I have been wanting to put together a game idea I have had in my head now for a year and an MMO idea I have had for about 10! But as far as I can tell there are no content creation tools for the trade. So I was trying to find a few good engines/modding toolsets(think Elder Scrolls Construction Set) to model mine after. I played around with HeroCloud last night thinking oh they should have some good tools… Not so much. I don’t need a terrain editor, I have Unity. I don’t need an asset importer, I have Unity. I don’t need physics stuff. I have Unity. What I need are some tools to create RPG content elements such as Quests, Classes, Items, Spells etc. For a demo of my idea I even played around with using Neverwinter Nights tool set or even Elder Scrolls tool set. But my game idea lives in Sci-Fi and I am no modeler and I have no budget as this is in my spare time. So unless someone knows of some good stand alone tools, I am totally going to write some kick ass content creation tools.
(Some background) I recently quit my job as a game developer/ enterprise program software engineer to take a gig closer to friends and family doing pretty much only in house enterprise apps. So the itch to make a game is even higher now that I don’t do it at work. And while I value my time I still don’t mind writing software in my spare time, especially if it’s for something that I am passionate about, such as my game idea. But I won’t scoff at the idea of someone else’s tools helping me to get to my goal. I already have a lot of server code to write and client states to manage
So anyway back on track. So if there are no tools I am writing my own… as well as developing a simple drop in RPG engine written in C#. So maybe when I am finished people like myself that don’t have anything could benefit from them.
So my other questions:
Could I sell them? (Would anyone even buy them)
What does it take to put them on the asset store for others to get access to and start making some kick ass games?
EDIT:
Won’t let me post…
I have no doubt it will tough. But all that stuff is configurable. I guess we will see when I get an alpha together. I am designing the DB at the moment in-between tasks at work. This weekend though is when the real work begins and I will know if it’s possible to put together such a tool. It would certainly be easier to make one that tailored to my game. But I figure if I am making my tools might as well try and see if they are useful to others as well.
This looks closer to the thing I am interested in. http://www.garagegames.com/products/magnitude-editor
It is lacking functionality. (I did DB stuff at work for the past 2.5 years so designing and implementing a DB is cake) I’ll take a look at it though, thanks for the pointer!
Ok i will put my personal view on this, so you can calculate this as consumer (developer) view.
First i have my own game idea in head and i am ready to bent for 30% from basic gameplay and visual aspect but not more. Anything more just isnt game that i would like to make. Now it very much depends what your tools offer. Is this going to be just some RPG asset pack with 90% art assets and rest some scripts that are hardly usefull or are poor written, i wouldnt consider at any point purchasing that. If i have game idea in head i dont want some art and assets that are way off. Now if your tool pack has some quallity scripts of inventory, fighting, AI, and similar things that can be easily adjusted and applied to any style of RPG game then that sounds very good.
I can guarantee you that if you make good tool pack with good and various scripts it would sell good. But if you had such great RPG idea why not starting your own game project? You will get some artist to help you out, but it would be hard to get anyone do it for free and to do good quallity models.
Oh yeah, I am by no means an ‘art guy’. I am a software engineer by trade so I’m a decent programmer This would be Content CREATION to make it easier to build quests, dialog, items, spells, character classes, and all that other good stuff. Depending on how generic it gets the tool might have a little learning curve since it would have to be customized to fit the specific universe. If I offered anything (assuming nothing already exists and is actually decent at its job) it would be tools to make new content and the libraries to use them. No art stuff
EDIT:
Yeah I want to make my own, that’s why I am looking for some tools to speed up development. And if they don’t exist I am going to make them and potentially sell them. Just wanted to know what is out there and if maybe there is a market for them.
I’m not sure I am reading you right shadowghost, but head on over to www.GarageGames.com
Look at their add-on tools page.
Are your talking about stuff like Verve, AFX Core, Mechanics Kit, Cirrus Skies, etc.
Look at the tools palette at www.Blitzbasic.com
Is this the type of stuff you’re talking about!
That would be specific to your game, so you’d generally write editor scripts for that. When you see “tool programming” credits in games, that’s what they mean. I doubt it’s really possible or even desirable to make that sort of thing generic enough to just plug into any game, but you can of course try if you want.
