Spec me a game building application

bainbridge

bainbridge

bainbridge

Soldato
Joined
9 Dec 2009
Posts
5,336
Location
Bristol
Hi OCUKers

I have an idea for a computer game and want a piece of software to get the basics up and running.

Now, I know very little about game development other than it is very complicated because it is a whole industry, but I just want something very touchy feely to play about with my idea.

I need a sandbox to place simple everyday objects in and a 1st person view to navigate within it.

A quick google search has completely bamboozled me, so I thought that there might be one or two people here who knew a thing or two about game development :)
 
I'm not sure there is anything that's that basic, and if there is it's not going to be of much use to you long term.

As you say game development is very hard, and if you've got no experience the learning curve will be near vertical. If you're still interested, my suggestion would be to learn Unity. It requires a knowledge of C# or C++, but you would need to learn this anyway and the sooner you get started the better.

The benefit of Unity is that there's a lot of documentation and it's widely used so there's plenty of help forums available. Also it can do 2d systems which are a lot simpler to build for a beginner, rather than having to deal with the very complex mathematical formulae of 3d environments.

Good luck!
 
Simple 2D engines like Gamemaker or Construct2 are good to play around with to get a feel for the kind of logic you deal with in the context of games.

Unity is a great application too, but I would say you'd need a moderate amount of experience before you can make something worthwhile and not get frustrated in the process.

How are your programming/maths skills outside of game development?
 
You want first person (i.e. 3D), you aren't a programmer....I would just go with Unity.

As previously mentioned, the difficulty curve is very steep if you haven't coded before....but it is the biggest community, and there are lots of free learning resources. Start with some basic C# tutorials before you open Unity.

Just beware that games, especially 3D is several factors more complicated than your every day application building/programming. It's much more rewarding though :)

Feel free to ask dumb questions on here....
 
Since most game engines I personally use/used have already been mentioned here, I'll add what's left.

Unreal Development Kit is another one that's 3D and oriented towards FPS games. As soon as you launch it and choose one of the templates you have a 3D world to walk around in just like in any FPS game. It comes with a fair amount of assets to mock up a game without the need to create any additional ones and coding can be done in a visual way using Kismet (visual, node-based scripting).

It has now been replaced by a newer, paid version, Unreal Engine 4, which is about £18/month but you can still find the old one for download and plenty of tutorials for it.
Unreal Engine 4 is even easier to use and tutorials for it just keep coming. It also has the best graphics quality of all the engines and I'd say easiest to learn too.

Good luck with making your game!
 
Start with Unity man, code in C# and move to Java to start off with. Also find Gamemaker Studio is a nice piece of software to make 2D games. Steer clear from UDK or CryEngine until you know the basics of coding games.
 
Apart from what has already been mentioned, Blender has a game mode that may be of use while prototyping, or there is also sourcefilmmaker, which might just about do what you want, hard to tell from the limited description.

For 2D there is also Godot which is open source.
 
I'm not sure games development is especially complicated. It does tend to be done under unreasonable time and financial constraints though. There is seriously sophisticated development tooling around to take some of the edge off, but I can't think of an open source project that isn't in the above list.

Since your location is Bristol, it might be worth going along to one of the Bristech meet-up groups and asking around at the beer and pizza stage - you'll inevitably find some game developers in the crowd.
 
mihaivdev said:
It has now been replaced by a newer, paid version, Unreal Engine 4, which is about £18/month but you can still find the old one for download and plenty of tutorials for it.
Unreal Engine 4 is even easier to use and tutorials for it just keep coming. It also has the best graphics quality of all the engines and I'd say easiest to learn too.
Click to expand...

It's worth adding to this that you are perfectly entitled to subscribe to UE4, download the engine and source, and cancel your subscription, and continue using it as long as you like.

One thing thing is does have going for it, especially if you're not much of a programmer, is the Blueprint visual scripting engine, which is probably the best system of its type I've ever used. I like having things visualised (hence the reams of scribbled flow diagrams on my notes), and even though I'm fine writing code, I prefer to use Blueprint a lot of the time. It is pretty cool.
 
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