hey guys,
I have started my venture on Unity by learning Unity basics and some 3D modelling basics. I want to start by creating a small FPS game for android with a very small map and add like a zombie campaign. I am quite new to the game development and its concepts so my question is Can you create a game all by your self from modelling to texturing to scripting and how long u think it takes to create those and since I am new would be able to complete my this simple game in about 3 months time span i.e in my summer vacation.
Yes you can, it takes quite a while because you don’t realise how much stuff you have to make to actually create something polished and you need a decent amount of experience/ability/patience in a good few areas, depending on what your idea of the kind of game you want to make actually is.
Don’t try and do an FPS, unless you’re walking very slowly and the badguys arent moving and your art can only be described as ‘surreal’. Anything that controls the amount of things the camera can see while looking nice is ideal. I’m done with advice now but yeah, be aware of how much work it is, and how much time you have
Haha my only real ‘almost finished’ game was my marble madness clone, also top down, and also the meat of it done in 3-4 months, most time consuming part was figuring out the workflow for making the levels as I decided to do the lightmaps in vray to have everything very lovely looking. I work much faster now and can do much more capable things, so bigger ambitions, but it’s still taking ages to get stuff done… if you really want to push the boat out and do something special you have to do quite a lot of reading and research, most of this year has been spent reading white papers where i dont understand the notation - in fact i’m amazed more comp sci degree owners dont have a look around at these masters/phd/research papers, i came out out uni knowing what all that stuff meant, haven’t a clue now, but a half decent programmer who remembers their university education could be forever swimming in money (asset store goldmine i’m convinced) if they could interpret the notation to a functional algorithm
Yeah, you can make a game on your own. But it’s going to take 4 times as long as you think it will, and you’ll probably have to narrow your scope many times. So, do as I say, don’t do as I do: don’t embark on some massive project immediately. I can’t count the number of times I’ve scrapped and re-done whole sections of my game, since I learned better ways to do things as I went. Do tiny little projects to learn the basics before setting off on a long term project, because like I said before, you can do it, but it will take much longer than you think it will, and it can be difficult at times to keep it going. Remember too that it’s never a waste of time to do a project that isn’t going to become anything if it teaches you something, because then you’ve done work you can often apply directly into a future project.
This is good advice. Eventually you tend to learn what ideas you have will be stepping stones rather than a grand design, after several years of doing bits and pieces i’m working on larger stepping stones, that will take a long time, longer than i’d like, and make no money, but the education is invaluable if this is your passion and what you want to do. Definitely know your bounds regarding time though. You can make a huge game if you want, but its going to take you years. Current project was meant to be for a competition but I cant see me making the deadline, so it’s going to take some months. It’s just a subset of the planned following project, which will take several years, and i’ve anticipated that and planned how i intend to live around that. So long as you know its going to take a long time and you need iron motivation, you can do it.
The quoted had it right, about 4x longer, even being optimistic
Yes, you can make games by yourself. A number of people do. However, the scope is very limited. They aren’t trying to make the next Call of Duty. The game I’m working on is similar to the old Raptor: Call of the Shadow game by Apogee and it’s still taking me months.
Each part of game development is not simple and takes time to master. You can’t just “learn to model”. You have to learn modeling, scaling, uv unwrapping, normal mapping, texturing, rigging, morph zones and animating. That’s the basics of 3d modeling. It might take you a week to finish a model. Then you have to import it, set up the animation trees, create the AI, create the pathing, etc. So you could be looking at several months just for making the 3d models.
My advice, if you’re not going to listen to anything else and still want to make an FPS (I wouldn’t. I’d advise you to make almost any other game that uses low poly assets), is to use a lot of assets from the asset store or anywhere else that they are offered for free. Don’t make the game to sell. Just get good at 1 thing. Get good enough at that so you can try to join a team and use the game to show off your skill.
I am making one right now! Been working on it for 3 months already. But I’ve learned shaders in the process, and wasted a lot of time. I’ll be posting a mockup level in a week or two.
Honestly I should have chosen a smaller scope. But I’ve gotta roll with the punches now! It’ll hurt more to rush it and lower quality, I try to do my best in everything I add to the game.
A game being made by yourself is a very long and delicate process, I myself have worked on an fps shooter by myself for two months, It is definitely not as easy as one would think and it does have its trying times. but hard work and determination you can without a doubt get your FPS done and polished in three months
I’ve started making a game by myself but it’s taking a long time, so I dropped it for a while and decided to try make a missile commander styled game in a couple weeks. I’m going to release it on the Android market in a few days since it’s quite fun to play despite the literal paper design. (Drew everything in a notepad) ^^
Yep, for your first game. I would suggest think up a game that you think will take you 1 week.
You may find it actually takes you 1-2 months.
But that is better than aiming for 3 months and taking 2 years!
Or even better think up a game that you think will take 1 day.
Seconded! Nice work. Hoping to get some kinda interactive turntable on the go soon to show my approach to the characters in my game, bloody hell what a ballache, but it’ll be worth it in the end. Been back and forth between Skyshop and Lux looking for the pbr solution that I like most. Lux wins, but since I have skyshop I can at least use a bunch of its extremely useful tools
I would not try and do everything, use the store as much as possible and you may actually have a working demo in a short time
If not, it could take forever, depending on the game
I think that is one of the major Unity assets, the fact that so many cool ready options for a variety of needs is readilly available
I managed to convert my XNA RPG project to Unity in a few weeks and used asset store to cover for many systems i would have to recreate in Unity
That way i could focus on the graphics and the actual combat/quests etc and now i am very close to having a rough first demo that could turn to a final demo in a few months, plus the whole gameworld ready and all creatures etc in the game, mainly due to the asset store that helped me fill in the world, besides my own designed creatures
So just strategize and focus on planning what assets to use first, then everything will be much easier
I would add that you need to know how to draw as well. There’s more to “modelling” than just moving vertexes. You need to know proportions, anatomy, motion, etc. Otherwise any humanoid is going to look like crap. So… to do art, you need to know art, and you need to know, basically, how to draw - even if you don’t actually sit down with pen and paper.
I don’t really agree, i’m crappy at drawing but have been reasonably competent with computer graphics since the mid 80s (My first graphics program i copied out of a computer magazine into bbc basic, okay i cant say the art was very good but i like to thing the spirit was there). Computers give you layers, undo, masks, copy and paste and so on, you dont need to worry so much about technique that way and i think its unfair to intimidate someone with the promised necessity of good drawing skills. Having an appreciation for art in general, particularly how to use its principles for your own intention (This is a bit like knowing your own language well enough to play with it entertainingly), certainly can help though, and i think a graphics tablet is an absolute necessity, without question.
The whole spectrum of skills you really absolutely have to get some kind of grip on if you’re doing, even if partly, your own content in your own 3D game can be fearsome though, S3dition’s list was just the tip of the iceberg, just for the 3D stuff, then all the other fields, well lots of those too. You’ll be doing a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, typing and scribbling on your tablet and waving yur mouse around, and somewhat abandoning the idea of a social life unless your mates join in or youre lucky enough to run into a tolerant partner eventually
Best thing to do is create a partially functional demo of about 5-10% of your game world in 3 weeks, so using one of my projects as an example it would be a mile of countryside showing 10% of a city. This is a good way to gauge what you are capable of doing in a short amount of time and how long it will take to finish the project, before I go to the publishers or private investors I always use this process to give a rough indication of feasibility against time/money.
Regarding the art side of things, I can’t draw- I’ve seen 17 year olds with better art than I can produce by hand. But I would consider myself to have a firm grip on immersive 3d environments characters with no hair pulling moments, then with the advent of products such as zBrush Substance Painter it’s only getting easier by the year to create standout assets. Everyone is different though, some people need detailed drawings for particular elements- some don’t. For some architectural Disney work I’ve done, I’ve been producing blueprints from 3d scans which can be then used as accurate drawings for producing 3d geometry then for other architectural work even a photograph will do. As long as the output is up to standard conforms to the engine’s limitations, there’s no problem with whatever technique you choose. One of my friends at Bethesda uses Photogrammetry for environment art, some people jest at it but it gets the job done and much better than some traditional methods.
Something I would say is if you are serious about making something alone, you should pump money into the backbone of your game regarding time effectiveness- it’s possible to do it without spending a penny, but money will speed your project up unless you’ve thought of the new gimmick or have a simple but unique formula in which case you can be laughing all the way to the bank. Perhaps a zombie game isn’t necessarily the way to go for a 3 month project, there’s so many on the market now the bar has to be set quite high unless it’s a project for pleasure. There’s alot of time saving assets on the assetstore, for AI I found either Behavior Designer or NodeCanvas to be useful, for general visual scripting there’s Playmaker or uScript… I’ve got over 95 store assets on my account, some have been expensive but left dead in the water- some have progressed to be the best time savers for the least amount of money. I’d say I’m using about 15-30% of them across 2 studio projects, the stuff for visual ai, scripting shading are amongst the most important I’ve invested in. Always check out the daily asset store deals, I’ve managed to nab quite a few impressive assets for 25-50% of the full price.
