Questions about Game Making

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1

Hello there :slight_smile:

In the past few week’s i’ve been beginning to wonder if i want to switch my focus from 3D animation to Game Design.

I feel like i don’t have quite enough information to make the decision though.

I don’t really have a game in mind just yet… i have a few ideas but i’m trying not to go crazy with the planning like 8 year old me would have done.

So i guess it’s question time,

What program should i shoot for if i wanted to do game design? Unity3D? Unreal4? something else?

If i ever needed an online mode for a game, does that need additional programs or does that come with the game makers?

How do you get a game out there? is it only steam? Is there a standard for what get’s published? or do they let most people go through the process?

and lastly, do you have fun making games?

(As of right now i’m a little down about how i will slave over an animation for so long i feel like i can’t even see it anymore cause i’ve looked at it for so long)

2

What sort of game do you want to make?

3

I think it depends on what platform you want your game to run on. Android, Xbox, PS2,3,4, etc. Blender won’t work for that.

For PC, Mac, etc. and, If you’re familiar with Blender, go with it.

I would choose Unreal Engine 4. Because it gives you what you need to start with right out of the box. You get a really cool FPS, and third person character. complete with run, walk, jump, animation. Camera follow, joystick or keyboard control. And starter content, that includes sound clips, textures, particles, etc.
You can start having fun right out of the box. Of course you can import your own assets via FBX.

Your Blender assets will import easily in UE4. as long as your textures are not jpg.
(UE4 doesn’t support jpg) convert the textures to PNG, or TGA.

You also have a visual scripting called Blueprints, (if you can’t write code). It allows the artist or visionary to make a game without coding. But it isn’t easy, and you should have some idea of how to program. According to Epic games, nearly any scripting you can think of for a game is offered in Blueprints. And it does it’s very best to make it easy. (Sometimes, it isn’t easy though)
Blueprints is a part of UE4, not an add-on like Playmaker is for Unity.

In Unity, you would have to pay for Playmaker. Which is Unity’s visual scripter.

You can also create your own mesh in UE4, and texture them. UE4 allows you to sculpt mesh, build walls, add glass etc.
It’s a big download, almost 6 Gigbyte. But it has it’s own download manager. Took me 3 days to download it on my crappy Hugesnet Sat internet.

If interested, do a search for “massive UE4 Tutorial” there are 208 videos that walk you through UE4. The first videos are for an older version of UE4, but still are helpful.

And yes, I’m having fun making games, they can’t compare with todays AAA games. But my 6 year old and I are having a ball playing my games.

4

Thank you so much for sharing that! :smiley:

First^ Asking what kind of game i’d like to make, i have 2 general ideas in mind for separate ones… a Storyline based game about escaping a prison sort of island you’re trapped on by participating in games for an audience.

The other i feel i’d work on first, is kind of a general combat triangle pvp type game. I think they call them Mobas for Online battle arena, but if online isn’t possible i’d just kind of go a monster hunter kind of route with PvM instead and try and make beautiful dungeons to go through as a mage, archer, or melee character.

And what platform?

I would say my first choice is probably PC, but the idea of being able to put something on the Xbox or Playstation sounds really cool. even if it was just my own personal local disc lol.

I don’t know coding, but being that i learned so much in blender on my own time through tutorials and forums, i’m more than willing to learn coding once i’ll need it :slight_smile:

It sounds like UE4 is probably the course i want to take :slight_smile: I’m so glad that seems decided :slight_smile:
And i’m really glad to hear about the UE4 Massive tutorial, infact one of the first videos i watched that got me into blender was something called Peter’s massive Blender Tutorial, so it kind of sounds like starting all over again in a nostalgic way.
And if i have time to watch 100 episodes of people playing minecraft in my spare time, i’m sure i can handle those tutorials no problem xD

Really thank you so much for your input ^-^

5

As far as Xbox and PS3 goes, you’ll need a special license for that. But it’s possible.

being able to put something on the Xbox or Playstation sounds really cool. even if it was just my own personal local disc lol.

And it would be cool to see my game on a PS3 even if it wasn’t good enough to share. :slight_smile:

I don’t know coding, but being that i learned so much in blender on my own time through tutorials and forums, i’m more than willing to learn coding once i’ll need it http://blenderartists.org/forum/images/smilies/sago/smile.gif

Blueprints is like Blenders logic bricks with super powers :slight_smile: So you may not need to code, but if you want to you can. UE4 uses C++,

UE4 uses different names for things, than Blender.
I.E “Raycast”, is called “Trace” in UE4
a type of collision is called “Overlap” in UE4
“Widgets” are text, boxes, progress bars, etc for you HUD.
“Cast” is a concept that I don’t really understand, but you’ll need to “CastToPlayer”
in UE4. Instead of sending messages. (I think, still learning) :slight_smile:
etc.

It’s definitely possible to make a large next gen. AAA game with UE4.
And you’ll have to pay a 5% royalty if you make over $3000.
Read the agreement.

Your games sound really cool.

Good luck. :slight_smile:

Oh, BTW. Here’s something really important that I found.

When making pickups, don’t duplicate the pickup in the 3D view to add more pickups. They won’t add correctly.
Instead, to add more pickups, drag the pickup blueprint from the blueprints folder into the 3D view.
You’ll know what I mean after watching the “adding pickups items” video #205.

:slight_smile:

6

you need a reasonably spec’ed desktop just to run it
UE4 will run on a decent gaming laptop. I use an Asus ROG laptop, I7, Nvidia Geforce GTX 965 M. It runs fine. Other than that I completely agree with your post. :slight_smile: I’ve used Unity for years and I like it. :slight_smile: But you have to write code, C#, Unityscript, (different from Javascript), or Boo. Also the OP mentioned he wanted to learn how to do an online game. (networking) That “Massive UE4 Tutorial” has videos that walks you through tha basics of how to make an online game. Video #88 - #93 I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbaOyvWfJE0&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaCL2XjKluO7N2Pmmw9pvhE&index=88 :slight_smile:

7

As far as Xbox and PS3 goes, you’ll need a special license for that. But it’s possible

Yeah, I agree. I was sold with the idea of unity and unreal being cross platform and thought you could just compile your game for your target platform like PS3 or xbox put it on a usb stick and play it. I’m not saying you can’t do this but you will need to apply for or purchase a license which sounds like, judging by reading other comments, an expensive thing and indie developers with no credentials to their names pretty much get poo pooed on.

Looking at the unity forums it does have multiplayer networking option or so it sees. I downloaded it yesterday and I’m going to play around with it. Never used blueprints, but I do see how these and unreals next gen AAA promise might sound convincing. Don’t forget although unity uses C# etc to program with, unreal uses c++, which I’ve used for years and it is not so easy, if you want to use a custom script.

I really think unity should release a free version of their visual scripting toolkit to further entice developers. But even so looking at their tutorials I’m going to enjoy scripting in unity much more than unreal, and benefit from a much lighter IDE toolkit environment.

I agree it is a matter of choice.

8

What I really like about Unity is how easy they make it to keep pickups, health, points, and things that you collect. Theres a script out there called “Do Not Destroy On Load”. So when you change scenes (levels) all that data moves onto the next scene (Level). It works great. I’m not really good at code, but I find a lot of scripts on line that I can use in Unity, and adapt to my needs. Wouldn’t recommend making a full game like that though. :slight_smile:
And there are a lot of tutorials for Unity out there.

So yeah, Razc should explore all options.

Lately I’ve been concentrating hard on UE4 trying to learn it. I’m really kind of torn between UE4, Unity, and Blender. :slight_smile:

I hear Godot is really cool also. Another game engine to consider. Haven’t tried it yet.

Peace
Mark