AuthorTopic: The right time to make a game?  (Read 8921 times)

Offline jmgandalf

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Re: The right time to make a game?

Reply #10 on: January 02, 2007, 03:17:22 pm
Well, from my experience, it's better to make games in teams, since almost nobody by his own can master all the aspects the game making involves p.e. design, spriting, music and sfx.

There's a little community of game makers that i frequent, www.gmclans.com , and what we do is make games in teams, named clans. We have all kind of skilled people there, from designers to musicians, including programmers and pixellers of course.

Sorry if this sound like a promotion, but that is the only place i known that really can help you to get into gamemaker.

You can try to make games alone though, just do what we said, start with smaller projects, and document yourself in every aspects of the Game Design.

Good luck with your search :)

Offline Willows

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Re: The right time to make a game?

Reply #11 on: January 26, 2007, 09:34:46 am
I've attacked GameMaker on and off for a few years, now. I'm still terrible at the programming aspect of it, but I can do enough to make most things function. Buggy as hell, but function. Barely.

I decided to have another swing at making a game again (You say simple, I think platformer) and an idea struck me. Here I am, making graphics without any programming. What are the chances that a programmer has made an engine without any graphics? A few quick minutes in google, and sure enough, there are a couple decent, pre-programmed platformer engines built for and on GameMaker. Most of the people that have made these simply ask that you stick their name in the credits. I, for one, don't actually plan to finish the game, but simply to have a fair exuse to attempt to put some things together.

These engines go into fair detail. The one I have is essentially a super mario clone. You can go up and down slopes without skipping, you can run and "fly" like in mario, jump on enemies' heads, stand on a moving platform, get pushed by a moving platform, disrupt the path of a moving platform etc etc etc. The code has notes in it "// do not edit this" or "// change these variables to make the character jump higher" and isn't that hard to get working correctly. Find an engine that has the basics of what you want to accomplish, and make a simple platformer, if you want.

I myself have tried working with a couple ambitious people (volunteer) on their game projects. Even though the vast majority of these aren't completed (I've one half-success out of a good 10 attempts) they do provide you with further experience. Keep trying, and remember that one small success is much better than a huge failure.

Offline Luzeke

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Re: The right time to make a game?

Reply #12 on: January 27, 2007, 02:59:58 am
Is this the poor soul you were talking about who's attempting to recreate Kingdom Hearts?
http://create-games.com/preview.asp?id=2811

I agree. If you feel that you want to make a game, that's the right time to start. The hard part is holding that feeling that made you wanna make a game throughout the whole process (building the engine, creating the content, etc). A good start is to write down everything that makes the game appealing to you on an A4 paper, fill that paper. What I do is I take an A4 and fill it with sketches of the game. Only stuff that can't be put down in a sketch is written down. Mostly because my sketches jolts my brain to search for the things I thought about the game better than lines of text (might just be an individual thing though, in the end everybody has their own way of doing stuff).

I use Multimedia Fusion 2 (which predecessor was used to make Streambolt & Noitu Love ;D) to create my games. I'm not too fond of Gamemaker, but since it's free you should probably check it out. If you feel like being really serious and putting money into investing in a game creation program I'd recommend two: Multimedia Fusion 2 (of course) and Torque 2D Game Builder. They cost about the same for standard licenses.

To answer your question "how do you know you're good enough to make a game?"

You don't, you find out!  ;)

Offline dragonrc

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Re: The right time to make a game?

Reply #13 on: January 28, 2007, 09:42:41 am
I also use gamemaker, I like it but its pretty hard to make a good bugless game. I agree, stay away from platform games.
There are many people who want to make a rpg, they go sprite all kinds of stuff, programm the whole story. But then they notice the impossibleness of the inventory (ooh I hate that evil inventory) and the battle system and stop making the game.

edit:
In gamemaker, variables are your friends

Offline Cow

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Re: The right time to make a game?

Reply #14 on: January 28, 2007, 06:51:13 pm
Quote
Buggy as hell, but function. Barely.
Don't blame the program for your problems. Game Maker isn't 'buggy', people just expect it to make the game for them. :ouch:

effort * skill = awesomeness of game