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Post by WithinAmnesia on Apr 30, 2019 3:57:29 GMT
Hey can I get help using the Third Person Controller engine to build an RPG worth playing? Now I am pressing onward to build a game worth playing using the Third Person Controller (with the shooter features) engine; I have tried, RPG maker, Flare engine, Game maker, some other engines on Unity like 3D Tank Maker and RTS Maker although I am still just not good at manufacturing games. I can game design books full of schemes, create intricate itemization math formulas and write long winding storys and draw detailed art and make happen the audio effects and voice acting and even make music (I play electric guitar and sing badly lol) and literally most everything else to do with making a high quality game until the cows come home but I just cannot for the life of myself complete my own full and proper game worth playing (tons a crappy prototypes though x.x). I can buy an engine, assets and even an 8k (too expensive) computer set up and I just cannot buy skill to make this RPG that I have been designing for over a decade now and it is driving myself bonkers. I even went back to Classic World of Warcraft to understand raiding better: Now it is time to grind out a game I feel. One problem, I am terrible at making games in Unity. Yet I am always making SOMETHING game related for over a decade now; just browse through this: www.deviantart.com/withinamnesia/gallery/ . Yet I have been trying and crashing and burning over and over through out the decade to get a proper game together somehow. At least from Unity for half a decade now and I think that I am just not a good game developer to do everything alone. Hell! That Baldur's Gate module took around 3 years of constant failure to develop myself to be able to grind out some decent high quality content. So my last attempt using the engine this year made the fresh project crash Unity trying to swap the default robots with a skeleton and knight (literally step one x.x). I have been at this since 2012-2015 trying to manufacture an RPG although I am not good at using the digital creative tools around the internet to build a robust RPG. Yet Rpg maker is just to clunky and 'anime' for what I am after even though I can use it (just like the hundreds of shovel ware game devs who also know how to use RPG maker) I don't want to release crap okay lol; please, those 'indie games' gave me nightmares haha x.x). I figured that I should look for help and come here. I am building two houses right now and working steady although I feel that I am about 5 years behind schedule working on a 3D RPG worth playing. Once I saw the Invector's engine on an action combat system I went with that direction; but not very far haha, uhh I need help x.x.
Small goals that add up into a finished content chunk is what I need to do to be productive. Right now I need to figure out how to get the 3D robots swapped into a different character model in the melee engine (yes even though there are tutorials and it literally is a selling point of the engine how easy it is x.x). I was previously just monkeying around bashing things together in Unity (honestly I am not good in Unity) trying to get a model swap to happen. So that moment when the model swap failed and the project died haha *crickets* - I knew that I really should try harder and get serious help. Here are the free assets I was trying to model swap (RIP Random Attempt Project 2019-2019 "Last words: This should be easy!"): So I do not know what will come out of this but I am trying to find help!
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Post by chainsawpenguin on May 2, 2019 7:00:18 GMT
I appreciate the ambition, and I'm going to skip the whole "that's too vague and an RPG is a hell of a lot of work" bit, because it's not helpful. In an effort to be actually helpful, then, I'll say that your very first step would be to go HERE and focus on the third item: Creating a New Character Controller. You don't want to simply replace the VBot with a new model. What you really want to do is create a new Character Controller that is its own thing! Spend a little time and see if you can get the Strong Knight model to work. If you can't, let me know, and I'll help you step through the process. If you CAN, then move on to the fourth topic, and then the fifth. Try to think up tests for yourself, to see if you really understand the tools. Add a vHealthController to a simple cube, and see if you can get the Knight to beat the cube to death. --- Okay, so let me take a minute here and do the bit I said I wouldn't do: RPGs are HUGE and are HARD and are EXPENSIVE to make. I've been working on a Pirate RPG for years, and I've realized it will probably never see the light of day, because there's just so much that goes into a good RPG: customization (which means a LOT of art. Like, way more than you think. And then more than that. AND MORE THAN THAT EVEN), crafting, skills, branching storylines, dialogue, interfaces, UX, inventories, vehicles, encounters, cutscenes... And with my Pirates, it's even worse, because it's not JUST an FPS (though you should be able to take out a British Regular with your blunderbuss) and it's not JUST a hack-n-slash (though slicing through the Royal Marines is an option), and it's not JUST ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore and large unit and small unit tactics... it's all of these AND I have to make sailing a ship feel real and fun and cool. Making combat feel satisfying at small (one man) and large (huge crew) levels is really really hard to do well. I don't say all of this to get you down. I say it help you realize that making a small fun game can be really satisfying, and you might want to just make a game to see who can shoot the most turkeys. I mean, the most successful arcade videogame of all time was about a circle eating slightly smaller circles while running from slightly squarish circles. Games don't have to have a day-night cycle and runeforging and raid mechanics to be enjoyable. BUT... you do you, and if you want to do an RPG, I will do my level best to help incorporate Invector into your vision, to the extent that I can! |
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Post by shadex on May 3, 2019 16:16:26 GMT
Well, to be honest, when making a game you hear and see a lot of people who are "great designers" who get design confused with balance or designing content. Design is more the systems your balancing or using to add content to. Since even with the asset store, your not going to have even half the systems your going to want, your going to need to build them. I've made a few mods myself and it's not something that prepared me in any meaningful way for making a game. My process for cleaning the kitchen or knowledge of systems used in other games is far more relevant.
Your on the right path though, creating tons of crappy prototypes seems the only path that leads to good prototypes. For instance, i had a 4km open world with a town that ran at 15 fps. I had to learn that using 100's of materials was bad design, that occlusion culling existed and wasn't a good enough answer. You won't even learn what you need to know without running into the problem head first. There is just to many skills and things to know. In fact i would say the #1 tool in my tool belt is by far Google, as API's usually have examples.
Now as far as creating an RPG goes, it's possible, but understand there are just so many systems that you have to have that no one thinks of. For instance, how are you spawning your enemy's? How are you going to do conditions like poison, slow, freeze, etc. It's a ton of work that isn't fun, and you can't show it off. The part i wish i knew going in is that i thought if i got the combat working well, that the rest of my time would be creating levels, and content. It turned out that combat is never done, and most of my time is spent creating a new system solving some problem i didn't expect (floating enemy's, null errors, UI, lots of optimization, rand based systems, animation transitions, syncing the hit box). Because of this, you'll end up sacrificing almost every cool feature you can think of. If you want to make an RPG, you need to be insanely good at design, mainly in making systems that require very little time to setup and can create a huge amount of content, because RPG's need a ton of content to even play a single level of a test dungeon.
All that being said, it's not impossible, just improbable. I think where everyone fails is that they go in with the assumption that they are special, and can just buy their weakness. Like a coder buying animations or a model or a "level designer" buying a system and thinking they won't need to edit the code. Just as dangerous as the guy's who want to create everything from scratch. IMHO you can't run from problem, especially if it's in an unfamiliar discipline.
So as far as where to start... IMHO go make a simple game, something you think you can do in a week. Something that you will release to family and friends. Think of it as an overview of all the things you didn't think about that goes into making a game, how long those things can take, and what level of quality your able to produce in the time you got. No one does this because everyone is ignorant at this point despite how smart they may be. If your week at coding, learn to code, if you suck at graphics, learn what it takes to implement good graphics.
And finally, making a game is an endurance race. Sometimes you make more progress by taking time off and learning a core system like the animator, or dictionary's for c# then by continuing to add stuff to your game you already know how to do. It's also worthless to have someone do stuff for you, as it will break, and you won't be able to fix it.
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Post by ronaldomoon on May 4, 2019 2:22:48 GMT
I saw the thread title and assumed I was in for some great satire. Poe's law strikes again.
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lhide
Junior vMember
Posts: 25 
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Post by lhide on May 7, 2019 20:59:37 GMT
This thread should be pinned because questions like this one are always popping up, and most of the time no one will care to answer them, and certainly not as comprehensive and polite as chainsawpenguin and shadex were.
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Post by WithinAmnesia on May 12, 2019 4:35:02 GMT
Oh crap I should have been here earlier. I am not used to being here. Uh 1 sec I need to read through this x.x; looks pretty bad on my side.
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Post by WithinAmnesia on May 12, 2019 5:44:24 GMT
I was quite surprised by the level of thought invested into the replies here; it feels good to be in the company of people who actually give a shit about making cool video games. I am not going to lie most all of the online player-bases that I've been to and with are just soul emptyingly unfullfiling. One lives through the same cycle over all over and over again there and nothing gets created, yet only consumed! A mouth that knows nothing of the hardships endeavored to beat the odds and make a decent game; a hunger that only knows voracity.
I have been bouncing around quite a lot to be honest from forum to forum, reddit, Unity, mods, weird game projects and what ever else weird vague RPG/medieval fantasy projects I forget that I have mucked around with. I should invest more time here and really grind it out I suppose. I agree that the best way to solve a weakness is to just tackle it head on and fail and fail until one cannot fail any more. That being said I realize that I am very blind where I must walk and I need to improve. That concept of making a game in one week blew my mind, in how would that even be possible? I would imagine some type of flash game or some sort of asset bash but that level of precise knowledge to mash a game together so fast seems like a worthy goal. Even if it is sh.. crap to start. If the game works it can be improved upon; and it will not be a failure if one can endeavour to learn from their failures. RPGs are pretty damn hard to make. So I thought to just make the levels like Doom or Quake where one starts fresh and gets in-level pick up items and all of the enemies are spawned in and the level acts as a test of endurance; a kin to old school coin-pusher-esc difficulty with constant pressure to succeed continually to advance - *like dark souls* euh. Yet for the old school 2D 'bit' games the difficulty and repetitiveness (after a death) to learn a level to beat it was strategically used game design to 'stretch' assets out for there was only so much space upon a game cartridge back then; none of this download the patch experience. The creator of the Legend of Zelda had nightmares of shipping Zelda carts with bugs on them haha! I kind of see a varyingly blurry outline of what I should do, what I am going to end up doing and what might happen in the end. I need to crash and burn and fail here over and over. Take a starting idea, launch it into orbit, have it crash down to earth BIG and salvage the better pieces and rinse and repeat until I get bashed in to a logical realistic approach that actually defeats the real issues that will be required to solve in order to make a proper game. Solve not just what I think needs to be solved but what is waiting unbeknownst to myself around the corner ready to blind side myself; over and over again - battle of attrition. I guess that I have to progress now. Bla bla bla is good and all but if I don't work I will be one of those 'here on moment gone the next' kind of guys. All fresh eyed and bushy tailed; full of ideas. My heavily flawed, bias warped and incomplete view of reality dictates that I need to grind my face upon the wheel of bullcrap adversity until I can have something to show of value to others I suppose. I need help though, which is the big IF. It feels as if like sailing the open ocean but my fresh water and food supply is 3rd party sourced; eh.
I do think that if this was pinned it could help many people like myself, I can teach people once I learn something quite well. The trick is that I have to learn it first lol! Eh a true master of a subject can teach even a child the subject's core of understanding. Teach a noob to fish and he eats for life all that preachy kind of stuff that you have probably heard a thousand times. So! www.invector.xyz/thirdpersondocumentation This a lot! Until it is in my dreams. Boring! But love has no meaning without sacrifice. Eh I press onwards. Although it is very nice (or even necessary) having friends to do the same things and dream the same schemes with. How many are there of us in the world? As in something around one in 100,000 people in developed countries on the planet? 1 in 1,000,000 over all if one counts every nation on earth? We are brutally rare. I have found that it is much more worth the small amount of time of life that we are given to us before we all inevitably die to work together and help one another in a mutually fulfilling manner and work to fairly settle (even with compromise) than it is to work alone and crave the sanctification of a local minded correctness. No one is really special, what good is wealth and knowledge if one is the only person to be it by possessed? Without others to share and immortalize our wealth and knowledge does it really exist at all? It may be better to be the peasant of everything than the king of nothing.
It is not like one can go and chop down a video game or dig up code from the back yard and stroll down to the market to sell a finished game lol. I don't know what it is like to have friends who make games. I have many friends, I've been to many towns, different places but I have never met another person face to face that makes games. I suppose that is what I get for living in Canada, 2nd least population dense nation in the world in terms of people per area. Perhaps if I was born in South Korea this would be a different story; or not lol: ("life is misery!")
I guess that I am pretty much a digital gypsy at this stage; a rolling stone grows no moss, eh. |
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Post by uberwiggett on May 12, 2019 12:14:55 GMT
Lots of good value responses in this thread and it's good to see that they are overly positive and constructive. One thing I find in a lot of the indie communities is negativity around newcomers and dreamers, mostly stemming from insecurities about failed projects and crushed spirits. Quite often, people chastise the "ideas guy" for their perceived lack of in depth knowledge or ability. Don't ever let that negativity turn you away or minimise your idea, because without the ideas, all we get are photocopies. It is important that you stick to your ideas, and focus on seeing them through, with perseverance you can achieve without needing that in depth knowledge. There are many other paths for an ideas guy to follow, whether you learn a new skillset to put your idea into motion, or whether you rely on others to help it get through. In any event, never underestimate the necessity of the ideas guy. I've tried many times to get an rpg system together, using kits and templates and adding bits and pieces, trying many different styles of rpg trying to find that key bit. But as someone who is predominantly an ideas guy, it's not easy. One thing I've found with many different get rich quick template systems is that they aren't as user friendly as they purport to be. I'm currently focusing effort on putting together my own tie in system built for invector's template, with the main focus on being easy to navigate and implement for people that aren't as good at the coding side as myself. I am by no means good, but I've spent enough time wrestling with various systems that's I've come out with some solid plans for structure and layout, and what is needed for a noob coder to effectively implement that dream system. The biggest battle for them is depth, as mentioned above, an RPG is all about depth. Most systems that focus on simplicity end up sacrificing a lot of depth to make it easier for people to implement, and systems that focus on that depth often require multiple subsystems that tie into each other, often making it harder for the developer to see the bigger picture at the same time as digging downward, which can put a lot of less experienced people off. With my system I'm looking to handle this by having the core structure contain all that depth by having a lot of stats tied into the character itself, then getting the simplicity by using modules to handle the mechanical implementation, sort of hard to get across in this thread but later when I have it up and running and a video tutorial you'll see how easy it will be to understand and keep track of. Now to answer directly to some of your points raised, before that though I want to say your game is your game and you build it to how you see fit. But one thing that put me off your game is when you say you want to make an RPG but you researched raids on WoW to find out how to better implement that. I personally think this is not a good move, the raid mechanic itself isn't something for an RPG but rather something for an MMO. MMORPGs are VASTLY different to RPGs, so vast that you cannot supplant one for the other. From the very start, with design perspective, they vary greatly, one is built around a single player being responsible for enacting change to a game world along a set story path. As open as these modern day RPG worlds become, they still fit the same design of a single track story, the game world can be affected by their actions, and grow accordingly. In an MMO, the design HAS to change, because now instead of one player making choices, you now have to cater for a number of players making choices, and you cannot deny them the ability to follow the same path and experience the same as the previous player, so now you must provide systems that handle the replenishment of the world. There are many ways to do this, but from UO onward, developers discovered that the mob spawn system was the only way to effectively manage it and still hit targets for player interaction. The trade off however is that the world suffers no effect from the player's input. The choices you make are later erased so that the next player can fulfill the contract, it becomes a production line, and this is basically the opposite of what you want in an RPG. Raids were designed for large numbers of players, they splash in the story arc, but in reality all they become is just a click to click roller coaster ending in loot gain so you can compare your fancy kit to someone else. Sure you sit through a story, but in the end you effect no change, as the next people in line get their ride. I strongly suggest that if you are looking to make a lasting RPG, you avoid this sort of mechanic, it might be popular with mmo gamers, and net you some sales, but it's not in the spirit of the game!  anyway that's my 2 cents on the matter, again it's up to you what you want in your game and I strongly suggest you build your game with the vision of what YOU want to see in a game, not your audience. |
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Post by shadex on May 12, 2019 23:53:05 GMT
Your asking the wrong question. IMHO what you should ask is "What are the tools i need, to make my game, as a novice".
Well, what game do you want to make? What does it look like? What are the important systems. I'm sure the collective experience of the forum should be enough to at least give you a direct answer. Some actual steps to follow. For example, In retrospect, it would of been nice for someone to tell me that VS studio's autocomplete + googling unity api's is all you really need to really learn coding.
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Post by WithinAmnesia on May 14, 2019 3:44:56 GMT
Ah well, I suppose it is time to grind out a working character in the engine. Step by step, small task by small task until one is spent.
I think it is more a matter of getting in the spirit of doing it now than anything. I have most of the tools now, I need to learn the skills. Strong Knight into a working character is my first goal; then perhaps a skeleton. Then bash together a level with free assets and rough out the layout.
I should keep this brief. I have more to talk about although it does no good if I do not produce. I have *too many* designs and concepts; I cannot afford to be specialized with low resources and no team. So now I have to build build build. I am just trying to be a bit more punctual here is all.
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anyway that's my 2 cents on the matter, again it's up to you what you want in your game and I strongly suggest you build your game with the vision of what YOU want to see in a game, not your audience.