First Game Questions

Hello everyone!

I’m pretty new to the forum, so sorry if I posted this in the wrong section. I’m currently looking for advice on my first game. It’s a 3D iOS space game, in which the player controls a character and makes money and other resources by going to different planets and creating mines/drills there. They can then sell resources, invest in fake businesses within the game, or trade with other users creating a player-based economy (this is the only multiplayer feature). There will be 6 total planets with low-poly terrain, a hub, different spaceships that the player can buy with resources, and perhaps randomized events (dangerous asteroids and such). I’m trying to use the Asset Store and not overcomplicate things, but I have a few general questions:

1. Based off what I’ve described, is it feasible (particularly the multiplayer part, with Firebase maybe)?

2. I’m doing this for fun on the side, which means I’m only working on it about five hours a week. Based on your experience, would it be reasonable to assume that this will (hopefully) take me no more than a year?

3. Do you have any suggestions as to how I could improve this, or how I can/should simplify it?

That was pretty long, and I’m fairly certain that these are common questions (particularly #2) — sorry about that. I would appreciate any advice! Thank you in advance!

 

How much software development experience do you have?
Unless it's 5 years+ in actual practice beyond hobbyism, you are aiming magnitudes too high.

I'd suggest to start singleplayer and a single planet with a 2D world. Something in the direction of "Motherload" or so.
If you are a complete beginner in programming itself, then even that will be far fetched and a very frustrating way to learn. Better to follow tutorials and expand upon the result of a tutorial you enjoyed as a first step.

 

This isn’t enough time.

 

i think most people making entire games on their own are working more like 70-hour weeks for 1+ years.

I wouldnt expect what you've described to be possible unless it was extremely crude and you are highly experienced (i.e. made many games already). And that woudl be long weeks, full time.

 

Even for experienced programmer, it is less than realistic.
Sometimes you can spend hr or more, with technical challenged, before even writing a code.
You can easily sepnd hrs reading docs.
You can easily spend hrs testing and debugging.
If you spend for example few hrs in 2 days, then coming back next week, you will spend some time, reminding yourself, what you did in previous week.

Your best starting bet, is to try make a pong game.
Simple and more realistic to do within couple weeks to a months, spending 1 hr per day while being beginner.

 

Echoing the above sentiment that working on a game on the side will considerably increase how long it takes.

For reference: I'm working on a survival-craft game; isometric perspective, broken up into zones like older Zelda games. I'm working on it most days after work for a solid 2-3 hours (often more), during weekends, and even taking the odd bit of time off work to really knuckle down and chug through some of it.

Been doing this for about 1 year so far, and I'm probably another six months to a year away from having enough put together in order to make a demo to send friends and whatnot. I'm starting to feel like If this wasn't a personal project I would be thinking about greatly reducing my scope.

One thing you'll find is that there's a lot of time that goes into the back end systems the player never sees. Though if you're smart a lot of this can be coded in such a way to make it reusable for later projects.

Honestly just the 3d space navigation alone is going to take a lot of time to get right.

But don't let this dissuade you. Perhaps think about lowering your scope or thick of a simpler game to start out with, if your plan is to have something done within a year's time.

 

Not feasible. You're trying to create low poly X4. This can eat years and that's with heaver time investment than you can afford.

You can simplify this by removing multilayer, or making it text-based.

 

The only multiplayer feature is an entire player-based online economy? You might be underestimating just exactly how much of a challenge a multiplayer game of that scope can be to develop - both in terms of time and cost.

Cloud storage, authentication, remote config, etc can add up pretty quickly. It's also difficult to predict costs on launch - so you could quickly find yourself unable to pay the bill. Almost every action a player takes is going to cost you money in some way, usually in the form of sending and receiving data.

You've not mentioned anything about how you intend to generate revenue, but mobile is a notoriously difficult space that typically requires a medium/large investment of capital for user acquisition.

Then there's the actual headache of building the system. One important aspect is some kind of anti-cheat which in itself can be a difficult subject. This is worse if you have IAPs or transactions that can be obtained without proper payment.

Also, mobile development typically requires multiple devices to test on so that's an additional cost, or you risk the game not working as expected on X percentage of devices based on your target.

Doubtful - First game. Mobile. Multiplayer. Player-based economy.

You could always spend a few weeks building a prototype, you'll quickly find out if it's too difficult for you to implement.

Build a prototype and focus on the networking aspect. use primitive shapes to represent everything - this will save you potentially buying assets that will never be used.

You don't even know if your idea is feasible yet. You might not have the necessary skill set to implement your vision... it's not exactly a simple one.

 

Just start, and see where that goes. Good luck!

 

You asked this exact question a few times already over the past 2 weeks or so. At that moment you also asked what software and programming languages you would need.

From this I reckon you are a total beginner in programming and Unity/gamedev. Nothing wrong with that, but you drastically need to lower your expectations.

I would suggest starting with something super simple, and work your way up. Otherwise you might be frustrated too soon, and bail out prematurely. The Unity learn materials might be up your alley.

 

Agree the two comments above. Less meandering and more doing. You'll only get a good feel for the reality of it by actually doing it.

 

Thank you all for your replies! You’re probably right… I set my expectations way too high. The thing is, I’ve already put a good bit of work into this project (making the terrains, planning, UI), and I really don’t want to just drop it for an entirely new idea. Is there any way that I could still use my project, but with several tweaks to make it more plausible for my low level of experience, and time schedule? For example, if I tried to make it into a single player game with a goal of gathering resources, but instead those resources were used for making a small city? Also, I’m planning on including some ads and in-app purchases, but my goal isn’t revenue (and I’m so far only using free assets).

 

So I'm gonna tell you something that will save you a lot of time in the long run. All this stuff? These are actually things you're supposed to do much much later. Ideally, you shouldn't even be doing planning yet. I know that seems counterintuitive, but it makes a lot more sense when you consider this:

You don't actually know if the game is worth pursuing, even if you've told yourself it is.

What you want to do is make a prototype: an absolute barebones project that lets you play with the ideas and see if they're at all interesting in the first place. Your graphics can be constructed from the basic primitive geometry that Unity gives you like planes, cubes, spheres, capsules, that sort of thing. If you need to make them more distinguishable, make a simple single-colour material.

The same goes for your UI. There's no sense making it pretty right now. Just use the default UI tools so you can get a better idea of how to work with them and then start building it outward once you have a 95% certain idea of what you're going to need from them. Your terrain can just be a flat plane with a solid colour applied to it. Anything else is just going to be wasted time. This is one of the big mistakes that most devs make starting out.

 

Thank you, this is a good idea! I haven’t so far been overdoing the terrain I’ve made, I was planning on adding detail later on. But do you think I could make still make a similar game to the one I originally described, but single player, with a different focus from the economy? If I know that I can make this game, then it’ll be a lot easier for me to start putting things together, as I don’t want to end up working on it for several years!

 

Nobody can answer that for you but yourself. Boil your idea down to the most basic concepts and try and build just that. From there, you will have a better idea of what your limits are, where your skills lie, and where you need to improve. The best way to figure out if you can make a game will always be to make the most simple version of it.

 

a reasonable place to start that still includes part of your initial idea would be take just one system and try to turn that into something fun (still being a prototype like mentioned).

So maybe you have top down, click to move, click to gather resources ,and then an inventory system that allows you to sell what you've collected and buy new things. New things is limited to stuff that allows you to gatehr resources faster.

So sort of like cookie clicker but different perspective.

That sounds simple but it will take a mountain of work to build and get to just a prototype stage. Try it and you'll see.

 

You'll get thousands of those ideas in the future, and some of them will be implemented by other people who have never heard of your idea.

I would recommend to keep things as simple as possible and not plan far ahead.

• For example, make a 2d asteroids game with 3d model of the ship. You'll have an asteroid and a ship.
• Now see if you can make it 3d. Just your ship and asteroids.
• Now add an enemy.
• Now add several.

Once you have that, you have a skeleton of a space game. From there you can go in many directions.

For example, you could add companion ships t hat will follow you as a fleet. You could try to issue commands to that fleet. Or you could add a space station. ANd then another one. ANd see if you can make Elite Frontier style trading/exploration. Or you could see if you can make it possible to descend onto a planet (this is actually hard). Bu this is something that is far away from where you're now.

I think you should get the overall idea.

1. Make a prototype.
2. Make it fun.
3. Do not plan beyond the prototype.
4. Once you're done, build on top of it. (and if you don't want to build on top, polish and release)
5. Repeat.

 

Thank you all for your replies! Taking into account what you said, and advice given to me by a friend, I’m going to simplify my game a lot. It’ll be single player, instead of moving around with a spaceship I’ll use teleportation, but I can still keep the basic idea of my game, and what I so far have. Thank you all!

 

You don't have to abandon the idea. You just have to accept it will take longer than you expected.

 

Thank you, and I’ve decided not to entirely abandon the idea. I’ll simplify it a lot like you all suggested, and make it single player, but focusing on a different goal. Some aspects can be textual to make it easier, and maybe the player can used resources to try and build a small city (with extremely similar looking and simple buildings). Ironically, because I went backwards with the design process I still have the option to change my idea without wasting any previous work.

 

Ryiah is correct.

Go for it. You'll see for yourself if it's enough time or not.

 

I understand what you’re saying, but like I stated earlier, I don’t want this project to take too long. Another idea I was tossing around instead, was a 3D version of the classic asteroid shooter/space defender game (I’m not sure what it’s called). This would allow me to keep most of the work I have so far (except for the basic planet terrain), and it would hopefully be much easier than my previous ideas. I’d still be able to use the hub I made as a starting area, and all of the spaceships that I have. Would this be a more reasonable project for a beginner like me with a limited work schedule (5-7 hrs per week)? Also, so I don’t make any more big mistakes, what are the basic steps I should take before diving into the idea? Again, thank you for your patience and advice!

 

What did you do in Unity so far?
Seems like you spending more effort typing these post than trying do anything in Unity.
If you haven't done anything yet, forget about any of your Unity project to happen.
Either you are doer, or ranter.

If you are doer, you wouldn't care what people saying here and you will be doing already something in Unity, to achieve your goals.

 

That is a fair point. I’ve already made a character and basic UI in Unity, as well as a hub where the character starts. I’m being cautious because some of my ideas in the past have been unrealistic, and I’d rather not endlessly work on a project. I need to have realistic plan for my first game before I continue working, which is why I asked those last two questions.