So I’m new, and like a deer freshly wandering out of the woods and seeing people for the first time. I have NO IDEA what I’m doing. Well I have ‘some’ idea. I did a couple of the tutorials finished the tic tac toe thing which was interesting because it had more parts than I expected from just tic tac toe. But it’s also given me a bit of pause.
I’m a bit concerned about how hard it’ll be to make anything remotely like even the simple games I had ideas for.
So I’d like some advice and perhaps a bit of direction as to which of my ideas may be simplest and least time consuming to put together just to get that first game under my belt.
I was thinking of either:
A simple turn based battle game with a grid for placing units(similar to the basic mechanics of Kings and Legends I really liked how combat worked in that even if I hated almost everything else about it.) Not sure where to begin with this one.
2.A basic action rpg, in the zelda style(I.E Go here do that, get things, beat boss, get shiny thing, repeat till end game) I actually kinda started a scene recreating an one of the villages from Crystalis(a very old NES rpg no one really remembers) then realized I had no idea how to setup combat or npc interactions…
3.A tower defense of some sort. (maybe something similar to Plants VS Zombies)
4.A mech combat game(The big issue here is I’d like the mechs to be customizable otherwise I might as well just make a generic fps)
I’d like to get started as simply as possible but I also want to familiarize myself with creating mechanics so i don’t feel so lost all the time and preferably be able to finish(or at least make real progress on) in a month or two. Assuming that’s a reasonable expectation.
Any advice or tips or anything really that sheds some light on things would be greatly appreciated.
None of those ideas are particularly simple for a beginner. Of them, #3 (the tower defense game) is probably easiest.
But honestly, you should be setting your sights lower initially. It’s much better to get something playable up and running, than to make a half-baked start at a more complex game. And games don’t have to be complex to be compelling. Look at Flappy Bird. Or Doodle Jump. Or Angry Birds, fer cryin’ out loud. All of those games are downright trivial.
My advice would be to pick one of those (or something else similarly simple — there are tons of examples in the app store), and essentially make a clone of it. Put your own spin on it (Angry Pigs!), and have fun. Don’t expect to sell it; expect to learn a lot, write a bunch of code your future self will be deeply ashamed of, and maybe get something you can show your friends. And then move on to the next one!
Hi Dekallis,
I’am a beginner just like you, so I understand the fact that you have so much ideas, and this is good
but you should organize your ideas first, some projects are too big and require usually a full team to be achieved, so thinking of such project right now would wast your energy, and you maybe lose interest in the end and abandon the hole thing (believe me, It happened to me so often).
here what you can focus on:
1- get some ideas, classify them from : small to big
2- from the small ideas: ask your self with my current skill what project can I achieve. keep note of all the other ideas and if at any time you get an improvement for them note it.
3- when working on the small project you chose, keep taking notes of what can be the next improvement.
for my self i’am extending the roll Ball tutorial, slowly but surely.
I wish you good luck