I posted this in the Teaching forum earlier, and then realized it should have been here.
SO
I have this lovely idea for a slightly anime themed 3rd person zombie MMO. I’ve figured out how I want everything to look and work, but I have one problem.
I have no idea how to make my ideas into a video game.
I’ve done the Lerpz tut, but that didn’t really help me too much. I understand how everything works on Unity, but I can’t do some important things:
-I can’t script
-I can’t animate
-I can’t mesh my models (i can make them though)
-I can’t make maps
I know you guys must have been where I am before, so I’m asking you for help. Who has any good tutorials on how to do the things I can’t?
You’re looking at the problem backwards. You’re trying to make your skills fit your project, but you’re never going to make that work. Instead, make your project suit your skills.
I get what you’re saying, but I learn best by having a huge goal to get to, and having to learning the individual things to make it happen. Pressure helps me learn I guess.
If that were true, you wouldn’t be here indicating that you’re way out of your depth. If you really did learn best that way, you’d be getting on with it. You may genuinely believe that you learn that way, but you’re convincing yourself of that because you don’t want to let go of the project. That’s fine, but you need to decide whether it’s more important to hold onto the goal and fail to achieve it or drop the goal, achieve other goals and come back to it when you’re actually capable of achieving it.
I get your point, and I suppose your right.
My project can go on hold while I pursue knowledge. All of this aside, it’d still be grand to know what other people used to learn how to script, animate, mesh, and make maps with (and all that other good stuff.)
Most people don’t do it all. Most people specialize… there are programmers, 3D modelers, graphic artists, level designers, game designers, etc… few people try to do it all. Having only 24 hours in a day is a good reason not to try.
Sounds like you have an idea for a zombie themed game that you believe in, that would put you in the role of a Game Designer. Now you need to find a programmer, 3D modeler, artist, etc to complete your team.
OR…
You could start off with a much smaller project that a single person could hope to complete… while learning along the way.
Well the thought I had today was that I’d start off by making a much smaller 1 player TPS, and eventually just add on to it as my life progresses. Sooner or later putting in some work to make it an MMO.
I fully intend on recruiting a small team to help with it (it’d be way to much work for just me) but I want to have a decent grasp on all of the fields of game making.
On a side note, I have a great idea for a really great movie. But I don’t own a camera or know anything about the movie business, but this ia a really great movie idea, its a really blockbuster - summer movie style of idea with a lots of special effects and stuff. Anyone know anything about making movies? I want to be the director, the camera operator, the lighting guy, the sound man, I think I could even be all the actors and I want to do the special effects myself too, but I don’t know how to do any of these things.
Oh also, I think I could be a really good skater, like a professional one. I don’t own a skateboard and I don’t have any skills (I have never tried skating). Any suggestions on how I could become a pro skater?
@Jerbear Don’t take my last post wrong man. Unity is such a great tool and this forum is really a great place to find answers. Just start working on your ideas and use the forum whenever you get stuck.
I hope to see something from you in the “showcase” section sometime in the future.
Specialization is most definitely what most people would do. However, I have (and am) going through a bit of the same route as you are talking about, with multiple disciplines. It’s not impossible, but I would strongly suggest you see some deeper goal in such an endeavour than merely being able to put these things together. Of course, I am an avid fan of the whole indie approach, starting out with solid theory and ideas and then moving on to the production skills. Thankfully, ideas count a bit more among indies than in the normal games market. The takeaway here is then that just should see where you want to go in the next few years: If you are aiming at AAA big-shot studios, specialize in a production branch, such as graphics. If you want to be a one-man army, do them all very strictly and meticulously. I warn you that you are looking 2-3 years down the road at least, and I guess you need to have a fair bit of understanding of the general game production pipeline ASAP if you are not yet “enlightened”. Strategy, goals/milestones, planning: Your new best friends. As for tutorials or learning resources, start out with everything Unity has to offer. Start with JavaScript but go to the library and borrow the most pedagogical books on C# you can find, move from there. Read as much as you can about game design and things like that, to see how the puzzle of disciplines join together. Read about general software engineering, and try to reverse-engineer Unity projects. Do your own tests after learning things (this goes for all new learning branches). Don’t try to do all of these things at the same time, you need to start with one thing. As soon as the initial worries are gone, move on to new areas and improve what you are now a bit more experienced with. Don’t expect to work 2 hours a day doing this though. Best of luck to you.
Thanks man, I’m working on basic scripting at the moment and trying to make everything a whole lot simpler.
I intend on specializing, but I’m trying to get a very basic understanding on most of the fields first. I’ll /most definitely/ end up recruiting other people, and it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who’s been at this stage.
I don’t see why people think that people can’t make a full-featured game with one person…
Of course it will take longer, but you guys act like it’s impossible.
I started out learning Blender and simply making models. I found it fun. I looked up tons of tutorials on rigging/skinning and for about 3 months, all I did was modeling.
(I highly suggest blender, I can work so much faster in it than I could ever dream of in maya or 3dsmax.)
Not to mention it’s free!
Then, I learned java by working on a RuneScape private server. (Private servers are useful for learning because you have every model/animation/sound needed for the game; you just have to program.)
(It doesn’t matter what language you learn to begin with, because they are all similar enough.)
Next I will look into networking and possibly sound effect creation.
This is how I suggest you learn. Get the idea of the actual game out of your head for now - just break down the skills one at a time and you can do whatever you want when the time comes.
