Advice For Writing Your Game
The following is my attempt to provide advice for new developer interested in creating their own game. This advice is based on my own personal experience and should be viewed as such.
Keep It Simple
Look at examples from the past. Most game programming teams from the 80’s and 90’s were small. The hardware of the day was not sophisticated enough to handle the complex artificial worlds created now. These past games represent a different era of computing when games were not the serious business they are today. Small teams of developers could crank out a new game in a few months to a few weeks and ship it on a single floppy disk.
When looking for a concept for your first game(s) keep this era of game design in mind. Too many young developers start out trying to create Doom 4 before id does. This is an impossible goal that is far out of reach for one young developer working alone.
The tools we use today are much more advanced and mature. Creating a game has never been easier. Writing a game such as Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 was the pinnacle of technological arts. It took a group of very talented individuals to create such a game. Re-crating the same experience today is trivial in comparison.
Almost all modern computers have a hardware-accelerated video card. Today’s game designers write high-level code to describe the geometry, lighting and textures feed that into the video card and the hardware calculated all the complex details. This is in sharp contrast to Wolf 3D’s handwritten software rendering engine.
Your First Try Will Be a Disaster
Go ahead and start writing your game. Don’t get hung up on creating the perfect game engine. Don’t agonize over what the perfect data structures to use. The first game you write will probably suck. The sooner you get it behind you, the better off you will be. Writing a game and looking back on mistakes made is known as experience.
The next game you write will not take as long and will incorporate ideas you have learned from past experience.
Imitate Others
Your first game or two should focus on imitating other works that you have enjoyed. You cannot just copy the work of someone else, but you should consider working along similar lines.
This provides you some practice with the mechanics of creating a game without having to become an artist overnight. The mechanics must come first. There is quite a difference between the mechanics of imitation verses the artistry of breaking new ground.
Unrealistic Is Better
Don’t try to complete (or even measure up) with game studios that are producing ultra-realistic games. Stick to themes that require a lack of realism. Modeling and texturing of a human character is difficult for a well-funded development/animation company. The limited budgets of the average amateur would preclude the possibility of you being successful.
Compare this advice to many of the indie games of the past that have been successful. In the game Darwinia, each of the characters is a low-polygon cartoon of what it was meant to represent. Another example that comes to mind is World of Goo. A game with great style an flair with very little realism.
Keep Your Scope Small
As you develop, it is common to think up hundreds of possible features that would add to the depth of the game. While these would make the final product very innovative and deep, it is best to keep these documented away from the current development. Unless the new feature must be included in this version, just make a note of it and store it for later.
As you work out more ideas for the game decide which are must haves verses nice to haves. Include the must haves in this version and then add the others to later versions.
One Very Important Thing…
Finish what you start. Your idea may be a huge hit or a complete flop, but either way you must finish before you can find out. The web is filled with amateur programmers who have started countless games that might have made it. We will never know because they never put in the final effort to complete the work.
If necessary, cut back features. This will reduce the amount of time needed to complete the project.
When you have completed a playable demo you will be given feedback from others about where to go next. Completing even a beta version of the game will give you some perspective on your accomplishment.
It Gets Easier
Don’t expect the first game you produce to be easy. Because most of the tools and techniques will be quite unfamiliar to you; things will start out very messy. You will have to rework models, code, music and everything else over and over until you finally get it right.
This is called experience.
Your first few tries will probably be painful but it will get better with time. Not only will your creative juices start to flow but your ability to create on the fly will speed up as well.