Others Game Development Advice and Inquiry

[XenoYs]

For a brief introduction, I am a computer engineer in graduate school who has a few game ideas, but no game development experience despite having coding experience (CE students where I'm at don't use game engines). As for why I signed up for this website, I am hoping to get some advice and/or assistance on adult game development. That, and download smut.

First, I'll admit that most, if not all, of my game ideas are ambitious for a beginner, but two things I've been hoping to have consistent among most of my games are the following (which are also making me debate my first game engine):

1) Anime/cel-shaded character models (closer to anime style)
2) System for creating characters easily with randomized physical traits

I was told Unity would be a good place to start, but I'd like an expert's opinion. I think it was recommended because of the 3D modeling being recommended for these two points instead of 2D. I know importing models from character creation engines are an option, but with a randomized system, using an import for every combination would likely take up too much data. But, as a whole, do any of you have any recommended game engines to start making game development?

For whatever game engines that are recommended, which threads are good for starting to use said engines? And if any professionals are reading this, do you have any advice for a beginner?

Going back to the "ambitious" point, does anybody know any Japanese/Japanese-style developers (mostly for art style without relying on "anime" specific character creation engines)? The reason is because many of my ideas are more "Japanese" in design, so if they have connections, it could help. I understand that this would go under the "Recruitment & Services" section, but I was hoping to have all this in one place (and I don't have a full description yet either for the recruitment requirements). That said, I'm still open to other styles, as not only "beggars can't be choosers", I've also seen some pretty impressive works created on this website that have started to change my mind, so I guess it depends on what others can offer. Ultimately, it's pretty clear I'll need some assistance in both tutorials (initially) and future development.

I'll admit that I'm sounding rather picky for someone as ignorant as myself in terms of game development. You can call me out for it, but humor me a bit and offer some constructive advice. If there's anything else a newbie in game development should know, please let me know. Same thing can be said for being a newbie on this website. As a whole, while hiring people to make games is an option, something has to be said about the "idea guy" not contributing otherwise, and I would like to partake in some part of the project beyond initial notes, if possible.

If you're on Discord and wish to know more about my ideas, you can message me with Xeno#6551 (I'd honestly prefer Discord). And I also apologize if I'm sounding a bit too formal, though this could be seen as a business inquiry.

 

[Brasdf]

I will assume that you are talking about lewd games development, not sure if visual novels, though.

There is an advice about game development that goes for any kind of game: "If you want to acquire experience, do simple games first". The thing that kills projects the most, is for sure, too much ambitious ideas to overtake. And when I say to start simple, I'm saying really simple, like a tic-tac-toe or a plain and short visual novel.

Once you get the basics, then you start to think about creating a more complex game. Be aware that you are not going to make the next GTA or Witcher, these games are made by an army of professionals and have millionaire budgets. If you want to see your project completed, you have to understand and manage the limitations of your team and yourself.

On what concerns game engines, everything depends on what you are developing. A screwdriver is not the proper tool to nail a spike, but it doesn't mean you can't do it. Game engines have their own targeted genres and styles, some are wider them others. Before choosing game engine, frameworks, languages, etc., first you need to know what you are going to develop and what tools are better to achieve that.

Some engines to search about: Unity, Ren'Py, RPG Maker MV, Unreal Engine and Game Maker

Since you are a computer engineer student, you shouldn't have trouble starting with one of those, what really matters is the complexity of your projects, do a simple project, go on to a slightly more complex one and repeat.

If you don’t know where to start:

• Try to think what games you feel you will have most fun developing. Since we are at F95, let’s say it is lewd visual novels.
• Search about the tools and engines used to do this kind of games. Let’s say you end up with Ren’Py.
• Now you know what you have to learn. Since each person has its own learning process, you have to use the ones that works better with you, here are some ideas: YouTube tutorials, forums troubleshooting and posts, dedicated sites tutorials, official documentation and tutorials, paid online courses.

Finally, about randomized/customizable characters, this is a fair simple code, but requires a lot of work from the artists (anime style / pre-rendered 3D models), what ups the development costs (money, time, human efforts…). If we are talking about live 3D models, it’s a completely different situation, and requires good knowledge of engines like Unreal Engine, Cry Engine or Unity.

In the end, all depends on you.

PS: Sorry about my english.

 

[lobotomist]

the customization system is actually much memor efficient than you think, look up blendshapes.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

You can design things one a scale with 2 extremes, this works for websites or game engines or even game user interfaces:

you can either make a tailored experience for users, by organizing such that it is easy to learn (how most web sites are organized for visitors), designed for a particular workflow (Daz3D is a character/3D art-making tool for making pretty images with no 3D modeling skill), or designed for a particular feel (like intuitive gameplay interactions for twitch shooters MOBA's vs constrictive horror game interactions).

Or you can design things for professionals, you don't hide tools behind layers of menus, you offer all the information they need at a glance, it is flexible, customizable, adaptive to the users's need.

The issue with tailored experiences is that it is low performance, slow.
The issue with a professional design is that it is information overload.

Blender is a 3D Digital Content Creation tool that is free, the second most powerful (following Maya), and previously had the issue of having a hard learning curve (commands hidden behind quick hotkey combos). They have improved on it a bit (more visually designed), but the result is that now some functionality are hidden behind layers of menus, or no longer have dedicated hotkeys. You could say it is more on the professional side of design.

Unity game engine also is more professionally designed (as most game engines) because it presents a lot of data to the user at once (and why it could be intimidating to start). Unity is great because it is well documented.

Yo-yo game's Game Maker (I think it is called Game Studio now) use to be one of the best, in that it was tailored for not professionals, hobbyist kids like myself, but you could pay $29.70 to unlock the advance api, learn their C++ api and you could do advance games (much like unity). But, they have gone through issues after investors took majority share and tried to go crazy with the pricing.

Unreal Engine 4 has the best graphics pipe line and is the third most documented (very important) but maybe not something to start with.

Godot, some people love it, some hate it. Over a year ago it had several key features that made it superior to Unity, but since then those same features were the big milestones Unity have reached. I hate it, because at the time I used it they just came out with 3.0 and 3.1 and changed all the api and as a result none of the documentation was accurate, and since you code in their own python language (avoid anything python if you want to make a serious game. python is good for tools, not good for real-time applications like games) I pretty much had to spend 3 hours to do 10 minute code through trial and error testing to see what error types generated to figure out the underlining syntax compiler mechanism. It is better now but if you want to make a game, and not document a wip game engine I would avoid this.

youtube gamingfromscratch youtube channel he has some great stuff.

~~~

2D vs 3D vs 3Dcgi
2d art, you need to get an artist, because art will kill the project if you don't
3D is a pain in the but, it is not that the art or 3D models themself are hard (but they can be if you are making everything custom) but the technical issues of file conversion, compatability, getting the god damn animation to load along with your 3D model and getting the animations to blend is the hardest thing I find. But this does offer the best customizability, such as character creation (way hard, but once you can do it you have mastered 3D model porting into unity)
3Dcgi, you use a program like Blender or Daz to make high quality 2D image of 3D scenes, and just using images as sprites in game. lots of people use this because it is the best bang per buck.

character customizing is easy in 3D hard in 2D.
2D, you need lots of images and layers. (way more data than a 3D mesh)
3D, you use shape keys and animations to morph the body shape and porpotions, and the game engine is already to layer these features together.

I'd say start with the unity game engine, and aim to have a character you can customize possibly ready in a year, beacuse that is how long it is going to take to learn and debug issues along the way, and perfect to your vision.

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[Tompte]

You call yourself a computer engineer but you haven't even tried it for yourself yet? It's a free download.

Here's some constructive advice, and this applies to more than just you: just try it. You could had downloaded Unity and evaluated it for yourself in the time it took you to write that post. Are you afraid that time is going to be wasted? Or that you won't understand anything? Those are not very worthwhile worries.

If you want to learn about something, you need to try it out for yourself and learn. Even if at worst case you don't understand anything, or don't know where to begin, or don't think it's the right tool for you, you would still know more than what you know now and you could start asking real questions.

You don't have to jump straight in head-first into the first thing you find. You can shop around. You are the only one that knows what your game needs.

 

[Tompte]

I'm referring to the OP and his question about which engine is the best for beginning game developing with. He mentioned Unity as something he was curious about, but not anything about ever trying it. Step one should be to download it and take a look, is what I'm saying. That, or any other engine he is curious about that is freely available.

 

[DuniX]

1) Anime/cel-shaded character models (closer to anime style)
2) System for creating characters easily with randomized physical traits

The problem I see with this is even if you manage to get a good enough base mesh and let's say the shaders and skins are good enough.
You can also have morphs with sliders to create a wide variety of random faces and bodies.
The problem for things like hair, clothes, accessories you have no choice but to model them from scratch.

You are basically asking to recreate Koikatsu which has been made by a professional studio with decades in the 3D games experience.
And even that is limited compared to the Modded Content that flows in.
A Character Creation Engine with Mod Support that is more "Legitimate" to use we have been waiting for that since forever.
Especially if we could use it for our own 3D games and not just taking pictures.

On a more reasonable scope on what you can achive by yourself is Enlit3d style games.

 

[MissFortune]

I'm referring to the OP and his question about which engine is the best for beginning game developing with.

Should probably look at the date of the OP. Thread was necro'd by fuji.seiko.

 

[Tompte]

Should probably look at the date of the OP. Thread was necro'd by fuji.seiko.

Aw, god damn it!

Wasting everyone's time over here.

 

[Tompte]

You posted your question in a dead thread from 2019, fucking pre-covid, causing it to show up again at the top of the forum as if new. You raised it from the dead, so to speak. Then I came along and read it for the first time, thinking the OP was seeking genuine advice and I responded like a big doofus.

Water under the bridge, but why didn't you just ask your question in a new thread? Your question had nothing to do with the thread's original topic.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

You raised it from the dead

real life necromancy!!!!!!!