how do you make a video game?

http://www.garagegames.com/mg/torque/testimonials.php

http://atcaonline.com/phone/sci-prog-Fig2.jpg

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/se/~tejima/noodle.jpg

* learn how to make stuff appear on screen first and shit
* then make program such that the stuff changes positions in memory, and then have a procedure that draws all this stuff in a particular order and shit
* repeat last step over and over again. there you go, the video game heartbeat and shit
* then add stuff like events which consist of making things happen when you press the keyboard or use your joystick or move and click the mouse and shit
* MAKE GAME TEH FUN!

That said, there are programs out there with which you can make simple games with readymade plug in parts. I dont know what they're named off hand tho.

What sets it apart from the other FPS engines out there? (genuinely curious) Because if there isn't something significant there, he's wasting time if he's after commercial success...

You fuckin heathen scum!!

Although I too am interested in making something Zeldaesque.

However, if your b/f is doing this for educational purposes, then by all means, it's great experience, and would be a great way to land a job at a console gaming company. (Companies like programmers who make 3d engines in their spare time.)

You spend a lot of time initially "engaging melee combat with cows" in order to get enough experience points (and food) so you can move on to the next monster.. you know, evil squirrels and shit like that.

Inform is a language that you can program Zork-type games in, but it's a bit harder than you might be hoping. The old super-cheezy program was something like Adventure Gaming System.

Kids - dont work for games companies. It isnt worth it.

Eh maybe I'm jealous, I cant draw for shite.

The last few "games" I wrote were in Flash or CGI/perl.

ragnarok what

xpost

I love that product placement is now such an issue! I'm imagining ZX Spectrum programmers in 1985 trying to figure out how to get Jet Set Willy to hold a Coke can...

had some experience in the past in writing test adventures using GAC and PAW in the spectrum-era. should be equivalents around today. didn't they just open the old Zork engine, or something?

started writing mobile phone games a couple of years ago too - limited processing power etc had a lot of the same problems people had to get over when doing spectrum programming so it was kinda fun. got halfway through something like 3d ant attack before Sony decided they were going to join in and spoil it for all the bedroom coders.

- Weather (wind in particular) affecting ballistics.
- Gravity affecting ballistics, I know this is used for grenades and missiles but it doesn't seem to be the case for bullets. If I put a cross hair on someone's head at distance and fire, the bullet should really drop off a bit (even assuming no air resistance the quickest an AK47 shot should reach a 300m target is about 1/2 second, that's plenty of time for gravity to kick in).
- Terrain affecting movement (e.g. long grass, mud, etc. slowing you down, ice/snow making it harder to turn/stop)
- Shooting round corners without sticking your head out, like they do in cop shows.
- Better injuries. Instead of this "42 Health Points" crap, have someone lose their good arm and have to shoot with the other one while still shaking from the effects of the shock.
- Other cool stuff

Oh, and while I'm here, can the next GTA incarnation include an iPod type thing so I don't need to nick a car every time I want to hear a song?

don't know about ballistics but plenty of weather in GTA.

> - Gravity affecting ballistics

no idea. but then i don't think i'd notice if the bullets weren't falling where i'd aimed them unless i was using something like a sniper rifle (which, i'd've thought, would have a higher muzzle velocity than an ak47 and, therefore, be less susceptible to gravity) (does the ak47 in GTA let you zoom in to aim? i don't think it does)

> - Terrain affecting movement (e.g. long grass, mud, etc. slowing you down, ice/snow making it harder to turn/stop)

GTA again. in fact they do this dynamically - floor that's wet due to having just been sprayed by a fire engine is slippier than the same floor when it was dry. it's harder to run uphill.

Mario 64 too 8)

> - Shooting round corners without sticking your head out, like they do in cop shows.

was some *third* person shooter i saw recently which let you crouch down behind things, aim at things behind the box using crosshairs, and then pop up and start shooting. which i thought was a bit duff because you wouldn't be able to see the people moving if you were behind something. they should've let you aim at a snapshot based on the last known position of people before you ducked.

>- Better injuries. Instead of this "42 Health Points" crap, have someone lose their good arm and have to shoot with the other one while still shaking from the effects of the shock.

thrashed together a game design at school that was very KnightLore-esque but rather than lose lives you'd lose limbs. which would effect your speed (hopping!) and how much you can carry.

spent an age the other day (literally) running around after tags and oysters and only realised after 3 hours how quiet everything had been without the radio stations.

Detailed ballistics effects like that are generally a detriment instead of a compliment as far as gameplay is concerned, it's one of those things that sounds really cool on paper, but then when you actually play it you either dont notice or the computer looks like it cant aim for shit. Another example in this domain is having your character trip over small objects, you just dont have the spacial awareness or the ability to move like you do in real life.

In a more tactical genre (Along the lines of Rainbow 6) it would make a little more sense, but really only for sniping and the player would have to be introduced to these elements explicitly.

And yeah, I dont expect my engine to ever be really commercially viable, I doubt I'm even going to finish it. But I'm getting what I need from it, I now know why things are done the way they are, what mistakes to avoid, and best of all how to use an external engine and understand its structure so it can be used optimally.

And it's fun! In the geekiest terms of 'fun', that is.

This guy I know writes dialogue for alot of the Disney games out there. It seems like a sweet ass job to me.

You are Luhan of the G'nitl people. You and a quirky tribe of misfits embark on a quest to the evil land of Korgor to extinguish the magical talisman of F'naaar. On the way you will encounter elven folk, quaint forest village, sentient trees and the Lake of Despair, and will be kidnapped at least once by rogue thieves who take the talisman, but you get it back anyway. Someone will die in a cave, probably the old bloke in ankle-length robes.

Anyway has anybody tried the Coldstone engine besides me? If I recall correctly, it completely sucked.

Maple Story, a Korean 2D sidescrolling MMORPG, seems sorta like gunbound-meats-ragnarokakafok

i want to do this, it is my new life's goal. bought a license for gamemaker studio 2, anyone ever fuck with this??

i am watching many tutorials on youtube that are teaching me how to code things, and it is very confusing! but i do have a little ghost dude who can run around a room right now, so there's some progress. most of the work i've done so far is on the music. after getting a sense of what i'm in for i think i can do most of this myself except make the art, i am not good at art.

i used to make stuff in megazeux when i was a kid and then later rpgmaker but ultimately yeah i can't do visual art/design and ended up making a lot of video game music and no video games

making progress! despite not knowing a thing about coding going into this im feeling confident i can make my idea happen. i made a big checklist of things my game engine needs and just been going through learning how to do (at least some basic/janky version of) them one at a time. my idea is a puzzle adventure game heavily inspired by power soukoban but with a lot more characters to talk to and a much deeper atmosphere, set in the afterlife :D

i have: a little title screen + menu, character movement with appropriate sprite direction, ability to walk room to room, a fade out/in transition btwn rooms, a music player that plays the appropriate music for each area, tile based collision, object based collision, ability to push objects, a check to see if object has been pushed into a hole, little blob enemies that spawn from the holes unless they're filled in, enemies swarm around the player, a pause screen, and text boxes that get text from the npc you're talking to.

my game is going to be sweet as fuck and despite my inexplicable unpopularity on this forum i expect several votes come coint and plick 2023 or so! <3, thx for reading

“Inexplicable” huh?

cars are miracles you fiend ;)

made a little NPC test room, having fun designing characters and dialogue

https://s4.gifyu.com/images/ezgif-5-771ceb05c10e3dfba4040e11945f.gif

into it

cuuute

agreed!

been tightening up the game engine and working on the story... really psyched about how it's all coming along! made a little prototype teaser thing to solicit interest + talent (looking for artists! paid!)

the game is... Netherlife

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofWUr2v8eIg

http://netherlife.co

that's some fast progress!

Seriously fast.

I was just watching this yesterday fwiw. I thought it was pretty instructive to watch Blow figure stuff out in real time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGe-d09Nc_M

looking really good, esby! i like the audio a lot too, it sets a good mood.

cool man!

That looks adorable.

There should be an ILX Animal Crossing-like hangout games where the NPCs all just spout random threads back and forth, verbatim.

that blow video was kinda interesting but i only made it about 30 minutes in. i don't blame him, he seemed to have good intentions but i couldn't follow with the constant stops and starts

nice Esby

Esby, so cool! This reaaallly makes me want to try to make a game with a friend (who loves these types of games and would be great at the writing part), but I know I don't actually have actually have the time to pull it off. And what I really want to do is just make the music and sound fx.

thank you guys for checking it out! :) I'm very excited about this.

Jordan, you should go for it! it's not hard to start hacking something together, maybe even just start w/ something very simple like an animated storybook... it's surprisingly not that overwhelming to make something like this, I mostly followed a tutorial for a couple weeks then started branching out and adding things I wanted. and yeah, I have been kinda sorta wanting to make music for games for years but you kind of realize the opportunity to work on something you really click with probably isn't coming along unless you drum it up yrself! I suggest taking a look at what's possible, and TBH learning even a little bit of code opened up my mind to a lot of possibilities and I see why ppl are constantly urging other ppl to do it.

Cool! Can I ask what kind of license you got?

Another little thing I'm curious about is the code base/platform thing...like, could you make your game, then later shell out for a more expansive license to publish it for a different platform? Or would you have had to do that before you develop it?

I'm going to a birthday bonfire for my game friend, who recently was laid off from his university job. So maybe I'll pitch it to him as an unemployment project. :)

I just got the desktop license (PC, Mac, Linux) - i def hope to get to the point of porting to more consoles (hopefully switch will still be a thing when this comes out), you can either a) yes, buy the license for another platform, amend your game code to work on that platform, and get the necessary licenses to develop on that system, etc. or b) essentially hire/partner with someone to do all that for you.

but yeah I think at any point youd have to go in and customize it to that environment a little bit, which will be work, but not an unreasonable amount. hard to totally plan for that from the start esp if you're new. I'm drawing inspiration from a lot of first time game devs who were able to figure this all out somehow, so I defer to that

I watched some tutorial videos and got discouraged because 1) duh, there's a lot of actual coding, and it seems like there'd be a pretty big learning curve compared to the vast number of people who are actually software developers, and 2) while it would be kinda fun to make bad pixel art, I'm no visual artist, especially compared to the vast number of people who do crazy pixel art things for fun.

Just a whole different world from DAW music, wish I knew some people who could do some of these things (instead of a bunch of writers who are even less technical than me, lol).