Hello everyone! I want to make a game! Any help is appreciated!

Okay, so I’m working on making a 2D stealth/platformer game! I’m writing down everything I want in my game, and I’m watching tutorials on how to use C# (since this is my first time jumping in to this sort of thing). Yet I don’t really know where to begin. Should I make the title screen/menu first, or the game then the title screen/menu? And should I make backgrounds or creature sprites first? There’s so much to consider. I really am new to this, and it seems a bit overwhelming. But I’m determined to do this. Any advice is deeply appreciated. Thank you in advance, everyone!

Spend a week doing tutorials first. Most of your questions will be answered and you will be primed to start working on your game. All of the ones on the Learn section is a great start.

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Well, it can’t hurt to have a little bit of a plan. Hope it doesn’t take too long to learn C#. Not that it matters, cause it’s gonna take a while to make a game worth playing, lol. Thanks for your advice.

I’ve been learning a year, I have a basic aptitude for coding, & I wouldn’t start here. By all means write things down, I find mind maps let me link ideas, branch them etc so I can make sure I have the right logic working, but start with the simple tutorials (the unity learn ones are really good, start with the roll a ball one, not the stealth one as that is more advanced) so you get an idea of what’s involved with making simple things happen. That will give you a good basis to decide whether you are ready to start on your dream game, because there’s nothing worse than trying to build that game you’ve always wanted only to find you can’t make it work (speaking from experience here :frowning: ).

Good luck, have fun

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Start small unity has plenty of learn tutorials and YouTube has many unity beginner tutorials. One is a 2d platformer from gamesplusjames. It’s really good. :smile:

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i am thinking too, that starting with 2d tutorials will be good. Try unity tutorials.

make at first gameplay mechanic. Title screen/menu is easy with unity-ui. And if you know, how your game will be played, then you can add background or sprites. And dont make complicated game at first :smile:

Yeah, I should probably start small/ I also have a cool idea for a card game. Maybe I’ll just start with that first.

Nah. I’ll start with my 2D game. May be slightly complicated, but I’ve wanted to make this game for YEARS. I just hope I can…

Good luck with it. If you are set on trying it, look at the mechanics & break it into chunks. Work on getting one thing working, save it, make a back up, then start working on the next bit. When that is working, save it, back up, then copy those elements into the original one you did. Test to make sure that both bits still work & when they do save it, back up & start in the 3rd bit. It’s very slow but if you do this & each bit works individually but breaks when you add one to the others then it will help narrow down where the issue might be (since it must be in the interaction of those 2 chunks of work).

This will also give you modular bits you can reuse later or at least easily refer to when making other games.

Please start small. I’m on game 10 with unity and 1-9 never finished :slight_smile: With 10 i’ve got a real simple game mechanic that i think will be fun on android/ios and seems to be fun so far. I’m trying to stay focused on getting it completed in a year.

Beginner Mistake #1 in game design. Creating a complicated game! It will never get finished if you plan on writing “by yourself” the next COD or WOW. Unless you are amazing! Maybe you are.

#2 asking where to start when you haven’t even started :slight_smile: Game mechanics i feel are the best place to start. if you cant create what you want the game to do then your doomed. graphics, audio, menus are the easy parts and don’t have to look great to work. But game mechanics, player jumping, climbing, ball bouncing, flying bird. sling shot throwing, swimming, sliding blocks, auto generating whatever, etc… Thats where the heart of the game is. so start there. and like tedthebug said do one piece at a time.

#3 not finishing a game, (because its complicated, which will discourage you in the long run). Pick something easy and finish it all the way. like all they way. Menus, score keeping, levels, music, sfx, graphics, etc… the whole game from start to finish. And show people your game. get opinions.

My current game i feel is the best! so i only show close friends :slight_smile: but it could be crap and without showing people, that don’t feel obligated to say nice things, i wont know. Sooner or later i will have to cave in and show more people…once i have more levels completed :wink:

good luck on your first attempt. Never give up, never surrender!

Thanks! That’s some seriously good advice! First though, I want to finish these C# and Unity tutorials. C# is much harder than I thought it would be at first glance. Hope I learn it well enough soon, because I want to make my first game before I die of old age. lol Also, thank you all for being so helpful. I’m gonna watch those tutorials you guys mentioned over and over.

Yeah, maybe I really should start small. I’d like to try to do this right.

Check out feedback Friday in the game design forum. I think the next one opens in a week or 2. Post a build, no matter at what stage, & people will play it & give feedback on what does & doesn’t work. It’s scary but really worth it as other people notice stuff you are so used to that you don’t notice it anymore.

My game is super simple to duplicate, picture FlappyBird easy to duplicate. so i dont really want to show everyone until i’m further along and it will take someone else awhile to catch up to me :wink: Then i will compile a small demo version with a couple levels and try to show it off. I’m thinking 6 months work still. Only because i want to create candycrush amount of levels and i need the basic functionality and interface to be solid before i get too many levels put together.

@Nichole121 sorry to post on your thread about my stuff.

No it’s okay. The more people talk, the more I potentially learn. I’ve already decided, thanks to this thread, to try doing the simple game I’d cooked up in my mind first before the story-driven platformer stealth game, to get a feel for game development. People talking helps me.

@Nichole121 you may want to sit in on the next live training by unity. you can go here http://unity3d.com/learn/live-training i try to listen in on them all. they are the best. unitytech will give live feedback at the end on anything you want to ask. plus everyone in the chat room is somewhat knowledgeable and can help while you watch the live training session. next one is Monday at noon on state machines, should be a good training.

K, will do!

Lurk through the other other threads as well. I have bookmarked some where people want to do things that I found interesting or think I may want to achieve one day so when I do get up to doing them I can see what other people recommended. Things may change between now & then but I will have a start point to then try to work it out myself. Sometimes just knowing where to start analysing an issue is all you need to get started & push yourself towards learning how to do it.