What's the easiest type of game to do?

[cassius]

I have been working on an adventure game for nearly 2 years. I chose this genre as I felt it was something i was capable of doing, but what is your opinion?

What type of game would you advise someone starting out to tackle first?

[Rick]

I would advise a 2D game to start with. Something like tetris or collapse.

[gamecreator]

Pong is the easiest. Then breakout. Then tetris, as Rick mentioned. This article has a few other suggestions.

 

That said, how are you doing on your RPG? If you've stuck with it for 2 years (which is pretty impressive!) then you seem to be in a good place, having likely overcome quite a few setbacks. You are probably better off sticking with it than abandoning it.

[cassius]

I am going to stick with it. The 2 years is partly cos early updates sometimes ruined work already done and I kept changing my mind about level design and other things that were not good enough. I don't like arcade games, for me it has to be big so I can relish the achievement when its done.

[Pancakes]

I like you cassius.

 

I don't know what game would be easiest though.

[ZioRed]

Well in my opinion the simplest games at all are cards and boards, something like solitaire, poker, monopoly, since they require very few graphics (that is a programmer could do it completely by himself without buying models) and lower AI (I think).

 

Just now I'm working on a board game, but unfortunately not with LE because I think that a SM3 card is really too high/expensive for a board game, so I had to stick with an engine with lower requirements.

[AggrorJorn]

Al hail to the game ideas that surpass the capabilities of a game developer/designer. I agree with pancakes and cassius. All of the games I come up with are way to large to make with 1,2 or even 3 people. You would need at least a professional team of 10 persons to work it out in to a commercial game.

 

Never the less, I never really wanted to make those 2d games because I wanted to go big the first time I tried to make a game. Not 2d is bad or anything (I mean look at World of goo, Braid etc.) but sometimes you just have a bigger passion for the bigger games. (even if they are 'slightly' out of your capabilities.)

 

When it comes to leadwerks I think the easiest you can make with it is a 2.5d side camera game. Something like mario with depth.

[Rick]

Nobody really enjoys making those crappy starter games, but it's something that helps you understand how a game is made and finished. Do you think anyone really wants to make a pong clone? It's a good learning tool to get the basics of game structure and such. If you want to learn how to skateboard you don't jump onto the halfpipe right away. Well, you can but you'll probably break something

[AggrorJorn]

some people can be really stubborn.

[Canardia]

I think the easiest and best way is to work in circles.

First make a very small circle, which means a very small game which you can complete in minimal time.

Then make the next bigger game in the same circle way.

 

For each circle (=each game), you have also this subcircle which gives a more detailed explanation what happens in side one game circle:

[cassius]

As a hobbyist my motives are different to commercial developers. They need a team, a plan or design and a structure.I chose adventure game partly because I can make it up as I go along. I get ideas for puzzles when in bed or at the supermarket or anywhere.I have been known to get up in the night to try something out.

[Josh]

RTS. Two people could put together a good one in 6 months and have it on Steam.

[megigames]

nobody said side scroller OR 2d top down games

i've always done FPS its always been easiest to me

[Aily]

TDS like Crimsonland, or 2.5D Mario like Aggror says.

[Flexman]

Presentation is everything. I reckon you could make a pretty compelling game of PONG if you disguise it well enough. Look at Angry Birds, tell me what ancient game that is dressed up? Turn Pong into a small planet or moon with low gravity, the ball is a nuke or grenade that 'heats up' and cools making it possible to kill your opponent in amusing ways. Take a simple idea and throw progressively more stupid ones till you find one that sticks and motivates you.

 

With Leadwerks you can put together a simple tower defence or RTS, or even a 2.5D platformer as all mentioned above. The HARD part is finishing, no matter what game you decide to make, you get to about the 80% completion mark and then you find the other 80% of polishing work left to do.

 

Just my 0.02 euros.

[Mumbles]

Easiest is guess the number. No fancy graphics required

[Canardia]

Easiest is guess the number. No fancy graphics required

I was going to say the same. But now you made me thinking of a new experiment:

What if you would first make a text based guess the number game,

and then stepwise expand it, like first graphical based text,

then using 2D graphics,

then 3D graphics,

then add maybe some more guessing questions,

record number guessing history in a database,

add multiplayer modes: turn based, split screen,

....

 

This would make an interesting tutorial, because the game would be ready already in the first step.

Then the question is which programming language to use,

and I would think C++, since that's the most popular at the moment.

But keeping it simple C++, which modern C++ allows, so we don't need to get into all the old C++ version's difficulties.

 

Long talk, short sense (like they say in Germany), here we go: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/Documentation/LE2/tutorials/_/programming/cpp/guess-a-number-r78

[cassius]

I started this topic some time ago and since then I have moved on to third person style game.The problem with first person games is there is no visible hero character and that deems to rule out close combat scenes like sword fights etc.My current game has a very simple plot. "rescue the hostage" after overcoming many enemies and obstacles.

[Flexman]

Whoops, just saw the original post date

Well it's good to just chit-chat once in a while.

[Canardia]

Reusable topics are like reusable code. They should be always preferred instead of making duplicate new posts. I don't know why many people seem to think the other way around, it just makes no sense to me. Do they code like that too?

[Canardia]

What else than scoring should I add to the Guess A Number game?

[caustic]

Lum, are you on a quest to have every game in the universe coded yourself at least once?

 

Features for Guess-A-Number:

- 3D "feedback" on the guessing (if you guessed much too high the number will explode and you will hear 'boo! boo!')

- Hints in the form of jokers which could point you to the area where to guess next

- "Perks" for the guessing - like if you guessed too low the perk will automatically guess the number +1 again

- different AI players with a 'personality' (trying to guess using other models than just "range/2" - also they could lough at you when you are guessing wrong)

- music which will get more intense as the guessing range will narrow down

- point system with stars which will tell you how good you were

- cheats

- a poker - style betting system where you can bet on your win. if you lose, you lose the (virtual) money.

[Canardia]

Lum, are you on a quest to have every game in the universe coded yourself at least once?

 

Features for Guess-A-Number:

- 3D "feedback" on the guessing (if you guessed much too high the number will explode and you will hear 'boo! boo!')

Yeah, I thought of that too, to make the textout be presented as 3D graphical effects. The textout could be still there, but it could be hidden with some keystroke.

 

- Hints in the form of jokers which could point you to the area where to guess next

Ah you mean like bonus cards. Yeah those could be earned after scoring well in a few matches.

 

- "Perks" for the guessing - like if you guessed too low the perk will automatically guess the number +1 again

Not sure if that's good, what if the player has already tried a higher number, it would get very complicated and confusing

 

- different AI players with a 'personality' (trying to guess using other models than just "range/2" - also they could lough at you when you are guessing wrong)

Yeah I was thinking to add some distracting background action too, like just for fun and laughs

 

- music which will get more intense as the guessing range will narrow down

Good idea!

 

- point system with stars which will tell you how good you were

Not sure about starts, but I have already a high score table for the next step.

 

- cheats

No way!

 

- a poker - style betting system where you can bet on your win. if you lose, you lose the (virtual) money.

Interesting idea.

[caustic]

Regarding the perks:

So the perk could just help you a little little bit.

Ok, if you would display the range of numbers as a bar:

<---------------------------->

0 100

 

And one would guess 40 you could grey out the already guessed stuff:

<---------------------------->

0 100

 

A Joker could then be applied and give you a hint where to search, or NOT to search (a random range is being made red).

<---------------------------->

0 100

 

A perk would help you like this (two numbers right of the currently guessed numbers the perk marked them BLUE):

<---------------------------->

0 100

(so it would broaden the range of your guessing a little bit.)

 

Regarding the point system I meant like 5-Star system.

You can have 5 stars in a level or 4,5 or something.

If you put this thing graphically it would say more on the first glance than just the number of the points.

[Canardia]

I'm still not convinced about perks, but the same graphical display idea could be used, as the player knows anyway what he has guessed already, and he can see in the text mode version the history of his guesses anyway.

 

So a graphical display just to serve as a memory helper for the player would be good (and to display jokers also).