Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loki333]

I've had a few game ideas mulling about for years now, and a recent burst of inspiration has started to turn a couple of them into something I'd really like to see become a reality.  Is anyone here in the same situation?  Or perhaps someone more experienced willing to provide a little guidance as to what can be done with these ideas or where to start? 

[Shadowlord]

I have too many ideas for games, almost always way too complicated, too.

But yeah. Same situation, more or less, though for me it's been a progression from trying to make things with no plan or design, to making a plan and design but never getting around to making anything because I have another idea to design completely, and finally to writing down every idea to find the best one or two, then picking one and revising/replacing the design several times to try to boil it down to something exciting which isn't an everything-simulation and won't take an eternity to make any progress on. (I've also tried alternating between projects but the result of that was losing track of the problems that were the reason I switched, and the detail of the program(s), making it even harder to fix/improve later, but part of the problem there is because I don't use a bugtracker or task-assigning software because of the added time cost*)

* I say while posting on these forums on my phone while Skyrim is paused

[Loki333]

Where to start: Learn to program (I'm assuming it's a video game)

You won't be able to draft anyone in with your ideas that wants to program a game without paying them. Remember, you have ideas for a game, but so do they. If they were going to make a game for free, it'd be their game.

I had assumed as much.  Anyone devoting the kind of time necessary to learn to program would already have their own inspirations to motivate them.  I would imagine though that to learn enough about programming to realistically start writing on my own I should have started a decade ago.  On the other hand, the little bit of python I learned in college really doesn't qualify me to make that kind of assessment and I have very little better that I'm able to do with my time anymore.  Am I over-estimating what would be involved in a complete production? 

Speaking of funding, what sort of start up capital is typical for an independent game?  I understand some people have a lot of success with crowd funding, but getting to the point of having something to present is costly in itself. 

At this point I'm really just looking for people to talk with and explore if it's at all viable or worth pursuing any further.  Given my situation I don't expect much to come of it, but I don't want to just sit idle with it either. 

I have too many ideas for games, almost always way too complicated, too.

But yeah. Same situation, more or less, though for me it's been a progression from trying to make things with no plan or design, to making a plan and design but never getting around to making anything because I have another idea to design completely, and finally to writing down every idea to find the best one or two, then picking one and revising/replacing the design several times to try to boil it down to something exciting which isn't an everything-simulation and won't take an eternity to make any progress on. (I've also tried alternating between projects but the result of that was losing track of the problems that were the reason I switched, and the detail of the program(s), making it even harder to fix/improve later, but part of the problem there is because I don't use a bugtracker or task-assigning software because of the added time cost*)

* I say while posting on these forums on my phone while Skyrim is paused

I've had the same issue with a lot of my ideas; far too ambitious to actually do anything with.  Which is the main reason I came here looking for like-minded people.  I've been following dwarf fortress since 2010 and it's so amazing to see someone actually following through with a project of this scale.  The key seems to be to make things more modular; get the basics working and then add details from there. 

So you're writing in your spare time or is this what you do professionally? 

[Shadowlord]

Spare time, yeah.

[Reelya]

Extra Credits is a video series about game design topics, it's pretty good.

One of the episodes was about scoping projects. Too many people start stuff, never finish it to the point where you feel you can show it to someone else. That's bad. A couple of ideas are important here:

Rule 1: get a playable demo out as quickly as possible. As a rule of thumb, game design books suggest getting a playable build no later than 20% through your planned development period. e.g. for a game that takes two weeks to complete, you want a playable build within 2 days. For a 1 week project, you want a working build on the first day. It doesn't have to do much, just proof of concept: it should have placeholders for all the main game elements you plan to flesh out for the rest of the week. Avoid feature creep here: if you didn't plan for it, don't include it unless you've completed all other features within the allotted time.

Rule 2: have a well-defined "end product" you want to make, and an end date to make it by. If you fail to meet that date, then start something else, but smaller scope the next time. e.g. make 1 game per week, no matter what. If you don't complete it on time, do not get bogged down: scope out a new project straight away. This is good experience. Finish up old projects in the quickest way possible when you have spare time (a playable thing you can show to someone is always the goal).

It doesn't have to be a game, per se, just something you could happily demonstrate to someone else, e.g. even a D&D treasure table generator could be a good first project. You then take all the modules you've made, and use them for spare parts when scoping the next project, e.g.: "take my treasure generator, and build a simple exploration game where you fight goblins and amass treasure, selling it at a town" would be a 1-week project that could follow a 1-week project where you learned to make a treasure generator.

If you're completely new to programming, start small, but still stick to the time management ideas. e.g. make a rock-paper-scissors game against the computer. It's not much, but if you've never coded before, it will take you a while to learn what you need to code that.

Once you've made a whole pile of 1-week projects, then start thinking bigger. The experience will give you a good grasp of what you're able to achieve in a set time, which will gradually increase as you have many more code parts to play with. Working through a bunch of classic genres is one of the best ways to start. Tic Tac Toe, Tetris, Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout: these are the level of project which are good for beginners.

[Loki333]

All great advice.  I'm looking into the extra credits videos on youtube now.  Any particular place you'd recommend starting?  There seem to be a lot of them. 

[Reelya]

idk, it's a series of short videos on pretty much every posssible game development related topic. It's really hard to say "yeah, pick this particular video!", since they almost all touch on interesting topics. What I did was download them all onto my phone, using downvids.net with the playlist url ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187 ), then the DownloadThemAll extension in firefox (there is an equivalent in Chrome). Btw if you use DownloadTheAll, use the *inum* renaming tag at the start of the file name - this puts the videos in order.

Since the pictures are just eyecandy, you can really listen to them like a podcast, while you do other work.

Either that or go through the entire playlist's titles and pick and choose the ones you want to see based on title.