
You Can Make Video Games - mwill
http://youcanmakevideogames.com/
======
debacle
The problem with making video games is that it is _long_ not _hard_.

Designing your game is about 3-5% of the time spent making it. The rest is in
tweaking animations, inverting arrays for better performance, refactoring,
adjusting physics, fixing weird bugs, creating metaformats, and wishing
desperately that floating point numbers did a bit less floating.

~~~
jwingy
I would say the persistence needed to make something does make it hard. I
understand what you're saying, but I don't think you can say it makes it any
less difficult to ship something.

~~~
debacle
No, but it takes dedication and discipline, not necessarily brilliance.

------
techtalsky
It's interesting to note that the newly Kickstarter-funded Wasteland sequel is
going with Unity for its development. A great post on why here:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/228226)

------
JoeCortopassi
I know that stealing content happens, but as a developer that wants to stay on
the up-and-up (read:not steal the hard work of others), I don't wan't to rely
on a resource that has this sort of attitude on stealing others content. From
the 2D Art section[1]:

"If you really don’t want to make your own art, steal it! There are a ton of
sites with sprite rips of classic 2D games. You can’t make a career on stolen
game sprites but no one is going to be sending you legal threats for you
making your first few simple games that way."

[1]:<http://youcanmakevideogames.com/resources/2dart>

~~~
djtumolo
They are placeholders, not final art. I've been working on a game, and I rip
sprites from wherever I find them. Not because I am a callous thief, but
because the art is temporary until I can get a prototype, and convince an
artist to join.

~~~
JoeCortopassi
You might use them as placeholders, which I have no problem with, but that
quote clearly implies using them in shipped products.

~~~
marijn
"first few simple games" ≠ "shipped products"

------
lindenr
PDF link: <http://youcanmakevideogames.com/YouCanMakeVideoGames.pdf>

------
davedx
I've been using Unity at work for almost 6 months now, and I can highly
recommend it. Coming from a game development background it's incredible the
amount of pain removed and productivity boosted by using it. If you know C# or
JavaScript (or Python I guess, as Boo is some Python dialect I think) then
you're halfway to learning how to use it already. Give it a try!

------
GavinB
For the total novice: <http://www.unity3dstudent.com/category/modules/> Start
with Essentials, then do Beginner, then Intermediate.

I ran through these and it got me up to speed very quickly.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd wish people made normal tutorials (text + screenshots) instead of video
ones. It's difficult to make a good one (that won't distract because of noise
/ recording quality / speaker without annoying voice), and at the same time
you sacrifice low-bandwidth users and lots of time for the high-bandwidth ones
- the important feature of a written document is that one can skim it,
skipping the parts one doesn't need, focusing only on parts one doesn't know,
while being able to see the entire context for the whole time.

~~~
jwingy
It's also much quicker to parse through text than to wait for someone to say
it, even if they are a fast speaker.

------
sageikosa
Been working on a turn-based role playing game framework (the Ikosa Framework)
for 7 years. Originally because I got sick of all the rote pencil pushing or
being a game-master and wanted an optimized database of game-play mechanics
and data, but eventually because I just enjoy the challenge of converting 960+
pages of RPG rules into code to automate the entire game system (senses,
languages, lighting, initiative-based turn tracking, etc).

I've been working in WPF, WCF, and throwing in PLINQ and TPL (all .NET
desktop/server-stuff) mainly because that's where I come from, but also
because I've always thought of what I've been doing as a proof-of-concept.

------
polshaw
Unfortunately I have no wisdom to offer, but that guy's enthusiasm was
inspiring.

~~~
Macsenour
And I think that was the point of the site. It will take that level of
enthusiasm throughout the long dev cycle to make a game. Even if you can do an
iPhone game in 3 months, to someone who is new that is LONG, not hard, as some
else said earlier.

Can I do a plug? I wrote a book for new mobile devs:
<http://ebook.greenlightevals.com>

------
dacilselig
I have had a lot of fun working with Unity but not for making a game. I have
actually been using it at work to use as the platform for an experiment which
is being done in our Universities Geography department. what it truly taught
me was how much scripting can save you a lot of time in the tweaking
department. As this is my first real project that I'm doing on my own, it
really helped in understanding how important making your scripting generic
really is. It also has shown me the weakness of Unity's GUI library as there
are some limitations with it.

------
chasing
If anyone's interested, I'm working on a fully web-based game-making toolkit
project, as well. Not public, but slowly opening up: <http://gt7k.com/>

The genesis of that project is a high school class I teach -- see
<http://www.auscillate.com/post/300>. But it's proving attractive to a broader
audience as well.

Anyway: End plug. Just thought I'd throw it out there!

~~~
tehwebguy
Super interested! Just signed up.

------
ismaelsow
There is also this huge list on PixelProspector:
<http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/> and this article is good
start for beginners (like me):
<http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2011/09/atomic/>. The first question to answer
is this: do you want to make games (go indie) or work on games (work for a big
studio)?

------
djtumolo
a few things that are worth checking out:

\- gamedev subreddit - <http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/>

\- python game engine - <http://www.pygame.org/news.html>

\- sprite builder so you don't have to worry about art - <http://charas-
project.net/charas2/index.php>

~~~
D3lt4
It seems that pygame has last been updated in 2009, that killed my desire to
work with python and game dev.

~~~
mkr-hn
Where'd you get that idea?

<https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame/changesets>

11 changes in the last 30 days. And it looks like pygame has an active
community: <http://www.pygame.org/wiki/info>

The site could be more coherent, but I didn't have to look hard to find those
things.

------
jwingy
I had been doing my own research recently on 2d frameworks and engines to use,
and while I don't have any experience with the following, they do seem to have
a fair amount of respect within the game dev communities:

<https://love2d.org/> <http://www.sfml-dev.org/>

~~~
Dn_Ab
See also: <http://content.gpwiki.org/index.php/Game_Engines>

------
edintheforth
I've been thinking about this for a month now... I guess we never know until
we try right?

~~~
krisc
I was just talking about this last night with my brother! He made a prototype
for a puzzle game in PyGame. Since he has a full-time job now, I decided to
continue it's development.

