Gamedev for dummies or how to make a game alone
Hi, future gamedeveloper! I think that many are interested in, and whether it is possible to create a game for one, and even more so without investments. That's exactly what this is about. I came across this firsthand. Everything that is written below is based on the experience of game dev from scratch in 3 months.
It all started in December of 2016, when I met with three former classmates.
We started talking about the present, who is working with whom, what we do, and of course we started talking about the future.
It turned out that I am a graphic designer, two other programmers (C # and Swift), and the fourth one is “promising”.
The fourth talked about how great opportunities in this world and blah blah blah ... And at that moment it dawned on me. I am at the table with two programmers, why not unite and do something of my own? And so it was the first thoughts about geymdev.
')
The first week after the meeting, we discussed ideas, decided on one, and I proceeded to the schedule. He did the graphics in the vector editor Adobe Illustrator, so that at any time you could change the resolution, since we still didn’t quite understand what kind of resolution we needed.
I sketched the graphics and the next day one of the programmers said that he did not want to continue, because he had found the lesson interesting. Behind him merges and the second.
And then I realized that I had a dream and it begins to move away.
The new year has come, and I realized that it’s not worth it to give up and you need to bring it yourself to the end. And immediately came across the Corona SDK - a cross-platform solution for 2D games. It is possible to do on PC, Android, if you have Xcode and on Mac, iOS.
I am not a programmer, so I started to run tutorials right on their site, very convenient and informative. So I got acquainted with the Lua programming language, I’ll have to write on it if I decided to use the Corona SDK. The language is simple, scripting. Lua is widely used in game development for writing levels and any extensions, including in the game World of Warcraft, it is actively used. The article "Lua in 15 minutes" will help you quickly understand the language.
Passed all the tutorials and decided to first do under Android. For I have a PC, not a Mac, and I already had 4 Android devices, while I have no apple devices.
A month was enough for me, with consultations from my good friend of the programmer (not a group mate), to sketch the functionality of the game. He gave valuable advice, so we became partners.
There was a question about music. As it turned out, it’s not so easy to find a suitable free sound for the game, especially if you want to like it. About two weeks I just killed to find the right sound and music, at the same time I completed the interface in the game.
The game became more and more like a finished product. And here I find suitable sounds, but their duration did not suit me, Audacity came to the rescue. Cutting sounds and remaking them in wav, I got the sound effects I needed. Immediately after that, the music was found, it was ambient with a free license, which went on cutting in Audacity and was looped. Thus, the music in the game takes up less than a megabyte and consists of one track and several sounds.
Important: Free sounds and music must have a corresponding license to use, it can be either a completely free license without specifying the author, or a Creative Commons license, which allows you to use, download and even modify works free of charge, but the author should be indicated in credits / credits.
There was a question about monetization. The game is free, simple, without internal purchases, so there was only an option with advertising. On Android, and on iOS, there are no problems with this, and Corona SDK also supports the most popular advertising plugins . My choice fell on Appodeal . It works with all major mobile advertising networks in order to show only the most expensive advertising inside the application.
The game used interstitial ads and video for a fee. That is, the player himself decides whether to watch the video or not, if so, he gets a reward, in my case he gets the opportunity to continue from the same place where he lost. But the player will see the interstitial ad after each loss, as for me, this does not interfere with the gameplay.
He planned to release the game on two trading platforms at once - Google Play and Amazon. On the first developer account costs $ 25, and on the second for free. That's why it started from Amazon. Besides, I have 2 tablets from Amazon and their ecosystem is close to me.
For the list of leaders and achievements, Amazon has a Game Circle, Google has Google Play Games Services. There were no problems with one or the other, as there is plenty of documentation on the Corona SDK about them.
At the testing stage I gave my friends a game, wrote myself notes, amended, and used adb logcat to track errors. Fixed bugs and on March 6, the game saw the light on Amazon.
After two positive ratings on Amazon, I immediately bought a developer account on Google Play, the issue price was $ 25. This is the only cost of the game.
He began to create a promotional video for the game. The choice fell on Adobe After Effects, as Adobe products are close to me. Honestly, I had no experience in creating a video, but somehow I quickly managed to figure it out and spent the whole day on the video. I just really wanted to quickly publish the game on Google Play.
And now the moment of truth, the promo video is ready, the account is purchased, it remains to fill out the game description, press the button and just wait.
A few hours later I received a notice that the game was published. It was the 19th of March 2017.
For iOS development, everything is the same, but you need a Mac with Xcode, apple devices for testing, and you need to pay $ 99 for a developer account every year, and this is not $ 25 for Google Play. On this, if all the same we are talking about geymdev with minimal investment, then either Amazon, where you do not have to pay at all, or Google Play, with its quarter of Franklin.
So alone, using a cross-platform engine in simple and understandable for beginners language Lua and with minimal cost for 3 months, you can make a game from scratch and release it. Believe in yourself and communicate with people who are connected with game devs, the community helps a lot.
Good luck in your endeavors and bring the project to the end, for the only way to learn something and get experience.
PS Here's what happened: Google Play , Amazon .
The beginning of the way. Idea and graphics
It all started in December of 2016, when I met with three former classmates.
We started talking about the present, who is working with whom, what we do, and of course we started talking about the future.
It turned out that I am a graphic designer, two other programmers (C # and Swift), and the fourth one is “promising”.
The fourth talked about how great opportunities in this world and blah blah blah ... And at that moment it dawned on me. I am at the table with two programmers, why not unite and do something of my own? And so it was the first thoughts about geymdev.
')
The first week after the meeting, we discussed ideas, decided on one, and I proceeded to the schedule. He did the graphics in the vector editor Adobe Illustrator, so that at any time you could change the resolution, since we still didn’t quite understand what kind of resolution we needed.
I sketched the graphics and the next day one of the programmers said that he did not want to continue, because he had found the lesson interesting. Behind him merges and the second.
And then I realized that I had a dream and it begins to move away.
New year - new forces. Programming
The new year has come, and I realized that it’s not worth it to give up and you need to bring it yourself to the end. And immediately came across the Corona SDK - a cross-platform solution for 2D games. It is possible to do on PC, Android, if you have Xcode and on Mac, iOS.
I am not a programmer, so I started to run tutorials right on their site, very convenient and informative. So I got acquainted with the Lua programming language, I’ll have to write on it if I decided to use the Corona SDK. The language is simple, scripting. Lua is widely used in game development for writing levels and any extensions, including in the game World of Warcraft, it is actively used. The article "Lua in 15 minutes" will help you quickly understand the language.
Passed all the tutorials and decided to first do under Android. For I have a PC, not a Mac, and I already had 4 Android devices, while I have no apple devices.
A month was enough for me, with consultations from my good friend of the programmer (not a group mate), to sketch the functionality of the game. He gave valuable advice, so we became partners.
Give more noise. Music and sounds
There was a question about music. As it turned out, it’s not so easy to find a suitable free sound for the game, especially if you want to like it. About two weeks I just killed to find the right sound and music, at the same time I completed the interface in the game.
The game became more and more like a finished product. And here I find suitable sounds, but their duration did not suit me, Audacity came to the rescue. Cutting sounds and remaking them in wav, I got the sound effects I needed. Immediately after that, the music was found, it was ambient with a free license, which went on cutting in Audacity and was looped. Thus, the music in the game takes up less than a megabyte and consists of one track and several sounds.
Important: Free sounds and music must have a corresponding license to use, it can be either a completely free license without specifying the author, or a Creative Commons license, which allows you to use, download and even modify works free of charge, but the author should be indicated in credits / credits.
The ringing of coins and the whisper of money. Monetization
There was a question about monetization. The game is free, simple, without internal purchases, so there was only an option with advertising. On Android, and on iOS, there are no problems with this, and Corona SDK also supports the most popular advertising plugins . My choice fell on Appodeal . It works with all major mobile advertising networks in order to show only the most expensive advertising inside the application.
The game used interstitial ads and video for a fee. That is, the player himself decides whether to watch the video or not, if so, he gets a reward, in my case he gets the opportunity to continue from the same place where he lost. But the player will see the interstitial ad after each loss, as for me, this does not interfere with the gameplay.
Game services. Testing and first publication
He planned to release the game on two trading platforms at once - Google Play and Amazon. On the first developer account costs $ 25, and on the second for free. That's why it started from Amazon. Besides, I have 2 tablets from Amazon and their ecosystem is close to me.
For the list of leaders and achievements, Amazon has a Game Circle, Google has Google Play Games Services. There were no problems with one or the other, as there is plenty of documentation on the Corona SDK about them.
At the testing stage I gave my friends a game, wrote myself notes, amended, and used adb logcat to track errors. Fixed bugs and on March 6, the game saw the light on Amazon.
5 stars on amazon. Creating a promotional video. Publish to Google Play
After two positive ratings on Amazon, I immediately bought a developer account on Google Play, the issue price was $ 25. This is the only cost of the game.
He began to create a promotional video for the game. The choice fell on Adobe After Effects, as Adobe products are close to me. Honestly, I had no experience in creating a video, but somehow I quickly managed to figure it out and spent the whole day on the video. I just really wanted to quickly publish the game on Google Play.
And now the moment of truth, the promo video is ready, the account is purchased, it remains to fill out the game description, press the button and just wait.
A few hours later I received a notice that the game was published. It was the 19th of March 2017.
findings
For iOS development, everything is the same, but you need a Mac with Xcode, apple devices for testing, and you need to pay $ 99 for a developer account every year, and this is not $ 25 for Google Play. On this, if all the same we are talking about geymdev with minimal investment, then either Amazon, where you do not have to pay at all, or Google Play, with its quarter of Franklin.
So alone, using a cross-platform engine in simple and understandable for beginners language Lua and with minimal cost for 3 months, you can make a game from scratch and release it. Believe in yourself and communicate with people who are connected with game devs, the community helps a lot.
Good luck in your endeavors and bring the project to the end, for the only way to learn something and get experience.
PS Here's what happened: Google Play , Amazon .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/324762/
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