So, I seriously feel like I’ve hit that dead-end, you can only go so far with a game using what they call a “Programmers Placeholder” before it completely just feels like a lost cause, regardless as to if it’s 2D or 3D.
I can officially say I think my first 2D game is near completion, albeit some obvious tweaking that would need to be done after proper sprites and animations were added to the game, however the logical concept is all down.
Running around a stick-figure attacking an evil circle monster is all good and well for testing purposes, but what about once your done with that? What about once your ready to get some art into it, make it look nice and publish it? This is the problem I’ve seemed to run into. I have recently purchased my android development license. I have a friend that’s doing SoundFX and Music for the game, so I’m literally just lacking on art. The worst part is, I don’t have a job. I’m currently in school full-time living under my parents roof and I do not have the time to work after my studies (Currently doing 18 hour weeks for Computer Science). However, this does leave me with plenty of free-time, my schedule doesn’t really allow for a job.
So now I’m stuck with a game I’m ready to polish, and without a way to polish it. What should I do? I’ve looked through websites like opengameart and other places to find royalty-free placeholder sprites, but the sprites that look good enough to be in the game don’t have animations, and the good-looking animated sprites just don’t really fit with my game. So I feel stumped.
Me too pal, but at least my game of green cubes vs red cubes now has my own A* implementation! I can barely draw a stickman to save my life, but i think once i get my game a little more fleshed out, I am just going to practice drawing till I get something useable, and then try to work that into simple animations. Practice makes perfect afterall right? I assume theres some good art lessons/tutorials around. I would rather create my own, even for a game I intended on putting on the market, because I’d hate to buy art and not be able to sell the game I put it in.
A lot of it depends on how much time you have on your hands. If you have the time, you definitely can learn to do art. It just takes practice. Not long ago, I had ZERO artistic ability. I’m not exactly great at it now, but I’ve made some cool looking models.
Make sure you know how to use the tools well. If you don’t, you won’t be able to make anything, no matter how much ability you think you have. They aren’t as hard to learn as programming tools, but they still aren’t easy, especially the 3D modelling ones.
I’ve never had this problem. I can’t draw anything (properly), but have always known where to find pretty good art whether in the public domain or under a very permissive license. But I still think knowing the basics of image editing and 3d modeling is necessary for a game programmer with or without an artistic background.
Maybe make some assets for the asset store, sell em and make a bit of money, then you can hire someone to do the art or buy the assets you need. As a programmer there are lots of things you could create that would sell.
The problem with this is you need eye-catching art in order to post something on the asset store - there are specific requirements to this effect, and further that said asset store art needs to be of a certain quality; obtaining this quality is the developer’s problem in the first place. It’s an evil art quality cycle.
This is also the reason that I do not post any of my stuff in the Asset Store - I have an art style designed to hide my shortcomings with producing art, not necessarily for fulfilling wider art expectations. I actually yearn for the days of the IndieGameMarketplace, as I did make money off it, and I didn’t have to create a whole bunch of promotional art to do it (I also don’t particularly enjoy making art - I like refining my frameworks, and designing challenges for my players. I hardly believe myself and Christian Tucker are the only two who see this thread who feel the same way.)
Tell me about it… My physics are phenomenal, my networking is phenomenal, my gameplay is phenomenal, but no art = no hype machine. I have players come in and be blown away by the code, but games with far, far worse gameplay in my market but actual art and interviews and youtube videos are the ones that build a player base even though people constantly complain about straight up broken game mechanics and networking.
I’m at the point where the code can’t go much further without a critical mass of players providing feedback, and it will take some funding to produce art that’s good enough to build hype and keep the interest of fickle players with so many options for what to do with their time, so my actual game is on hold while I work with one of my players on asset store icons, refactor some of my frameworks for general consumption, write docs, etc, and I’m hoping income from that will be enough to bootstrap art.
Cause art and vibe is absolutely key… it’s the reason one particular version of a game will take off and become a household name mega hit even though there are half a dozen or more extremely similar games out there, some of which may even have better gameplay. Oh, and the addiction hooks and nag-your-friends features, but, yeah, I’m trying to holding on to my integrity until I actually have to file the bankruptcy paperwork.
Oh, and I’ve had players who’ve tried to make models for me, but I’m not an art person even though I have a general vibe and style in mind. And as mentioned earlier in the thread, what happens in that situation is you end up spending tons of time on communication instead of game progress, and as a non-art guy you don’t know the artistic concepts or language to express yourself in ways other than “can you make it more like WoW / TF2 / Borderlands / Angry Birds / etc”, which only frustrates an artist cause that’s not enough information to go on, and anything you might name probably has extremely detailed design guidelines written in artists’ terms and production values that are WELL beyond the ability of one dude working in his free time.
Don’t focus solely on the asset store. Google around. You’ll find some decent free stuff out there.
If you’re doing it by yourself you don’t need a GDD. Let it evolve, write down the concept but you don’t really need anything more than an A4 page at most.
Ah… any programmer can put something on the store, it doesn’t have to be something highly visual. Could be some script. A little tool. A simple editor extension. Some shaders. So long as you can make some pretty basic screenshots and throw some text on it you’re not far from doable.
For coding assets, so long it has good help file, good demo (preferably one that demonstrates each function, each event, and usage) that should be enough.
