Paul Frew
Getting started with making your own videogame
January 14th 2009 08:57
Naturally, you can't expect to make the next Bioshock without a large team of developers and a significant budget... but there are single developers out there that make games of surprising quality.
Actually, the GamesRadar article mainly provides links to software that can help you make a game, which is a terrific way to get started, as it takes away the complicated programming and lets the developer concentrate on design.
What I'd like to talk about are examples of single developers that have made great indie games, all freely available to play.
A big name in the gaming scene is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, who is currently rather famous for his scathing video reviews of games, called Zero Punctuation. For example:
Croshaw is also well-known for his adventure games, from the Chzo Mythos series, adventure-horror, to the 1213 series. While Croshaw is very critical for the hamhanded stories and playability of commercial games, his games prove to be rather interesting... full of flaws, yes, but, for a free indie game, they're quite pleasant to play.
Games are downloadable from his website, Fully Ramblomatic.
One of my favourite single-developer games is Dwarf Fortress, which I've advocated many times before... this is the prime example of how a single programmer should be as ambitious as possible and slowly work to that goal.
Zarn Adams is a math dude, but he's always been interested in making games... Dwarf Fortress is a 2 MB free download, and plays in all text, but will run a state-of-the-art computer into the ground running at maximum settings.... that's because the game keeps track of so many details and units.
Dwarf Fortress is available from Bay 12 Games.
I mention these two games on this post as a side note from the Games Radar article... if you want to get started into making your own games, great: download the software and play around.
My point is that there should be an equal amount of thinking and planning about what your game will be, and how you'll get there. For example, look at the Dwarf Fortress development blog, which lists the day-to-day items that Adams has finished.
Even more ambitious are his long-term goals, which show nearly a decades worth of work, something for us all to be excited about.
ARTIFACT ARC: Special items made by the dwarves aren't very interesting right now, and there's not much for an adventurer to do with them. These objects should have magical powers and they should have a huge influence on the actions of entities that come into contact with them. Even if your adventurer can't make use of a particular artifact, you could arrange for buyers in the nobility, and use those opportunitites to get a home or good entity standing, for instance.
I'm not saying that you should think about the next 10 years, but some amount of planning is crucial, even if it serves to excite you now. When you'll inevitably be slogging out the grunt work, it's important to keep in mind where you'll be going, so that you hopefully will avoid cutting-and-pasting to change the direction of the project.
Well, what do I know? I've only made terrible, terrible games...
*this image is from the Escapist
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Comment by Janet Collins
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Good to keep in mind though.