How hard would it be to make a game?

[Drailer1999]

hi guys, sorry in advance for my bad english. i hope you will get most of what im trying to convey.
very soon ill be starting a year long course learning the basics of unity and unreal softwares. im aproching it with zero knowledge in programming.
i was wandering, because i really like games like THE TWIST and such, how hard will it be for me as a single developer to create such game?
and if by chance there are content creators who read my post. are there any tips you are willing to share on what to pay attention the most in my studies relating to this subject?
many thanks!

 

[Obscure]

The difficulty of making a porn game is usually easy.

The bottleneck is usually obtaining assets.

Any information about scene composition is gonna come in handy.

 

[NeonSelf]

As a programmer? you definitely need to learn language and programming patterns first, and then any game engine. Some year-long course in unity or unreal may be not enough for this. Look for books about C# or C++, algorithms, classes, software architecture etc. Well, you can make a linear VN with basic knowledge, but its alot better when games have gameplay and when you can keep supporting it and releasing new content.

I was making games in Flash (ActionScript3) as solo developer and for me it was hard in everything except programing. Complete game is not only a program, you have to get art somewhere, design gameplay and balance it, test everything. And then somehow make a profit among thousands of other games. Thats alot of completely different skills: programming, design, marketing.

 

[CardinalRed]

As both a renpy and unity developer, I can say this:

Coding wise:

If your game can be made in Renpy, use renpy. I reserve unity only for games that cannot be made in renpy (and a lot of them can).

I'm not into paid courses or reading lots of books before starting. I only go study what I need to do, and when I need it. Starting out, since you don't know much, just break your idea down to the most basic components, and go one by one (e.g if you are making a game like stardew valley, character movement would be the first component that you would need to learn).

Art wise:

Not much to say here, just practice and practice. Choose a style you want and spend as much time as possible practicing it without burnout (pauses are important, don't forget to live your life).

Can't talk much about anything else, but if you follow this, it may take some time, but eventually you will have a game made (the first ones will be crappy, and that is fine. The only way to have a great game is to have many crappy games before it).


Now, about having success, that's a completely different story.

edit: about answering your question, yes it is very hard.

 

[woody554]

easy to start, incredibly exhausting to survive the workload. it can't be said enough how EVERYBODY underestimates the amount of work needed by at least a factor of 10. the work itself is not that difficult, but there's just so much of it it takes forever.

the same applies to the scope of your plot, you need to cut everything unnecessary or you'll run out of life before finishing the game. this is not like writing a book which is incredibly easy compared to making these games.

the only way to survive it is if what you're doing is your passion. you must have a burning urge inside to see your game events become reality. if your motivation is anything else yo won't make it. focus on your own kinks and nothing else.

 

[Drailer1999]

easy to start, incredibly exhausting to survive the workload. it can't be said enough how EVERYBODY underestimates the amount of work needed by at least a factor of 10. the work itself is not that difficult, but there's just so much of it it takes forever.

the same applies to the scope of your plot, you need to cut everything unnecessary or you'll run out of life before finishing the game. this is not like writing a book which is incredibly easy compared to making these games.

the only way to survive it is if what you're doing is your passion. you must have a burning urge inside to see your game events become reality. if your motivation is anything else yo won't make it. focus on your own kinks and nothing else.

actually i do have a plot for my game it will focus on 1 main charcter and 6 other chractres (as for now) that you could interact with. would you say im aiming for a reasonable start or should i narrow it down? i was reading here a while now and ive gathered some sense people would like to first know the plot and the charcters so no sex scenes from the get go, so modeling wise will it be easier for me too?

@
CardinalCode
im leaning leaning toward unity because aesthetically wise i like the 3D models more. have any tips for startes on this one?


P.s Thank you so much guys for the fast replies!

 

[TessaXYZ]

Quick tip: Since you're completely new to this, don't start with your main idea. It's probably too big. Start with something small that you can take from beginning to end, just to learn the entire process.

 

[Warthief]

Depend on the project and how much free time you have, don't try to do something big and you will be fine as solo dev.
I don't know about the twist game, but from what I seen I think its point and click with only 2d renders, not using 3d.
If you gonna do click and point game try to make you 1st game very small with a small cast of characters, also better stay away from things like sandbox, stats and grind... at least at your 1st project.

 

[HarveyD]

Can't believe someone would suggest writing an entire book might be easy.

But as TessaXYZ said, start with the smallest idea that you can. A protagonist, a love interest, maybe even just one location. Come up with a small story and make that. That'll give you some understanding of the process and what it'll take to make something larger.

 

[woody554]

actually i do have a plot for my game it will focus on 1 main charcter and 6 other chractres (as for now) that you could interact with. would you say im aiming for a reasonable start or should i narrow it down? i was reading here a while now and ive gathered some sense people would like to first know the plot and the charcters so no sex scenes from the get go, so modeling wise will it be easier for me too?

if you can, cut out at least 4 of those girls. or make their parts incredibly shallow. even with three actual stories you'll be super swamped.

just try to have a very very simple story with the minimal amount of bells and whistles. maybe treat it as practice for a later game, rather than trying to aim big. and if you can survive this one, you'll have a great place to start your next game from.


all in all I think it's a great idea to have a real project like this for your unity course. it'll make everything much easier to understand when you have an actual need to fulfill. otherwise things tend to feel abstract and pointless, and it's hard to remember them.

 

[woody554]

Can't believe someone would suggest writing an entire book might be easy.

it takes a few weeks to write a book. I've written five.

this is year 4 making a porn game, and it's not ready for a bare bones launch yet.

 

[Drailer1999]

if you can, cut out at least 4 of those girls. or make their parts incredibly shallow. even with three actual stories you'll be super swamped.

just try to have a very very simple story with the minimal amount of bells and whistles. maybe treat it as practice for a later game, rather than trying to aim big. and if you can survive this one, you'll have a great place to start your next game from.


all in all I think it's a great idea to have a real project like this for your unity course. it'll make everything much easier to understand when you have an actual need to fulfill. otherwise things tend to feel abstract and pointless, and it's hard to remember them.

So all in all, i get the feeling that it is pretty mandetory to start with a small project and not the one im aiming in the end to produce, to get the ropes. im a writer myself and i know the same applies to that process, "dont fall in love with your first projects because they gonna suck" was what our script teachers always told us at the uni'

thank you again for your insightfull comments guys, much appriciated and if you happen to have more, im always willing to learn

 

[nulnil]

That depends, what skills do you have for making games?

...starting a year long course learning the basics..

...im aproching it with zero knowledge in programming....

I think you'd be better off sticking to normal games for a while.

 

[khumak]

Easy to make a bad game. Hard to make a good game. Especially for a solo dev, most people don't start off having all of the skillsets required for it. You need to know how to code, how to write, and how to render the visuals. Some people find 1 or 2 of those things easy but most people don't find all of them easy.

 

[OsamiWorks]

Coding isnt that bad, its really straightforward and its usually spoonfed to you through people who understand it well, a lot of UE and Unity is just being able to navigate the engine knowing what to do and where. The trap is that the ceiling is really high, and while there is a lot of great stuff to kickstart you into something playable and decent really quickly, you'll suffer later on when you need to start working on your own digging through documentation and needing to ask 50 different community discords for an answer and not knowing which responses are bad advice.

Art has been really difficult for me, its frustrating to learn a skill just to fall down a rabbit hole of needing to learn another skill and it is very time intensive. Ideally plan around and use as many marketplace assets as possible. If you have to learn how to make all that stuff you will find nothing but difficulty suffering ahead. I approached it with the philosophy of focusing on the fundamentals in each, and I think as an artist that is still the best route, but as a developer that is too time consuming. Its also been a little over a year since i started seriously working on making a game and really disheartening to feel like I'm making such little progress because art has been 8+ months now.

As a developer, if you are set on making your own assets, don't bother with doing things correctly out of the gate. If you can sculpt, retopo, rig, texture, make an animation, import it into your game engine, and use it, you are doing an amazing job with art. Learn how to fix deformations and improve animations later. Learning how to do any of those things correctly is well beyond the amount of time you have.

 

[Luvcock]

Does anyone here have access to a download or maybe a site with a free ai scene creator?

I have searched high and low, all make you pay or restrict nsfw content. I would love to be able to download an ai program thats been site ripped or something. Im sure some of you developers know a good one?

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Here's your first hurdle: Learn English.
If you can manage this, then perhaps you're not hopeless.

 

[khumak]

Making a game is easy. Making a good game is hard.

 

[SergeantDauterive]

It really depends on two main things, the genre and your budget (assuming you're not a competent artist/composer/etc).

If you just want to make a visual novel and have enough money to pay for quality assets then making a video game is fairly easy. If you have grand ambitions and you're broke, well...good luck.

 

[LovePlayFantasy]

There's a lot of factors in this....

8 hours of game play vs 20 minutes
20 love interests vs 4 love interests
$1,000,000 budget vs $200 budget
A team of 40 vs a solo developer
Complicated Algorithmic combat vs RPGM battle template

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it's up to you how complex and difficult you want your game development process to be.

I think the best advice I can give, is to aim for 20 minute game, but make it the BEST 20 minutes of the player's life.