Hobbyist looking for advice

hi my name is marty and i am considering on learning programming for games and as a first shot I'm planning to try and make a 2d game maybe a la mega man platform action or something metroidvania style just for fun as a hobbyist, but I feel quite overwhelmed by all the information about programming and using unity at the moment so I was wondering if anyone had any advice to help a starter pick a direction.

The idea for the mega man action hobbyist project is to just make a similar feel game with weapon swaps item upgrades of course it seemed like a simple idea to figure out but als not simple as in easy to make cause i do feel like it should have a slight bit of challenge in the design.

for the castlevania idea would mean I would be more focused on basic RPG systems in a platforming game world so the idea is relatively the same, but the execution of "upgrades" in game are different.

Which would you as a community advice and is unity really my best option for this as a started hobbyist project or should I try something different first?

It of course does not have to be great and commercial I am just a guy trying to learn something new in his life in a field which makes products I love and enjoy

thanks in advance!

 

Do you have any prior programming experience?

 

Both of those genres are at least 10 times too big for a first project. Seriously, start with Pong or something like that. You might be surprised what that takes. Then, if you're still into it, slowly increase the scope of what you can do. It'll likely be a while before you're able to tackle even simple RPG's and platformers. But it can be a really fun process getting there!

 

^ Nailed it. You could also start with the most basic platformer as there are plenty of great tutorials (including the official one) on how to do that. Once you have the "bones" there, just mess around and see what you can do.

When I was learning how to use Flash with the Flixel library, I started with their "Nutmeg" sample project. I first wanted to see if I could make Nutmeg (who is a little chicken thing, by the way) fire lasers from its eyes. Once I accomplished that, I wanted to see if I could make the eye lasers function as a ride-able platform. Getting that to work was a great little learning experience and it was pretty fun, too. Try stuff like that and don't worry about making whatever complex game idea you have.

 

personally I would go with simple platform 2D game, collect things do some jumping about etc. I used to play a great 2D browser game Glitch, sadly closed down now but they released all art to Open Source so worth checking out to get you started. Then read making 2D game tutorials its easier than u might think. https://www.glitchthegame.com/public-domain-game-art/

 

Hey guys just noticed the replies

Yes I know that its still to far grasped but its not planned to be made in like a month or a year this is something to spend free time on bit by bit over many years and to push my interests.. I do understand something like just doodling with a random level is a better option, but we do have to keep on pushing also after that. The main reason to make the project bigger then I can handle is just so I can put milestones for what I achieved to program or get working and get back to the project bit by bit everytime to build upon and not end up witha flurry of half made doodles in the mean time.

 

@jester-race
The Nutmeg bit where you push yourself is kinda the reason I wanna push it a bit further then just start with pong not planning to do it all immediatly lets just keep it to just jumping around like super mario bros then add double jump functions work on some physics etc etc, but in a way that it would be usable like a mega man game for example and eventually maybe lead to a single project to show all my programming/designing

@MagicZelda I will check your link asap gotta walk my dogs first now haha, but I do believe it will help me a lot cause I doubt trying to figure out all the codes from the ground up would be to much effort and it is a better idea to start by copying and looking for advice what other people did and then check back in the code what it is and editing them to see what changes

@stevetack
its the journey that counts for me atm I'm not plannig on getting it to be bugless still as I'm only still learning and a complete rookie when it comes to working in something like unity

@PvTGreg
Yes I do have a background in programming and it is also one of the reasons I wanted to try and get more in game development. Started out with programming in Java build up to C# years ago, then had a 3 year down period where I stopped, because of studies/music/art. And now that I have been working a slight bit in FMOD again for small freelance gamedevelopers and interactive media developers it sparked my interest for the programming aspect again.

Hope to hear back from you guys again soon!

PS maybe I should just aim on Basic Platform > Mega Man action > castlevania action > RPG element/Metroidvania action as a guideline and timeline

 

Dan that is exactly how I plan on learning, basic to fun. Currently just trying to figure out movement, all the source out there for 2D movement seems to be outdated for Unity 5 and no longer works. Leaving me in a rut trying to figure it out with very little understanding of what is going on. It's been good fun mapping out my game though.

 

There's no absolute right or wrong way to do it, but there are learning methods that are *typically* effective. It's just that it's quite common for newbies to jump right into RPG's or something and then get discouraged when they realize there are 10,000 things coming at them at once that they need to learn and that everything takes 100 times longer than they thought.

 

@Steve Tack
valid point cannot disagree that, but on the otherside I do believe a lot of people that start video editing audio editing game design etc go into it with that trail of thought, but I think a lot comes down not on if your goal is realistic but if you are realistic in that what you aim for might not be great yet, but are you proud still of what you did? its like musicians you gotta start somewhere and there are no musicians that can be honest and say my first song was an epic hans zimmerman track for example it most likely was a 2 chord doodle mostly

but hey it made that guy still proud he achieved something he made something and its kinda that feeling I wanna get from it hence I stated im not looking to make anything commercial, it might even be barely playable, but did I make something? Yes I will make something! Even if it will be the buggiest game ever lower lvl then ET for Atari was

 

That's the spirit! I'm right there with you Dan. No real clue what I'm doing. Enough coding knowledge to not be overwhelmed but not enough to just write code with confidence.

Since the last time I posted here I have made strides! Small strides, but strides none the less.

I didn't start with pong, but what I'm trying to achieve cannot be that difficult as I got a pretty good lead on it in a few hours.

Now if I could just figure out this camera and texture clipping situation I'd be golden. I expected this progress to take me two weeks at least.

 

@BRMX
Haha sorry for not responding to the previous post sent the other post on my mobile phone earlier

It is nice to see that someone understand with what I mean with trying and damn man those sound like some major issues in programming the game idea u have. All the time I am still here sitting trying to figure out where I should begin and just checkin videos on youtube of people talking about working in unity and getting used to the interface. Makes me feel like the first time I opened up Adobe Premiere, Fmod and protools again. So many buttons @.@

 

I'm doing a top down view game. Seeing as I'm more of an artist than a programmer you know I already have 2D tilesets for a game. So I used those for a placeholder map. Made a circle with an arrow on one side and started working on basic character movement via WASD keys.

Once I got the grips on that I decided to look into collision, which led to my clipping issue. Which was simply me not layering my textures. Then I moved onto character rotation via mouse. (Front of character is always facing the mouse) I've been arguing with it and going over other peoples examples for four hours. With a bit of this and a bit of that mixed together I finally got it working. It doesn't work the best, but it works.

I now want to work on making my character sprint.

I can't say that I'm a C# master, but I'm learning. For me the best way to figure anything out is to just take it apart and put it back together.

Oh http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/index.html this is handy, it's not really the best IMO for learning because it's a lot of info. But it's really good for looking up the little bits that make your game work and what other little bits of code work with it, etc, etc.

One thing that is really getting on my nerves is the fact that I'm using old scripts. But I just don't have a great enough understanding of C# to fully take advantage of all the new features. I have a feeling that I'll need to redo it all at some point. Hopefully I'm more confident, cause right now my game is held together with bubblegum and scotch tape.

My plan is to continuously add to this game little project by little until I have enough in-game features to possibly make something fun. Right now my mind is set on a simple adventure game. (Walking, running, standing, taking in the glorious birds eye view of what my 2D world has to offer) It'll be great.

 

I agree that the "I made this!" feeling is great. Be aware that game development is in no way like writing a song or even doing video editing. Anybody can hit keys on a piano or strum a guitar for five minutes and call it a completed song. You can learn to use the basics of Sony Vegas in an afternoon and make something. But if you start too large of a game project, it's all too common to never get to the point where it's playable as a complete game. I'm not talking about quality at all.

My advice, regardless of the size of the project, is to get to the point as quickly as possible where you can start the game, have at least one gameplay element implemented, and be able to get to a win or lose condition. Otherwise it's all too common to get bogged down in endless details and not even have a complete game loop.