How to get started making games?

[Houndeye]

http://scratch.mit.edu

I have been making games for a long time now, and when I was a kid I would use Scratch to make little web games. Extremely limited and straight forward, but it is a great way to learn how programming works.

[Vogon Poet]

HI! I'm new here.

I'm interested in making 3D games, although not with fancy graphics. Is this hopeless for a beginner? And where should I start? I'm trying to learn OpenGL right now. I have some pictures in my head that I want to make into games, but that probably won't be for a while.

[Stephen L (inactive)]

HI! I'm new here.

Welcome!

I'm interested in making 3D games, although not with fancy graphics. Is this hopeless for a beginner? And where should I start? I'm trying to learn OpenGL right now. I have some pictures in my head that I want to make into games, but that probably won't be for a while.

My advice - have a look at Unity. Try to follow some tutorials (these are the ones I learned from). It's a bit proprietary, but the free version is Very Capable. There are some fun open-source projects on the horizon, but they're still a way off (polycode in particular is shaping up nicely) so I would recommend against complete newbies getting involved.

You can get, for instance, a basic first-person game set up in a couple of clicks in unity. If you want to do particular things that happen to be further away from the locations a new person can access, then you'll have to work a bit more, maybe a lot more.

But, it's totally possible that that will be a bit much for you as well (but that doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying, nor does it mean that any frustrations experienced while trying to figure things out won't have been worthwhile). Lots of fun can still be had in 2D...

[Vogon Poet]

To be fair, I can code, and I don't mind learning things by reading APIs. I'm only a total beginner wrt game development: for example, I have no idea how to deal with physics, or what "rendering" means. Unity looks really cool, but I am wary of anything that makes something as complicated as a 3D game that easy. Does it give you access to the details of how things work if you want them?

Thank you, though, because now I know that a 3D game definitely is feasible. Hopefully I'll be entering one of the pageants soon!

[Stephen L (inactive)]

To be fair, I can code, and I don't mind learning things by reading APIs. I'm only a total beginner wrt game development: for example, I have no idea how to deal with physics, or what "rendering" means. Unity looks really cool, but I am wary of anything that makes something as complicated as a 3D game that easy. Does it give you access to the details of how things work if you want them?

Not all the way down, no. But a lot of the way down, for a lot of areas of the engine, yes.

[Lance Burkett]

If your just looking for game specific programming try this:
http://gafferongames.com/

It covers stuff like physics implementations and networking paradigms. Worth checking out.

[Stephen L (inactive)]

If your just looking for game specific programming try this:
http://gafferongames.com/

It covers stuff like physics implementations and networking paradigms. Worth checking out.

While I think that site is cool, it is NOT something I would recommend to anyone getting started. This is pretty specialist stuff that's geared towards people doing (particular parts of) engine programming, rather than for someone who hasn't made games before.

[Lance Burkett]

If your just looking for game specific programming try this:
http://gafferongames.com/

It covers stuff like physics implementations and networking paradigms. Worth checking out.

While I think that site is cool, it is NOT something I would recommend to anyone getting started. This is pretty specialist stuff that's geared towards people doing (particular parts of) engine programming, rather than for someone who hasn't made games before.

Good point, but I saw somebody saying:

To be fair, I can code, and I don't mind learning things by reading APIs. I'm only a total beginner wrt game development: for example, I have no idea how to deal with physics, or what "rendering" means. Unity looks really cool, but I am wary of anything that makes something as complicated as a 3D game that easy. Does it give you access to the details of how things work if you want them?

Thank you, though, because now I know that a 3D game definitely is feasible. Hopefully I'll be entering one of the pageants soon!

[Epoché]

Does anyone know of a good website/IRC dedicated to people helping others with game issues?

I find freenode is overflowing with useful channels: #opengameart #blender #gimp #java #android-dev #math-software #game-dev it goes on and on, practically any open source game, language or app has their channel on freenode.

Getting involved in open source projects is a great way to get into game development, there are hundreds of games out there waiting for someone to come along and help, even the simplest of tasks need doing and you can work on whichever part of the game you feel comfortable with. Its also a great way to meet devs and artists to ask questions of :)

Perrin, loved the video :D

[FuzzYspo0N]

Does anyone know of a good website/IRC dedicated to people helping others with game issues?

I found #ludumdare to be super helpful and fun, on irc.afternet.org

[Fallsburg]

HI! I'm new here.

I'm interested in making 3D games, although not with fancy graphics. Is this hopeless for a beginner? And where should I start? I'm trying to learn OpenGL right now. I have some pictures in my head that I want to make into games, but that probably won't be for a while.

I would recommend Panda3d. It is easy to set up and use. Not to the drag and drop level that Unity is, but it's pretty accessible. The things that it has up on Unity are the following:
Open Source
Uses Python (my favorite language) or C++ (my second favorite language)
Free (I understand that one can produce great stuff with free Unity, but there are some glaring omissions)
Works well with version control software (This one was huge for me, as I'm a huge proponent of version control. Not so necessary when you are working alone, but still useful, in my opinion)

[jonbro]

I just read through this thread where a guy goes from 0 to master as a fine artist. He built off of accepted techniques and copied old masters etc. He also worked every single day. I know that video games are kinda a young form, and the things that are master works within gaming in general are more of folk works (chess, go). I wonder if there is a place for copying master works or developing techniques around specific gameplay things.

I notice that most of this thread is about the technical / software approaches to game dev, but I wonder if anyone has any thoughts about approaches to developing ones technique around game design.

[pione]

I just read through this thread where a guy goes from 0 to master as a fine artist. He built off of accepted techniques and copied old masters etc. He also worked every single day. I know that video games are kinda a young form, and the things that are master works within gaming in general are more of folk works (chess, go). I wonder if there is a place for copying master works or developing techniques around specific gameplay things.

I notice that most of this thread is about the technical / software approaches to game dev, but I wonder if anyone has any thoughts about approaches to developing ones technique around game design.

Game design is tricky because it's a lot less defined than programming or art, because there's no specific program to practice game design, or technical tutorials. Good game design - the process of creating fun mechanics, great storylines, or well-thought out levels, for example - is derived from a lot of different disciples. That being said, there are still a ton of resources for game designers.

~Psychology is a huge part of game design, at least for me. Knowing the difference between positive/negative rewards and feedback, and when each is appropriate, is extremely important.
~Game designers should know at least the basics of both code and art, because it will help them accurately estimate the cost of a design decision (for example, the code/art needed to add an extra super-move to the main character's arsenal) This also applies to other disciplines like game sound and music.
~Knowing the ins and outs of a game engine (or better yet several engines) helps immensely - practice making simple games with engines to learn how they work, how level design works, how scripting actions work, etc., and this can help you a lot, even with other engines.

Sorry for the super-long ramble, here are some helpful links!
~Gamasutra (Design): Gamasutra is huge in the game business. It's part of the same company that runs the GDC, as well as Game Developer magazine. There's tons of free articles by professionals on game design here.
~Game Developer Magazine: Contains articles about design, art, programming, the games industry, and interviews with successful devs. In addition, every issue has a postmortem from a different game - every genre, every size, from Super Meat Boy to Minecraft to Rift - where the dev team discusses (a while after release) what went wrong and what went right in the process.
~Extra Creditz: This is a series on game development, the future of games, and the world surrounding gaming. They write a lot about tricks and tips of game design (aimed at developers/designers) and make it very accessible to those who know little about game design, but still remaining very valuable to experienced designers. You might not agree with all they have to say, but it's always interesting to hear another point of view. The episode I linked to is specifically about learning to be a game designer for noobies.

The only book I know of regarding game design is Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design. A lot of my friends swear by it, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet so I can't vouch for it.

My only other suggestion would be to search Google for game development blogs, follow some devs on Twitter, and read up on articles - there's plenty of them around the internet. A lot of AAA professionals have podcasts and blogs about game development.

[Lance Burkett]

I reckon when it comes to game design knowledge I would recommend getting a list of your favourite development companies, then see if they have any blogs. It's especially useful information when the game designer decides to publish some musings.
For example:
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/201 ... voice.html

[DaveMB]

When it comes to books on game design that I have really enjoyed, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals are excellent.

One of the main things that people try to do when they are looking at getting started is to be the best at everything. They often lose sight of the goal of finishing a game since they are concentrating on being the best programmer, the primary artist, lead designer, audio editor, video producer, web site designer, marketing guru, business plan writer, not-a-lawyer trying to play lawyer for all legal aspects of EULA writing, copyright and trademark registration, etc. And it makes sense since one of the most confusing things in the beginning is finding what you are good at so you know where you can excel and the places where you really need someone else to help because it's not your skill area at all.

Here's my "come here youngin's and jump up on grandpa's knee while I tell you a story" moment:
Getting started now is so much easier than it was when I was getting started, at least in terms of availability and accessibility. The games industry is still a closed industry in many ways, but the rise of indies and the accessibility of the mobile market have created a ton of content that wasn't available even 10 years ago. 15-20 years ago, there were few books about game development, and the ones that were around were usually very programming-heavy. When GarageGames opened its doors and sold Torque for $100, it was pretty mind-blowing for me. At that time, you pretty much had four choices: use Allegro and make 2D games, roll your own engine, use an open source 3D visualization engine like CrystalSpace that was not optimized or designed for games, or pay $10,000-$800,000 to license a proprietary engine.

Now all that's old news. Unity, Shiva, Torque, Corona, PyGame, Love, GameMaker, CryEngine, UDK, Stencyl, Flixel, GameSalad, C4, etc... There's a ton of low/no cost engines out there and they've been consistently getting better and hitting the usability mark more and more with each release. It's really crowded in the engine middleware space now. Jumping in early and digging in to find my strengths got me my job at GarageGames. Now I work with some amazing developers and artists who have worked at Westwood Studios, Ubisoft, EA, Disney, Crytek, Broderbund, etc. All because I found a place to start and dug in.

When people say that it's who you know, there is definitely truth to it. You should not burn bridges because it is a small industry and a lot of people know each other. But you also have to be able to do the work and do it well (and not be afraid to do a lot of it for long hours). Because that's the reason those people that you meet or know will begin to talk about you. They might just get you your next job or contract. I was a contractor on the Union project at Unity because I did great community and bizdev work, so they felt I was a good fit to put together the game catalog of top-notch Unity games.

Find your niche and fill it. And work hard to be the best at it.