Another newb with feasibility questions

Unity Engine
1

Greetings all around!
In this thread I, an utter newb, ask of the Unity community to inform me on the issue of the feasibility of a certain gaming project of mine.

For years I’ve wanted to make a few games of my own, I tried the RPGmaker and the GameMaker (and found both lacking, obviously) and, in my desperation, even went so far as to make a few forum-based text RPGs before pretty much giving up (coding from scratch always seemed too daunting). But lucky me, Unity came around to re-ignire my hopes. I’ve been playing around with the latest release on and off for the past few months, trying some sample projects, going through a few tutorials, looking into programming languages and adjusting my expectations according to my new experiences.

So what I’d like to create now is an open-world sruvival FPS, basically. A 3D roguelike, in a way. In the long run, I’d also like a procedurally generated world and full physical interaction with all objects…but that’s a long way away.

For now, what I need are the technical methods, resources and/or approaches to creating the following:

  • An open world (think fallout 3, or the old gothic games)
  • very simple graphics (think MineCraft minus its snazzy textures), really just for representation rather than prettiness
  • Procedurally generated characters and objects
  • Customisable controls
  • A saving feature (to save the entire game world)
  • Basic physics - gravity, inertia etc. (I don’t really know much about what Unity offers in that department)

And I also wonder about how one would go about implementing the following features later on:
(Ordered by decreasing priority)

  • Procedurally generated world (think Dwarf Fortress)
  • Fully physical world, from the ground up - everything consisting only of physical objects, not just background

The goal is to have a large world with lots of weird locations to explore, items (tools, guns, raw materials) to collect and tinker with, hostile and less hostile characters to meet, vehicles to drive around…and ideally (but not necessarily), the whole thing would be randomly generated for unpredictability, and fully physical to promote creative problem solving, rather than shooty solutions only.

I realise of course that nothing is ever easy; but I don’t mind spending months before even having something playable - if it takes me ten years to get it finished, then that’s no less time than I’ve previously spent waiting for the right tools (unity) to become available.

Any help, whether it be linking to relevant tutorials/posts, pointing to an open source project I might want to look at, or simply direct advice, is dearly appreciated, so thank you in advance :smile:

2

Hey there,

I know They made Fusionfall with Unity, you should be able to check it out on cartoon Networks website. I’ve seen some pretty cool things made with it, I don’t know what Unity’s limits are myself, I DO believe if you code your engine from scratch you’ll get an over-all better outcome, but if codings not your strong suit then Unity is sure nice to have around. BUT don’t think you’ll get out of it, I tried scripting multiple times but I always gave up, I hated it. Finally, after realizing good scripts/scripters are expensive, I finally sat down and said “I’m not going to try to make a game, I’m just learn about Vecor3’s” Now, about a month later I think, I’m probably a little over half way done with a TINY but functional and (if I do say so myself) fun spaceship game. If you want to BE A PART of games learn 3d animation, writing, level design, if you want to MAKE games learn coding. It’s harsh but true, if I can do it, you can too. My advice, start yourself on a tiny project with one level and a single objective, you’ll learn how much more there is to learn. I know that wasn’t exactly the answer to your question, but I figure I’d save you a post (and a rather harsh reply) on the Colab section. Best of luck.

3

My problem with that is that I’m not really interested in programming very much - I have no intention of making it my career. All I’m interested in is making little games - so learning scripting properly, rather than how to put together and modify pre-existing code, is a little beyond the scope of what I’m really up to.

4

You will need a very significant about of programming to do an open world with procedural content. Since you’re not interested in programming, I’d have to question whether this project is something you should undertake.

–Eric

5

I’d say it was possible, but Ambitious by any stretch of the imagination.

Sounds very interesting, and quite similar to my “big” project which I’ve been working on a few years.

6

The procedural component is no priority, and the open world part needn’t exist straight away either. They’re mid- and long-term goals, for the next months and years maybe.

I’d really like to just focus on what I can do with a minimum of in-depth studying of programming; and for that I’m right now looking for resources and pointers - it’s hard to start with nothing but blank space :confused:

7

What you described in your original post is the opposite of a ‘little game’.

Assembling the code for a game from (possibly modified) bits of existing code probably isn’t really a viable option, especially for something like what you’re describing.

Long story short, if you want to do something even remotely like what you’re describing, you’ll probably need to learn to program (IMO).

8

I’m going to be less diplomatic and just state flat-out that not only will you need to learn to program, you’re going to have to learn it really quite well and be prepared to do a lot of it (speaking as someone who’s done a certain amount of procedurally-oriented projects). There’s simply no way you’re going to be able to find bits of code and bolt them together to do what you want. Actually I’m somewhat confused as to how someone could be interested in such a heavily procedurally-generated concept and not be interested in programming…kind of like someone who hates sports wanting to do a football game.

–Eric

9

It’s a shame truly that nothing can ever be easy :\

I suppose I’ll be borrowing some books on C++.

10

While any sort of programming knowledge is good, C++ isn’t used in Unity. (Unless you’re writing plugins, but the need for those is pretty rare.)

–Eric

11

Alright, dozing me will be getting some sleep first, Java books afterwards.

Life is hard!

12

Unity doesn’t use Java either…

–Eric

13

Sleep, stat!

14

At the moment, I’m having trouble thinking of any complex technical endeavor that could be described as ‘easy’ (and I can’t think of any reason why game development should be an exception).

15

Doing nothing is always easy.

16

Until reality sets in, then it becomes a whole lot harder.

Anyways, I’ve got some time on my hands, and I’m currently trying to decide whether to go with C#, JavaScript or Boo. The latter two sound no bells in my head, I know next to nothing about them. And C# makes me worry about the whole “belongs entirely to MS” thingy.

Any quick and dirty opinions while I go and dig up information?