Am I in over my head?

The past week I've buckled down and decided I wanna learn how to program, making a game has always been something I always wanted to do. However the more I'm reading, the more I'm realizing in gave development, there's a heavy emphasis on artistic skill. I can picture how things look in my head, but when it comes to drawing, I'm terrible.

I'd like to be able to make small games, then move on to bigger projects. I keep getting thoughts like "the asset store exist for a reason, surely you can make a game just getting stuff from that." and "Maybe I should hire an artist, but I live on a shoe string budget as it is"

Am I in over my head here? What are some suggestions some of you experts may lay on me if I'm not?

 

I'm the same as you, I wanted to make a war game but i'm bad at design. So now i'm making a "Ball game" Yes it's nothing special but it learns you to code and get around unity itself. I would say youtube most things i've learned so much in "design" to "code" from that site.

 

I'm going to start off small like that anyway, since a lot of basic things are already there to be used in Unity, but I eventually wanna make something decent sized, I'd love to make a horror game

 

Try to find ways to work around your artistic limitations. Lurking, for example, is based around the concept that the player cannot "see" their environment. Instead the game visualizes the environment as if you were using echolocation.

There's a discussion going on concerning the effect they used, but it may have gotten buried by other posts.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/help-with-ripple-effect-in-game-lurking.281895/

 

Pretty much the same here except it as been a few years since I got into this stuff as a hobby.
Look around there's a lot of nice things you can find for free
Also I have found in my fps project that there is tons of little tricks you can pull with code to hide not having everything animated.
Beat of luck to you.

 

I'm pretty terrible at anything other than programmer art. Even on a shoestring budget you should be able to make a game with either creative commons resources or very cheap paid assets (there are many resource websites out there). Those first few learning projects I doubt you'll find it much of a hindrance at all since learning projects need to be simple in scope. As you complete those projects do certainly dabble at gimp/photoshop, blender, audactiy etc. there are many great free tools out there. It will help you grow in the following ways.

1. It will help you become more familiar with workflow. Even if you never become that great at making art (like myself) you will certainly need to become proficient at converting file formats, decimating models, etc. Dabbling in the tools you will certainly pick up these skills with time.

2. Those cheap/free resources found will never be quite right for your specific project. Being able to modify things that are close is a lot easier than actually being able to create art yourself. That and things like being able to buy a texture and takeout the background, enhance the colors, blur, edit a video, modify sound effects, etc. will greatly increase the options that you can buy on a shoestring budget and then use in your project.

3. Who knows maybe you'll actually find yourself serviceable on the art side of things (didn't really work out that way so far for myself).

 

You can learn artistic skills just as you can learn to program. My favourite CG artist is Olivier Ponsonnet, who started off as a computer science student doing 3D art in his spare time as a hobby, and is now (I believe) a level designer for a game company.

 

It's not just about "programming". It is about all of it. Fortunately everything you need, absolutely everything, is out there.

A lot (most?) of it cheap or free.

Game development today has so many tools available, so many tutorials out there and so many examples that everything from the sound and textures to the music and models can be done by just about anyone. Just take your time.

You are most definitely not in over your head.
It just takes time, the most valuable resource, to become familiar with your tools and the medium.

You'll be fine.
Just read everything you can get your hands on.

Good luck!

 

Well, first of all, I strongly suggest separating "learn how to program" and "making a game". If you were into music you wouldn't consider that "learning guitar" and "learning music composition" are the same thing, even if you were going to use your guitar skills in your compositions. Game programming is a specialization of programming and, while people will tell you otherwise, trying to learn both at once will make it harder than it needs to be. By all means jump in and start making games, but also do some dedicated, programming-specific learning time as well. Do a short course or get yourself a book (the "Yellow Book" comes recommended). You need to understand the code and learn to solve problems with it, not just learn how to make things happen in your game and/or apply other peoples' solutions.

Secondly, programming is just one part of making a game. Game development is the culmination of many skills - programming, art, game design, and audio design, speaking broadly, but each of those have their specialties. Most games either design around their developers' weak areas, or are designed by multi-disciplinary teams who have at least one member dedicated to each area important to that game. Don't try to learn everything and be a jack of all trades unless that's what you want to be. Instead, I suggest picking an area or two to focus your own skills development on and either team up or pick projects that align closely with those areas. Stuff like the Asset Store will help out a lot, because even if you're not good at art you can easily find and buy stuff from people who are.

 

I like the guitar analogy. Would you be over your head for wanting to learn guitar skills? of course not, anyone can do it and have fun, learning every day; do you want to play on a concert by Friday and rock the stage? If so, maybe you are being too impatient. Same with gamedev, don't be too anxious!

 

Gamers these days *do* highly value art in a game. If it doesn't look good, it's an immediate strike against it.

However, you *can* overcome that. There are plenty of games that are so well done that the art is only a momentary setback. VVVVVV comes to mind immediately. And there are plenty of others that would have done well without the great art, but that's harder to prove.

None of that matters, though. For your first games, no amount of good art is going to save them. They're going to suck, they're going to be a lot of hard work, and other than the satisfaction of having created something, they're not going to have a lot of reward for you. That's the price of learning a new skill, and it's true for *all* skills.

Along that same lines... You could learn to draw. It'll suffer the same initial issues as learning to write games, but it's a skill that will serve you well for a lifetime if you're into creative endeavours at all. And you wouldn't be here if you weren't.

 

Building a game is like building a house. It's hard, takes a long time, and requires MANY different skill sets. Among them are coding, 2D art, 3D art, game design, interface design, marketing, business, and management. Even if you were a genius, as a team of 1, you'd still have to learn most of these skills. Consider starting with boxes and circles.

The guitar analogy is solid. Notes -> Chords -> Melodies -> Songs -> **deliberate practice** -> Rock Star!

Gigi

 

My suggestion is to keep it simple. Create your game idea using colored squares/cubes/cylinders/etc...
Don't worry about any gfx unless it is required by a feature, and even then chances are Unity can create something that works well enough.

Focus on what you know, tackle things in small steps! You will find great satisfaction when you set teeny tiny goals and accomplish them. The satisfaction breeds motivation which breeds passion which creates success.

Create an ugly as hell fun as hell prototype, then start tackling the gfx. By time the prototype is "finished" you will have probably absorbed some artistic skills or have found resources. Don't let a lack of skill stop you, everyone learned from somewhere.

 

Try onegameamonth.com

Forget about assets, use cubes and stuff until it's fun enough to justify adding art.

 

I can't recommend too highly Feng Zhu's YouTube channel for anyone wanting some education on art for the entertainment industry. Check it out.

 

I thought I would pipe in here, as I was in the same boat as some of the guys above, if you want to have a good laugh and would like to learn and maybe even help, check out these posts:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/match-3-algorithm.282285/
and
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/gr...ind-matching-tiles-in-a-2d-array-that.285802/

I started way back on the commodore 64 and Amiga in assembly language. In fact you can go google "ARSON" demo group on the c64 and you will see that me (Too Tall) at the time cofounded the group and all we did was CODE demo's and crazy other software. (sprite editor, BBS, character set editor err uhh.. FONT EDITOR) I have recently been learning C# and Unity. I have been working on this project on and off for a short time now. The guys in the forums so far have been extremely helpful! If you want to learn C# I would for sure recommend that you grab these two books:
C# Game Programming Cookbook For Unity 3D
Learning C# Programming With Unity 3D
Also feel free to message me if you want to jump on my learning bandwagon, im happy to share ALL the code for Columns that I have so far.
Thanks
King

 

I started Unity in last June our July with zero game making and programming experience. Heres what I've done in less than six months starting with no experience.

I can now program fairly well in js and c#. I also work a fulltime physically demanding job and have a family. Anything is possible if you really want it.

 

Some great games with simple art, and I would consider them booouutiful!

Thomas Was Alone
Qbeh
Super Amazing Wagon Adventure

...hell even Minecraft is just blocks with simple textures!

Consistent art is nice.

 

Consistency is a key to game dev in general but especially the visual aspect.

 

I think I will just take this post, tuck it away into a locket, and stare into it any time I lose motivation.

 

Now I know what I'm doing this summer

 

thanks guys, this is all good information! my first project when I'm ready will probably be a simple platformer that's only suitable for Kongregate =P