I’ve been dying to make a game, but have a lot of personal blocks. Mainly, I can’t program, despite many attempts at learning. I can learn code about as well as I can learn to be left-handed.
Unity has a few visual scripting tools available, so I’m looking seriously at diving in.
I just wanted to share my broad plan, and see what wisdom I could gleam from long-time users.
The game I have in mind to start would be much like the original Starfox on the SNES. I’m not adept at modeling, and I love the minimalist style, so graphics-wise I know how it’s going to look and am confident about it.
Now, the levels would be tunnels, open space or no. I have no desire to make a sim. So, in regards with Unity, what would be the best manner of creating mobile, but on rails, levels? Also, they ought to be a decent length, but I’m not sure what kind of limitations there are in regards to level size limit, streaming capabilities, etc.
Is my simple game idea going to require any complex coding? Are there any examples of similar gameplay with Unity?
Or is there another engine that would better facilitate my low skill level and gameplay idea?
Thanks in advance for any help!
As for learning coding, the best way to do that is actually not to just start coding. Have you spent time reading about software logic and object oriented programming?
Regarding your actual game, there is no real limit for level size depending on how you do it. If you actually move the player there are practical size limits. If you move the world there are not really size limits. You could just spawn the objects as you need them and pull them to the player. Then again, if you don’t make the levels too large (which would be pretty large), you could just lay out the whole level and move the player through it at a fixed speed.
So would something like Playmaker be able to handle the more mundane coding aspects? Like defining the player as a spaceship the flies forward constantly? Something like that ought to be drag and drop a spawn point, select the ship mesh and texture material, and adjusting a percentage for forward momentum. I know those things would take code in the first place, but I’d think the engine itself would have most of that built in, same as when you create terrain you don’t have to code that the player doesn’t just fall through into nothing.
Basically, I’m looking to fill in and adjust the variables of equations, not write each equation from scratch. If there are resources available I can get code from to patch together something, that would work, too… I think…
I’ve tried simpler things, like Game Maker, but the results of hard work are so underwhelming I don’t care to play my own game, and can’t imagine anyone else caring to.
Yes, what you have in mind is extremely hard. ‘Hard’ is a relative term. A team of advanced developers could do it, but if you aren’t willing to learn to program, then I suspect this isn’t the hobby or business for you. There are thousands of books, tutorials, pages, etc that are available to help you learn. And, I will share this. The only difference between you and the people that know how to develop software is that they have spent years doing it. If you want to learn to do it, just start … There is nothing holding you back except for you and your expectation that you can build an awesome game by just ‘adjusting the variables of equations’. AAA companies spent $20-50M to develop a title, and that’s not because they are tweaking values in a spreadsheet. Indie developers do it much cheaper, but even then, the developers either have years of experience, or they are willing to sit down and do the hard work of learning, trying, and failing on their way to success.
I was going to suggest some dev books, but I think you would do better starting with, ‘the 7 habits of highly effective people’. Start with the end in mind and go for it. Life is a journey, ride hard.
I’m thinking more realistically its broken down into two things for the beginner:
a) I don’t know how to code
b) I do know how to code but I don’t know how games do things
Both a and b are solved by following every tutorial you can get your hands on for as long as you can stomach, then making the simplest possible game from start to finish like pong, or space invaders. Thats the only realistic way people are going to learn to make games these days. I’ve had well over two decades of making games or trying to make games, and I think most of that time I was just doing R D, trying to figure out how to do things without the internet, without instruction books. It made me appreciate in this day and age just how much easier it is to do.
So when people aren’t willing to learn from readily available tutorials, and they aren’t willing to make a full but really simple game to solidify what they learned from the tutorials, they disgust me.
If you have your heart set on game development you’ll need to be the sort of person who loves to experiment, has an open mind and is willing to knuckle down with tutorials.
Your problem is you’re trying to learn. You can’t “learn” to code any more than you can “learn to drive a car by reading books”. The ONLY way to become a programmer is DOING it. You need to start by downloading full projects then constantly by trial and error, tweaking it.
From tweaking, you evolve to adding stuff. From adding stuff you evolve to finally “getting it” and being a programmer.
Can I ask how long you’ve been “trying”? if its less than 6 months then I don’t know what to say to you, other than you’ve probably not been doing what I advise above!
I have made a quick tutorial for beginners on my site you can go to it at http://teengamers.co.uk/simplefps.php it is great for beginners as it is completely fool proof, although the end result is not particularly interesting it goes over how to get a gun firing and a grenade working. So basically if you had your own 3d models you you would have to do is add a bit of code and then your done.