Hi, I have been around for a while now. I can code the game I want to make, however there is the design problem that still persists. The games I make do not feel professional. Is there a book or something else for learning tricks to make the game feel professional ?
I know some problems arise because I am a cheapskate. I don’t have art skills either (I use blender, gimp, inkscape). Even if I buy arts from artists, the picture in the screen does not feel good. It is like watching a high budget film with a very bad director. Is there a standard training for improving myself?
Pretty easy
Play games and study games. Read articles on sites like gamasutra.com
When I amdoing artwork for our toolkits I try to put things apart as detailled as possible. Blatant example. Even flappy bird has a super polished attention to detail. Every action has an effect gfx or gameplaywise. It’s a really fascinating element of game development and I enjoy it a lot with every new project.
Super rewardingto improve like that
i’d say it depends highly on the game, take a look at other games to see how they do it, watch Extra Credits and follow their advise of examining mechanics and playing like a designer.
Directors don’t work alone. Watch some of the production videos for Game of Thrones. If you’re making games on your own then you should attempt to improve your art skills, however bad they are. I’m a hopeless artist but I’ve been working at it for quite a while now and I have improved. An excellent source of great art training for free is Feng Zhu’s channel on YouTube. Check it out.
What you’re looking for is called experience and you get it by making lots of bad games. It’s not a stage of the process that you can simply bypass by reading a book or buying a piece of software. Just get stuck in and make games. Finish them too, or else you’ll miss out on the majority of the experience.
A while ago I did an environment design workshop on CGSociety and I’m currently revisiting the training. So I spent the last 30mins sketching a thumbnail of a mountain/valley scene just in grayscale with a few values. I’ve done a few of these over the past couple of days and it’s great practice. I think that’s the kind of practice that helps with design problems.
Extra Credits is something I watched and it is very cool.
This :
I didn’t know. Even in the first episode he tells how to plan the scene to make it look cool. Thanks a lot for the lead. Anyone who hasn’t checked it out already should do so.
I will also try the book Art of Game Design : A book of Lenses
