sometimes the help of a (semi-)professional, it will be possible.
You do need lots and lots of time, experience, and dedication, but it shouldn't be too hard (no flame pl0x) to crank out at least a basic game.
It might not be the best, but you would then have some of the experience to make a better game, or build on to the first one. :thumbsup:

I would also suggest the UDK, since it's free until you publish commercially, and 100$ isn't too much either. Secondly, it is IMHO one of the best engines, in terms of what you can do with it.
Secondly, learn to program. Even if it looks hard or complicated, and you might not need it, it actually isn't too bad when you get the hang of it.
I know Java does suck, but it's so similar to UnrealScript, that it's worth bothering.
You might also want to learn C or C++ (preferably), in case you want to build your own engine.
Python is also a good first language, since it's fast and somewhat agile.

Just my two cents.