So You Want To Be A Game Developer

Transcription

1 So You Want To Be A Game Developer For Hobby or Career, Discover What It Takes To Get Started! Written by J. A. Whye for ThreeRingRanch.com

2 1st Edition Copyright 2016 by Three Ring Ranch All rights reserved.

3 Introduction... 4 Your Game Dev Office... 5 Hardware... 6 Software... 6 Choosing Your Target D vs 3D... 8 Target Audience and Platform... 9 Scope... 9 Choosing A Game Engine Coding vs Drag and Drop Rolling Your Own Use an Existing Product Game Development Assets Create Your Own Buy Existing Art, Music, and Sound Hire an Artist/Musician Your Next Step How To Actually Learn Game Development Recommended Resources Game Engines Art Assets Audio Assets Code Editors Graphic Editors Audio Editors Video Tutorials... 20

4 Introduction You like playing games on consoles, computers, or mobile devices, and now you ve started thinking about making your own video game. Is it even possible for someone by themselves to do that? Here s the hard truth: If you want to make something that rivals World of Warcraft or Call of Duty, no, that s not possible for a lone game developer. But just about every casual game in existence, most arcade games, many adventure games, role-playing games, etc., can be created by a single game developer. Game development has exploded in recent years, both as a career and as a hobby. As tools have become readily available, more and more people have decided to dive in and create their own game as an indie game developer (indie as in independent). You don t need specific schooling or training in order to get started what s most important is your enthusiasm. Second to enthusiasm are common sense guidelines, which is what this report will give you. If you think game development is for you, this guide will show you what s needed in order to get started. Note! This isn t a how to program guide this is the thing you need before ever starting that part of the process. What kind of computer is necessary? How do you know what software tools you ll need? Do you have to draw your own artwork? Keep going and I ll answer your questions about indie game development.

5 Chapter 1 Your Game Dev Office What are you going to need? While it would be awesome to have an actual office (with a secretary!) in which to work, one of the coolest advantages of game development is that you re able to do it with a minimum of cash outlay and in just about any location you can imagine. Many game developers work from a simple desk in their house, and some small game studios have their members work out of local coffee shops all over the world. A few years ago my family of four lived on the road for about a year, traveling the West and Southwest United States. My office during that time was my laptop in whichever coffee shop was closest to the campground where we were staying the night. During that time I completed many projects (and drank many cups of coffee). The best option for a home office is an actual room that can be used specifically for game development. Most people don t have that advantage, but if you do, use it. Second choice and what many people settle for is a desk in the corner of some room in the house. In fact, as I write this guide that s where I am right now, my living room. I have a desk set up in the corner with two bookcases within reach (holding the many reference, programming, and game books I ve collected over the years). On my desk I have a laptop with an external monitor as well as a desktop machine. Using this office I ve published almost a dozen games so far. When your kid moves out, turn their room into an office before they have a chance to find out how tough it is out there and tries to move back home!

6 Don t let the lack of a real office stop you from working on your game. If all you have is a laptop that you set up on the kitchen table in the evenings, go for it you re not alone! Hardware While a fast computer and multiple monitors are helpful for game development, that kind of system is not a requirement. Those people who do all their development in coffee shops have a laptop and that s it. One thing you will want to make sure is that the computer you use is capable of running the game engine software you end up choosing. For example, something like Corona SDK will run on just about any laptop or desktop. Use Unity and you ll need a bit more horsepower. Try the Unreal Engine and you ll need some heavy-duty hardware. In general, 3D game development will require more resources than 2D game development, so check the system requirements for the software you want to use to make sure what you have will work. Outside of a computer, there s little hardware that s actually required. If you re going to be drawing your own artwork (not a requirement, by any means) you may want a digital tablet. If you re going to be making games for mobile devices you ll probably want at least one such device for testing (most people have a mobile phone and tablet, so that s already covered). Most of game development can be done with minimal hardware just your computer. Software The list of game engines section on Wikipedia shows more than 120 different game engines (including frameworks/libraries), so there s a lot to choose from. What s really nice is that many of them (possibly most) are either free or have a free version so it won t cost you anything to get started. (To be fair, some on the list are proprietary and not available to be used by the public.) If you looked at that list and started scrolling through all the options you could quickly become overwhelmed. In an upcoming section of this guide you ll decide what kind of game you want to focus on, what your target platform will be, and make other decisions that will pare that list down to a manageable size (because not every game engine is right for every type of game).

7 So you ll need game engine software, but what other programs will you need? Much of that depends on what kind of game you ll be making, but here s a quick list: Code Editor - While some game engines (such as Unity) come with an editor built in, others expect you to have your own. You can t use a word processor such as Microsoft Word or Apple s Pages, it has to be a text or code editor. There are many available cheaply and even free. Graphics Editing - Even if you won t be creating your own artwork from scratch, there are always things you need to tweak. Adobe Photoshop is somewhat the standard in this area, but there are very many options available, both free and paid. 3D Modeling - If you re going to be diving into 3D programming you re probably going to need a 3D modeling package. Most of those are high-priced, but there s at least one free option available that s used by many indie game developers. Audio Editor - Every game is going to need sound effects and even if you get a professional to create them, you ll often need to edit them in some fashion. One of the most-used audio editing packages is free (I ve used it for years). Be sure and see the Resources section at the end of this report for links to some of the more popular software packages available to help you get ready for developing games. That s about it. There are many, many tools and utilities out there that can help with game development, but if you had one of each from the above list you d have everything necessary to create your own video game. The software you actually need can all be had for free.

8 Chapter 2 Choosing Your Target Who will be playing your games? What kind of games do you want to make? Is it going to be a 2D or 3D game? Who s your target market? What platforms (mobile, desktop, etc.) will you focus on, etc? The answer to those questions will help you determine which game engine you should choose. 2D vs 3D A typical 2D game might be Angry Birds, Candy Crush Saga, or the classic Super Mario World. While some of the artwork may be drawn to imitate 3D images, and some sprites (images on the screen) go behind or in front of others, the games themselves are created with horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) coordinates, and don t use depth (Z). A 3D game on the other hand, uses X, Y, and Z with examples like God of War, Battlefront, and the classic Doom and Quake franchises. What kind of games do you like to play, more 2D, more 3D, or a mix? I ll be right up front with you even if your plan is to create a first-person shooter (FPS) or some kind of 3D adventure game like Tomb Raider, you should start by building some 2D games first. This does two things: 1. Gets you up to speed with your new game engine as easily as possible. 2. Allows you to learn game dev techniques without also learning 3D-specific techniques. Developing 3D games is much more complex than developing a 2D game, but the skills you learn with a simpler 2D game will help you once/if you make the jump to 3D game development. One of the complexities of 3D game

9 development is the artwork creating the 3D models that make up the game worlds require a completely different set of skills than any of the programming. In another section of the guide I ll go into how to find both 2D and 3D art assets in case you don t want to have to create them all from scratch. So the first thing to do is decide whether you re going to stick to 2D game development or whether you also want to get into making 3D games. That decision is one of the major keys to determining what game engine you ll wind up using. Target Audience and Platform Who is your game s target audience? Young people between the ages of 13-25? Women aged 35-55? Hard-core gamers? People who like casual puzzle games? The more specific you can be about who your target audience is, the better off you ll be when you start designing and making your game. Your target audience can also affect which engine you choose if your target market usually plays on consoles, you ll want to consider that and choose an engine that allows console deployment. If you re shooting at mobile devices, look for an engine that s good for those. Of course, most modern engines can target multiple platforms, but some have a really good focus on a specific platform or two. Special note: If you want to target consoles, be aware that many console companies require you to be a registered developer with their company before you re allowed to make a game for their console. In some cases it costs a good-sized chunk of money to make that happen. Mobile devices and desktop computers, on the other hand, are fair game for anyone. Scope While this is something that you ll be worried about more when you actually start putting your game design down on paper (yes, usually the first pass at video game rules, level design,

10 and such are done with pencil and paper), I ll mention it here because it can have an affect on which engine you choose. Your first several games should be small. Mainly because they ll probably be pretty bad. Hey, it s the same for everyone me included! But the only way to get better is to finish one game, and start the next one. With each one you ll become better and faster. In order to actually finish a game, you ll need to limit the scope how large the game is and how complex. For your first few games you must to keep them small and simple, that way you ll have better luck at finishing them. Many people want to start making The Perfect Awesome Game and grab the biggest engine and come up with the biggest plan and then quickly run out of gas and the dream dies. The best way to keep the dream alive is to feed it with several smaller games as you become better and better. The people who build mansions today started out building birdhouses!

11 Chapter 3 Choosing A Game Engine The software that makes your game go. Video games are typically created with a game engine software that s specifically made for game development. In some cases there s not a specific piece of software, but a library of code routines that are used to put together a game. While those are technically frameworks and not engines, they are often referred to as game engines and we ll use that standard in this report. While using an engine doesn t make game development as easy as pressing a Make Awesome Game button, having something that handles the low-level work of displaying and moving graphics, etc., takes a lot of the grunt-work out of making a game. Some engines handle more of the heavy lifting for you than others and which one you end up using depends on a lot of different factors. Coding vs Drag and Drop There are several game engines available that don t require any programming at all everything is drag and drop based. Drag a sprite (game image) into a scene and position it, then choose what kind of behavior it has, etc. While fun games have been made with those engines, they re more limited in what you can accomplish. If you re more artistically inclined and have no desire to learn programming, you may want to play around with one of those engines. Even artististic types can learn to code. Joe Kauffman, owner of Fire Maple Games, started out as an artist/animator. He decided to make a game and learned to program in order to publish The Secret of Grisly Manor, The Lost City, and more his games have been downloaded millions of times. Kauffman is a self-made game millionaire!

12 There are two ways of looking at game engines should you create an engine yourself, or use one that s already made by someone else? There are pros and cons to both. Rolling Your Own I m going to cover this one first because while it has one main advantage, I believe the disadvantages far outweigh it. The advantage is that if you create your own engine from scratch you know everything about it. If there s a bug, you can fix it. If you want an extra feature, you can add it. So what s not to like? Making your own game engine means most of your time will be spent making a game engine and NOT making a game. Those are not the same thing. Don t get me wrong, for programmer nerds (I m one!) it s fun to dive in and create a game engine, so if that really floats your boat, go for it. Just realize that making an engine and making a game are two very different things. Use an Existing Product This is the approach I suggest for people who want to make games especially if they re just getting into game dev. Leave the under the hood aspects to the guys who really geek out on that kind of thing, and instead, focus on making the most fun game you can. Using an existing game engine doesn t mean all the work has been done for you. Unless you choose one of those no coding engines, you ll still be writing code to make things happen. So making a space ship show up on the screen might look something like this: display.newimage( spaceship.png ) If you didn t have an engine helping you, there could be dozens of lines of code to do the exact same thing instead of that one line that s fairly understandable (even if you ve never programmed anything before). An engine handles a lot of the mundane housekeeping chores for you. While many indie game developers stick to just a single game engine, many others are fluent in more than one because you want to use the best tool for the job. But while there are a ton of game engines to choose from, don t worry that you ll pick the wrong one switching game engines at some point is kind of typical.

13 Chapter 4 Game Development Assets All about artwork, music and sound effects. The art, music, and sound effects of a game can t be considered second class citizens to the programming because those are what s most visible when a player is having fun with your game. The programming all but vanishes into the background, and to the player the graphics and sound are the game! There are three main ways to get great art and sound into your game and we ll look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of each here. Create Your Own If you have the talent and the time this is the absolute best way to go because you end up with a game that can be completely unique. From a marketing standpoint that is pure gold. While you can buy multi-thousand dollar digital drawing pads and rent recording studios, there are many more budget-conscious ways to create your art and sound assets. Since this isn t a how-to course I ll just briefly mention some of the ways: Draw pictures on paper and scan them to turn them into digital images for your game. Draw on a tablet and transfer to your computer for use in your game. Record different sounds with your phone or digital recorder, transfer them to your computer and tweak them for sound effects. Use a digital piano or other digital instrument to record music for your game. Maybe you re a great musician but can t draw, or it s the other way around. You can still create the assets you re able to and use one of the following methods to get the ones you still need for your game.

14 Buy Existing Art, Music, and Sound Most of us are missing the talent or the time needed to create our own assets (okay, some of us are missing talent and time!), but all is not lost. There are artists and musicians out there who create art and sound packs for those people without talent and/or time to buy and use in games. Those packs can usually be purchased for a pretty low price. What you re going to be looking for is royalty free art, music, and sound effects. That way you pay one time and then don t have to worry about it again. Need fantasy backgrounds? Buy em. Need a girl archer who can jump and run? You can buy that, too. Same goes for music and sound effects. I ve purchased packs consisting of hundreds of sound effects that I can pull into my games. In the last game I had sound effects such as: Swords striking Enemy getting hurt Hero getting hurt Door unlocking Treasure chest opening I also have different packs of music in different genres and moods. If I want suspenseful music I can grab that. Exciting, fast-paced music for a chase? That, too. To be honest, I now have more music and sound effects than I ll ever use, but building a library like that makes it easy to add something to a game without losing your momentum. As you get into game development you ll end up with the same kind of collection. How much will you pay? At the low end I ve paid as little as $8-$10 for graphics, and the same for music and sound effects. Of course, there s a lot available for around the $50 mark, and on up. The downside to buying artwork like that is that it s for sale and anybody else can buy that package and use the same characters, objects, and backgrounds in their game. While that s a

15 disadvantage to buying artwork, in many cases it s still worth it working on a game with good-looking art is more fun that using stick figures drawn by the programmer. And after the game is done you can publish it with that artwork (your gameplay will still be different than anyone else who s also using the same artwork), or you could go with the next option to make sure you have unique artwork, and just replace the artwork before publishing. Hire an Artist/Musician Instead of buying stock assets, you can hire an artist or musician to create them according to your specifications. You tell them exactly what you want, what style, etc., and they ll create unique art and music for you. Your game will be the only one with those characters. That s the upside. The downside is that way of doing things can cost you a lot. As in, thousands of dollars, and up. Or, there s the option of working with an artist and splitting the proceeds, which means there s sometimes no money up front at all the artist gets paid when you get paid. (In many cases it s hard to find someone who will work for that kind of deal, but it does happen.) I teamed up with an artist a few years ago to create a game called Horse Crazy. I did all the programming and he did all the artwork and we split the proceeds of the game 50/50. The experience was good and we hope to work together on another game in the future, but I ve also heard many stories where things turned out badly. If you go with that option, a signed contract among all parties is a must.

16 Chapter 5 Your Next Step Where to go from here From a hardware standpoint you re probably ready to get started (for at least some of the game engines) if you have a fairly recent desktop or laptop computer, so your next step is to use the links in the following Resources section to explore some of the recommended game engines. Using the questions mentioned earlier, figure out what kind of games you want to make and then choose a game engine based on those answers. How To Actually Learn Game Development Once you ve chosen a game engine to use, how do you actually discover what to do in order to make a game? There are two major ways to learn to make games: 1. Dive in and start splashing! Read the documentation on the game engine you ve chosen and look for example code, try demo projects, etc. Many game developers got their start this way (including me). 2. Find someone who knows how to teach game dev and take some lessons. This is probably the fastest way to get a firm foundation under your feet. Trying to find someone in your area who can teach game development is often hard, but there are some very good video courses available online that can walk you through the process, step-by-step. Find someone with good teaching and good game dev skills, and then start following their tutorials. Most of all, remember that it s not a race learning game development should be fun, so enjoy the journey!

17 Chapter 6 Recommended Resources Tools for game development. Below you ll find links to some of the resources I recommend for beginning (and above) game developers. Everything you see here will work well for game dev. Game Engines Wikipedia Article - List of Game Engines The list of game engines mentioned earlier in the report. Could give you some ideas on which game engine you want to use. Corona SDK A fun 2D game engine. Easy to get into and rapid game development make it my favorite of all the game engines I ve tried. Unity Works for both 2D and 3D game development. At this point the most popular choice for indie game development. Fairly steep learning curve. My overall 2nd choice, personally. Stencyl A fun game engine that doesn t require any actual programming. Because of that the learning curve is a little higher, however. Art Assets kenney.nl This site has a huge collection of 2D assets that are in the public domain, which means

18 they re free to use even in commercial games. Game Art Partners Great looking cartoon artwork. Not free, and costs more to be able to use in multiple projects, but very nice artwork options. (There is some free art available on the site.) Audio Assets Freesound Noise for Fun Incompetech Great place to look for music for your game. Some free, some paid, but lots of good stuff. Code Editors Sublime Text (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) One of the most popular code editors, it s not cheap, but you re allowed to evaluate the full version free for as long as you like. Visual Studio Code (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) Not the full Visual Studio IDE, this is a stripped down version that is free and cross-platform. ZeroBrane Studio (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) If you end up choosing an engine that uses the Lua language, this free and open source IDE is a great option.

19 Outlaw (Mac OS X, Windows) Created specifically for people who use Corona SDK, this IDE is cheap and also includes a free version. (Full Disclosure: I made this software.) Graphic Editors Acorn (Mac OS X) A commercial package (only for Mac), but reasonably priced and the one I end up using most of the time. Paint.NET (Windows) Free image and photo editing software (Windows only). Gimp (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) Probably the most popular free image editing program, but be aware the learning curve for getting up to speed can be pretty steep. Piskel (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) A specialized online editor that allows you to create pixel graphics, great for that 8-bit retro look. Inkscape (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) A professional vector graphics editor that's free and open source. Blender - 3D Modeling Free software that s used by many in the game industry. Very steep learning curve, so give yourself some time to really dive into it.

20 Audio Editors Audacity While the interface is not the prettiest in town, the price (free) and power (lots) more than make up for it. I ve used Audacity for many years and can t imagine leaving it. Video Tutorials Mastering Corona SDK Professional tutorial videos that walk you step-by-step and don t waste your time. Greta for beginners to game development. (Full Disclosure: I made this course.) Mastering Unity 2D While Unity is most known for 3D game development, it has a set of tools that are specific to 2D games. The tutorials on this site are aimed at 2D game development using Unity. (Full Disclosure: I made this course.)