Don’t be offended, I know a lot of people who start an mmorpg with a month of experience. We even see those “Gimma da linkz for the doom3! 11 authoring program” folks every day on the forums.
Therefore, you must first make sure that you have accumulated enough experience. If not, you should finish some small projects like pong, galaxian, then small projects like tetris and then medium projects like mario only after these processes, come here and try to do a commercial project.
The above may sound daunting, but if you move on to a commercial game right away, you will be wasting your time and money. It will also affect your career in the game as you will be a huge disappointment and lose your self confidence.
The experience alone won’t get you that far. To be successful you need the tools of the trade, money, time, determination, and dedication. And most important of all, you have to love what you do. If you really combine your passion with your game, players will love it too.
So let’s get into the details a bit;
A) Adequate tools;
You may already know, tools are the applications in which you will develop your game. I will break them into branches according to the purpose.
1. Producer tools
2. Programming tools
3. Artist tools
4. Music / sound tools
1 Producer tools
Well, producers use a lot of tools. As a producer you need
write a good design document. For that, I recommend html knowledge as other documents similar to Microsoft Word may have comparability problems and a simple notepad will not be enough.
Instead of writing, you may want to draw something to give
the impression of what you want for the artist and programmers. You can
use Gimp as it is free or you can buy photoshop / paintshop pro.
You can also download a free to-do program. Or you can ask your coder to create one specific to your needs, as creating such an application is a simple task.
If you work in an office or garage, you might want a whiteboard to write down daily tasks or to-dos on there. It can also be useful during brainstorming.
Well, you need more than these tools, which are your tools since you were born. Your brain, your creativity, your faith in the project, your leadership, your relationships with others … This list is the following.
2.Program tools
A freelance programmer doesn’t need many tools. An advanced IDE will suffice for the needs of programmers. For example I use Blitz3D but to be honest the default IDE is supported. So I downloaded IDEal called Free IDE, which is great.
But of course you have to select the right language and engine for your game.
3. Artist tools
There are many types of artists. 2D, 3D artists, Animators … Each of them uses different types of software and those softwares may vary.
2D artists generally use Photoshop, but suppose you are a new independent group, you can use Gimp. It is free and many people use and recommend it. It will also be great if you can buy a drawing tablet.
3D artists can use 3DStudioMax, of course, if you can afford the huge sum of the license fee. ($ 3,500?) Milkshape3D is a cheap and good solution for general modeling, texturing, and animation needs. If you want something free, you can try Blender. I used Wings3d when I was a solo developer. It’s really easy to use and finally there’s Gmax from Autodesk (author of 3dsmax), which is a free tool much like 3DStudioMax, sadly no longer supported by Autodesk.
Animators can also use Milkshape and Blender, but if you want something specific for animation, there is Character Studio, Fragmotion, and Pacemaker.
4.Music / sound tools
Well, I am not an expert here, so I will only list the programs that I am aware of.
Fruity Loops, Reason, Cool Edit, Ableton Live, GoldWave. That’s all I know. You can do a little research on them and find which one is right for you.
B) time;
In today’s world, timing is everything. You can’t do anything without giving it time. If you have everything but time, you just can’t do it. So before you start producing a game, think twice about whether you will be able to dedicate your valuable time to the project. It will be difficult if you already have a job, because you have to sacrifice your vacations, weekends for gambling. So make sure you have enough time.
C) Money;
It depends on the scale of your project, you will need a certain amount of money. You have to pay for artists, web hosting services, advertising, application licenses and that’s it. The most important thing is to “do everything you can with the least expense.”
D) Passion;
I saved the most important for last. It’s simple, if you don’t have a great passion for games, you can’t do them. At least you can’t make games that people play. Ask yourself;
o Do you play games every day?
o How often do you read gaming related magazines / websites?
o Do you have a portable game console that you can take with you everywhere?
o How much money do you spend on games in a year?
o Do you really want to make a game?
o Have you ever bought a new graphics card for a specific game like FarCry or Doom 3?
It is possible to multiply the questions. If you really feel that you are in love with video games, then you have the necessary passion.
