Making a Video Game Based on Throwing Weapons
On Starting Out To Make a Video Game From Scratch
Hey, I’m not a video game developer. I’m a newbie, an amateur at developing games, but I want to become a professional.
With any line of work, I think becoming the very best is about two things tools/software and skills.
And both of them are about customization, being able to create anything you please. That’s always the ultimate goal whether be it fine arts, editing videos or game development, to be able to envision something and then have it pop into existence whatever it is.
If only things were that easy…but having the tools/software and skills facilitates the process of idea to product, to be able to envision something and implement even 1% of what we wanted. That’s probably closer to what happens in real life.
Because in a perfect world, artists, game developers and other creative people wouldn’t need to worry about technical skills, all they would have to worry about is having an amazing idea.
If only there were mind reading devices to help you draw/make exactly what you thought of.
However, reality pops in and unfortunately, we’re not that advanced yet, so we need tools/software and skills.
Yes, in the end it doesn’t matter which software or tools you pick, I feel like in technology related fields there is such a focus on what hardware and software you’re using to create something.
You don’t need the latest GPU, CPU, microphone, camera to do most of these things, because without the skills, all the tools in the world are useless.
With the skills, you could use pretty much anything and get something pretty nice, yes it would be more difficult, but possible.
However, if tools/software come at no or little cost to you, I mean within the range of $0–20, don’t go any more especially if you’re just beginning, it can be helpful to understand professional workflows, because it’s just easier if you’re doing the exact same thing.
This is especially true, because most professional software has free trials to help beginners to any line of work take their first steps into that field without making a huge investment of money, but again, not necessary, don’t splash out a huge amount of cash when you’re not sure you want something that much.
Skills wise, I just have one thing to say.
Do it properly from the start.
Skills are the most important thing in any line of work and I don’t mean the nitty-gritty of the technical skills, although they are helpful, but they can always change and evolve. What is more important than that is knowing how to think which is pretty much how most coding works.
There are no shortcuts to becoming the very best, so learn from the people who do it every day. Although there are ways to do things more easily, especially if you’re a kid, people will offer you simplified ways of doing things, but in general I’ve found that these ways just don’t work.
Just bite the bullet and do it how professionals do it, because usually, they follow the most efficient and effective methods, because they’re specialists.
There’s a reason why people commit years of their lives to learning skills such as coding.
Furthermore, you’ll find like cooking, its cheaper and better, if you do it properly yourself.
“But those are just concepts, how does this apply to game development?” — Me, here, now
But those are just concepts, how does this apply to game development? Let’s get down to what exactly you need to make a game. A disclaimer, I have almost no experience, developing games, everything is just taken from my research into this subject, so if you feel that the details are incorrect, please do feel free to correct me.
If you’re looking at game development, in 2019, the current professional software is Unreal Engine, Unity, CryEngine, Godot, GameMaker Studio for game development. For art and animation, it’s Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, C4d, Houdini, Spine2D, Blender. And yes, it’s possible to make games in less popular and cheaper software, but it’ll usually result in more obstacles, which can be overcome and less support.
Also, if you have the software that a professional uses, it is easier adopt their workflows. This is especially the case, when a lot of these have free trials for students and others. So as long as it’s a small cost to you, I would recommend you to get some of this software if you want to develop a game, same thing applies to web development and video editing.
And I can tell you for sure that Unreal Engine and Unity have free trials, which at least currently allow you to develop some pretty complete games without spending a dime.
This is because if you’re a beginner, you don’t know if you want to go ahead with it, so you should keep your costs to a very minimum.
Skills-wise, you need code to make a game that means something. Drag and drop will not cut it for game development, so you just have to bite the bullet, because the loss of customization is so crippling for game development.
I’ve done a little bit of GameMaker Studio back in high school, when teachers didn’t have the time to teach proper coding, so instead they taught us drag and drop. That experience convinced me that you can’t make a game with just drag and drop.
Make no mistake, GameMaker Studio is entirely sufficient to make complete games just look at the likes of Cook, Serve, Delicious and Hotline Miami. However, that’s only through the use of scripting in GameMaker Studio, because no matter how detailed a drag and drop system is it still limits your ability to customize your game.
And I get that it’s supposed to make game development seem less intimidating to people who aren’t sure about game development and more accessible, but to create something meaningful, I firmly believe you should just do it the proper way.
Because code means freedom to be able to implement almost anything that you want. I’m currently working in Unity and I’m learning C#. Even though it’s difficult to pick up, a lot of the standards meaning that if you don’t write it a certain way, it just won’t work, makes for less confusion later on and again even more customization.
It’s like making a website on Wix or Squarespace without code, yes, it’s really easy, but there’s a reason why most huge corporations like Google code their websites from scratch themselves, they don’t even use Wordpress.org, which has more customization built in.
But if you want to be able to edit your website or add any extra functionality, it’s very difficult.
Customization is so important for making what you want.
The Game Idea
Okay, so now we know all of that, I wanted to walk you through my idea process for a game that I want to make.
And I won’t kid myself, the vast majority of game development never works out, because it’s difficult.
You need to know how to make sprites or 3d models for your game, how to animate, how to code, how to make music, how to make a game fun and how to market and publicize your game.
But out of the millions of failures, when someone succeeds, they make something beyond beautiful. And that is why people are so willing to take that risk.
So my friend and I were thinking of making a game, based around the idea that a character could only interact with the game world with throwing weapons.
But how did we even think of that?
Short answer, because throwing weapons and consumables in game are for the most part, done pretty badly.
We thought that there were two main issues with throwing weapons or consumables in general which were:
- Throwing weapons were never reusable, so they made you feel really bad about using them, which would harm the player experience, because a player would never use the items, seeking only to conserve them.
I remember that I would never use potions in Pokemon, because I always felt like I was losing something by using. The same thing applied to projectiles and restoratives in Dishonored. This was especially bad if you had to spend a lot of resources and time to craft them, only to have a one-use item, that disappeared when you use them.
For me, this always lead to the phenomenon of what I like to call “saving up for a stronger enemy”, I would always hoard these items waiting for a stronger enemy. A question of what if I need to use this later? and this useless wastage of resources always lead me to wait and never use these items.
And then I would get to the final boss or level and be like oh, that was it and never use them.
Because there’s something important here.
Game items are worthless unless they are used.
Because if they don’t affect a player’s experience, it’s pretty much the same as them never existing. So I sought a way to make them actually useful, to make consumables something that players would use as a viable build.
So I thought, what if I made that the only option, forcing players to use throwing weapons, which not many games did.
And so evolved the idea for our game.
2. Also, they were useless and had little impact on the game and were optional, so why would anybody use them? An example of this is the spell scrolls in Skyrim, not only were they one use and rare, but cost so much that they could not be a valid strategy. Consumables sucked, even more so because you could cast the normal spell anyway, do more damage and keep on doing more damage.
There’s a really nice video by Razbuten which covers this exact topic, here. He suggests increasing the difficulty as a solution, to force you to use consumables but I was thinking about something else.
You see in Dark Souls, their version of health potions, Estus Flasks are a very good example of this, because in Dark Souls, Estus Flasks are worthless. Which is ingenious because you have an infinite amount of them, yes you have a maximum cap, but they recover, so they effectively have no value. Because they’re worthless, a player like me who will needlessly hoard resources will use them, because they don’t mean anything.
We also took inspiration from Terraria although I’ve never played it, my friend said that throwing weapons could be used as a viable strategy because they dealt a lot of damage.
We combined these ideas together so that first of all throwing weapons would be worthless in game, to have no value, because they could be thrown infinitely and they were the only weapon, so players would not have any qualms about using them. Number two, we learnt from Terraria, by making them powerful, a viable option to combat, that we would have to assure, because it’s the only option, so to make game play and thus, the game fun, we would have to make throwing weapons fun.
Overall, I think we still have so much we need to implement. So much we need to learn, it’s easy to talk about these things as I have done, so much harder to implement them. Which is what I want to do.
Actions speak louder than words, so I want to show you that it’s possible that I can do something like that, by becoming a game developer. I don’t want to become a game developer full time, because I understand how difficult the process is and that it’s very difficult to become a successful game developer, but learning how a professional thinks, I think that’s valuable.
However, more than that is one goal that I have in mind, which is an ardent wish to be able to make something which is enjoyable for someone else to play. To create an experience that someone else will smile at and to improve someone else’s day.
And that’s about it.
Thank you for being here, you are my lifeblood, the strength which courses through my veins and allows me to constantly improve myself. I’ll never forget that.
I’m out.
