# Making Computer Games



## PhotonGuy (Mar 21, 2015)

Anybody here have any experience writing computer games? From what I know, in this day and age it takes an entire team to produce a computer game. As for me, I've got some great ideas for computer games but I don't have the programming skills so I can see why it would take a team to do stuff like that.


----------



## Deafmute (Mar 23, 2015)

absolutely, unless your making a small indi game, most video games these days require massive teams, usually multiple writers for the story alone.


----------



## Boofy (Mar 23, 2015)

Indie games can be made by a solid team of one (It's a hell of a lot of work for a half baked product, by yourself, imo). If you're looking to make one, you'll need to either learn to code or grab yourself a programmer and then you can probably make it work provided the concept isn't too ambitious. You'd still need an artist or two on board though, unless you're both talented digital artists and I uhm... wouldn't recommend making it 3D... isometric grid at most, really... It's something I've looked into with a bunch of friends who are at uni studying Games Programming heh. We've dreamed up a few ideas that we're working on lazily... all pipe dreams, of course, but it's fun to do something like that with friends, even if it comes to nothing.


----------



## KellInkston (Mar 24, 2015)

I've had a small bit of experience writing games both from the story writer and designed point of view. It's fun stuff to put your ideas into an interactive, visual, and auditory medium like videogames, but it's _very_ hard work when first getting into it. I'd just hire a programmer and an artist.


----------



## KJ1001 (Mar 25, 2015)

There is a game called Limit Theory. It is a space simulation game along with dynamic economy and AIs that make the world living and breathing. It is being developed by one man. He does the writing/coding/graphics. Very incredible effort, I should say.


----------



## Tyler Danann (Mar 27, 2015)

Limit Theory looks pretty cool.

Another World is another example by one person making a game that went onto great success. It took the game-maker about 7 years to make though.


----------



## Nayath (Mar 27, 2015)

I can say that, if you're planning on making an RPG, there are some programmes like RPGMaker that offer trial versions for free. They aren't the most complete but in order to start they are very practical. 
If you're looking for something more complete, I think you would need a good team or a lot of time, patience and dedication


----------



## Neelai (Apr 15, 2015)

What kind of game do you have in mind? I had a desire to create adventure games, so I found a free engine that was developed for this purpose. It's called Adventure Game Studio.
There must be other engines out there depending on the type of game you want to create.


----------



## JamieJabbourIllustration (Apr 27, 2015)

For sure, a lot of games need writers, programmers, artists, voice actors, soundtrack/music people, etc. 
Luckily these are all skills that can be learned through the internet if you put enough work into it, I've certainly seen some pretty impressive one-man games before, it's not impossible.


----------



## madjac74 (Sep 6, 2015)

You could probably make some very basic games on your own like many of the little browser games that are all over the internet. As for programming there are tons of resources to teach yourself or you can always take a course at a local college. When I was just a boy and had nothing more than just a basic dinosaur of a computer, I discovered a book for programming role playing text games and wore that thing out! This was before the internet became the vast sea of learning resource that it is today. My goal was to program something like Dragon's Lair and I spent so much of my time trying to learn as much as I could  

Of course a lot of the incredible games you see on xbox and playstation take teams of talented people and budgets that rival some hollywood movies. Start simple and learn as much as you can.


----------



## handsomegenius (Oct 24, 2015)

I used to write very simple games as a kid in the late 80s/early 90s. Things like maze games and a very rudimentary platformer. Obviously gaming is a lot different now! Though with the internet there seems to be a lot of scope for solo programmers and small teams to find a niche. If you were going to have a go at it I think it would be worth having a bit of a crack at the basics of procedural programming, even if you were going to get someone else to code it later.


----------



## JustRob (Oct 24, 2015)

I have this problem indirectly on a more basic level. As a professional software developer I have under my wing a fourteen year old autistic boy who wants to learn about programming. He is also an avid collector of retro gaming consoles. I have seen his collection and have no idea how many he has and just how rare they are. I have never been into computer games as such. Give me a 3D game and I just find out the hacking codes so that I can explore the visual structures behind it. I never try to win, just explore every corner of the designer's thoughts by trying all the stupidest things imaginable. Playing one of the original Mario Brothers games for the first time with this lad on a vintage console was an ordeal. 

I only had a short while to prepare before I visited him, but a search on the Internet led me to Scratch and Greenfoot, two teaching aids for children that encompass a wide range of skill levels. He mentioned that he had previously used Scratch at school. Being autistic he is a complicated mixture of aspects, very intelligent and focussed and quick to learn but somehow in a childish way. Sometimes he seems very mature but then his childlike limitations kick in. 

During my brief session working with him we did manage to get an animation of Ray the flying squirrel (Have I got that right?) working in Scratch, complete with the correct sound track, but it's not entirely up to building a full platform game to my mind. The sprite handling may be okay but a moving background is just a pain to build and the screen resolution is limited.

Scratch may well be too limited and hence frustrating for him but Greenfoot seems to jump into the nitty-gritty of object-oriented code programming too soon, and is also subject to its own limitations. If anyone knows of a middle way package that might enable him to build his own basic platform games without having to drop into the more complex syntax of raw code, then I'd like to hear of it. Of course if he needs a competent coder to build any of the technical components for him then I'll probably be at hand, but the gaming environment itself is all Greek to me.


----------



## krishan (May 2, 2016)

I'll take this opportunity to mention Construct 2, as well. It's a very easy-to-use gamemaking engine - you can do impressive things with minimal knowledge of coding. And, with the purchase of a relatively cheap licence, you're allowed to sell the things you make.


----------

