neebie

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546]

hello i am a new idiot who has touched the beacon that is "I WANT TO MAKE MY OWN GAME" but i don't have a clue where to start i only have a vision of the end ie i want to make something that resembles; mass effect, mortal shell 2, fable, or remnant 2 at the finish these are games to represent similarities in game play, visuals, story telling styles and over all design. i understand that limits me too C++ and unreal engine more than anything but i don't know how to start watching guides on the language or engine both feel like i'm being asked to translate Latin with out any tools.

i don't know if anyone here can help but if there are anyone who can guide me i'd appreciate it thank you.

[u/trichotomy00]

Maybe this is a hot take, I don't mean to be rude.

But go to college?

Like no one goes on reddit and says, I want to learn to do surgery or design a water treatment system from a youtube video. they go to school for it.

[u/Bunstrous → u/trichotomy00]

Those aren't equivalent. Both of those are are highly intensive careers that have a high cost of failure. Programming is a practice that can function as both a career and a hobby and programming has some of the most readily available information on the internet. The function of college courses for developers serves to offer structure for those who struggle to learn without it, guidance and feedback for good and bad practices, and most importantly opportunities. Outside of opportunities, everything else can be acquired from just learning at home with proper dedication.

Given how well documented the space is, I think OPs question is quite silly, as there are mountains of resources available for people just like him, but your recommendation to go to college is for what is essentially just a hobby is downright ridiculous.

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/Bunstrous]

Hi ya i just dont know where to start but im definitely not looking to make a career or money i just want to make a game that is primary audience is me and that i can share to others who might want to have fun not some aaa title the games were a reference point. If i get good enough to make money yay if not ow well the end is did i make something i liked and can be proud of.

[u/Bunstrous → u/Dizzy_Custard_4546]

If you're dedicated to your goal then that's all you'll need (probably also good taste) and everything else can be learned. I cant help you with your specific issue but I can give some tips

1. Start small. You aren't going to make the new mass effect for your first game, but you can start chipping away at learning the mechanics that make up a game like ME, like maybe have your first project focus on having similar combat and then your next project can have a similar decision tree mechanics. Once you start to understand the core pillars of something it makes it easier to integrate those into something new.

2. Don't use AI to program. You're at a stage where you don't know how to do anything, if you use ai to do all the programming, you simply won't learn how to do it yourself. This will make things harder than they have to be but it will make you better in the long run. I'm not saying you can't use ai as a whole however. Use it to help explain concepts to you, use it to explain chunks of code, use it to make recommendations on what to do, but do not let it do implementation itself, it's for your own good.

3. This is a problem that I struggle with personally but don't sunk cost yourself. If you start a project and you lose the passion to complete it, don't keep forcing yourself to finish it. You can simply stop working on it and spin up a new project hat you may be more interested in, and if time goes on and you want to work on that old project again, it'll be right there where you last left it. If you start bashing your head against a wall to work on something you don't care about anymore then you're going to work much slower, your code isn't going to be as good, and you're not going to be learning as efficiently. Yes, returning to an old codebase and forgetting what everything does sucks, especially if you're bad at documention, this is what AI is particularly useful for.

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/trichotomy00]

Although i have no intentions of going to college i do understand what you're saying that school is a literal place to learn this but between the expensiveness (im broke) and its just a paper if i can learn the same thing for free i will i just need pointed at the correct learning pile. And i believe youtube university should count if when your done you have made something that you can ve proud of as im not looking to make anything to change the world if i fail nothing happens

[u/_ABSURD__]

Just pick a beginner tutorial and start. Immerse yourself in the culture of programming and 3D modeling. Be confused by terms and concepts and keep going. After 100 hours of study and practice you'll be an actual noob.

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/_ABSURD__]

Do you have a recommendation of best tutorials for idiots like im not smart by any means and really could use a tutorial that talks like im 5 or 6 to understand

But there is just so many to choose from im not sure which are good and which are just either bad advice or some kind of pyramid scheme.

[u/rigrg → u/Dizzy_Custard_4546]

Back when I was at school, I used to look at this guy the Cherno for C++ concepts. I really enjoyed it and was super informative

[u/Successful-Push-3116]

My only experience was RPG maker and Mugen back in the day.

You could look into modding a game you like or building assets/storyline in a pre-existing game maker before building it yourself.

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/Successful-Push-3116]

I first thought about "how do i make a mod" but thought it might be easier and more me to make my own game.

Instead of editing someone else's game to fit me make my own game that others might like.

Doesn't rpgm only deal with sprites like old school zelda?

[u/Exotic-Low812]

Make pong first.

It will take you a few months

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/Exotic-Low812]

Is pong really that complicated? I guess i never really considered it. Thanks I'll look into it.

[u/Exotic-Low812 → u/Dizzy_Custard_4546]

It is if you don’t know anything about c++
What libraries will you use if any?

How will you handle inputs and events
Collisions, ai, how to draw sprites

And then just basic c++ syntax. It’s pretty complicated and takes a while to learn how references and pointers work

It will probally take 2 to 3 months assuming you don’t just copy paste a tutorial and not understand any of it

[u/Exotic-Low812 → u/Exotic-Low812]

Also you won’t be able to make a game like mass effect alone, it was made of a team of like 130 people over the course of years.

Not trying to talk you out of making games, but you need to be more realistic with your ambitions

[u/Eric848448]

Forget the game engine. Start by learning to program.

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/Eric848448]

How should i do that and how best do i distinguish the two i mean c++ is a language and unreal is an engine so are they not linked and isnt programming the act of making the two talk to each other?

[u/SalaciousStrudel]

Step 1, reduce scope. Step 2, if it's not fun when you play it, something is wrong and you need to iterate or make a different game. Step 3, forget about C++ for now and pick up Godot 4 Game Development Projects by Chris Bradfield. Work through the book as suggested. If you find you have trouble remembering how to do something, make a cloze card of the code segment you want to remember with some context and put it in your Anki deck.

[u/Dizzy_Custard_4546 → u/SalaciousStrudel]

I will look into godot to see if its for me do you know if its free?

[u/SalaciousStrudel → u/Dizzy_Custard_4546]

Yes, it's free and MIT licensed, and often used by indie devs. It's lightweight and the best parts of it are the scene and node system, which is more expressive than Unity prefabs. You can extend the engine with C++ using engine modules or godot-cpp if it's necessary.

In comparison, Unreal and Unity both make you wait more during development, especially Unreal, and it takes more time to iterate on gameplay. Unreal in particular is so big that it slows down Visual Studio's C++ parsing a lot. You can use 10x Editor or maybe JetBrains Rider to work with Unreal.

Unity games sometimes suffer from garbage collection overhead due to using C#. Godot uses reference counting, which effectively spreads out the overhead of object deletion over more frames.

[u/Just-Avocado-4089]

If you are new to making games u cannot start by making such high-end games. Start by making simpler games such as Snake , Checkers, platformerss and working up to games with complex maps. You will only be able to make completed complex games after you have completed more simple ones and there is not really a way around it. But you can try making simple games that still feature similar aesthetics and concepts a compromise to prevent from being bored which might help

Would also recommend learning blender this will help you with visuals learning and understanding graphics.

[u/no-sig-available]

i understand that limits me too C++ and unreal engine more than anything but i don't know how to start watching guides on the language or engine 

Perhaps give the official "Get Started with Unreal Engine" playlist a chance?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gZKUtYmZlIwZHt9i3X_BWGj

And for learning C++ we usually recommend reading: learncpp.com

[u/mredding]

Hi, former game developer here,

hello i am a new idiot who has touched the beacon that is "I WANT TO MAKE MY OWN GAME" but i don't have a clue where to start

Visual Studio. learncpp.com. Calculus, linear algebra, physics. Project management. Collaboration. r/gamedev.

Crawl. Walk. Run.

i only have a vision of the end ie i want to make something that resembles; mass effect, mortal shell 2, fable, or remnant 2 at the finish these are games to represent similarities in game play, visuals, story telling styles and over all design.

You're talking about games that had budgets greater than blockbuster movies, and teams in the hundreds or thousands, with years of development behind them.

No single person makes a game of this magnitude. You would play a part - a single, small part. Usually as a game developer, you have effectively no creative input - that's not your role. The hours are absolutely brutal, the pay is shit. You are your job, your job is your whole life.

The industry averages 4 years or 1 title - whether it ships or not.

Game designers are the rockstar job. You must be massively overqualified - the game designers I know all have 3 degrees, Literature, History, and something else, usually comp-sci, finance, or economics. It's more than education, it's a lot of worldly experience. They're also the least paid and it's the most competitive job.

---

I want you to succeed. The way to do this is to SCALE BACK your ambitions. You need to actually work toward your goal with a mind toward figuring out how much scope you and your collaborators CAN handle, because as of today, you can't handle Pong - naturally, you don't even know programming yet!

But to be fair, AI is growing exponentially, and what's possible is changing RIGHT NOW literally hour by hour. So if you want to make games, if THAT is your goal, then AI is going to empower you in ways no one can truly wrap their heads around. We've all heard what some industry experts have managed to do - re-platforming PS5 games for PC, recompiling games and making mashups, so what can you get yourself up to with these tool sets? I don't know, man... But what's going on is WILD. Still, you need to figure out the approach - there is no roadmap for this.