Hey guys, I’ve assembled a 3-man team (including myself) and we’ve decided to make a game using Unity (free version). I have some questions that need to be answered first:
What are the exact steps for making a game. What needs to be done first, second, third so on…
What are the specific jobs on a game development team, I know there’s programmers, designers, audio editors, but is there anything else i should know?
Any other advice that will help the game-making process
Thanks, in advanced
I dunno; how long is a piece of string?
Hit the tutorials hard, I have a 5 man team and it all depends on what exactly you want to do as to how painful it’s going to be.
More info, then we can give you more help.
Well what i’m basically asking is what should we start with. I’d assume we’d create all the 3D models, and than add script and the like to them, then proceed with lighting and other effects. I can see other ways of doing it however so i don’t know.
I’m also wondering what specific jobs need to be done, and again in what order? I know we need to create 3D models, textures for those models, animations, lighting and special effects, audio, and physics but is there anything else.
As for what kind of game i’m trying to create i want it to be as high quailty as possible. I’m willing to put in time if the end result is something i can be proud of. The genre of the game seems to be a horror rpg at the moment.
Remember i’m using the free version of Unity
Hi mate,
I’m currently working on a project that has had me start, scrap and restart 4 times over the past year! Its a huge learning curve and its one I am still on myself. I would suggest you get the basics down, know exactly what your game is going to be and stick to it, change things along the way but keep the core of the idea the same.
Next start trying things out in unity, if your game is a FPS then create a small FPS with the fundamental basics (movement, shooting, impact blah blah) leave the animations and modelling until later (the pretty stuff comes after). Keep in mind what your "Glue"is for the game, if it is a FPS then your glue will be the shooting, aiming and movement if its a third person hack and slash then your combat will be the glue as these are the things the player will be doing more then anything, after that focus on an art style!! This is important because the art style will give that all important “Feel of the game” to the player, google some game art styles or something like that to get ideas of what your aiming for but still try and experiment and be unique.
If your looking to fund the game then the asset store is your friend, create something good, sell it, use the money to fund development, rinse and repeat.
I am no pro developer but this is my personal experience from starting as an indie just because I had the passion for a game idea, keep at it. 
I will say, if you want it to be as high quality as possible the cost of Unity Pro will be the least of your issues… What genre of game are you making? RPG mechanics differ greatly to the likes of Racing game mechanics.
But still, yes first you will need textures and meshes to import into Unity. There is Blender which is a free tool which can do most if not all of what you need, but I personally prefer lightwave and / or 3DS max probably due to experience with them I find them less painful to use.
Then build your terrain, import your objects / characters / meshes LOD, build your terrain, get them moving with either character controller or rigid-body function, use player prefs to save data, build a database to store whatever info you need, do the mocap if needed, get the enemy AI and path finding set up, get the interaction / attacks etc. etc. / dialogue system sorted, sort out all the GUI functionality or HUD / UI, sort out the lighting and shadows, optimise, occlusion cull, test for bugs, come back in three to six years and tell me how it all went.
This is all loosely based on little info…
When you say you want info, what exactly do you want? By the way i have Autodesk 3dsmax 2014. As for the genre of the game as i said, Horror RPG
What exactly do you plan to do? Are you using guns? Will you be using particles for specific things? Do you want cutscenes? Have a look into game creation as a whole, or just play some and see how there all put together.
I plan to create full-length horror game, with realistic graphics as the chosen art style. The game will be in the first person perspective and you’ll have a few, but limited, weapons such as guns and knives to fight with. The game features navigating a vast space station, while you’re hunted down by the bodies of possessed teammates and demonic ghosts. The game will feature a map complete with a objective marker and an in-game menu we’re you can change specific options and the like. I would like cut scenes and specific events triggered when you do certain things. For instance if i walk through “point A” i’d like to make it so the player is attacked or if i walk through “point B” i’d like the player to hear whispering. Cut-scenes will also be used to help move the story along. I’d like the lighting to be rather dark and the game to focus more on subtle things than any major effects, (mysterious sounds, rather than full blown explosions). The game will feature the remnants of your crew, who will help you along the way as you journey through the space station. The game will also feature a few easter eggs and story endings based on what you do, as well as branching events based on your decisions.
Cool, well you have a long way to go… It starts with the 10,000 hours of pain so to speak, learning C# for a start… Checking the doc libraries, mastering 3DSMax, learning how mecanim works etc. etc…
Is there any way to use C++ instead of C#? I think you can in the full version but it’d be cool if you could do it in the free version also. If not doesn’t Unity come with its own programming language ( how effective is it anyway)? Also, any more advice you could give. You’ve been a huge help by the way.
If you want my advice, I’d say get the uttermost basic gameplay mechanics down first. Afterwards you’re naturally going to trim down the things your planning and will be lucky if you get to implement more than ~1% of them. Don’t lose motivation though, you have to take small steps before taking big ones.
Either way, after experiencing the difficulties that you’ll encounter while trying to implement the basic mechanics, hopefully you’ll be able to make a relatively good distinction between the realistic and attainable plans, and the unrealistic ones. After compressing your plans and getting the basic mechanics down, you can begin thinking about cycling out the placeholder graphics for nicer looking ones.
But this is just my advice. Keep in mind that I’ve only made one game so I’m not as knowledgeable as the other members of this forum.
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
There are no exact steps to follow in making a game, I guess if you want the basic logic some things do have a certain order. such as writing down your ideas, creating concept art, modeling / texturing / animation, programming, ect. Then putting it all together. First off before you start anything major you want to develop a prototype of how to game will play without getting too fancy. Once you have a solid prototype then you can start getting fancy with it. Everyone does everything their own way though, so you three will have to figure out what works best. If non of you have any experience then it will be difficult creating much unless you learn the basic skill traits required.
Hi Wendigo
I’m not a pro, only a novice hobbyist that has only started her journey in this amazing world of game design development. The pros here will probably laugh at my amateurish experiences and recommendations for you. But then, maybe some advice from another novice that only started her journey is what could actually help you and your mates (-;
First off, so far I have identified the following working areas for me (highlevel outline only):
****[/u]
1) “Visual” game design
- Create models (meshes) for your game
- Create textures for your game
- Create rigs and animations for your game
- Select or compose sound effects and music for your game (yep, not really “visual”, but still somehow fits here (-; )
- Terrain building and texturing
- GUI design
- World building (plugging all of the above together like Lego bricks (-; )
2) “Conceptual” game design
- What’s the story of your game, which tale do you want to tell, any message that you want to bring across?
- What game systems do you want (e.g. combat, trading, harvesting etc). Which ones are the pillars of your game, its core?
- How will these game systems work? What formulas and logic will they have?
- How do you want the player to interact with the game? Classic mouse/keyboard? Mobile devices?
- Any actors or protagonists in your game? Which role will they play?
3) “Technical” game design infrastructure
- Programming of the game systems and UI parts
- Packaging and deploying the game
- Technical infrastructure (website, distribution platform, patch system, online features etc.)
- Unity API
[u]Second, I have identified the following learning path for me (you will most likely go through these phases iteratively):[/u]
Phase 1: Prepare your toolbox
You will most likely end up not only with Unity, but with a bunch of tools. You need to select them carefully for two reasons:
a) they need to fit your working style like the proverbial glove
b) they need to interact seamlessly and flawlessly together (I call it “value chain”)
As to which tools you need, you’ll get an idea through the section 1 above (“visual” game design)
Phase 2: Exploration and disposable prototypes
You will most likely have to start over again. And again. And again … “GameDon” mentioned it in his posting and I strongly agree to his experiences. It helped me a lot to strive for “tiny projects”, instead of doing a tutorial marathon. Try to set yourself a tiny little goal (e.g. “today I want to achieve a main menu that let’s me exit the game”) and then gather specifically the information and tutorials that you require in order to achieve this goal. I always found it way more easy (and rewarding) to do it this way, rather the other way round where you follow a learning path that somebody else has defined.
After you have achieved your first tiny little project, define yourself a slightly “bigger” one. And then try to achieve this as well by researching appropriate information and tutorials. And so on, and so on, and so on …
Again, it’s an iterative process. And it is very likely that you will throw away most of what you have produced in the very beginning. But as you progress, you’ll notice that you will be able to inherit more and more of what you have achieved so far for your actual game.
Phase 3: Build your game - one brick after the other
I’m currently in phase 2, but I can already notice that I will be able to reuse parts of phase 2 for my actual project. So I’m building up kind of a “game pieces library” for myself. Step by step. I’m far, FAAAAR away from even starting my actual game, but it’s exciting to see that even in this early stage I can already collect some very basic building blocks that will make their way into the actual game. I expect to gradually “phase out” of phase 2, and at the same time to gradually “phase in” to phase 3.
[u]And last, here’s some general advice that helped me so far:[/u]
- Don’t split up your team too early. I find it extremely helpful when everybody gets at least a highlevel understanding of all building blocks along the value chain of game design development. The designers should at least have a vague understanding of programming, the programmers should at least have a vague understanding of the visuals, and so on.
- Be prepared for many, many, MANY setbacks. Last weekend I have been looking for a coding error for hours. It was SO frustrating. And then, after 3 hours, I actually found it and it was a ridiculously tiny simple trivial little bug. But on the way of tracking down this bug, I have learned so much, that it was actually rewarding in the end.
- Don’t head for your game. Yes, It sounds contradictory. But this paradigm actually helps me. What you produce on your very first miles of this journey will most likely not make it into your final game. Hence if you try to achieve too much in the beginning, you will most likely be overwhelmed or loose track. Have your final game always in the back of your mind, but be prepared that the journey to get there will probably have some turning loops.
- Think big, act small. A similar advice to the one before. Be prepared to make small steps, but never loose your long term vision out of sight.
- Don’t enjoy the target, enjoy the journey to get there. Many, MANY hobbyist projects die after the first wave of excitment has ended. I belive that this happens because one tends to think too much about the end product. But it will take a loooong time to get there. Hence I believe that the motivation and satisfaction should not come from the end product alone, but moreover from the journey that you are about to start in order to get there - it has so many satisfactory moments (and frustrating ones as well (-; ) that the journey itself is reason enough to do the journey.
OK, lots and lots of text. And I’m sure the pros here are already rolling on the floor laughing about me and my tiny little novice experiences (-;
But again, who cares? It’s my journey and this is the way I learned to enjoy it. And I’m enjoying it a lot. I hope that my novice experiences help you and your team a little bit, so that you can enjoy your own journey as well. It’s a journey worth travelling indeed (-;
Wish you and your team all the best, but especially lots of fun!
P.S.: Yep, I intentionally wrote “her” in the beginning, female game designers actually do exist (-;
Start with the core stuff first, starting by making models might seem tempting since that will make you “see” progress but is often not a good idea unless you have dedicated modelers of course. Identify what the core mechanics for your game is and start with those and try to focus and finish them of so you dont end up with 20 half finished buggy features, this will make it harder to identify and fix problems. And the most important thing, have a plan. Does not have to be a fancy Game Design Document but at least write down all the features you want and sort them with the most important ones at the top. A good way can also be to set up milestones, like v0.1 should have those basic features in and 0.2 those ones, will make it easier to focus and also give you some sense of progress. Make small goals, baby steps is the way to go : p
Think it works like that:
But seriously, game development is a very (VERY) time consuming thing and you have to take it into account. Days turn into weeks, weeks into months and so on. Also, if you plan to make a quality thing alone - forget it. If you don’t know anyone who might team up with you, better save some cash for some assets for your game as it is nearly impossible to do the whole thing alone (unless you’re doing basic arcanoid game).
Good luck.
PROTOTYPE!!!
Don’t try make the game first go. Make a prototype to check it is fun and work on mechanics. Until you have a prototype you don’t have a game to make.
I think a lot of Parallaxe said holds true, but I would really emphasize how important it is to plan what your doing, especially when working with a team (especially especially when working with a distributed team!). It doesn’t need to be a full GDD, but you do need to know how everything is going work, look and play long before you dive in and start spending hours making assets (models, animations, etc) for something that might not work, technically or from a game play POV, when you get down to making it.
There’s no such thing as too much detail, when it comes to game design… well, almost 
^This x 10000%. It doesn’t need to be a prototype of your entire game, or even look pretty, but if there’s an important/tricky aspect to what your making, there’s a good chance you’ll want to prototype it.
You may not be able to identify all of these important aspects from the start, and the more experience you get the easier this will become, but good planning will help you lower the chances of something big popping up later and throwing a spanner in the works.
How is your game play going to work out? Prototype it. How are we dealing with monster AI? Prototype it.Having random level generation in your game? Prototype it. Not sure where your plot and story are heading? Write a draft (pencil driven prototyping!) Etc etc etc…
If you know C++, C# shouldn’t be a huge leap to learn. UnityScript (Unitys version of Javascript) is also very similar to C++.
Maybe you can learn some things from my blog:
www.gladiusforagladiator.blogspot.com
I also didn’t know how to start, but if you search knowledge about programming, try these guys on Youtube:
Burgzerg arcade
JesseEtzler0
SolarChronus
ETeeskiTutorials
UnityCookie
They helped me into the scripting part.