Making game without coding experience

Hey, I was thinking about a pretty cool game. I have no experience with coding, the game is alot similar to the game called "galcon2" but a bit more complicated with more tactics and more Things etc. I was thinking, is that impossible for me? should I just take it the hard way and start learning to code?

ty and would be awesome if you tried galcon out, it is available on app store and steam.

 

Start with the tutorials in the learn section & decide yourself whether you want to try to make it yourself. It is possible but probably not straight away. Personally I'd say start learning with really simple things while you are learning or you could risk getting frustrated trying to make the game of your dreams & giving up. Take it slow & work towards it.

 

Learning how to code is never a bad idea. And as soon as you need some special/custom features you are going to need it.

 

Okay thanks, I'm gonna try learn it, but how long time does it take approxemately?
And I'm just gonna go to the "learn" session like the Roll-A-Ball?

 

Simple stuff can be learned in a few weeks / months. Becoming a decent programmer takes years.

 

Ok thanks, do you know the game galcon?

 

No not really.

 

What game development experience you have?

 

not really any :-/

 

In theory, you could try to make a game like that using a visual tool like Playmaker, but even that will require you to learn some basic programming concepts. You are better off learning to program. The sooner you start learning to code, the better you will feel overall. I'd suggest starting with C#. Programming is exciting, fun, and very empowering. You could try to go through life without learning to program, but that would be silly.

Instead of worrying about making money selling games at this point, you need to focus on learning how to make a game. Learn C#. Make several small, simple games in Unity as learning activities. Then try making a cool game to sell.

 

Ok, thanks. I'm gonna learn to code, I just finished the Roll-A-Ball course and I will finish the others too, to get better at programming. After that I'm gonna make som simple, learning games and after that its the big final

 

Just to make clear, I have no designing, programmin, devopment etc experience.
I just played the game galcon2 for like a year now, I'm one of the best in the game and my Clan is in top 15.
I just felt like i could add more stuff, its a simple game (simple compared to battlefield, skyrim etc.) its a fast paced real-time strategy game, and I would like to add more stuff, and make it even more strategic.

 

I would recommend shelving your idea for now. The key is to start small. Roll-a-ball is a great place to start! Don't be afraid to strike out on your own though. Be clever, as you go through tutorials and learn how to do more and more things- think of different ways that you can combine what you currently know to make something that might be fun for people to play. Most questions that come up for you will have already been asked a dozen times- learn how to look for what you need to know. That said, you can always ask questions here on the forums or in the answers area. Some people here might be a little grumpy sometimes, but I've found it to be a rather friendly community. Welcome to Unity and Game dev! Good luck!

 

Galcon is a great game, I used to know the developer. Back in my GG days, we published the first version online. It's a not a bad game to start with, but the developer is primarily a coder, it looks simplistic, but is much more complex than it appears. Good choice learning to code, I'm not sure you could effectively pull it off with a visual scripting tool.

 

Thanks, so zombiegorilla, how long time does it approxemately take to learn a galconnish game? not because i wanna hurry, I'm just corious. And thanks LMan, I'm gonna remember it as i go trough the learning.

This is a Little of topic, but my game crashed and all my items that was in the hierarchy got deleted by its own when i opened it Again :/ does anyone know this bug, and can i get the Things back?
@zombiegorilla
@LMan

 

He built it for over a year before the first release, IIRC the first version was for a game jam, built in C. That was nearly a decade ago, everything was built by hand. With an engine it would be much less time consuming. How long it takes is going to be heavily dependent on skill level.

 

You could always spend a few dollars and pick up a visual coding solution. Blizzard used PlayMaker on some bits of hearthstone and it seems to be doing well

Did you save your scene before it crashed?

 

Hmmm I don't really remember, why?

 

I was more reffering to how long time it takes to get enough skill to actually make the game with Csharp as language and of course unity as the engine.

 

A scene is your organization of items in the world & hierarchy.

 

As I understand it is used for assisting in building structured events, I don't believe it was used for any actual game development. It can be used very well for content tool.

 

That depends on many things:

1. How focused you are.
2. How dedicated you are.
3. How easily you can concentrate without being distracted by things.
4. The state of your brain (a brain with a heavy toxin load will not be able to learn as easily).
5. Previous experience with things that may relate (math, game design, etc.)
6. The learning resources you choose to use.
7. The methods you use to learn.
8. Perspective.

And on and on...

I would say: don't expect to learn it quickly. It takes a lot of time to gain the skills. Expect months just to get a basic level of knowledge. But you will likely need to spend many years before you are at an advanced level. And more years yet before you can truly call yourself a professional.

I've been programming for roughly three years now and while I've certainly come a long way, I still can't come close to calling myself a professional. There's way more to learn

 

@JasonBricco ok thanks, can you help me with this?:
It doesnt really Works, it is always false and not only when the Count is >= 11

if (count >= 11)
other.gameObject.CompareTag ("Hidden Pass");
other.gameObject.SetActive (false);

@Tomnnn hmm how should that delete my items?

 

I don't know what 'count' is or how it's defined, so I can't really help there.

But if you want both of those lines to happen if count is 11 or higher, you need to wrap them in curly braces.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. if (count >= 11)
3. {
4.     other.gameObject.CompareTag("Hidden Pass");
5.     other.gameObject.SetActive(false);
6. }
7.  

 

Count is that when you pick up some yellow boxes, the Count gets 1 bigger so what i wanted was that when you have taken 11 yellow boxes, your able to move to NeXT level. It is not a big problem, I was just trying to built more at the Roll-A-Ball projet. I move on to NeXT project tommorow (the Space shooter thing)

 

It's great to have a game idea but if you need to learn how to code you need to start learning with the examples Unity and others provide so by all means design your game idea but plan to spend a few weeks or even a month or two learning how to program with Unity.

It's not impossible it will only take more time and dedication.

Also, it can be deceptive how complex games are when you just play them. For instance, Galcon might look simple to play but I think you have to play against the game's AI and it can be complex to make a good AI opponent that will provide a good challenge as players progress.

Have Fun.

 

@Arowx

Thanks, but I was never really thinking about this as an offline game, I was thinking about it as online battles against eachother. Is that even harder? Is it expensive? ty

 

You then need to learn about network programming which Unity has, but it can get complex and tricky as over the network you have to keep all the players updated on the game's status. The hard part is not adding networking so much as getting it to work well and keep the game smooth.

It will just take more time to learn and you will hit more problems as you increase your games complexity but try and keep it working smoothly, but that's all part of game development.

Have Fun.

 

@Arowx

Ok, thanks, I think I'm gonna wait a long time with online then.
I think I'm gonna make other games then until i get good enough

 

You can make incredible headway in a short period of time, you just need to honestly assess where you are and what it will take to get to where you want to go, and decide if it's really worth it.

The first rule of games is there are no new ideas, and whatever new idea you think is new, isn't. Basically everything you might want to do has been done, and every problem you want to solve is already solved. Sure there are exceptions, but not for new people. And understanding this is key to going from where you are to where you want to be in a short time period. You can assume that somewhere out there is a library or tool that does what you want to do, and your first reaction to any problem should be google. Piecing together existing libraries and assets into a complete game is a great way to learn. New developers often don't get that, they think hey I want to learn how to do this on my own. But the fact is what they really learn is how to do it wrong with that approach.

The other thing is you will learn far faster if you can allocate larger blocks of time to your learning process. So rather then doing an hour here or there, decide how much time you can take out of a week for this, and do it in one big stretch. Not 20 hours straight with no breaks, but if you have 20 hours do that all in 2-3 sequential days.

And lastly you have to at least dedicate 20 hours a week or so. There is a minimum here you can't just do a day a week and expect to get anywhere. There is a threshold for being able to maintain a skill, and it takes even more time to progress in one.

 

I wonder if visual coding will be anywhere in the future. Blueprint => c++ sounds promising. Still waiting on pre-alpha-1.0 for Unity's official solution.

You're talking about the hierarchy right? Scene saving saves those. If something was not saved it won't be there after it loads up again.

Although at this point a miscommunication is more likely.

 

Sure, to some degree. A decade or so ago, few devs used engines. But like everything in the tools category, when you are out on the (b)leading edge, tools just aren't there. Someone has to lead before others can follow.

 

That's certainly the case for GO right now. I want to use it but there's nothing but console applications right now

 

If you are serious about this. Just learn to code. Check out the Learn section and watch the Live Sessions which are now recorded. They start out very simple.

There is also a ton of free scripts on the wiki page and attached to those live sessions. It is frustrating at first, but there is a great feeling that comes with ´If I can dream it, I can build it´. It does not take long until you can code anything you want to, and then it just becomes a matter of doing it correctly so you don´t have performance issues.

Seriously, you will go from frustrated and clueless to the point where you are hacking apart other people´s scripts in a matter of weeks. Also check out Youtube, Bergzerg arcade and Brackeys do a bunch of really practical scripting tutorials.

 

Go, along with node, need to just die in a fire. Yes I'm biased

 

A word of advice: don't pick up game dev as a pursuit based on a single game idea. Do it because you love the craft or because it's your job, not because you have this one cool idea.

 

Excellent advice!

 

NPM node? But I just learned MEAN stack D: I've heard the only utility for GO right now is running a server. I get that the concept of node is crazy, but I just recently figured it out + laravel + angular. On their own they're alright but together they're pretty amazing.

Plus as a MEAN developer you can make jokes about moving technology sideways instead of forward because mongo focuses on horizontal scaling more than other DB systems.

 

' I want to make a complex game without having to learn how to do the complex things'
Sorry mate, you wont get far

 

Hmmm aren't we all making complex games with much simpler coding that native in unity?