Thinking of making my own games

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Elynole wrote:

Te_Roy, it won't be a surprise when you get into game development that there are thousands of others, just like yourself, that have large dreams of seeing their creative talent show up on screen - having the ability to be shared with so many others. Knowing this, you'll find a wealth of resources to explore and will come to find that working to make a game can be one of the most challenging and rewarding things that you can possibly do.

Why do I state this? Because on this journey you're about to embark on, you'll find those that lean more towards the pessimistic side of the tracks - telling you that you do not have the talent, that you're aiming too big, or that it's a waste of time because it can't be done. Truthfully, the most important part is not whether you make it big, it's not in hopes that your next game becomes a Call of Duty or The Sims, but that you've taken away a large portion of experience in multiple different arenas: technology, art, leadership, project management, physics, mathematics, sociology, psychology, etc.

Your Starting Point

I would recommend starting out by both yourself, your musical producer, and your graphic artist agreeing upon what is called a Capstone. A capstone, like it's architectural equivalent is a one to two sentence statement on what you plan to achieve, as a whole, with the project you're starting. If you find that you're unable to describe what you're trying to achieve in one to two sentences, there's a great likelihood that your main goal is too complex to manage effectively - and may need to be split into multiple projects. This will be the Mission Statement of sorts for everything else that you do for this project.

I've been getting into World Building pretty heavily lately, here is my Capstone for said project as an example:

"To create a scientifically holistic fictional world toolkit that consists of distinct, segregated multiverses, while maintaining a genre-agnostic setting, to be used for the purpose of novels, art, movies, or video games."

Your Resources

Next, I would dive not only into the game design community but also into what topics/studies/areas that you feel may accompany you in your design. Don't worry, as time progresses these topics will become both more complex and more fleshed-out and apparent as your project begins to bloom. Below, I've listed a few resources that I love to use.

http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html - You'll find both amateur and professional game developers and designers within this community, and their forums are chalked full of useful advice for every area of game design - they've also been around for quite some time and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

http://www.gamasutra.com/ - Gamasutra, like the website states, is The Art & Business of Game Design. You'll often find articles and interviews from real world game developers and designers on this site, even from AAA companies. It's a great resource to bookmark.

http://www.sloperama.com/ - Tom Sloper has created some useful guides and articles for those entering the game development arena - especially for those that wish to learn more about the business and management side of things. He's a veteran in his field, and while I don't agree with every point he makes - as a starter, he's a good resource.

http://www.ted.com/ - There are many sites like this, and while this is not exactly game design specific, it's good to let your mind wander. I recommend just flipping through and watching some of the TED talks - keeping a notepad and pencil with you - and writing down anything that comes to mind.

Additionally, there's a new series on Education TED that just came out specific to World Building and designing fantasy worlds - I highly recommend taking a look. - http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-build-a-fictional-world-kate-messner

http://www.igda.org/ - The International Game Developers Association - If you live near a big city, or within driving distance - it may behoove you to check on the events that this organization often has in said cities. Additionally, they offer a good amount of member benefits once your project starts rolling.

Reddit - Reddit is more than Funny, TIL, SpaceDicks, and GoneWild. It has a plethora of distinct, silo'd groups in it that can be a godsend if used right. Have a question or want to learn some general facts about Physics, check out /r/physics - want to design some maps for your game you're developing - check out /r/mapmaking. Interested in constructing your own language for the game, pull up /r/linguistics or /r/conlangs - the list goes on and on.

Your Planning

As an agriculturalist and qualified culinarian you should already be well aware of the importance of preparation, planning, and preemptive ability. The same holds true with software development - in fact, planning is THE most important stage of any software development project. You may spend 75% of your time planning, and only 25% of it actually doing any physical work such as code or art and that's perfectly OK - in the long run you'll have fewer instances of you needing to redo work or pulling both yourself and your team into focus of what the actual target(your capstone) is.

I highly suggest grabbing a book or two on project management and software development, while it may seem foreign at first you will begin to find that you'll need this throughout your journey of game design. Additionally, I'll suggest a few books that I would highly recommend you reading through - both at the start of your project, in the middle of it, and at the end.

The Mythical Man Month - Any software developer, project manager, or creative director who has not read this book has committed a sin in my eyes. This book is more like a software development and project management bible than a book - in fact, I read this book at least annually to keep on top of it's teachings. I highly recommend this book, and it should remain on your bookshelf for eternity.

The Power of Habit - It's without consequence that we, as individuals, shape a large portion of our lives through the use of patterns(ask any mathematician, haha). Everyone has them, and they can either be our downfall or our ultimate uprising. While this book isn't specific to game development or software development - I highly recommend it as a read to grow while working in a team, and understand not only your own habits and patterns in life but those of the people you work with and lead.

There are probably a dozen or so more books that I could recommend regarding leadership, planning, and technical know-hows but my library is located in my little boys room and he's fast asleep - and not to be woken up - I may update this section later.

To move forward, if you search the game design community most will probably lead you to a Game Design Document - which acts a document detailing the plans of your game design from your initial goal down to the controls and hardware specifications that you plan on using - you can use these if you wish but from my personal experience I find these to be highly limiting within the scope of software development. Rather, I would recommend more of an enterprise approach to your game development by way of using a tried-and-true software development and planning methodology, ensuring that you cover all your bases.

Either way, start from your capstone and begin some brainstorming sessions with your team. Scoop up every idea, whether bad or good, and keep a log of them. Ask questions, never be afraid to ask questions - even to your own ideas. What genre is my game? Is this genre something that's currently popular right now? What is my target consumer? What platform(s) should we work to create on? What is the backstory? What is the setting? Who are the antagonists and protagonists, etc etc.

Once you have some of these questions loosely answered, start defining the roles that each member of the team will be apart of. With the roles, begin making realistic, achievable tasks that these members can be apart of. In the game development community, with amateur developers - the worst thing you can possibly do as a team leader is not have something to do for your team - you need to keep them involved and motivated or they'll begin to wander away from the project and onto someone else's.

Your Inspiration

Projects change, ideas change, teams change. You've stated that you're wanting to create a game like POE, but I'd be willing to wager a month's pay that the game you end up creating will be nothing like that of POE. You'll find inspiration and new ideas in places that you've never dreamed possible.

Do not be afraid to draw inspiration and pull ideas from wherever you find them. Just finished a Lord of the Rings marathon and want to have a backstory that consists of powerful rings? Go for it. Listen to talk radio, read a book, look at people's art, play other video games, watch movies. Pull these ideas and inspirations - by the end of your project, you'll most likely not have to worry about "copying" someone else's work as these ideas and inspirations will evolve into something that's your very own.

Hell, a good example of this is a constructed language that I'm currently working on for my world building project which draws heavily on Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian ideograms. Even within the first few passes of this language, I've noticed that my idea which very heavily drawed from Sumerian cuneiform is now taking on a mind of it's own, evolving, and looks rather nothing like it.

Your Tools

Lastly, I'll touch on the tools you'll need to build your world. As you've already mentioned, with Unity Engine, you're already looking at what tools you'll need to build your game - which is a good start. You'll find many free, or affordable, game development engines out there. The two predominant ones that come to mind are:

Unity Engine
Unreal Development Kit - Unreal Engine

(Having used both of these engines on a hobby-basis, I tend to like UDK more. It has a higher learning curve, I think, but is a much powerful engine and more well-rounded.)

Additionally, you'll want to find some sort of collaborative software that you and your team members can use together to keep track of task completion, brainstorming ideas, etc. Putting in collaboration tools or project management software into Google will bring you up enough resources to last you a decade in trying them all out - and I highly recommend you try them out - find what works best for your team. For starters, a great collaboration tool for your team for brainstorming ideas and grouping research may be Microsoft OneNote.

(As a side note, Adobe now offers their whole Creative Suite (photoshop, illustrator, etc) as a subscription based license now instead of having to spend thousands of dollars to obtain professional software - It's called Adobe Creative Cloud - check it out.)

At any rate, if you have any specific questions to game design and development, or project management, or software development and design - or anything in between, let me know and I'll try and answer them as honestly as possible.

Additionally, it'd be really cool if some of the GGG staff could comment with their experiences on the OP's topic.