MAKING games!

We all like to play games, but have you ever tried to make one? The most extensive experience I have with making vidya are a.) really old RPG Maker stuff back in the day, b.) Starcraft custom maps (also from back in the day), and c.) Making derpy choose-your-own-adventure text games on the graphing calculators during math class in high school.

But man, I wish I knew more about programming or even how to use GameMaker or something. I want to remake old 80s games.

Have any of you guys made a game?

Made a bunch of really crappy little things in GameMaker for classes. Nothing with any substance unfortunately. Had a tiny bit of experience with Dark BASIC and Visual BASIC as well but hardly have the skills to make a game. Writing one for someone else to make is as likely as I will ever come to being a games dev.

bits

i made a few unity 3d games for work although most of them only got to the concept demo stage. got them to work with a ps3 controller in various ways, and other motion controls too. unity 3d is a great engine, i really like it.

i've also done some work on 2d flash games but that was mostly for fun

here's wesly's birthday game!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15079479/Wes...0Adventure.swf

For over a year now I've been working on a mapping project for an old half-life mod (an RPG, in fact). I basically have 3 maps completed and one final one on the way. Here are some screenshot from the first map I ever made. It looks rather nice, imo, for a first ever attempt but if you saw the amateur job I did within the mapping utility itself you'd cry.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0002.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0000.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0006.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0005.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0004.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...3_leak0003.jpg

I've also, rather predictably, composed for games (mainly this one) and will be composing a few tracks for this series I am making.

I once made the Battle Of Helm's Deep from LOTR the Two Towers in Age Of Empires II using the custom scenario maker. It took ages to rename all the unit types & adding ambient events. It played like a rpg/rts because if you were using the individual heros, they got stronger the more units they killed or you could control the Elven army or the human army. Thinking back I spent a lot of hours messing about with the scenario maker!

I'm going to just post in this thread so that those who know why, will know why. Oh, EoFF: A Tragedy... the true tragedy is that I never finished it.

I once made a 2 minute RPG in the PlayStation version of RPG maker where my dad was a giant whale who was mad because he had a bad bowling night. I was the player character that had to fight him when he got home.

I was working on a strategy game a while back but last year my partner in crime moved to the other side of the country. That kind of put things on hold since he was playtesting it with me and helping me design new systems in the game and playtest game balance, plus he was the one who actually knew how to program. The worst part was that shortly before he left I concluded it wasn't going in a direction I was totally happy with balance wise so I was working on a complete overhaul of the game.

Now that he won't be back for at least another year, possibly more/never, I've started to teach myself C so I can at least have a solid background in programming and then I plan to either learn an engine or make my own 2D engine. I'll probably go with Gamemaker though since that seems simpler to start out and anything 3D is out since I know nothing about making 3D models and textures. I've got a number of ideas for the strategy game, a sim, a fighting game, and a horror game rattling around in my brain at the moment, so I'm hoping by January I can be ready to start working on the horror game. I'd have to be crazy to try any of the others as my first game by myself because they're just too big/complex to handle without constant play testing and while trying to learn.

I wrote a command-line car racing game in my first year at university. It was horrible.

A couple, yeah. Here's one of them.

I also made an RPG with RPG Toolkit when I was in school featuring some school chums, oh yes. It was set on Halloween and I guess there was a town to explore with subquests and what not, and you could go trick or treating or egg houses or what have you. It even had secret unlockable characters! My friends thought it was the tit. That did not take me 5 years or however the smurf long it took, that one took a couple of weeks when I was off with terrible stomach migraines and needed a distraction. I wish I still had a copy.

And I've kind of been fleshing out ideas based on this but I make no promises or anything, I am too lazy to do an entire game by myself these days. Hit me up if you want to do 90% of the work while I point and gesticulate. Actually if someone could just design me a huge town map or something based on EoFF with cool places to go and explore and have shenanigans, I'd be ok. I hate designing maps!

I've taken a little programming, enough to know I'm pretty lousy at it. I did design a game for the original RPG maker on PS1 but the game started to get too big and god knows I was having issues with organizing the event switches. I might take another shot at it since I can now use the PS3's memory to make the game large without as much worry. I also recently picked up RPG maker 2 on PS2 but not sure when I'll get around to that. Once I get my new PC, maybe I will pick up the new version of the PC RPG maker because a keyboard will make the game so much easier, not to mention they have better tools for making combat systems which was my main gripe with the original RPG Maker.

I have designs for several games, including a Zombie shooter that would be aimed as a simple iOS title, a couple of full fledged RPGs, and a 2D fighting game. I was also working on a project with another EoFFer but we keep losing interest in communicating with each other. :p

All I'm getting from this thread is that EOFF needs to develop some games.

A friend and I made a serious effort towards making a PBBG but we failed to find and artist that meshed well with the style that we were going for and had to stop it. We put about a year and a half of work into it, so it kind of sucks, but without art the style of game we were going for would not have been successful.

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Originally Posted by Vivi22

All I'm getting from this thread is that EOFF needs to develop some games.

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Let's do it.

Messed around a bit with RPG Maker on PlayStation for a while, but didn't do much outside of designing some levels. I've also Dungeon Mastered a bit in 3rd and 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

My favorite experience was probably with Graal, back when it came with a server-running utility and you could run your own servers. Damn that was so much fun. A lot of my friends and I made a ton of awesome towns and dungeons and even learned to mess with events and such a little bit. What a fantastic thing back in the day.

I tried to learn flash for like a day so I could make an EoFF dating sim, but then I got lazy.

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Originally Posted by Freya

I tried to learn flash for like a day so I could make an EoFF dating sim, but then I got lazy.

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Oh you have to finish this game now. :hyper:

I can just imagine:

You enter the high school hall and spot Wolf Kanno.
Say Hi?
->Yes
No

You say hi to Wolf Kanno, Wolf Kanno ignore you, he seems to be involved with a gaming device.
Try to get his attention?
->Yes
No

You yell at the top of your lungs and yell Booyaku! Wolf Kanno looks up to see what it is and looks at you.

WK: Um... what was that all about
Player: Hi!
WK: Oh hi.
Player: .......
WK: .......
Player: .......
WK: Did you need something?

How will you respond?
-> Um, I was just trying to be friendly.
I said hi you dumb jerk, what the hell is wrong with you!?

WK: Well, go be friendly somewhere else, I'm grinding. (goes back to playing game)
Player: ......
WK: ......
Player: ......
WK: Are you still here?
Player: Um... I guess I'll be going...

You leave Wolf Kanno to play his game. You notice Psychotic from Class 2B is humping your leg.

Player: What the smurf?!

What action will you take?
Scream and yell "rape!"
Smite him
-> Kill it with fire

I worked as a writer for an online browser based game for about 4 years. Was good fun, the game was primarily text with an image based interface. A major part of my job wasn't just writing descriptions for items and monsters it was actually about designing the quest arcs and everything like that. It was time consuming but good fun, I loved the ability I had as the chief writer to go "well, lets have this arc for humans, this for the dwarves, that arc then coincides with this elvish arc here and all the while conflicts directly against the orc, goblin and darkelf arcs there!" and then get stuck in writing. We actually had an image which was like a spiders web of all the different quest arcs and where they intersected with explicit quests. I felt like I could really make a difference and I also was the first developer to make a quest system for non-combat characters and also repeatable quests simply designed to relieve the game of it's overburden of items and gold. In essence I was trying to construct a living, breathing world which actually seemed to have a stable economy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Freya

I tried to learn flash for like a day so I could make an EoFF dating sim, but then I got lazy.

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Oh you have to finish this game now. :hyper:

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I got some concept art done. That was as far as I got though. I was just going to do it and SURPRISE dating sim! But now I'm too lazy and learning flash, doing the art work, and writing a script is far too much work. Maybe ill get back to it... One day.

I started working on an RPG that involved people I knew in high school. I had pretty much the whole plot mapped out, every character, every area, and bosses too. I even came up with names for the ultimate weapon and magic attacks for each character, and found midis for what I wanted each person's theme song to be based off of.

Each character had control of a different element, with the exception of the main (9 characters total for fire/ice/wind/earth/lightning/water/light/dark). The story involved a multiple-layered world and a WoB/WoR type split where you lose all your characters at some point and must go find them. There was a love story, but it wasn't the focus, and had a tragic ending (that in fact was the climax of the first section of the game).

The ability system was like FFIX where you learn abilities from your equipment. The elemental magic could only be learned by specific characters but generic abilities like Steal and HP+10% could be learned by all characters and only a few could be active at a time. Almost exactly like FFIX. Thing is, I came up with all this about 15 years ago, long before FFIX even came out. Square stole my idea! :mad2:

I actually got far enough to have the first 25% of the game scripted, dialogue and all, but no programming, since I was just a kid. The game was called Dangerous Wonders, which I picked because it was a generic fantasy name like 'Final Fantasy' or 'Star Ocean' or whatever. I even had the sequel started, which was a completely different concept set in a futuristic world. Now I wonder if I still have all my old DW files somewhere.

I was a writer for a planned MMO project that ended up never taking off, but I like to think I took the backstory from "Terrible!" to merely "Poor!" :jess: Aside from that I've derped around trying to come up with some PnP rules, but I honestly don't have enough experience as a PnP player to actually do much there.

Everything else is just ideas. I have a very good one I think I could make, but I've decided not to pursue learning what I needed to know for the time being, I've got enough to worry about with this book that I'm never going to be satisfied with.

I've used RPG Maker and that's it. I suppose learning Game Maker could be an enjoyable and rewarding experience also.

Does anyone suppose there's enough interest for an indie game development subforum?

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

Does anyone suppose there's enough interest for an indie game development subforum?

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I wish. There's certainly enough people who've made or are making the attempt, but how much you want to bet the apathy would creep in a week later and such a subforum was left deader than the video game music section?

As far as personal projects go myself and two other friends made this one game for Windows Phone 7, I did all the art whilst they programmed, and we had a friendly fellow do some music for us.

:)

http://www.luckygg.com/wp-content/up...uo-uematsu.jpg

No no

Wait

Ok

The next incarnation of Eizon...is a videogame

Back during the time I worked with Flash a lot, I worked on copious amounts of unfinished game engines and gadgets. I did submit a few "finished" ones to Newgrounds:

Flee! - School project
Candy Man - Made an engine for pushing balls around and threw together a quick game around it. In hindsight it didn't turn out all that well...
Xmas Games Collection - Made one of the games ("Santa's Little Sorter") for this collection. My brother made the graphics.

There are a few other interactive thingies on there but they aren't really games, so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Old Manus

http://www.luckygg.com/wp-content/up...uo-uematsu.jpg

No no

Wait

Ok

The next incarnation of Eizon...is a videogame

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YES

Never really got past futzing around in RPG Maker. Nowaday, I just stick to playing other people's games as I know I'll never get myself motivated to make a complete game myself, let alone one that is good enough that other people may want to play it.

Oh god. I have no idea how many projects I started and ultimately scrapped. Like Psychotic, I find the worst thing to be making maps for a game. So tedious and boring.

My fondest memories were of my two projects of remaking Final Fantasy X with voice acting, and a game version of the Scream movie. So much potential they had. ;)

Now that I'm in a full time job, there's no way I could ever make a game, if I couldn't finish it as a lazy student, there's no way I can finish it now. :D

For over ten years I have been working off and on on a scenario for Marathon Aleph One. The development thread is here (note that I give the vague intended plot away in the first few posts, so don't read it if you don't want spoilers; also note that I do not currently have the alpha uploaded anywhere because the place where I was hosting it got wiped of content; I will reupload it when I feel I have a version that is worth uploading). I should probably whip up some screenshots.

I made a command-line game in Ruby where you have to describe how you like being molested by the antagonist (the narrator) and if you don't use certain preferred words like "dirty" or "anal" he gets angry at you for not being the correct plug for his outlet, and a long paragraph of abuse ensues.

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Originally Posted by Sylvie

I made a command-line game in Ruby where you have to describe how you like being molested by the antagonist (the narrator) and if you don't use certain preferred words like "dirty" or "anal" he gets angry at you for not being the correct plug for his outlet, and a long paragraph of abuse ensues.

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Sounds like my my experience playing FFXI all those years.

There is one thing I really like about modding / making an RPG out of a game I love.. It makes me think of the game and toons in a way I never thought before.

For instance, I made a Skyrim mod for Thane Krios, of Mass Effect fame, recently. When making the mod I realized his in game models were all dressed so I could not use the body. Why ? Because then the armor would not fit on top of it. So I had to design an new body for him.

Attachment 36347

Now look at the body "skin texture" above. Do you see anything wrong with it ?

It has a belly-button! Thane Krios is a Drell humanoid, descending from lizards or birds. He would not have umbilical chord. No belly button. He is also not a mammal so no nipples.

Those are the kinds of things I never saw while playing the game, but it really makes you think, when you have to design / write something for a game. And I love this kind of minutiae!

EDIT

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

...
You leave Wolf Kanno to play his game. You notice Psychotic from Class 2B is humping your leg.

Player: What the smurf?!

What action will you take?
Scream and yell "rape!"
Smite him
-> Kill it with fire

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Teheheh.. you haven't lost your touch Your writing is hilarious!

I got around a quarter way through making EoFF:OOC way back in the day, but I think I had too many ideas to ever really get it completed.

I used to make maps for Warcraft II back in the day. All my favourite ones involved having to cut your way through vast lengths of forests and sheep/seals in order to reach the enemy. :D

No video games...

Star trek space battles strategy/exploration game with the micro machines ships

pen and paper rpg version of the resident evil universe.

^ Oh man, you reminded me of my pen and paper RPG for Chrono Trigger I did back in middle school. Man I wish I kept those notes. :(