Twunt

If I'm playing a lot of games right before I go to bed I will often have video gamey dreams. Last night I had a game dream, and woke up feeling highly motivated to make the game real. I dreamt that I was part of a small space colony on a planet where everyone was aware that they were video game characters. Everyone referred to themselves as NPCs, objects were called assetts, and there was a general understanding that everyone was living in a video game environment. Everyone was afraid because we knew an alien invasion was on it's way. A meeting was called and everyone was excited, because they were announcing that a space marine game was being hosted in our world, which would solve our alien problem. We were all happy until a guy walked onto the stage in the meeting hall and handed the announcer a piece of paper. His face dropped and he said "oh no... oh no!" He had been handed the achievement list for the game that we were to host. The achievements were things like "teabag ten dead innocent civilians" and "destroy fifty homes." In the meeting we hatched a plan; we needed the marines to fight off the aliens, but we were terrified that our losses would be equally bad because they would be going after those achievements, so we started figuring out ways to use the achievements to manipulate the players' behavior to our advantage. Unfortunately (probably because my dreamy brain isn't as creative as it likes to think it is) I only remember a few of the things we did. I remember being crouched under a vehicle with a cardboard sign that looked like a dead person, and whenever I wanted a marine to crouch by the vehicle to avoid alien fire, I would slide out the cutout of a dead person so he would try to teabag it. Another thing we did was to very carefully lay out the random stupid collectibles (they were coffee flasks!!) in a manner that would herd the marines where we needed them the most. One part that was funny, to me at least, was that the space marines all had gruff, angular faces but all they did was repeatedly yell homophobic slurs in Ike Broflovski's voice. I think the puzzles would be a bitch to design, but I think this would be a great adventure game. I think the whole idea of video games commenting on video games is starting to run its course though. I think this idea might be a year too late.

I think I may be way too lazy to read the whole thread and find out what the whitelisting process is. My username is Twunt and if I could get whitelisted that would be fab.

I haven't tried Unity3D so I wouldn't know much about it, but JavaScript is an excellent starting language. It is incredibly free-form and very forgiving, and it will accustom you to the C-style syntax, and to building your own data structures, which is painfully easy in JavaScript. I may start messing around with Unity3D some time soon. It is a long time since I've messed around with JavaScript. Perhaps we need to start an Idle Thumbs Amateur Video Games Development Consortium? Edit: Looking at Unity now... oof... I can do this....

Some more suggestions for new folks; lots of applications have VBA included. If you have Microsoft Excel, you can start writing visual basic through VBA (Visual Basic For Applications) to get the hang of some simple stuff. I have written a few VBA games in Excel (a maze generator and a very simple strategy game) just 'cause I was bored at work. If you're serious about getting accustomed to writing code to interface with a 3D environment, there is a free 3D editor called Blender3D that is not only an excellent place to learn 3D modeling, but is also a good place to learn Python (not my favorite language to write, but I respect it) and get to grips with the trippy math that comes with working in 3D environments. Blender actually has a game engine built in, but in my opinion it isn't very good. My opinion isn't worth a great deal here though, since I'm just an amateur.

At 22 you missed the days when computer ownership pretty much demanded you learned at least some programming. But there's no need to be jealous, there's nothing stopping you from learning if you want to. It actually isn't nearly as difficult as most people think it is. PHP is a nice and easy way to introduce yourself to the world of programming by building websites. While the language mimics the more in-depth languages in many ways, its very forgiving and very easy to debug. You can set your computer up as a web server and start writing PHP apps in minutes with MicroApache. One other really good introductory language is QuakeC. The first Quake game had a simplified proprietary version of the C language that is easy to play with. It is a rewarding starting point if your interested in game programming because you can make changes, compile your code and play your version of the game within minutes. All the links you need to get started messing around with QuakeC can be found on the Wikipedia page for QuakeC. I wish I still had all my old quake mods, I did some wild shit with QuakeC.

I am mostly directing this question at amateur designers and developers, not folks who work in development studios. The first game I ever made was on the Commodore Plus/4, written in PET BASIC. It was an astonishingly simple skiing game in which you controlled a red "H" character (which to me looked like a skier as viewed from above) avoiding green "4" characters (that were the closest facsimile to coniferous trees) and "8" characters (snowmen) as they scrolled up the screen. Little nine year old me thought he was the smartest mofo around because the game would end if you tried to move either left or right too much without changing direction, forcing the player to snake left and right continually, much the same way skiers did when I watched them on TV. I quit messing around with code for a while when consoles arose as the cost effective method of playing video games. Eventually I badgered my parents into buying me one of those new fangled Pentiums. I made a game in QBASIC that involved riding around on a skateboard dodging anvils that were thrown by a puppy on a that flies around on a cloud, and an ASCII based tank shooter with destructible environments. I attempted to learn C++ and WinAPI to make more graphical stuff, but this was pre-Internets and the books I needed were far too spendy for a jobless fourteen year old nerd. Later I dabbled in writing Java applets but never finished any of the projects I started, and the same was true when Flash started to gain popularity. I did miscellaneous development for a few different MUDs and helped on a few other projects here & there, but nothing that was my own creation. Just recently I've been throwing around the idea of writing an engine for browser based interactive novels with toolsets for writing massively divergent stories. If you were ever into those 'choose your own adventure' books, imagine a high-tech update to that idea. I've been writing it on and off for nearly a year and at the rate I'm making progress it will likely be finished some time in the late 22nd century. I am very interested to hear what game development projects other amateurs have undertaken.

OK, how about this... The game opens with Odin standing atop the ramparts of Valhalla, looking out across the landscape of Asgard. In the distance an ominous dark cloud darkens the horizon. Odin turns to his lieutenant and explains that Helheim's minions are rising to challenge his rule. He instructs his lieutenant (lets call him Sven) to go to the realm of mortals and select the four greatest living vikings and bring them before him to be endowed with the power to defend Asgard. On the way to the mortal realm, Sven stumbles across a heavenly tavern and decides to partake of some wenches and mead before descending to Earth to select Asgard's saviors. The screen fades to black as he passes out drunk under a tree. He awakes centuries later to find Asgard in ruins and lousy with demons. Realizing his mistake, Sven hurries to Earth to look for four mighty vikings to help reclaim Asgard. Unfortunately for him, it is now the 21st century and there aren't many vikings around. Eventually he stumbles across a four-man viking metal band and figures, "I guess this will have to do." Gameplay begins as our heroes rise to Asgard and have to make a mad-dash through armies of demons to get to the besieged stronghold of Valhalla. I am imagining a four-player co-op beat-em-up style game where our heroes use their magically imbued musical instruments as weapons of war against the minions of Helheim with a heavy hitting death metal soundtrack. Can you tell I have been listening to Amon Amarth all day?

One quote from from a game that really stuck with me was something written in Neely's Bar in Silent Hill 2: Dunno why, it just messed with my head a little. I love that game so much.

I have had Gold for the majority of the last three months simply by letting it expire and then re-upping with a $1-for-1-month or $2-for-two-months deal shortly after. They seem to run one every few weeks. I don't play enough MP to justify the full charge, especially now that the Metro upgrade now has half of my screen real-estate taken up with ads. That bugs me a lot and I'm surprised there wasn't more uproar about that. If ads suddenly appeared on HBO there would be a shitstorm.

Hello. Video games. Where it said this thread was "pinned," I thought it said "pwned." I am jaded.