The Indies’ Guide to Game Making

gizmo

This is a nice little article from Tom Francis, a writer over at PC Gamer who also happens to be working on the rather awesome looking Gunpoint, where he looks at some of the easier tools indies can use to make games.

Thought it may be of interest to some folk in here.

The Indies’ Guide to Game Making

RedXIV

Good article, and hopefully will help people get started on their own projects.

My one bit of advice for anyone considering it? Start it, even just name the folder and open the application, have a quick mess around, even if you don't intend to do anything, just do SOMETHING. Once you've started, it's a lot easier to keep going

ShooterSF

I've spent 2 weeks reacquainting myself with xna through tutorials and it's a little scary to see no one mention it. Worth switching to something else?

RedXIV

hmmmmmm I don't know if I'd class XNA as an "indie" tool, like I would most of the above. Although in saying that, I would have said Unity and the Unreal Engine probably weren't beginner friendly indie tools also.

I would have put:
GameMaker, RPGMaker, Adventure Game Studio and Flixel as "beginner friendly tools"

and:
Unity, Unreal and XNA as more hardcore ones.

If you are happy with XNA, stick with it, its a great tool, very versatile.

gizmo

Actually to be honest at this stage I'd consider moving away from XNA itself, at least if I was just starting out. There's been a suspicious lack of development on the framework by Microsoft which doesn't bode particularly well going forward. Over the last while I've seen an increasing number of folk recommend Monogame and SharpDX, the former being based on XNA but with added support for non MS-based platforms while the latter is based on the full DirectX API, and both seem to be in active development.

Of course you could also take the C# knowledge you've acquired while studying XNA and move to Unity which, imo, is probably the better option for a lot of folk.

Torakx

Im using UDK at the moment.
Its pretty nice to work with compared to the zombie mapping I started out on with COD WAW.
Is there any advantages to using unity over UDK?
I wouldn't mind a list of pro's and con's.

Ive been learning to make modular assets in Blender, Gimp for textures etc and UDK to port into as FBX.
So far so good.
There are also indie style games being made on UDK and Unity,so if people are so inclined, its quite possible and may give more flexibility too.

gizmo

There are a myrid of posts online comparing Unity to UDK so I won't go into it here too. I will say one thing though, when UDK is finally upgraded to a UE4 base, I'd imagine Unrealscript will also be removed so in the long term, if I was starting a project now that I thought would go on for awhile or if I was intending to use one of the engines for the foreseeable future, I'd stick with Unity.

ShooterSF

gizmo wrote: »

Actually to be honest at this stage I'd consider moving away from XNA itself, at least if I was just starting out. There's been a suspicious lack of development on the framework by Microsoft which doesn't bode particularly well going forward. Over the last while I've seen an increasing number of folk recommend Monogame and SharpDX, the former being based on XNA but with added support for non MS-based platforms while the latter is based on the full DirectX API, and both seem to be in active development.

Of course you could also take the C# knowledge you've acquired while studying XNA and move to Unity which, imo, is probably the better option for a lot of folk.

Well you see at the minute I'm focusing on little 2D games and while I know you can get some scripts to make Unity into a 2D engine I figured that's one extra hoop to jump through and while I like game maker's simplicity I can't justify learning a language I can only use to make game maker games. I'll definitely look into the other 2 you mentioned though.

RedXIV

RopeDrink wrote: »

Shame I missed this article - I'm trying to overcome creative block... Not that I have any issues with getting my hands dirty or learning, just to get the get-up-and-go to make another game.

Got quite a few ideas bubbling in mind but always think of them, never do anything with them, mostly as I haven't decided on a game maker to settle on.

Snap,

Decided to try and get past that and have downloaded Unity and AGS so far. Have only gone through very basic steps and played around with AGS engine but I like it. I just need art assets now

I like the idea of RPG maker as well though....Argh! decisions!!!

gizmo

RedXIV wrote: »

Snap,

Decided to try and get past that and have downloaded Unity and AGS so far. Have only gone through very basic steps and played around with AGS engine but I like it. I just need art assets now

I like the idea of RPG maker as well though....Argh! decisions!!!

I'd probably give Gamemaker a shot before RPG Maker, simply on the basis that it's been was used for both the initial versions of Dustforce and Spelunky, the final version of Gunpoint and also for smaller interesting titles like Maldita Castilla. The downside is, of course, needing needing to familiarise oneself with GML.

RedXIV

Only problem there is I kinda want to go the whole hog. I COULD get the free licence for gamemaker but I want to make something awesome and not be limited the way it is....

hmmm I guess I'll try the trial of that tonight and see how I get on

RedXIV

gizmo wrote: »

Actually to be honest at this stage I'd consider moving away from XNA itself, at least if I was just starting out. There's been a suspicious lack of development on the framework by Microsoft which doesn't bode particularly well going forward. Over the last while I've seen an increasing number of folk recommend Monogame and SharpDX, the former being based on XNA but with added support for non MS-based platforms while the latter is based on the full DirectX API, and both seem to be in active development.

Of course you could also take the C# knowledge you've acquired while studying XNA and move to Unity which, imo, is probably the better option for a lot of folk.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/388858/microsoft-to-axe-xna/

Oh you're good......

gizmo

RedXIV wrote: »

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/388858/microsoft-to-axe-xna/

Oh you're good......

It's official now.

ShooterSF

Yep. Typical! But I'm going to finish the book I have because it's teaching me some handy game logic I can easily transfer to mono or something similar.

Torakx

Does this effect pc gaming?