My motivator, how hard will it be to create?

Am I not necessarily looking to become a super rich and super famous game developer, no.. At the age of 21 I feel like I am late to the programming scene, since I have no experience what so ever. At the time of writing this, I have in fact not even tried running Unity, simply because I cannot until I return home from Japan in 2 months.

That aside, I am curious how difficult my MAIN goal will be to achieve in Unity. I am looking for answers from semi to pro experienced people, preferably someone who started out like me, late and with nothing.

Here it is. Sorry for the silly music, there aren't many videos to choose from.

This is a game called Tanarus, released in 1997, the servers were online way up until 2010. There is still a small community of us old players banding together on Facebook, still clinging onto the idea of playing it again some day. There have been other attempts to recreate it, but they have either failed or are barely making progress and/or are not going in the direction I prefer.

Now there are many different game modes, but my main goal is to first create the "Force" gamemode, which is the main content in the video. No flying, only tanks with missiles that push tanks on an x/y axis with ramps being the only possible way to send a player upward.

The thing that most terrifies me, is the physics. I will likely have to tweak a lot of things to get it the same as this game, if it is even possible. So, sorry for the long message.

Can someone tell me, how HARD would this be to make in Unity?

 

Difficulty depends on knowledge and skills of the team members. Based on the video an experienced coder can do all the work in a day if creating almost a 1:1 replica. Newbie can use few days or weeks to learn and implement all the stuff.

 

Thank you so much for the answer, this is reassuring. I am not fully aware of Unity's capabilities. I know creating a game and replicating a game must be two different things, but this game is fairly simple as you have seen. The more complex gamemodes have many more weapons and tanks, including tank forward and backward shields and shield management, but that would all come later.

If I got this game mode perfectly replicated I am positive others would jump on board quick and offer to help. Note, it isn't shown in this video, but here are other things to implement. 4 teams, base defending drones, safe "recons" which are the colored pads on the ground, once docked you are invincible from force missles. This is also how you reload, since you can only carry 4.

Now, what do you mean by Newbie. I am as newb as they get. No scripting experience at all. Do I need a high level of c# knowledge to get started?

 

Yeah with newbie I mean someone who starts from scratch. No you don't need high level knowledge. That game is pretty good thing to start with instead of mmorpg/fps/rts games. Only thing I can think of that could be hard at start in that game is the multiplayer aspect since it usually requires knowledge and preparation when designing stuff but maybe the Unity 5.1 and tutorials will help,

 

That game would not be hard for an experienced developer to make. It would require some knowledge of programming, though. I would say start with something smaller and easier, and then work up to this.

Maybe build several very small games/projects to tackle individual pieces of the game. For example, tank movement on a flat surface, turret control, firing a projectile, projectile movement, impacts, explosions, ultra simple networking (like moving two boxes over the network), etc. Practice the smallest parts. Then put it together.

 

Looks already like it's made with Unity

 

I used to think like you.. "I am 25..what use is it going to University for a chemistry or medical degree.. I will be an old man when i finish".. I am 57 now and started programming in 1999. You literally have your whole life ahead of you. Mind you I was nearly always the best artist in the 8 or so schools i went through as an army brat..so i did have one leg up. Unity was a huge shot in the arm for me when i found it 6 years back. Finally something that did what i wanted in near realtime.

 

That is a pretty good idea, thanks! I will get on that when I get home. Using this method, could it easily all be crammed together in the end? Haha.

Thanks for the information, it is pretty inspiring, and to be square I was kind up hoping someone like you would set me straight, I dislike thinking like that, so I won't! Maybe Unity will be my break too, I just cannot wait to get to work in two months when I am back to a computer that can run the installer without overheating. I am fairy artistic too which is why I never even bothered to ask about the 3d models that will be necessary for this project. Nothing too fancy but here is my 2nd ever model [WIP]:

Sound effects are another story, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

Set the Normals to Calcualte = 60 on import to get hard edges on your model Or if that is a 3D app set the Phong Tag.

 

Thanks, and oh here is some gameplay of the Open gamemode, which includes all tanks and weapons. This was from a last day event and tank movement and weapon speeds were a lot faster than normal. I hope some day to implement all of this into my game as well.