I know, I know, I know. This wont go anywhere. I'll get bored or whatever and put it down. It will take too much time. Don't care! I want to do this, or at least start doing it :)
Before you start going nuts, I'm a seasoned developer with a computer science degree etc etc. I can write and learn any software language from assembly through C and C++ to Ruby. I like to code! I reckon I'm also a pretty good storyteller (one of my things-to-do-one-day is write a book) so this ties in well.
I am thinking of creating a prototype with a few levels to show what I want to do and kickstarter if I ever get that far.
So I want to get bang for my buck, and having spent years in the industry I know the value of good libraries. I want to use an isometric 3d perspective (top down game board like an RTS or RPG). I have some time but little money to invest (so can't buy a 10k license to an engine). I don't want to spend months learning so an advanced engine would be good, but I need more than a walled off game maker toy in case I want to do shit my own way.
So, Unity? Do MS still have their ... XDA?! thing? Maybe something for Metro, so I can flog it to desktop and mobile? ... I'm a big Visual Studio fan and have 2012?
I know, I know, I know. This wont go anywhere. I'll get bored or whatever and put it down. It will take too much time. Don't care! I want to do this, or at least start doing it :)
Before you start going nuts, I'm a seasoned developer with a computer science degree etc etc. I can write and learn any software language from assembly through C and C++ to Ruby. I like to code! I reckon I'm also a pretty good storyteller (one of my things-to-do-one-day is write a book) so this ties in well.
Meh, fuck those people who would say stuff like that, I say go for it! Its fun, and its not like you're working to any deadlines so who cares when you make you way over the finish line. I'd only have a go at you if you came in here suggesting you should write your own engine, but I know you're smarter than that :P
But yeah, go with Unity, with version 4.0 now its got features comparable to any triple A engine. The free version is a little bit crippled, but depending what you want to make you could get away with the free one, but even if you buy a license its pretty cheap.
Unity also has a resource marketplace that you can use to source art and game assets and animations and stuff. I haven't had much of a look through it myself, but it sounds like a really good idea for stuff like what you're talking about where you're a coder that wants to make a game by himself.
Oh and yeah, its really easy to retarget a Unity project for android, ios, even Flash now, so thats cool too.
Are there any recommended beginner & intermediate Unity 4.0 tutorials out there? I loaded up one of the previous versions and took a look at the sample they provided and it was a bit daunting.
Unity is probably the best indie engine on the market now, it offers easy tools and is really easy to use. It's also one of the more art designed engines, in that dropping textures and 3D files is super dooper simple that it doesn't require much effort. Rig everything up in 3D Max and then dump it into Unity and it just goes.
There are also some great default assets and code, with the bonus of a great forum that loves to help as long as you credit etc. I used it for 6 months in tafe when I did my diploma and while our game was pretty sub-par it was still a heap of fun and I'm still using it now (for Wii U).
Unity is nice if your more of a designer than programmer, I've actually found XNA to be extremely straight forward and simple for doing game prototypes. I'd really pick the platform and go from there, if your happy with M$ then try out XNA, if you want to reach the most people, Unity, or Flash.
If your more just playing and don't care about making money at this stage, play with Source engine and Unreal, they are really quick to get off the ground with a lot things built in.
If your more just playing and don't care about making money at this stage, play with Source engine and Unreal, they are really quick to get off the ground with a lot things built in.
UDK would be a better choice, since it's fairly cheap to license.
One thing you have to keep in mind hoggy, is that the sort of games that tell stories, are the sorts of games the require the most content and generally are the sort of games where you get the smallest return on investment for the content you make. I mean, you could make like a small multiplayer game with a few maps, and if its fun people will get hours and hours and hours of fun out of it, but to create enough content for a single player, story driven game to entertain someone for the same length of time is, traditionally, a much, much bigger endeavour.
Its a problem I've been thinking about a fair bit lately, and started playing with a few prototypes and ideas I have for creating more emergent gameplay, and creating convincing, engaging randomly generated environments and scenarios and such, so that you get the maximum bang-for-buck out of your content as its pieced together and reused in many different ways and you end up with a much bigger game world as a result without having to micro-manage and hand create every detail. Still pretty rough and its mostly just notes and scribbles and a few code spikes, but I'm really interested in coming up with new ways to create content for games without the need for throwing excessive, ridiculous amounts of manpower at it.
Single-player is always the hardest to create because as you said Khel, it requires a heap of effort to make the story engaging. A few ideas I have are more level based so they don't rely on a story, but if I was to make one it would quite literally need to be like a book with chapters and plot in-order to get the best out of it.
For now though, I'm currently focusing on this Dungeons & Dragons style game for Wii U, so less story more user-generated content. Also another thing with Unity, I believe they don't charge you for fees until you hit more than $20,000 in revenue.
you dont need any story at all. just put in some sort of mechanic where you have to do simple things to get experience and then when you get a certain amount of experience, you go up a level. then just sit back and watch idiots play your game for evar while you get rich doing nothign!
yer, i was actually meaning the wow, i should have mentioned have completely horrible graphics and charge idiots a fortune for the oportunity to level up, to make it clear.
Its a problem I've been thinking about a fair bit lately, and started playing with a few prototypes and ideas I have for creating more emergent gameplay, and creating convincing, engaging randomly generated environments and scenarios and such, so that you get the maximum bang-for-buck out of your content as its pieced together and reused in many different ways and you end up with a much bigger game world as a result without having to micro-manage and hand create every detail. Still pretty rough and its mostly just notes and scribbles and a few code spikes, but I'm really interested in coming up with new ways to create content for games without the need for throwing excessive, ridiculous amounts of manpower at it.
Procedural content generation does extend out into titles like Oblivion, but roguelikes are still the premier domain for generating content. You might be interesting in the PCG Wiki, or even a recent Roguelike Radio podcast focusing on current PCG in Academia. There's also my little project on tackling PCG from a different perspective.
Hoggie, buzz me on Skype sometime. I've just gone through the same reduction process and settled on Unity too. Mainly to link with an Oculus Rift VR Headset
find something catchy enough and you can at least pay for your server hosting ( by which I mean a collection of dynamically scaling amazon instances of course! ) with ads or microtransactions.
Oh nice, thanks for the links bones, that wiki looks interesting
Race you? :p
I'll have to quit WoW again probably before any significant headway is made on my stuff, and I'm not quite ready to do that yet, its still entertaining me for the moment :P
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