Hello all. I’m currently obsessed with realtime wargame development in Unity. Problem is - I am not a developer, I’m internet marketer and business development guy, so I am out of ideas where to start.
Basically, game is like Total War. Gameplay is a boss, I’m not heading for uber-graphics here:
3D wargame with regiments of units fighting each other
unit pathfinding
physics for flying objects
control with taps
regiment inventory
single player
missions
I’m ready to build up a team for this game development, but I’m no idea how to valuate expenses, time efforts, how to 80/20 in the end
So the questions are:
How would you rate complexibility of this project from 1 to 10
What are the biggest challenge points (“pathfinding”, “animation” or whatever)
Does it manageable with 1 semi-experienced developer full-time? How long can it take (throw your forks, 1-100 years etc.)
Can asset store win time in this kind of project? How would you utilize asset store inventory (“buy models”, “framework” etc.)
Is it essential to build strong architecture? Excuse me if I picked the wrong definition - I mean allright, I’m going to launch minimum viable product but I need to scale it in future - add pvp for example, new mechanics etc. Should I take it to account on the first place and demand code structure which would scale efficiently in future? Can this be a problem basically, and should I keep in mind future twists?
First - and not to burst your bubble - this is pretty much the classic newcomer post, except most of those choose MMORPGs. So, points for originality!
The quickest way to help you understand what’s going on, is to answer your questions:
10
Yes.
It does not manageable with one person. A large team might find it challenging, actually - and, yes, that’s including the idea that you’re considering a simplified graphics style (which, would actually be necessary due to the problems of having hundreds of thousands of units involved in the simulation at any time.)
It can win some time, but it won’t solve most of the implementation or design problems you’re going to be facing.
Architecture is always essential. A game is a software package. One advantage you seem to have over the classic ‘newbie’ poster is that you recognize the size of your idea, so you’re actually suggesting using a minimally viable product! Good call, there.
For a first project, I would not actually do your massive wargame - there’s no way you could hope to finish it, it’s just too complex, your knowledge of the tool too weak. I would suggest beginning with something far simpler, and building up to the point where you’ve got the knowledge and code library to tackle your wargame project.
To start you on the path, Unity has some great tutorials to help you know how to use the tool on a basic level. You can also pick up some basic scripting knowledge, which will help you have some greater insight into the technical challenges you’ll be facing.
One note, though. As a marketer/BD guy, you have a significant advantage over most of us - indie games are notorious for not having good marketing, in part due to budgets. If you can overcome your inexperience with the tech, such that you have a game with which to leverage your BD/marketing skills, then you’ll have some interesting days ahead of you…perhaps.
If you build a small demo which highlights some of your combat/AI ideas along with some simple strategy, you will have a much better chance of attracting a decent and dedicated team than if you start with only an idea. Get a few folks to help you with the demo and then use that to recruit.
I agree with Avarduil. You need to start smaller, especially since as a non-programmer, you won’t know enough about the technical side to know when someone is just taking your money. Learn some basic programming if possible, or at least be able to look at a script and have some idea of what it is doing. Same with artwork, get Blender, follow simple tutorials and make a simple object.
Your business experience will be great in the end! Good luck to you.
Thank you very much for your detailed answer and patience. I can imagine amount of this kind of newbie posts.
I’m no way dreaming of coding this myself. I’m good at game design, business dev, promotion and monetization (based on my startup experience). Was hoping to outsource the development without splashing much cash. Bring several developers, designer, develop that to MVP and crowdfund maybe or other types of fundraising
Thanks! That a good point to get the basics of programming. I think I remember Delphi - I coded a little bit back in a days, looking forward to learn Unity basics
Be careful! I was on a team that outsourced the programming and it didn’t turn out well. Also, only about 30% of crowdfunding games works these days. Too many people didn’t follow through after they got the funding. People are more cautious than the old days.
Before I move this to another forum, allow me to add that @AndrewGrayGames is 100% correct. Your idea is 100X harder than you imagine. If you had a company and $1M to WASTE, you might probably cobble together some Indy devs to build a crappy version of what’s in your head. You’re talking servers, networked game play, and massive numbers of units. That’s before you design the ACTUAL gameplay, mechanics, or user interface.
You would be infinitely better served buying a million lottery tickets, assuming you $1M to waste.
“If you had a company and $1M to WASTE, you might probably cobble together some Indy devs to build a crappy version of what’s in your head.”
But why?
Because talent is expensive, and time is money. So your cost is going to be calculated by amount of time x level of talent. There seems to be this assumption, very widespread at that, that a talented artist or programmer is extremely easy to come by and relatively cheap to hire. It might be easy to get that impression looking through all of the collaboration and looking for work pages, because there are such a large volume of posts. But let me do my best to dispel this myth. People who are reliable enough to do the job, talented enough to do something that is commercially viable, are outside your price range and they are not looking for work. Everything is dictated by the laws of supply and demand, including arts, programming, etc.
As a person who has dedicated years of my life to various disciplines I have to say I am beginning to find these posts somewhat insulting.
People will pay whatever it costs for hardware, the car they drive, the coffee they drink… but ask them to pay more for human quality, for human resources or to respect the value of talent and ability… and they scoff.
I see it all the time in my line of work.
Is it so hard to believe that just because a game like League of Legends technically can be made with technology you can afford, inside of your house… that doesn’t mean you can actually make it happen, any more than you can write a book and become a global sensation, or take up playing poker and win the wsop?
I would suggest going for Unity 5 it has a multi-threaded job system and aims to provide natively compiled code.
Or start with smaller unit counts and maybe opt for a turn based mechanic (especially on mobile).
But the key is to prototype and deploy to your target hardware as early as possible then test and adjust based on performance.
Additional there are a lot of tricks that large scale strategy games use to render armies, look up imposters a technique to draw models in the distance as 2D sprites.
If you stick to Creative Assembly staff only, and you count just ‘coalface’ people (i.e. artists, designers, programmers, etc - excluding senior management, HR, IT staff, etc) you’re looking at 40 people minimum - 40 trained and highly proficient people for whom this was almost certainly not their first project.
Judging by the standards of Rome 2, a monkey with a typewriter(mechanical keyboard?) could implement a better battle UI and enemy AI. Graphics aside, and the fact its single player, I would not say its impossible at all.
1). 7/10
2). LOD culling and possibly animation culling, to keep performance at a distance but keep it looking good close. Unit collision may also prove to be a challenge.
3). I couldn’t possibly say, it depends on how good you are
4). I would advise against using art from the asset store, however things like the camera can be found (there is a nice one with RTS mode already built in).
A good programming architecture is quite essential, there will be a lot of repetition and if you do not pull it off well it will become a spaghetti nightmare. By the way if you are interested, take a look at how rome 1 stored information for gameplay, basically characters, cities and unit stats were all stored in plain text files, as is.
Here’s the biggest piece of advice I have for anyone who wants to build their ‘dream project’.
The first thing to do, is build something stupid.
I’m serious - you have great skills and can easily find developers to partner with. However if you build something you’re emotionally attached to, before you build something you are going to fail. We just had a chat with someone in these forums who has spent 4 years of his life, and $5k of other peoples money, on his project - and still hasn’t got anything of value completed. He’s put in the time, money and effort to build his game, but has no learning, no skills, no knowledge, no players, no prototype, no game to show for it.
This is not unusual.
So build your project, just start with Hangman. Consider it R&D.
yeah build stupid stuff, ALOT of stupid stuff, build minor little mechanics and learn how each work
and then dont use any of that for the actual game … because you’ll probably have to majorly optimize it all
… i tried to make armies with: helmet, chest armor, gloves, boots, shin armor/ pants, spear, shield
coming up to about 1000-1500polys per individual person…
i had a army unit of 100 of these people…
the thing that craps out the performance is “draw calls” … had too many of them because of the individual pieces… i guess this is why total war uses pre-equipped units (also i guess, historical equipment loadouts)(i had wondered why they didnt let you customize them)
so it was 800 draw calls for 100 people*… hmm… it was like 2000 draw calls when performance ate dirt… so i guess like 300 people* … and i had multiple skinned meshes per person, which is unoptimal
theres ways around this… just something to mention i guess
Good luck to you.