Have you ever tried to make a game?

[Twunt]

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.

[Sno]

I've taken to messing around in Unity like probably every other wannabe designer on the internet. Heh.

I've also made some random mods and maps for various games in the past.

I have, as of right now, never made a game.

Let's see where i am in a year.

[shammack]

I only started working at a game development studio about a month ago, so I feel like I'm allowed to answer this.

I also made stuff in BASIC when I was a kid, although I don't think I ever managed to make anything that would qualify as a complete game that way. I do remember making a sort of "expansion pack" for a game called Escape from School that I downloaded from AOL, adding some new features and little cutscenes between levels.

Then I made a bunch of ZZT games. ZZT was a shareware adventure game with ASCII-based graphics that was written by Epic Megagames's Tim Sweeney; it came with a couple of "worlds" but the main attraction was the editor, which had its own simple "object-oriented" scripting language. I made a handful of small games using that, and then a couple more using MegaZeux, which was a similar but more advanced game/engine. Around the same time, I also wrote a patch for Nethack that added cows as a monster. (This was mainly an exercise in figuring out how the Nethack source code worked and how to make a patch. Cows were just a new type of quadruped that didn't really do much except that levels would sometimes generate "cowhives" full of cows and you'd be alerted to their presence by hearing mooing.)

That was all before high school, and then for a long time I didn't really make anything. I would occasionally experiment with various tools and libraries for making games but never had the motivation/patience to get very far. Then a couple of years ago I taught myself Inform 7 and started writing text adventures. The only one I actually released so far was Chunky Blues, which I entered in the 2011 IntroComp competition and lost. Then this year I wrote a full game which is basically done but hasn't been released because I was planning on entering it in this year's IFComp.

Then I got hired by Telltale, so I don't think I'm allowed to make stuff on my own anymore.

[lobotomy42]

I attempted to make some text-based adventure games as a kid in QBASIC. They were awful, but I had the basic idea.

In high school, I made a Tetris clone in Visual Basic 6 and in college I made a really sad Pac-Man clone. I also once implemented a really crappy text-only Gin Rummy in Python, which I was going to turn into a Facebook game at one point, but...didn't.

There have been other attempts throughout the years, but those are the most successful ones.

I don't know, maybe I'm not patient enough or just don't have the creative drive. I do have at least one idea for one, though.

[juv3nal]

I've fiddled around with undum and choicescript a bit as I'm a web developer by trade and studied lit in college so hypertext fiction is kind of in my wheelhouse. Nothing worth showing's come out of it yet though.

edit: oh as far as ancient history stuff, I've also fiddled about with text based stuff in java and qbasic and done some skinning for freedom force & morrowind.

[TheLastBaron]

I've messed around in UDK but mostly with audio stuff, and I've used audio middleware programs like FMOD and Wwise. That's about it though

[ShadowTiger]

I am an indie developer but I got my start making custom maps for Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I made a tower defense when those were just catching on in the early 2000's and I have worked on making RPGs, a pirate ship simulator, and more stuff all in the Warcraft 3 editor. Since it lets you do scripting/programing but also has built in art assets it really is the easiest way to make a game.

In HS I took a remake of Asteroids in Java and I edited the source code to add in lots of new weapons and was going to turn it into a scrolling shoot em up but I lost interest.

I started working on a 2D platformer in Unity but it is a really big learning curve for me, I would suggest making stuff in the Starcraft 2 editor unless you are trying to learn very specific skills.

As for as design... I spent many hours growing up with graph paper making essentially spread sheets for various game ideas. I very much like working with numbers, hit points, damage, abilities... so it was lots of fun for me. Still do it in my free time once in a while.

[Donk]

Many times, I always find myself in too ambitious ideas and I run out of steam. However I made an effort the other day in finishing a game. To do this I scaled everything back as far as I could, algorithms, code design (hardcode ALL THE THINGS), art and assets (i.e. NO ASSETS), gameplay mechanics (input wound up being just one button).

The gameplay was done in a few hours, what really took most of the time was setting it up as a game, level structure, menu, scoring, health/lives, game state management.

Anyways I already posted about it here in the "Plug your shit" thread but here it is again.

I just realized it doesn't have a name, you will get a mention in my next game credits if you come up with a cool name for it

https://dl.dropbox.c...esta/testa.html

[Jaraknarn]

I'm so damn jealous of you guys! I dunno what it is but, I think I must have been just in the next generation after, where programming your own games was never presented as an option. I mean like, how old are you guys? I'm 22, an it seems a lot of people who are the same age as me had wildly different experiences with coding.

I really wish i'd grown up piccking up little bits of coding and programming here and there so that now, the idea of learning to program didn't seem so daunting.

Is it a age thing? Or is it a country thing? Any other UK guys have a similar experience? Or an opposite one perhaps?

[njoos]

I made some mods when I was younger. Some maps for Quake 3, Urban terror. I made a puzzle dungeon thing in Morrowind once and that was a good time. I had some friends who also did this so that probably helped versus figuring out everything on my own.

I have also programmed some simple map generators for both 3d and 2d worlds, but I wouldn't call that games. Some AI stuff here and there for games too. I will never be a proffessional game maker though, I don't want to enter that clusterfuck of an industry (also I live in Norway).

[shammack]

I'm so damn jealous of you guys! I dunno what it is but, I think I must have been just in the next generation after, where programming your own games was never presented as an option. I mean like, how old are you guys? I'm 22, an it seems a lot of people who are the same age as me had wildly different experiences with coding.

I'm 28. I picked up a lot of this stuff pretty early because my dad was a computer scientist. I started playing games on the Commodore 64, and since the command line interface also sort of doubled as a BASIC interpreter, it was easy to transition into learning how to print my name a bunch of times and stuff like that, and he taught me the basic principles of programming from there. I also took a couple of classes in Pascal, C, and C++ in high school and college.

The good news is that nowadays there are a lot more tools available for making stuff without having to write any actual code. Playing around with a level editor for a game you like is a good place to start.

[Sno]

So many of the tools available now are just so incredible. Don't be intimidated and just start playing around with stuff, a lot of very high end tools have very low bars of entry. (Often free under certain conditions.)

[mikemariano]

I wrote a weblog entry about my teenage QBASIC games a while ago, complete with terrible fantasy prose!

I still can't wrap my head around programming. My mind is forever stuck in Choose Your Own Adventure, "if this is chosen, then this happens" mentality and I can't wrap my head around creating a game where things happen without player input.

Heck, I don't even know how save games work.

[Erkki]

I've been working on and off on games for years. Now it's been a few years where I haven't done anything. I started in high school (

I'm over 30

) after learning BASIC and Pascal and even completed a couple of bullshit games. Once I worked on a Deus Ex mod, but then I started learning Java in order to find a good job and the project stopped. My problem generally was having too many ideas and not enough persistence to take one of them to its conclusion.

Anyway, in the game ideas thread I posted a video of my last prototype -- I think that was my most promising project, but then I had a creators block with that one and later got some new ideas, of course.

But now I'm trying to make a board game(or perhaps several) instead, and I actually find that I'm 5 times more productive with that than I was with creating video games! I recommend that everyone who wants to make games try their hand at board games!

[elmuerte]

I've been programming for over 20 years now (I think; 31 years old right now). During that time I have tried to make games on several occasions. Initially I messed around in Basic and DOS batch files on an IBM XT clone. After I picked up Delphi (Object Pascal) I tried to make games in that, but never really completed stuff. I spend more time on dissecting savegames and file formats of games. I have done some mod development in Duke 3D, although it was mostly level design.

When UT'99 came out I really started to mess around more on the inside of games, and all the way through to UT3 I've been messing around in the UnrealEngine (also did some contract work). But most of my attention went out to non-game stuff for those games. Stuff like frameworks for others to build upon, or utilities. I did make a few minor gametypes and mutators for those MSUCs (usually created within a few days of part time programming).

I once tried to kick off a UT2004 mod of my own, a "proper" mod. And that's more or less where I figured out that herding cats isn't something for me. So that mod died before it ever reached a playable state.

I'm more an engine developer than a game developer.

[syntheticgerbil]

When I was younger I tried to make a couple of Klik and Play games. The way I did it is start with the intro, do all of the animations, and then create the title screen along with Level 1. So I'd get to the game part and then abandon it because I had no fucking clue what I was doing.

Hope that was helpful.

[elmuerte]

Oo... Klik and Play, I totally forgot that. It was quite fun.

[juv3nal]

it just occurs to me that we could use this thread as a clearing house of links to tools/frameworks/apis/devkits

I'll start with stuff that's been of interest to me (it's all ways of doing choose-your-own-adventure/gamebook type stuff on the web):

http://varytale.com/books/info/about/

http://about.failbettergames.com/about/

http://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/

http://undum.com/

http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter

http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/

It has basically never been a better time (tools-wise) if you want to be a choose-your-own-adventure author.

[Udvarnoky]

In elementary school my friends and I would spend our recess time using Hypercard (when the computer lab had Macs) and later PowerPoint (when they upgraded to PC) to make these interactive cartoon thingies. Being able to draw shapes, poach clipart and have control over the timing of, uh, slide propulsion was a sufficient framework for making these stories where characters walked, talked and got obliterated in alarmingly violent ways. We were kind of competitive and basically were motivated to keep one-upping each other. Once we discovered action buttons we were able to make "games" by forcing decisions when the character would reach an Important Moment, and even requiring the player to click an object (like a flashlight prior to walking into a dark cave) before it is too late. It's still kind of amazing to me that we just instinctively saw this business presentation software as a sandbox for making cartoons that didn't require drawing skills and games that didn't require programming. I envy the ingenuity I've clearly lost in the intervening years.

Oh, and an high school I made this program where you were simply prompted to type in your name and a unique dialog returned that greeted or mocked you in a really specific way that could only have been contrived by someone who knew you personally. The notion was that I'd eventually get literally everyone in the school accounted for and freak them out.

I'm kind of amazed at how little I've dabbled with hobbyist game stuff since adolescence considering I'm a programmer by trade. In college I enrolled in a game course where we were split off into teams and tasked with making a 3D game using a provided environment (don't remember much about it except it was called Electro and the scripting was in LUA), and our team won, which was cool. At one point I tried to amuse myself by writing a typing game, and I once embarked on an ambitious text adventure based on a unique coworker of mine that I got pretty far with. (It would have been given to him, specifically.) I'm also guilty of that traditional disorder we should not beat ourselves up over of involving myself with some fan games over the years. And I know I've at least played around with the likes of Adventure Game Studio, Klik and Play, that other popular free game-making software from ages ago that I can't remember the name of, and various modding tools in moments of vicious self-delusion.

[Twunt]

I'm so damn jealous of you guys! I dunno what it is but, I think I must have been just in the next generation after, where programming your own games was never presented as an option. I mean like, how old are you guys? I'm 22, an it seems a lot of people who are the same age as me had wildly different experiences with coding.

I really wish i'd grown up piccking up little bits of coding and programming here and there so that now, the idea of learning to program didn't seem so daunting.

Is it a age thing? Or is it a country thing? Any other UK guys have a similar experience? Or an opposite one perhaps?

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.

[Winks]

I agree with Twunt for the most part, especially about programming being easier than you'd think. I had never written a single line of code when I switched from being a journalism major to CS during my second year of college. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the learning curve isn't as steep as you'd think. Programming is also, I think, a much more creative endeavor than it's given credit for.

PHP is probably a fairly decent place to start, but I'd suggest something strongly-typed like C# (you can even learn it while making games with XNA or Unity) or Java. I learned PHP rather early on and I think it probably caused me to develop some bad habits. But really, I'm probably picking nits.

[Twunt]

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.

[Lu]

Well, if you're specifically thinking about making games, then maybe Unity3D would be a better fit? I've recently been messing around with it and it's all very straightforward and there is a good tutorial base. It supports Javascript and C#, which from hearsay are excellent starter languages. Although it is only advantageous to you if you learn a 3D modelling program at some point.

[Twunt]

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....

[I_smell]

HELLO WORLD!

I'm so damn jealous of you guys! I dunno what it is but, I think I must have been just in the next generation after, where programming your own games was never presented as an option. I mean like, how old are you guys? I'm 22, an it seems a lot of people who are the same age as me had wildly different experiences with coding.

I really wish i'd grown up piccking up little bits of coding and programming here and there so that now, the idea of learning to program didn't seem so daunting.

Is it a age thing? Or is it a country thing? Any other UK guys have a similar experience? Or an opposite one perhaps?

I'm 21 and in Manchester, England. Here's my story:

BOY you guys all talkin about your "BASIC" and "Unreal mods" makes me feel really out of place, cos I learned how to make games in Macromedia Flash 5 and ActionScript. I came from the complete opposite end, I wanted to make cartoons when I was in high school and slowly leaned over to games.

I learned by downloading already finished flash games and basically reverse-engineering them from the top down- firstly changing variables like

Speed = 5;

to

Speed = 10;

and then drawing my own graphics in, and then doing tutorials on how to make my own games.

For my first game I took a top-down driving game and changed it to a top-down arena shooter with 10 levels, where you had to clear out each room of enemies and get to the exit. The final boss was basically the regular enemy, but made bigger, and with a faster rate of fire. Sadly it's not on the internet.

Learning in Flash was PERFECT! It's originally an animation program, so it's more suited to drawing cartoons, and then putting code onto those objects. So when you make a game: it's one file, and everything's done in one window.

I practiced Flash games until there came a time when Flash games started to explode, and suddenly there was money. I entered some contests and Tom Fulp at Newgrounds PM'd me about putting adverts in games as this new idea. Newgrounds is great, and does everything they can to make their regular forumers and contributors the star, BUT- now that there's money in Flash games, it's turned into this giant horrible soul-less business where nobody gives a shit about anyone else, or what they're making :/

So nowadays, the class of Newgrounds 2001 are all over XBLA and Steam. I'm learning Unity and C# for the first time, the same old way I learn everything: badgering people about it on forums.

I've never took a class to do any of this stuff, I've just googled and googled and googled my way through it all, and soon enough you stop having to google things. In not doing formal classes, you do miss out on certain high-level complex pieces, but you gain so much more by just spending that time making a living.

My last game was a Kickstarter baby, and my first pay-to-download game. This is way before the Double Fine thing- about a year before. This post is already crazy-long, so I'll just sum this part up as: We got funded and the game came out, then a free expansion came out. It's an alright game. It was a difficult trial-by-fire experience, and I'll definately plan my next one out more carefully so it can be a much more exciting one.

My next one is this, by the way.

Summing up everything since I made my first game is nuts, I left out so much!