Octopus Overlords

So I've been gaming a lot lately, mostly playing stuff from gog.com and Steam, and I've come to the conclusion I could design a very decent game compared to most of the stuff out there. I already have a "design document", actually just a few scrawls on the backside of some official letter or somesuch, but I know what I want pretty precisely, that helps right? My would-be coder is also very competent.

This might be the wrong forum to ask, but the open questions are:
1. Which engine? I want to make a 3d-game but I'm on pretty much zero-budget. My coder loves open source, so it's gotta be open source if we ask him at least.

2. How long does it take? I know you can spend like forever on a game, but what about 8 locations, 4 them maybe 50x100 meters big, 4 of them around 500x500meters big. Both unarmed and armed combat. A car chase (this might work out so that you don't actually drive the car, just shoot out of the window). The Eiffel tower. Four dudes with lots of time on their hands making this thing.

3. What about texture packs and model packs. Are there GOOD ones?

Now the thing why I want to make a 3d-game is first and foremost to stand out a little, lots of indie platformers out there (with some very impressive ideas I must say) and also because of immersion. Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) is an inspiration, except the horrible gameplay and two-hand quick-time events, but art direction -wise you know.

Now the game itself. It would be an adventure-action game where the basic plot is that your wife is kidnapped and you are thrown into a bottomless pit by the Turkish mafia. I already have the taglines ( ): SURVIVAL... VENGEANCE... MORE VENGEANCE! Would you want to play it based on that description?

Stupid? Probably not. Naive? Maybe.

I forgot about an another major hurdle: voice acting. I'm not a native English speaker so I can't really do anything myself. I do know tons of actors though, one of them is bound to be a skilled voice-actor. Or maybe all the characters are Scandinavian

Another inspiration I forgot to mention is Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, if I can get the same feeling into fist fights that game has I'll be ultra-happy.

Somehow I have this strange feeling I gotta do this thing or I'll regret it later. I think I'll just start modelling asap.

This is naive indeed. It's nice that you're eager about it, but you haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of accomplishing what you're describing. People don't make games like those alone these days. You'd never finish it. Get a crew of about 8-12, and you might be able to do it. Alone? No way. Not even close. Even a simple indie game with basic 2D graphics and a very limited scope of gameplay (like Braid, for example) would take you years to make and would require tremendous talent and skill.

I know this sounds harsh, but it's better to have your idea put down now before you've committed too much to it, rather than having to face the disappointment of failing after pouring blood, sweat and tears into it.

I would also like to add this: Everyone's a designer. Being able to jot down ideas is nothing unique. What you need to be able to do is to both code AND design. Only when you are intimately familiar with the limitations you'll be facing will your design be anywhere near realistic. You'd better hope your would-be coder is smart enough to crush your ideas when they aren't feasible, and that you are humble enough to accept that.

TiLT is giving you the honest truth. That doesn't mean you should listen to him, but it's the truth. Two people cannot make something along the lines of a modern game (outside of simple casual games). Those games take years - for massive teams of experienced professionals.

Thanks for the honest feedback. It's not like I'm trying to build Skyrim here alone though, and yes the coder does tend to crush my dreams. I'm not going to invest money to this at least, just my time. If I ever get something that's actually interactive done I'll keep you posted!

Bottom line. If you want to do it and you have the means to do it....then by God DO IT! Do not let anyone deter you. One day you can look back and either say 1 of 3 things.....

1. At least I tried.
2. Im glad I tried and succeeded.
3. I wonder what would have happened if I had tried? Where would I be now? What would I be doing?

Go and make a game! Just... make a simpler one first.

While I do tend to agree that this is a huge undertaking, that has a high likelihood of failure, it’s not impossible. Look into a game called Miasmata. It’s a 3D first person survival game made by two people. It was released on Steam and even achieved a fair amount of success.

Now what you actually described sounds a bit on the generic side. If you want to survive in the indie scene you need a hook. Maybe your story is amazing, or you have a unique way of telling it. Maybe go for a very unique aesthetic. Realism is not advised because frankly, even if your team does have the skill to pull it off you won’t have the time, budget or engine capable of pulling it off. Crappy realism will always be worse than something that is simple, attractive and highly stylized.

Finally, realize that if you intend to sell your game, and actually make money on it, then you need to get onto Steam. Unless you are incredibly lucky, or do something amazingly unique, no one will even know you exist otherwise.

Miasmata looked interesting. And seems, to me, that for a two person team they really only misfired on a couple things. I mean I don't know how they went about making it or putting it together or testing but seems they almost had lt really.

On the other hand, I am developing my own game right now. The process is slow, but I'm getting help from interested game dev friends.

It's also a much better time to do indie development than at any time before. There are so many available engines, often free to start with, or even free to use so long as you don't go over a certain amount of revenue. Unity is a good one to start out with, but even Unreal and Crytech have free versions of their full engines for download and experimentation with.

Digital distribution has taken off, not only is there steam, there's all the bundles. Even steam greenlight will help you get in the system if your work is good enough.

There's also kickstarter, and buy-in beta process that's becoming common (but is still a bit shady unless you really know what you're doing).

You also have to think ahead to what your actual gameplay is going to be like exactly. What you describe is just a story setup. You don't say if it's an shooter, RPG, and what viewpoint the player has. What are the mechanics, etc.

The more mechanics you have, the vastly more difficult it will be. Just designing, implementing, and polishing one mechanic (FPS shooting, for example) is a full game in and of itself. Adding on large worlds balloons the art budget. Implementing a decent melee combat system is another game. Implementing a fun driving system is yet another game as well. You really need to understand what you're making.

From what I read, you're making the same mistake I see so many 1st year game dev people do, they want to make an MMO without realizing exactly how much goes into making it. But in your case, you basically saying you want to recreate GTA, Yakuza, Sleeping Dogs, etc. Go and look at those games and try to imagine actually making all that.

The most important thing is to not just be a designer, because that's just one step away from a useless "idea guy." Have a applicable technical skill, either creating 2d and 3d art, programming, sound, level design, etc. Real world game designers do all sorts of tasks related to the gritty technical sides of a game, not just planning the gameplay, but implementing it, doing more scripting than designing.

Small teams can make a game, you just have to be realistic about it. Understand that for the next few years this will take up all your time, so you also need to think about how it will sell.

To get a sense of what a 1- or 2-person developer can accomplish working in their free time, check out Bill Harris's weekly blog posts about Gridiron Solitaire. He's been working on the game for almost 3 years and posting about it for more than a year now, and I think his writing will give you some good insight into how challenging development can be for a newcomer. Here's his first post, and here's the most recent.

AWS260 wrote:To get a sense of what a 1- or 2-person developer can accomplish working in their free time, check out Bill Harris's weekly blog posts about Gridiron Solitaire....

Note, though, that Bill wanted to do the coding himself and started with no experience at that. That said, his series on Gridiron Solitaire is an excellent window into just what it takes to make a 2D, turn-based game. So reading it would indeed be illuminating for the OP.

Also illuminating would be to select a 3D game from this list (say, Jedi Outcast) and examine its source code.

For each package and module in the source, the OP and his coder buddy should ask themselves: Do I know what this is? Do I know why it's here? Do I know how it interacts with the rest of the system?

Grundbegriff wrote:Note, though, that Bill wanted to do the coding himself and started with no experience at that.

I've been programming for 28 years (17 years professionally), and I've found that it doesn't much matter. For a modern game, it isn't so much the mechanics of programming that are the issue - it's the variety of domains you need to be an expert in outside of the programming itself. For example, 17 years spent programming Windows/Linux device drivers and applications provides little in the way of help when it comes to programming a graphics engine, or AI, or sound, etc. It has given me a leg up on the networking side I suppose, and on tool development certainly. Game programming is a very complex beast when you try to tackle it as a one man wolf pack.

With a small team, if your sights are set on a more modern game, the best bet to get started with is modding. There are a lot of small, inexperienced modding teams out there. If there's a game out there that is functionally what you are looking for, find out if they have a modding community for it, and if so, spend the time learning how to use and push the boundaries of those tools.

I'm not going to use Kickstarter, thats for sure. Don't want to waste peoples money in case I never succeed in actually making a game, also nobody would probably back this project since I'm just a nobody.

As for art style I was thinking highly stylized models, kinda like those icons that show you where the men's room is, then if it's a policeman for example slap a simple texture on it that conveys the idea that it in fact is a policeman. The idea being here that you communicate the purpose of objects and people with extreme minimalism, for example the mafia dudes are just the basic model except they have sleeve tattoos.

The Citizen Abel series is great imho, although not a whole lot of game in them, that's why I'd like to have at least some sort of combat in my game. There are many options here however, Virtua Cop -style shootouts might be fun for example.

I've also been trying to adapt the story into 2d, platformish-format, and it might work out actually.

Anyway, we'll see.

If you just want to make a game your not stupid, but if you want to make a game with limited resources and just a couple people and expect to make a living or money off it...then your stupid. As others have said in other ways. I've been gaming for many years and I have Ideas that I think would be fun (at least for me) and if I ever became rich I might explore farming my Idea out (Here have a couple million...now make THIS game). But, prolly never happen...lol