GameDev

[Hinken]

Good evening!

I fell in love with SoG as soon as I saw it, and even more when I played it.
All those treasured memories and feelings from over 20 years ago suddenly bubbled up.

To this day, this is the only game that made me feel like an overly excited child getting up, early in the morning, turning on the SNES and play Zelda till bedtime.

Since playing this game one of my dreams suddenly became a reality. Seeing how you folks made this game, it made me realize that it is possible to create something extraordinary like SoG without having "Two letter game company" throwing money at it. Of course it makes a lot of stuff easier but apart from that.

I too want to create a game!

To make a long story short. I recently became a dad, yay, and realized that my little girl wont experience the same gaming experience as I did.

I want her, and hopefully my future children to experience something similar I did.

Enough with this rambling.

I've been programming in C# for a while. Nothing too fancy though, but I know my way around the neighbourhood.

Since SoG looks amazing, and it's written in XNA I thought about doing the same.

But I've got no idea where to begin...

I've got so many questions but I can't seem to find any answers.
I guess most of the questions I got are superduper top secret pixel ferret stuff.

But...

How does the collision in SoG works ( it's astounding! )?
I presume Vilya is creating an entire map in Photoshop, but how do you add collision to that?

What resolution are the characters, the map, and so on?

I'm really really impressed by how smooth and precise the movement are. The combat! Gosh!

Everything looks so good I can't begin to grasp the amount of skills each individual possess.

Where did you people start? Any courses I should participate in (I live in Sweden)?
Any recommendations where an aspiring game dev should start would go a long way!

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank you all for this amazing game! Love it!

Best regards
Hinken

 

[res7less]

I know you asked the devs, but I would also like to answer as I have some experience with making games myself. I'm sure the devs will also answer in time - the more experiences the better, right?

First off you need to be aware that making games is not a solo project. While there are prominent examples of successful games out there, who were made almost entirely by one person like Undertale or Minecraft (I'm sure there are more), alone it takes significantly more time and furthermore no one can equally excel at every aspect of game development. You need to know your own strengths and weaknesses and get people into your team that synergize with you, meaning that their strengths can cover your weaknesses and vice versa.

Game development consists of three main aspects: Programming, Art, Game Design. So if your strength is programming, you will at least need artists. If the game is supposed to be based on your idea, you will also have to play a significant role in game design, as people who work with you need to know exactly what your intentions are. Furthermore it is really important, that your teammates believe in your idea - this might sound cheesy, but quality can only be achieved if every member pulls into the same direction and if your teammates love your idea, they will be a lot more motivated to work on it and their results will also be significantly better. If your teammates will only think of your project as "work", they won't be putting as much thought and effort into it as they would if you all have a common goal.

Furthermore you need to know two things which are very important to keep in mind. While I wouldn't want to deter you from making games, those two "hard truths" are things that every game developer has to be fully aware of to not run his project into a wall.

The first is that the games market is currently flooded with indie games, so it is really really hard to stand out within the sheer mass of games. So you will need either a very good and unique idea (which is nearly impossible nowadays) or the execution of the idea has to be really good. Advertising is also a very important matter, but that is another story.

The second thing is that because of the flood of free games/apps, people have lost their will to pay for games, if they aren't from a well-known trademark. If you're planning to make a game as a hobby, it won't be a problem. If you're planning to earn money with your game on the other hand, you better have a good plan when it will be finished, how much it will cost you et cetera (if you have to pay your workers). The competition is relentless and many good games with great potential die before they have a chance to rise and shine.

There are also some questions you have to answer for yourself first before you begin, such as:
- What is your goal?
- What is your target audience?
- What is the genre?
- 2d or 3d?
- Single player or multiplayer or both?
- Which platform? (PC, console, mobile etc.)

There are many more aspects to game development but those were some basics. I hope I didn't scare you too much but I wouldn't want someone to run around blindly without knowing the risks I hope I could help you!

Greetz,
res7less

 

[Hinken]

Thanks for the response res7less!

I'll gladly take any tips and pointers, eventhough they sound harsh, they are still valuable!

The idea is to make a story based RPG, much like SoG, Zelda ALTTP and Baldur's Gate.
A few years ago I found an ARPG, which name I've forgotten, that suddenly shutdown.
It had a few unique things around at that time and it really made an impact.

A thick story, lots and lots of lore about items, environment and monsters/npcs.

So imagine if you will.

SoG, Zelda and Baldur's gate combined.
With the ability to play co-op as well as single player.


I have no plans to compete with all the other great indie games out there, but more of a hobby.

Got some friends who might tag along on this journey as well, but as you said.
I need a better gameplan, put my ideas into reality and so on.

"Our" goal right now, is to more or less digitalize the oldschool DnD.
If that makes any sense...

Thanks again for the response!

Faith in humanity is restored!

//Hinken

 

[res7less]

Sounds interesting, I personally love things with a good story. The best part of a project being a hobby is that you have much more freedom to tinker around and tweak stuff until it becomes the way you want it to be. I wish you the best of luck with your game!

 

[Hinken]

Sounds interesting, I personally love things with a good story. The best part of a project being a hobby is that you have much more freedom to tinker around and tweak stuff until it becomes the way you want it to be. I wish you the best of luck with your game!

Thanks res7less!

If you got any more wisdom to share, I'm all ears!

 

[MannedTooth]

I'm a computer sciences student, never did C# except for winfows form, but if you need help I would be more than happy to participate actively in the creation of a game as it is my dream.

 

[Hinken]

I'm a computer sciences student, never did C# except for winfows form, but if you need help I would be more than happy to participate actively in the creation of a game as it is my dream.

That's awesome!

We'll take any help however small!

Our main problem right now is that we don't know where to start.
I'm trying to figure that out while grinding in SoG

 

[The G-Meister]

Nice to see another games hobbyist I'm currently working on a web game in my free time whenever I'm not playing Rocket League, Factorio or any other game for that matter. It's going to be a text-art puzzle game based around code breaking/hacking and screwing with people's assumptions about buttons, switches and dials. I'm actually working on coding tools that I can use to essentially draw the game from within the game at the moment, and once they're done I'll start on the actual game. It's kinda necessary to do this due to the niche situation I'm working with. Due to the text art I've decided to lay it out in one big table to make sure the characters will always be evenly spaced

 

[MannedTooth]

I actually have a very good and creative game idea (in my opinion). But as long as I'm not sure how to do this, I don't want to say it since it could be stolen very easily

But in short: a game where you can change the script code of objects

ie: you step on a block, you set its size to 500% you can now access the higher part of the map.

 

[The G-Meister]

Have you looked at Hack n' Slash? That seems to do a very similar thing