Anyone know about Giant Sparrow? They're a team who's made two games: The Unfinished Swan, and What Remains Of Edith Finch, They're working on a new game too. But back to me and my question, I have a game idea that I want to make, which is about the struggles of game designing, but it'll be my first game, do any Devs, fellow creators, or Youtubers, or even just people who like games have any tips?
If you are just barely getting into game design, do not plan on making your dream game as your first project. Taking on such a potentially large project will most likely lead to burn out. Start with something small, something you know you can make. From there, work on incrementally larger projects until you have the experience and know-how to be able to confidently create your dream game.
I would second that, especially given the circumstances. No matter how good it feels in your head today, I don’t think a game about the struggles of game design by someone who’s never designed a game will be particularly good… better to let the idea grow for a few years while you get the experiences that will feed it.
I’d recommend trying to make a ton of small games, experiment with different approaches, genres, etc–that variety will give you more insight into the process and when you finally sit down to make your dream game you’ll be well-equipped to handle the subject.
That’s not surprising, I started around that age and I wouldn’t have been able to wrap my head around Unity or Unreal at that time, had they been around. Have you tried any simpler stuff like Scratch, Game Maker, or GDevelop?
Some folks will gatekeep over not diving into more programming-heavy engines, but I think there’s merit in taking time to get your feet wet in a simpler environment so that you can build the fundamentals that will carry you in the future.
Focus on discipline more than motivation because it will get you farther in the long run.
I'll use myself as an example. There are days I'm just not motivated to work on my game. I would much rather watch Youtube or find a cool Steam game to play. But because I am disciplined, I get up at a set time every morning and work on my game for a solid hour. Don't get me wrong, the progress can be incredibly slow the way I do it, but progress is still being made. Some mornings, if I don't feel like programming, I work on something else that is more enjoyable, like modeling spaceships in Blender or rendering explosions in Embergen.
You need to be absolutely convinced in your mind that the end result is going to be worth it. Think about how it will make you feel to finish it.
Learning the skills to make games -- that's the easy part. The hard part is the staring contest with your computer monitor to see who gives up first.
I was only 15 when I made my first game ever, and let me tell you, it was a mess!
It took me like 3 months and was only 30 minutes long, but the reason I finished it was because I had a TON of fun with development!
So in my opinion, when youre a younger teenager, the real trick to game development is simply finding something you can understand and that you enjoy doing. My first game wasn't in any game engine, it was actually in Javascript alone. So you should really try out a bunch of different ways of making games until you find something you enjoy doing! Here are some fun ones I would recommend for a beginner programmer/developer:
Also, if you ever want personal help in any of these, I'm (mostly) well versed and would love to help :)
If you are interested in making 3D games, but are not comfortable with scripting, I would use Unreal and their node system. Their are a lot of tutorials out there, I would recommend Ryan Laley tutorials in particular. If you want to branch out and learn basic scripting, go with Unity and the EdLab tutorials. I personally say go for it and use Unity and learn scripting, because you are better off in the long run.
I definitely agree that you should start small, you could work on small projects to get more knowledge and experience and keep your dream project as a sideline and add to it when you are able, you'll be surprised how often little projects can bleed into larger ones, if you have your idea which in your case you do i would suggest getting a pen and a notepad and start working on a game design document mapping out everything you possibly can which you can always refer back to, once you have that finished analyse it and break every part of it into it's simplest form and that's where you can start your small projects from, never be afraid of trial and error, making mistakes and getting things wrong that is totally natural and actually sometimes some of the fun that goes into making games, you can't get tips on motivation that is something you will have to manage yourself but if you truly believe something is worth working on the sky will be the limit and speaking from personal experience if you can make decent progress save your work to a removable usb drive so you don't lose it if the worst comes to the worst as it did with me a good few years back when my pc broke down and i lost everything i was working on and i seriously considered never working on games again.
I hope you find this useful and good luck.
Start small, learn from your mistakes. Nothing more disheartening than getting half away through a big project and realising that there's a much better way to do it (or that you've rendered it all wrong).
Small, disposable projects that you don't care to much about and don't end up investing to much in are a good way to start. You'll learn and get some confidence from the ones that work and minimise your losses from the ones that fail. Only when you've got some experience do you want to get into something bigger.
Don't forget to play other peoples games and see what you can learn from their mistakes.
Try joining a jam. Folk in jams seem more open to giving feedback than the general itch.io community.
IT is not easy question. I dont think that exist 100 pecent method. But.
1) Do SPORTS!
2) Have a walks and some relax nothing to do intervals
3) play videogames you like
4) Some village time! Go to the village, if you have for weekend
5) learn new skills you need. Programming, art, music
6) practice
Everytime you practice some things become more easy! And thats the trick to do the things that you have skills to do. In theory... Of course everybody just starts what they want, and they dont have enough skills... and lost motivation yes... so go to point 1.!!!!!!
that's interesting, tnx. I need some motivation too. I'm bad at writing and I think it's ok to use some help of v at https://www.customwritings.com/creative-writing.html. Luckily I found reliable custome service to help with my papers. These writers are professional and they helped me with grammar and plagiarism check. Luckily they have affordable prices and it's useful tool to save your time.
Advices for beginners based on my firsts experiences (keep in mind that my english is not native):
-If i lost all my memory except "wich game engine to get started?", by far, it would be Unity.
-We learn new things e v e r y day, so - don't try to build your dream game as your first project (the project you created by hitting New Project button for the first time ever). If needed, create and delete how many projects you want before you feel confident, and let me remember you - practice is the only way to know-how.
-If you have any difficult, go on your own steps - speed does not matter. What really matter is that, certainly, you will get there.
-If you don't like programming, let me remember you again that, even world's best job has something that you would not like to do to it be completed. This is real life, little boy.
-If you have interest in more than one programming language, i recommend to practice both, if you have time.
Brief (real) history: When i was about 15 i was getting many difficults with game making, but one day i, spontaneously, started loving making websites as a hobby - keeping game making out of my mind. As everything, learning web developing from scratch was not easy but i had not the dream but, the desire to build an entire website by myself. Because my mindset i started stuyind like crazy. The more i learned, the more i wanted to study. So much that i became quite familiar to programming, and became a (not-that-professional) web developer just 18 years old. Surprisely, Unity has a fundamental feature i learned while building websites as a hobby: GET and POST methods, wich can be used to communicate with the server for e.g: read or write data from database... That's it - i got excited by other segment that envolves programming, wich either i improved my skills on programming, itself, than i learned how to work with database, wich is essential for a multiplayer desire game.
