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Let's [Game Design/Development]

UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
edited January 2015 in Social Entropy++
Hey you! Over there, playing your games, dreaming about games. Did you know that you can make games, right in the comfort of your own home? It's true!

There are even free* tools to help you do it!

Maybe you want to start slow, maybe something 2D, maybe something that doesn't require mucking about with meshes and textures and stuff? How about something used to make one of the best games of 2013 (Gunpoint) that also happens to be the focus of a new tutorial series for beginners from Tom Francis, the creator of one of the best games of 2013 (also Gunpoint)
S3iAEg1.png

GameMaker Studio has also been used to make Hotline Miami, Nidhogg, Spelunky, and of course, Cook, Serve, Delicious! It is super flexible, fairly easy to learn, and also free (though the free version can only be used to make executable files, you need to buy the Pro version for $99 to be able to export to HTML5/Android/iOS/Mac/etc)
T4CT wrote: »
also you should probably note in the OP that $99 for Game Maker only lets you export to Mac as well and TEST on Android. Exporting to any mobile platform costs $299.99 per platform.

Tom Francis' tutorials start here:
http://youtu.be/DN6dZWXUEzA

Maybe you want to make a 3D game with lasers and pirates and whatever? That's probably a bit ambitious to start, but you can damn well try!
logo.jpg
Unity is a free 3D game engine with a bunch of available tutorials that can easily compile games that will work on basically anything, including in-browser. Unity is pretty great, but does require some programming knowledge up front and can be a bit much for first timers.

This is a dumb little thing I made in Unity a while back. WASD to move, click to fire, Q to mark one of the boxes as a target (there's no feedback to show it's marked, just trust me), hold E to make the projectiles seek the targeted box.

It also has its own asset store so if you are butts at art (like me) and have some extra cash (unlike me) you can buy all sorts of models, textures, animations, music, whatever all ready to import into your game.

Maybe you don't want graphics at all, maybe you just want to tell an interactive story, like a choose your own adventure book-game-thing?
Still not sure what to do, or none of those options really got your attention? Do you have more questions, or want suggestions on how to create your own game art, resources on game design, tips on distributing your finished masterpiece?

Do you want to learn all of this in the form of a Twine (see above) game, and in doing so see my entire OP up to this point put to shame by something much cleaner and more comprehensive? (seriously I was kind of tempted to just link this and move on but that felt lazy)

Check out the Sorting Hat courtesy of one Zoe Quinn

so lets make some games SE++
let's make some magic

UnbrokenEva on
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    I've done the first two of Francis' GameMaker tutorials so far and the way the game organizes it's code is pretty cool + giving me ideas. Basically he got to a part in the second video where he pointed out that we didn't need to add any scripts to the Bullet objects because they don't need any special behaviour

    and my brain went "wait that's how easy it would be to give the bullets special behaviour!?" and off it ran

    also I'm looking forward to goofing around with it instead of Unity because it is a hell of a lot easier to make shitty sprites for prototyping a 2D game than it is to make shitty meshes and textures for prototyping a 3D game. Heck, it's easier than importing and using someone else's shitty meshes and textures.

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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Oh, and if anyone is in the mood to read a book about game design, I can't recommend The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses highly enough. It's all about different perspectives to use to look at a particular game idea/design and using those perspectives to generate ideas and insight. It's not video game specific, but designed to look at game design in general, whether it's video games, board games, card games, sports games, whatever. The first time I read through it I had to keep a notebook handy because almost every chapter gave me a bunch of new ideas that I hadn't considered for game concepts that had been bouncing around my head for months/years.

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    Duke 2.0Duke 2.0 Time Trash Cat Registered User regular
    Back when Flash was The Shit I put some work into making a sort of Asteroids style game. To get the ship to spin I had to learn trigonometory by myself, despite never actually finishing the later classes of Algebra.

    I never figured out how to spawn enemies, keep track of them, and delete everything cleanly. Either Flash is horrific for that or I found no resources that really explained how that stuff properly works.

    VRXwDW7.png
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    edited January 2015
    Duke 2.0 wrote: »
    Back when Flash was The Shit I put some work into making a sort of Asteroids style game. To get the ship to spin I had to learn trigonometory by myself, despite never actually finishing the later classes of Algebra.

    I never figured out how to spawn enemies, keep track of them, and delete everything cleanly. Either Flash is horrific for that or I found no resources that really explained how that stuff properly works.

    I haven't done the 3rd part of Francis' GameMaker tutorial yet but based on the first two and the description of the third you'll be pretty much there in an hour and a bit, no trigonometry needed.

    UnbrokenEva on
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    Bluedude152Bluedude152 Registered User regular
    Speed Racers stream was brainstorming a potentially amazing game

    Imagine goty 420 blaze it but for mobas

    p0a2ody6sqnt.jpg
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Speed Racers stream was brainstorming a potentially amazing game

    Imagine goty 420 blaze it but for mobas

    I understand maybe a third of that second sentence

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    JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    For the last year or so I've been writing a 2D game from essentially scratch in C++

    I use SDL2 for basic operating system stuff (input, output, files) and its 2D renderer
    Awesomium for GUI

    and everything else is original

    AI, mapping, data systems, combat, and a dynamic lighting engine that supports blending and layering... and eventually ray tracing.

    Still a long road ahead, but the experience so far has been great

    I recently switched my development environment back to Windows, because Visual Studio is just plain better than Xcode for C++

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    Duke 2.0Duke 2.0 Time Trash Cat Registered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Duke 2.0 wrote: »
    Back when Flash was The Shit I put some work into making a sort of Asteroids style game. To get the ship to spin I had to learn trigonometory by myself, despite never actually finishing the later classes of Algebra.

    I never figured out how to spawn enemies, keep track of them, and delete everything cleanly. Either Flash is horrific for that or I found no resources that really explained how that stuff properly works.

    I haven't done the 3rd part of Francis' GameMaker tutorial yet but based on the first two and the description of the third you'll be pretty much there in an hour and a bit, no trigonometry needed.

    Oh I've watched the videos already, it is super easy to change the angle of sprites in Game Maker because it's a program for making games somewhat easily

    Where Flash attempts(?) to be a proper programming language with Radians as a unit of angular measurement

    VRXwDW7.png
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    David_TDavid_T A fashion yes-man is no good to me. Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Oh, and if anyone is in the mood to read a book about game design, I can't recommend The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses highly enough.

    Well, that loo--AAAH!

    So, are there any good books on game design that aren't four or five times the price of normal Kindle books?

    euj90n71sojo.png
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    MachwingMachwing It looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it? Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered User regular
    edited January 2015
    Unreal rules, Unity drools

    That being said, the only semi-complete project I've done was in Unity. Itch.io is PRETTY GREAT for getting your shit on the net on no budget.

    Machwing on
    l3icwZV.png
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    Bluedude152Bluedude152 Registered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Speed Racers stream was brainstorming a potentially amazing game

    Imagine goty 420 blaze it but for mobas

    I understand maybe a third of that second sentence

    Goty 420 blaze it is a amazing parody of first person shooter culture

    So imagine a Moba that is just as shitty as possible and is needlessly hostile to new players

    p0a2ody6sqnt.jpg
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Unreal is cool, but at $19/mo it costs infinitely more than Unity

    It's something I would consider if I had a) more practise than I do now, b) an artist to work with, and c) an idea that suited it.

    For fooling around, prototyping ideas, and knocking the rust off my programmerbrain? Nope.

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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Speed Racers stream was brainstorming a potentially amazing game

    Imagine goty 420 blaze it but for mobas

    I understand maybe a third of that second sentence

    Goty 420 blaze it is a amazing parody of first person shooter culture

    So imagine a Moba that is just as shitty as possible and is needlessly hostile to new players

    So like,

    most of them?

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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Jasconius wrote: »
    For the last year or so I've been writing a 2D game from essentially scratch in C++

    I use SDL2 for basic operating system stuff (input, output, files) and its 2D renderer
    Awesomium for GUI

    and everything else is original

    AI, mapping, data systems, combat, and a dynamic lighting engine that supports blending and layering... and eventually ray tracing.

    Still a long road ahead, but the experience so far has been great

    I recently switched my development environment back to Windows, because Visual Studio is just plain better than Xcode for C++

    Back when I was in school I made a tank game mostly from scratch in C++ and a two player LAN game of Go in Java, but my programming skills are beyond rusty at this point.

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    MachwingMachwing It looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it? Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Unreal is cool, but at $19/mo it costs infinitely more than Unity

    It's something I would consider if I had a) more practise than I do now, b) an artist to work with, and c) an idea that suited it.

    For fooling around, prototyping ideas, and knocking the rust off my programmerbrain? Nope.

    It's not 19 bucks a month

    It's 19 bucks, and then for that month you can download Unreal. Once the month is over you don't lose the engine or anything. If you want updates, you pay for another month and download them, or don't and then use the version you have!

    l3icwZV.png
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    Machwing wrote: »
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Unreal is cool, but at $19/mo it costs infinitely more than Unity

    It's something I would consider if I had a) more practise than I do now, b) an artist to work with, and c) an idea that suited it.

    For fooling around, prototyping ideas, and knocking the rust off my programmerbrain? Nope.

    It's not 19 bucks a month

    It's 19 bucks, and then for that month you can download Unreal. Once the month is over you don't lose the engine or anything. If you want updates, you pay for another month and download them, or don't and then use the version you have!

    That makes sense. It also makes sense why they wouldn't mention that on their site.

    Still, I'm looking to keep things 2D for now, and while I assume that's possible in UE4 like it is in Unity, it'd still be several layers of complexity more than I need. Something to keep in mind for when I am ready to goof around with 3D again though, I'd totally spend $19 once to see how it compares to Unity.

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    Duke 2.0Duke 2.0 Time Trash Cat Registered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Speed Racers stream was brainstorming a potentially amazing game

    Imagine goty 420 blaze it but for mobas

    I understand maybe a third of that second sentence

    Goty 420 blaze it is a amazing parody of first person shooter culture

    So imagine a Moba that is just as shitty as possible and is needlessly hostile to new players

    So Dota2?

    VRXwDW7.png
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    LuvTheMonkeyLuvTheMonkey High Sierra Serenade Registered User regular
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Machwing wrote: »
    Fearghaill wrote: »
    Unreal is cool, but at $19/mo it costs infinitely more than Unity

    It's something I would consider if I had a) more practise than I do now, b) an artist to work with, and c) an idea that suited it.

    For fooling around, prototyping ideas, and knocking the rust off my programmerbrain? Nope.

    It's not 19 bucks a month

    It's 19 bucks, and then for that month you can download Unreal. Once the month is over you don't lose the engine or anything. If you want updates, you pay for another month and download them, or don't and then use the version you have!

    That makes sense. It also makes sense why they wouldn't mention that on their site.

    Still, I'm looking to keep things 2D for now, and while I assume that's possible in UE4 like it is in Unity, it'd still be several layers of complexity more than I need. Something to keep in mind for when I am ready to goof around with 3D again though, I'd totally spend $19 once to see how it compares to Unity.

    I haven't played with the 2d stuff in UE4 yet, though it looks like it'd spit something out that looks like Shadow Complex. Which I am all about. You should definitely give it a spin, if only for the Blueprint system (which is absolutely amazing).

    Molten variables hiss and roar. On my mind-forge, I hammer them into the greatsword Epistemology. Many are my foes this night.
    STEAM | GW2: Thalys
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    LuvTheMonkeyLuvTheMonkey High Sierra Serenade Registered User regular
    Oh looking at it now it has a pre-built 2d template. I just booted a fresh project with it.

    Molten variables hiss and roar. On my mind-forge, I hammer them into the greatsword Epistemology. Many are my foes this night.
    STEAM | GW2: Thalys
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    MachwingMachwing It looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it? Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered User regular
    Blueprints are The Light. Writing C# in Unity is hardcore database management compared to the ease of stickin' nodes together

    l3icwZV.png
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    LuvTheMonkeyLuvTheMonkey High Sierra Serenade Registered User regular
    That is one damn good advantage for Unity, having C# support in the core. That is a damned fine language.

    Molten variables hiss and roar. On my mind-forge, I hammer them into the greatsword Epistemology. Many are my foes this night.
    STEAM | GW2: Thalys
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    I just looked up what blueprints are... That seems really goddamn neat

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    LuvTheMonkeyLuvTheMonkey High Sierra Serenade Registered User regular
    It is! I totally turned the default weapon you get (essentially a ping pong ball launcher) into a homing weapon, complete with selectable targeting, using nothing but blueprints.

    Molten variables hiss and roar. On my mind-forge, I hammer them into the greatsword Epistemology. Many are my foes this night.
    STEAM | GW2: Thalys
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    MachwingMachwing It looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it? Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered User regular
    edited January 2015
    I had a pretty big Unity crush for about 2 years, when I first heard UE4 was going to try to compete with it I was like "They're gonna have to deliver a hell of a product to compete with Unity's primary market"

    and then they did, and now my boner is for Unreal. Unity's still GREAT, but it's ten times easier to make something that looks ten times better in UE4.

    Machwing on
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    DaebunzDaebunz Registered User regular
    edited January 2015
    right now my team of 3 (including myself) is working on a card game! outside playtesting is fun/terrifying especially when people whose input you value greatly have an active interest in checking your project out

    we were previously working on a platformer w/ gamemaker studio pro that we had the good fortune to show off a couple pax easts ago but our programmer fell off the face of the earth so we switched to tabletop

    Daebunz on
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    AistanAistan Tiny Bat Registered User regular
    I've messed around with Gamemaker Studio some, made the framework of a platformer and a kind of matching/detail/puzzle game. Stopped working on them because things fell through with the artist/idea person friend I was working on them with.

    Kind of gave up after that, mostly because I am shit at coming up with ideas.

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    AbsurdPropositionAbsurdProposition Registered User regular
    A reminder for people who might not be aware: This year's Global Game Jam is going to be from the 23-25th. It's something I've participated in for the past 5 years and it's always been a huge amount of fun to do.

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    T4CTT4CT BAFTA-NOMINATED NAFTA-APPROVEDRegistered User regular
    KEEP IT UP DEVELOPER IN THE HOUUUUUUUSE

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    T4CTT4CT BAFTA-NOMINATED NAFTA-APPROVEDRegistered User regular
    also you should probably note in the OP that $99 for Game Maker only lets you export to Mac as well and TEST on Android. Exporting to any mobile platform costs $299.99 per platform.

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    T4CTT4CT BAFTA-NOMINATED NAFTA-APPROVEDRegistered User regular
    Machwing wrote: »
    I had a pretty big Unity crush for about 2 years, when I first heard UE4 was going to try to compete with it I was like "They're gonna have to deliver a hell of a product to compete with Unity's primary market"

    and then they did, and now my boner is for Unreal. Unity's still GREAT, but it's ten times easier to make something that looks ten times better in UE4.

    I agree with this, the only thing about Unity that's still pretty damn nice is that UE4 requires decent hardware whereas Unity 4.6 could probably run on a Toaster if you duct-taped some RAM to the side.

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    agoajagoaj Top Tier One FearRegistered User regular
    I've made some games. Even sold a copy or two.

    Now I'm doing a lot of work in Unity.

    ujav5b9gwj1s.png
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    MachwingMachwing It looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it? Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered User regular
    Gonna be doing Global Game Jam in Oakland this year!!! If any of you scrublords are there, let's made a flappy bird clone or something

    I'm sure we can rope flappiness into the theme, whatever it is

    l3icwZV.png
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    agoajagoaj Top Tier One FearRegistered User regular
    Machwing wrote: »
    Gonna be doing Global Game Jam in Oakland this year!!! If any of you scrublords are there, let's made a flappy bird clone or something

    I'm sure we can rope flappiness into the theme, whatever it is

    I'm close, this might be fun.

    ujav5b9gwj1s.png
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    UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    T4CT wrote: »
    also you should probably note in the OP that $99 for Game Maker only lets you export to Mac as well and TEST on Android. Exporting to any mobile platform costs $299.99 per platform.

    noted, thanks!

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    BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    I remember back in the mid 90's you could get a book with a cd that gave you the keys to remod Doom
    It was the Doom Engine the book told you how to make levels design you own graphics and so on.
    I remember the person who bought it turned doom into a bizarre dating game.


    I have the RPG maker with some dlcs like the LUA engine.
    I goof off a lot in it and make some broken to shitty games. I really need to make a clear list of what would neat in a game instead of changing my mind and ruining it.

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    AnzekayAnzekay Registered User regular
    I've done a lot of gamermaker stuff solo in the past, but nothing that will ever see the light of day.

    But right now I'm working on project in Unity with a few friends of mine, and we're hoping to make something that is at least decent enough to throw onto the internet for free at some point!

    Since I'm on my summer break from University at the moment (and have been since november) I've been working on it roughly full-time (around my actual part-time job) since I got back home from GCAP and PAX Australia last year. Hanging out with a bunch of indie devs had a huge effect into galvanising me into pouring far more effort into it than I was previously (regardless of my university work load), so I've been feeling pretty good on at least that front since then!

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    JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    I want to use Unreal one day but my regular job requires so much API knowledge I'm not sure I can cram Unreal into my mind long enough to be useful

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    TasteticleTasteticle Registered User regular
    Unity is the light

    If you have any decent programming knowledge it really gets all the bullshit out of your way and let's you code.

    I had a networked, fully functioning 4 player pong clone (paddles on each side of the screen) up and running in about 3 hours. It was dumb fun.


    Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
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    TasteticleTasteticle Registered User regular
    Basically (aside from learning how to program) the best way to learn how to 'make a game' is to copy ones you like. You already know what the final product should be, so it takes a lot of guess work out of the equation and really helps you get familiar with whatever tools you decide to use.


    Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
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    vsovevsove ....also yes. Registered User regular
    Strongly considering diving into the Arma 3 map tools to see if I can make anything worth a shit.

    WATCH THIS SPACE.
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