24 replies to this topic

[necroside]

I don't know where to put this so I'll use this forum.

Here is the deal, we've choose to go indie for our first game, we're 6 people, 2 artists, 2 programmers, 1 musician and programmer, and 1 CEO (Everything else), we want to do something 3D, and we are looking for advice in which tools to use. We are short of cash, so we need cheap but professional tools.

Engine (we are between Torque and C4 and maybe Visual3D)
IDE: Visual studio express.
Modeler: Blender, or Truespace or both.
2D: Gimp and other free drawing tools.
Sound: Sound Forge.

About project tools we don't know any good one, something like schedule managing and payment control, and stuff like that, suggestions are welcome.

Please leave your opinion.

Thanks in advance

Necroside

BTW
Forgive my bad English.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Best advice I can give you is to make a 2D game instead. You're more likely to make money off of it, as development will cost less, and the customers won't care.

[necroside]

Thanks Matt (can I call you Matt?), if we choose to go 2d, then I guess SDL would be the main option. But still I'm missing the project manager and the stuff to keep us on schedule, I have some software experience but none at game development.

Also about SDL, is there any other tools that can help our 2d game rocks? XD, I mean something like pygame that will easy our life and development time.

By the way, I was looking at your post and your position against indie engines, I respect that, and hope someday to work with something like Crytek or Unreal.

I'm coding in linux, but if I have to switch to Windows again, I don't have any prob.

Thanks in advance.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

necroside said:

Thanks Matt (can I call you Matt?),

sure :cool2:

necroside said:

if we choose to go 2d, then I guess SDL would be the main option.

Well, there's a bunch of options actually:
SDL
Allegro
PTK
TGB
Popcap Framework

All of then have been used for commercial games, but which one is best, well, that depens on you and your game really. Of course, 2D is rather simple technology-wise, so you could easily make your own if that's your preference

necroside said:

But still I'm missing the project manager and the stuff to keep us on schedule, I have some software experience but none at game development.

My advice would be to keep things simple (as simple as you can, and apply this to everything), and to always keep the game in a playable state. If you lack experience in making games, then don't worry too much about planning and scheduling, but instead make the basics of the game playable in a week or less (even if it's a bit rough), and then keep adding one thing at a time, until you're either happy with it or you run out of time.

necroside said:

By the way, I was looking at your post and your position against indie engines, I respect that, and hope someday to work with something like Crytek or Unreal.

I'm not particularly against indie engines; I'm just very cautios about unproven technology. It's enough hassle with the proven engines (I've worked with renderware, gamebryo and unreal, and all of them have plenty of issues). It would probably be more fair to say I'm somewhat against all engines :yes: It's just that it's too common to put the focus on the engine, when all it really is, is a utility library to help you with mundane tasks. 2D libraries does this well, 3D ones tend to be rather poor...

necroside said:

I'm coding in linux, but if I have to switch to Windows again, I don't have any prob.

If for no other reason, do it for the Visual Studio debugger. If you learn to use it, it will save you crazy lots of time.

[Hawthorne]

I am a big fan of TV3D6.5 for DX9 work (www.truevision3d.com)

Also check out Geonardo/Geoworld API (www.zepadev.net and http://www.youtube.c...?v=3OHA6r1fmsw), it was built on TV3D6.5 and is a Gaming platform and World Editor with Audio/Video playback, and source code examples in c# for loading your .MAP files and assets that you use with your worlds.

-Pat

[starstutter]

Mattias Gustavsson said:

Best advice I can give you is to make a 2D game instead. You're more likely to make money off of it, as development will cost less, and the customers won't care.

Let me clarify that a bit. This is my own opinion on the situation though.

It's a cold, hard and resentfully accepted fact that the vast majority of players will take 3D over 2D at the first chance they get. This changes slightly for the indie market though (mostly because that player base cares little about graphics), but it's still not a dramatic leap and everyone wants a good looking game (no matter how much they won't admit it ;)).

However, notice that for the indie crowd, I say "good looking". 3D is still preferred in the indie market yes, but for your first project it is very very unlikley that you guys will be able to make a 3D game and have it look good and polished ( would compare it to indie suicide really). So the best thing to do is make a graphically enhanced 2D game that captures peoples eye. Belive me, by comparison of most 2D indie games that's really not hard to do.

So in the end, yes, you are much better off producing a "visually enhanced" 2D game. You may even think about 2.5D.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

starstutter said:

vast majority of players will take 3D over 2D at the first chance they get. This changes slightly for the indie market though (mostly because that player base cares little about graphics),

That's not right... It changes dramatically for the indie market (and by "indie market" I mean the casual games market, as that's the way indies make their money).

Casual gamers care a lot about graphics. Everything needs to look very neat, you need lots and lots of polish (much more than your typical AAA game). But what you don't need is 3D or fancy technology. It won't get you any more sales. It will give you a higher production cost.

[Mephs]

Mattias Gustavsson said:

2D libraries does this well, 3D ones tend to be rather poor...

I'm really partial to Ogre so far, and I know what you're going to say, so let me just rebut: If one person can publish with it, anyone can :P

It's so far the most portable graphics engine that puts out some impressive results.

[necroside]

Thanks everyone, Matt is right, I have been thinking and doing some calculus and the cost really goes low when you go 2d, also the Linux market have issues with 3d acceleration, and is one portion of the pie (a really big portion actually), and well, we will save our design doc to later and star a new one while coding the game.

The 3d artists can make some pre rendered stuff.

Thanks for the advice, we're now in production, hope sometime near to show off our work. Keep up the good work, and thanks again for the help.

I think you will have more annoying questions from me or my team.

[starstutter]

Mattias Gustavsson said:

Everything needs to look very neat, you need lots and lots of polish (much more than your typical AAA game). But what you don't need is 3D or fancy technology. It won't get you any more sales. It will give you a higher production cost.

That's basicly what I said lol. Yes, 3D is not the way to go if it's your first project and your budget is an issue. That's not to say 3D graphics should not be allowed in Club Indie, but make sure you can handle it first.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

starstutter said:

That's basicly what I said lol.

No it's not. You said:

starstutter said:

It's a cold, hard and resentfully accepted fact that the vast majority of players will take 3D over 2D at the first chance they get.

And that is not true. For hardcore gamers, it's true, but they are not the target of the indies.

starstutter said:

That's not to say 3D graphics should not be allowed in Club Indie,

If you want to make money off of it, you shouldn't use 3D. If you're not bothered about making money, you're a hobbyist, not an indie (and nothing wrong with that, I'm a hobbyist myself, and it's more fun). And for hobbyists, anything goes - we're just doing it for fun anyway.

[marek-knows.com]

you probably also want to add some sort of source control software so that you can easily share all your code between everyone. Things like ionForge or perforce or something similar.

[starstutter]

Mattias Gustavsson said:

You said:

Yes, but I also said...
"This changes slightly for the indie market though (mostly because that player base cares little about graphics), but it's still not a dramatic leap and everyone wants a good looking game (no matter how much they won't admit it )."

"good looking" does not translate to "3D"

Quote

And that is not true. For hardcore gamers, it's true, but they are not the target of the indies.

That's why I said "vast majority", not "all". Keep in mind though that when I say you're appealing to a small minority in a group, that by no means states that your audience is small. A minority in a few million people is still a hell of a lot of potential customers.

Quote

If you want to make money off of it, you shouldn't use 3D.

I half agree with that. Yes, it's undeniable that 3D games will take a lot more time and money to finish than simple 2D games, but it's certainly not impossible if you're not going for something next-gen or mind blowing. Imagine a cell shaded stylized game that didn't need a whole lot of graphics tech. I personally love that style and I see no reason why it simply couldn't be quickly plugged into tourqe (just as an example) or other graphics frameworks (even your own).

Also, 3D affects gameplay, like it or not. That's not to say that 3D *graphics* effect gameplay, but the abillity to move 3 dimentions does and allows a whole nother level of freedom. And moving around in a 3D environment with 2D graphics would just be... wierd. I know it would theoretically be similar to Wolf or Doom, but combined with new player expectations for play styles I dont think that would work so great. Maybe you could get away with 2D sprite enemies but non-polygon 3D worlds would be very odd, and it would still be restricted to 2 dimentions.

There is the option of top-down views for 2D, but they have their own issues. I personally would not buy a sidescroller though, I simply can't stand platformers (maybe mirrors edge will be an exception ;)).

[starstutter]

Oh and btw, about 3D games never making any money for indies:

http://frictionalgames.com/site/games
http://www.introvers...co.uk/darwinia/
http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax
http://www.taleworlds.com/
http://www.ninjabee....postkaloki.html
http://wolfire.com/lugaru.html

[SamuraiCrow]

Another up-and-coming 2d framework is SFML. It is built around Mesa or OpenGL (depending on what platform you have) for the graphics and OpenAL Soft for the sound. The earlier versions had some trouble but seem to have been ironed out somewhat since version 1.3 came out. I'm not sure how well it works on 64-bit OSs yet but it might be a more streamlined approach than SDL 1.2.x . It's also written in C++ so it might save some time putting together wrapper functions as well.

[TMichael]

Two other popular 2D engines are Haaf's Game Engine and Flat Red Ball. There are many more. You could even use XNA Game Studio along with the tools you first listed.

For project management, freebies include Open Workbench, Gantt Project, and dotProject.

Good luck!

[fireside]

I think, for your size group, you should consider an online game and try making money from advertising revenue. Flash is pretty expensive, but it's still probably the best option. I don't use it, but I'm not trying to make any money. The reality is that hardly anyone makes money making games, but I think you're best chances are with Flash. There are a couple ways you can go for revenue, so you should check those out. One is to just keep the game on your site and put up ads as an exclusive type deal. The other is to embed the advertising in the game and let anyone put it up. Another thing you can do is offer an offline expanded version that they pay for and download. Torque also has a 2d type game making system and if it's pretty good will put up the game and advertise it for sale, so that would be another option.

[necroside]

Thanks, Advertise is good and we plan to use some on our site, but I don't think you can get enough money to pay 6 people from it. If I'm wrong please let me know.

About the 2D engines I'm taking a look at FlatRedBall, it seems nice and solid. Maybe to port our soft to Xbox360 in the future.

Thanks again.

[najak]

FlatRedBall seems to have a good offering for 2D games to port to Xbox360 via XNA. I'm in agreement with Mattias, that if you want to ensure success, 2D is probably best way to go for now. There is much you can do, even in 2D to create an enjoyable game play experience.

If you achieve success (and cashflow) from 2D, you then might consider adding the 3rd dimension. From the sounds of your original post, you are quite new to game creation, and therefore, aiming for 2D is probably in your best interests. And Xbox Live will become a natural marketplace for your games, with FlatRedBall (I really don't know much about this engine, but haven't heard anything bad about it, and it seems to be gaining some popularity). Good luck!

Also, please keep us updated on your experiences and success (or obstacles).

[necroside]

najak said:

FlatRedBall seems to have a good offering for 2D games to port to Xbox360 via XNA. I'm in agreement with Mattias, that if you want to ensure success, 2D is probably best way to go for now. There is much you can do, even in 2D to create an enjoyable game play experience.)

I agree

najak said:

And Xbox Live will become a natural marketplace for your games

Same thoughts here, only waiting to get something done. And then porting it.

najak said:

Good luck!

Thanks

najak said:

Also, please keep us updated on your experiences and success (or obstacles).

Sure :)