This post will cover some of my experiences, adventures and thoughts during the making and developing of Hinterhalt 2.
Hinterhalt 2 - Screenshot from mission 1 I always dreamed about making games. More specifically, making my own games. I already created a few other minor games but i always felt like creating something better, bigger and more complex. Making games is hard. It is incredibly time-consuming, frustrating and sometimes even depressing, specially when you finally & proudly release your with most effort created game and then #1 No one plays it or #2 You get negative feedback and reviews or #3 People undervalue or ridicule your work and effort.

Start Up

So where do you start? First of all, you need a game engine (obviously). Oh now, wait, first of all you need some motivation for making a game, oh now, wait, first of all you need a game idea,...hmm, wait, what about programming skills, true you first need some programming skills,...oh what about free time, true you truly need some free time before anything, oh wait, i need a proper PC, Hardware and Software tools as well,..ok ok,.., i think you get it, the first problem is the most basic problem: Where and how to start. Basically making a game consists of the following jobs: Programming, Modeling, Texturing, Gameplay-Designing, Level-Designing, Audio-Desiging, UI-Designing, Managing, Testing & Debugging, Animating, Performance-Optimizing etc... WOW, that`s a lot of work that has to be done. Now image if you are alone... -> No chance!

Outsourcing

Alright, you then decided to get some help (e.g paying artists to do the modeling). But how much do you actually think it will cost to hire an artist to make assets just for your game -> No chance! So there is this "thing" called the Asset Store. This is basically a place where artists can sell their products to anyone, and anyone can buy their products. But what's the deal? Well, obviously, your assets wont be unique. There will probably be > 100 more people who already bought those assets and might also have release a game with those assets. Then you got asset flippers (=People simply buying ready to use assets from these artists, and selling them, slightly modified of course, as a complete game). No one likes asset flippers, but here is the problem. Whenever you use assets from the store, a lot of people with simply say: "Hey, you are an asset flipper!" and sh*t storm your game, no matter what your game actually is and how much work you have put into it.

Developing

Congratulations, you have started the process off actually developing. You got all your assets and requirements and are ready to begin,..ready to begin,..ready..ready...to...to begin, to begin what? This is how you will start.
Empty game scene Can you see anything? Right, it is completely empty! No how do you turn something like this into this:
Non empty game scene Ok ok, let`s suppose we got some lovely terrain and a beautiful game scene. What about performance? Performance is a key issue in any game development. But wait, we only added some terrain, and characters, how do i make these characters move? How do i animated these characters, who do i add some logic? And hold on a second, the performance is bad already without having added any AIs or scripts?! Ok but lets get back to the gameplay. We must add some gameplay!

Scripting

Come on, let`s add some game play. I want this, cool feature, and this, and this, ah yes and of course this...and...and..and how do i do that?
Googling Yes, google will help you a lot, but it wont give you an individual solution exactly for your problem. It takes a lot of time to get the right Know-How. And yes, if you want to make a game, you will need to code!
Example of scripting

Publishing

Yes i finally, finally finally got my awesome game. What now? It is not a shame to say that i would like to earn some money for my hard work. What about Steam? Steam has the so called "direct access". You simply pay fee and are ready to publish your game. AWESOME! Let`s freaking do that! I`m sure that my game will be successful. Making a game is so hard and complicated that i am sure i will be the only one releasing a game on day X.Y, so i`ll get all the attention and... -> WRONG! There will likely be around 30 other developers releasing their game at the same day. Okay, but my game is better than theirs, i am sure people will play my game first and will tell their friends about my game, won`t they? -> Nope, sadly this is not how it works!

Conclusion

Game Developing is hard. It was never easy in fact. But it is something beautiful and there is something magic about seeing people enjoy playing my own made games and it always brings a smile or two to my face :) Thank you for reading and i hope this gave you a different glance about game developing. I thought it would be interesting to kind of write about my own personal perspective to game developing. Have a great an awesome day

[ 2018-09-26 10:52:54 CET ] [ Original post ]