Can someone help me, please? Im just a newbie full of passion.

Getting Started
1

Hi all,

im a developer, i’ve no skills to draw enviroments or to design en efficient UI, but i really start to develop my first game (really “simple” game, 2D story driven game). Is there some tool in unity that could help me to reach my goal (sprite in assetsStore or some kind of framework…), or i really need to look for someone to collaborate with?

Sorry if my question seems stupid, but im new and im trying to understand.

I red a lot of articles where only one developer create games like Undertale or PinStripe, and i really want to know how do they did this :slight_smile:

Obviuosly im ready to pay to buy assets in the assets store, as a sort of investment.

Someone could help me pls?

thanks in advance

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Have you considered Game Maker Studio or RPG maker?

Here’s a couple RPG kits from Unity’s Asset Store:

3D RPG Kit

2D RPG Kit

There are other fancier ones too, if you want to spend more.

Edit –

I just looked up Pinstripe. If you want to make something like that, take a look at this: Corgi Engine.

You can make pretty much any sort of sideview 2D platformer, with dialogue boxes, etc. I used it to make my game, XENOCAVE.

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Thanks for your reply! Very useful!

I’ve seen your game XENOCAVE (well done, bro :slight_smile: ) and my question is : How have you created the sprites of the main character or of the enemies? Is theresomething like a “sprite-maker”?

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I just use photoshop and zoom in and use the pencil tool to edit pixels. Try to use a controlled color pallet. Pixel art is generally best when approached in a minimalist way. A basic understanding of color theory is good.

This site is a good source of inspiration for me, as far as technique: pixeljoint

Here’s a sticky on their forums: pixel art tutorial

Your sprite dimensions should be powers of 2. So, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, etc. This is optimal for performance.

Atlasing or sprite-sheets are also techniques to learn for performance.

In Unity, use point filtering in the sprite settings to get a crisp, sharp look.

Of course, you don’t have to use photoshop, there are a lot of other options. It’s a matter of personal preference.

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thanks for your kindness and suggestions blueLED!

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What specifically do you need help with?

Start by going through the tutorials in the Learn section, linked at the top of this page. Then, I’d pick a small game (PacMan, Space Invaders, something like that) and build the whole thing. Not just the playable part of the game, all of it. And maybe think about publishing it somewhere for free so that you’ve been through that process, too.

While you go through that, I suggest figuring out which part of game development most interests you. Broadly it can be broken down into programming, art, design, and business. (Most people overlook that last one.) While you can do all of them yourself, it’s obviously going to effect the scope of what you can make, because you’ve got less time to put into each of those. As a newbie, you’re also going to be learning each of them as you go, which will slow you down in and of itself.

Once you know what area(s) you’re interested in you can start focusing on them. For the other areas you can buy assets or get other team members on board. You can’t really “outsource” the business aspect of game development, so that’s something you’ll probably want to chip away at over time. Luckily it doesn’t really matter until your technical skills start to build up nicely, so it’s not one you have to rush into.

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You can probably try these asset store characters:

There are many free assets on asset store.

8

This is what you should do.

  1. Go through all the basic interface tutorials. You can find them here.
  2. Go through the basic scripting tutorials here.
  3. Do a couple of the example projects here.
  4. Watch a few of the live trainings on occasion here. I highly recommend the one on pooling.
  5. Learn how to code in C# on tutorials point here. Fantastic site!
  6. Learn some important patterns used in game design here.
  7. Learn programming patterns here.
  8. Read though the Unity Manual here.
  9. Reference the scripting API here and read through it from time to time here.
  10. Look up some other great references. I recommend:
    Sebastian Lague’s Video
    Lynda.com
    Particularly the video series Advanced Unity3d. Lots of great gems in there.

So while you study all through those and apply them to learning projects you’ll go through a cycle of over confidence, then burn out, followed by getting back your passion, taking small steps and feeling good again, then over confident repeating the whole cycle.

Don’t do that.

And don’t pick some enormous project for your first game.

Small.

Tiny even.

Think something like Flappy Bird small.

Once you have something.

  1. Stick with it. Do not start a new game every other day.
  2. Don’t spend all day talking about it. People hate “idea guys”. Show them.
  3. Read more than you post.
  4. Be courteous and polite. This is a professional forum full of potential employers and employees.
  5. Help others to keep yourself sharp and to better the community.
  6. Try before asking for help.
  7. If you still need help thoroughly write out the problem. What is the game? What is it supposed to do? What is it doing? What does the error say EXACTLY? A lot of times you will find the solution while writing the problem all out.
  8. Get a white board and use it. Have a plan and think about how to structure the project.
  9. Keep scripts tiny. Have all of them do one thing. And have them do things to themselves, not others. Don’t tell the enemy to invoke a death method on the player, tell the player to do the death method when it touches the enemy.
  10. Read other people’s scripts and figure them out. Even if their code is trash, you’ll learn how to read trash code.
  11. Know when to use update and fixed update.
  12. Remember to use delta time (or fixed delta time!).
  13. Remember to cache things, and generally avoid doing something every cycle when possible.
  14. Do not lean on assets. Learn to do them on your own when possible.
  15. Learn scriptable objects, custom inspector scripts, and editor scripts.
  16. Learn to make your own tools.
  17. Get Playmaker for FSM’s. Period. Just get it. I know people who have worked in programming for years that still groan when you bring up FSM’s. Playmaker is invaluable in saving head and heart aches. Plus it’s good for learning. Meanwhile, any detractors you hear are often full of it. No, it does not have a hit on performance. And no, scripting is not easier (anyone saying so is straight up lying to boast how good they think they are). FSM’s compound extremely fast and Playmaker lets you map them all out.

Lastly if you want to score a job, employers expect you to:

  1. Have at least SOME work experience. Even if it’s flipping burgers for a year.
  2. Be able to function socially. Including taking care of your health and hygiene.
  3. Have some work under your belt. ~3 complete games with at least 1 made in a group using GitHub or something similar.
  4. A GOOD media presence. No pictures of you holding bongs or in fringe political groups.
  5. Some basic tech skills that they will quiz you on. Namely:
    C#
    .Net
    LINQ
    MVC Framework
    IC Framwork
    Singletons
    Quadtrees
    Asserts
    Entity Framework
    JQuery
    Azure Platform
    SQL Database
    Database design

EDIT: OH! I almost forgot the single most important thing!!!

Do the “20 Minute Rule” each and every day. Just do it.

The 20 minute rule is that you do 20 minutes a day no matter what.

If at the end of the 20 minute you want to stop, stop. You most likely need a break and you’re just punishing yourself while not retaining anything.

If you find yourself picking up momentum and getting into a rhythm, follow it through and keep working.

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Hi Not_Sure,

Thanks for the advise. I almost felt like burn out a day ago, as I went through online tutorial from Unity and even purchase 2 Udemy courses that cover Unity(focusing more on 2D type of games) and also designing simple Vector + Dragonbones course. Completed those and end up creating a simple ‘tutorial look-a-like’ game - simple such as flappy bird and hack & slash 2D platformer.
That was 3 months ago and in between I still look back at the courses video for reference on the game that I planned to build. I understand about starting it as small and simple for first game. I not sure this game I have in minds (and captured into a game design document) will be too big for a single person to develop + character design.

The game is targeted for mobile space, 2D, player will be assign with a character that will auto attack any enemy based on the start and end x-coordinate. Enemies will be auto spawn on a specific coordinate. Simple animation of attack, walking and idle. There will be 100 floors, each floor will have it owns type of monsters. No multiplayer, no in-app purchase, probably just unity-ads once the playable character died and you want to get back to the game without waiting too long (by watching ads)…using PlayerPrefs for data storing…

Main reason for burn out is because, the animation seems not smooth when attacking and overall seems like very slow. I managed to create 1 hero character + 4 enemy minions plus all its animation.

Question is, do you think this is too big for a first game?

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If it was your first idea for your first game, then yes, its too big. This is universally true, regardless of what the actual game is. Fist time devs always scope too big.

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Hi Kiwasi,

Ok, thanks for reply. Then I have second question…if 1st game need to be smaller, to be honest, there is not much option to develop…I mean, probably will end up like a copy of flappy bird, or a copy/similar game out there…Or, for first game, it is ok to develop something similar the market, simple enough and just to enjoy the end-to-end experience of coding+designing+dev+releasing to the store?

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Yep, that’s perfectly fine. Your first games are probably going to be more about learning than they are about making something new. There’s lots of “common problems” that you can learn to solve before you start breaking new ground.

That said, if you clone a simple game then you can still add your own twist to it. This is a great way to get started in playing with game design. Take something simple that you know well, change something about it, and see how it impacts the experience as a whole.

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I know this post is like…6 years old, but I just found it now and am actually going to go through everything you mentioned in he post, or at least do my best to do so. Was wondering if you had any kind of update to this?

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That’s his join date. His post is only three months old.

His post should still be accurate.

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Oh…Welp ill be in this corner hiding from society if anyone needs me XD

Thanks!

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That’s why we are all here :stuck_out_tongue:

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Spoken like a true pro.

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