I’m looking to do a video game. I guess the amount of people saying that is high, but trust me, i’m deep into it and i think about it for almost 2 years, and now that i got a degree (in something totally different), i can get a part-time job and work the time left on my project.
I almost finished to write the story (took me 9 month tho), same for the gameplay, but before getting started i need to learn, and get a strong basis of knowledge. I did C programming at school for a year, 50 hours a week of C coding, so i know a bit about functional programming, but i’m almost knew to OOP.
So i was wondering, should i :
Learn OOP, data structure, .Net framework, LINQ request and things like that before starting unity
Dive straight into unity, and learn scripting by small projects/tutorials
Learn several programming languages, more than just C# to get more and more knowledge and call myself a “decent programmer” before use unity * Any thing else that is not in my mind ?
I’m able to do all the things listed above, and more if necessary, i’m really into it, i know what programming involve in term of motivation, i got a quite ambitious project, but still doable, a good story, and i think that i’m able to do something fresh and new, i just need to know how to get started.
Thanks for answering, sorry if my English is bad, and have a nice day !
If you want to finish the game fast, you need to hire an experience programmer to work according to your spec. Let that guy or girl make you a game prototype in a week or maybe two, and test your ideas on the prototype.
If you want to do everything by yourself, then you need to head to unity learning section, and work your way through tutorials.
The options you listed are not relevant to the goal of making a game.
Becoming a decent programmer takes many years, and if you go that route, you’ll finish your game in maybe 30 years (because you’ll also want to become a decent artist, composer, etc).
P.S. Spending 9 months to write a story might not be a good idea either, because typically you’ll need to prototype and test ideas before heavily investing into them.
Two years and you haven’t written a line of code? This is going to go well. At least tell me you’ve prototyped it out on paper.
Otherwise I have to tell you you’ve pretty much wasted the last couple of years, and are still at the very beginning. Your going to have to throw out most of your ‘design’ because it simply won’t work once you start developing.
in general stories require huge amounts of time, skill and resources.
The only small games that can remotely start with a “story” are games being driven by skilled artists. Even then any kind of story that is more than a rough outline/atmosphere is usually going to be way outside of indie resources. The exception is when the game is largely text based, or using very unconventional storytelling techniques.
When an inexperienced person says the word “story” - the project is usually doomed from the start.
You did say usually, but when the scope is very small even a first-time developer can make an engaging story-based game. Grimsfield, After Life, and Suppressed are good examples that come to mind (and that happen to use the Dialogue System, btw). Suppressed was on my mind recently because Resist Jam is running right now. But Grimsfield is a perfect example of scoping a game for a lone first-time developer, from the scale of the story to the diorama-style world:
Make lots of small, good games first. Save your epics for later. You’d have a small life indeed if you could fit your entire life’s work into a single game.
It was his first game, though. But very good point!
And that touches on another idea for @alanwaston - since you have a degree in something totally different, leverage it just like Adam Wells leveraged his art and film background to make Grimsfield even though he was new to Unity and game development.
It’s interesting though - those stand out exceptions - if you look into the bios of the devs, almost always make sense.
The good work is never by beginners, it’s always on the back of years and years of hard work and developing skill. Even if the experience isn’t directly “making a video game” - you need a solid framework that includes real experience building, planning, and executing not just years of “playing games” or “thinking about games”
I’m going to generalize here, and I’m not an expert on the subject, but from my analysis…
Stories in video games are built on atmosphere and aesthetic first and foremost. The core of that atmosphere is almost always built on the visual art. Stuff like character dialog, voice acting, cut scenes, etc, are all minor devices that are built on top of the foundation to generate details - plot points, underscoring important stuff, highlighting some aspect of the game environment, etc.
The core of ‘story’ in games is almost always driven by the overall atmosphere and environment, and this always starts with the visuals. Often, the most successful games have the atmosphere reinforced by every single aspect of the design, all the way down from character art and environment to the borders of popup boxes and widgets in the options menu.
This kind of cohesive visual presentation requires huge amounts of artist hours, so its generally out of scope for small projects unless the project is artist driven from the start - as I think that artist driven work tends to design the feel and aesthetic first and foremost, then mold the game around the aesthetic. Also, if the project’s primary is the main artist, they’re usually willing to put in the extra few thousand hours of work required to make things ‘click’ without breaking the bank.
I would also hazard a guess that solo work by artists are also more promotion friendly, and tend to receive more attention and more opportunity for proper funding.
If a dedicated programmer put together that Grimsfield video - it’d be a disaster at the bottom of the greenlight pile. It’s the art that makes it a video that gets posted. He is using top shelf visual techniques and deeply integrated audio to create an immensely strong aesthetic. The plot, dialog and even gameplay is absolutely secondary.
I am also a believer that strong aesthetic is the single most important thing for a game once we’re beyond the most simple of puzzle games (and even then - candy crush for ex is dripping in aesthetic).
I think its also really tempting to look at something like that Grimsfield video and think “wow look, he’s just using a bunch of primitives! It’s so simple, anyone could do that!”
What you’re looking at there is a dedicated expert who’s making something very difficult look very simple.
He’s been refining that visual style and working deeply with audio and animation for the better part of a decade at a high end professional level.
It’s like watching an Olympic athlete, he’s so well trained that his flawless execution looks so simple. But if you tried, it would look very, very different.
I see where you’re coming from. I don’t necessarily feel the same, probably because of the types of things I’m interested in, but I do understand what you’re saying.