Newbie

Easy people... I'm pretty new to this, and I have been talking to an online mate about game design.

I'm most probably not the first person this week to say "Hey I've got a game idea"... but I'd love to know what I could do to make it a reality...

I don't know any development languages (which is useless!), I am more a website designer etc.

What could I do to make this work? Do people still release free or shareware PC games?

Regards

Keith

PS Oh hi by the way peeps!!!!

 

Absolutely. Some of the most fun, innovative stuff seems to be coming from the homebrew crowd.

http://indygamer.blogspot.com/

 

Thanks!

Looks like I've gotta bit of fresh websites to visit

 

Are you talking about making the game yourself with others, or are you talking about somebody buying your idea?

It's very rare for commercial games companies to even consider looking at game ideas from outside the industry. You'd have about the same chance as you would selling your idea to the book industry for a top selling novelist to write for you.

On the other hand if you have a group of programmers and artists and you are making your idea then you can approach publishers with it once you have a good prototype. There are lots of platforms and ways you can get distributed, but very little good content.

 

game idea? this is what we do with those!

Look for programmers most are found on IRC and in office buildings working there buts off and if you also can't do that artists as well!
But first make sure you worked out a solid plan for your project.

 

You'll need more skills than just "the Idea Man" to be taken seriously in any team. Other people with skills generally have their own ideas that they would much rather work on than someone else's.

If you can't answer the question, "why should someone work on my idea", find an answer. That means you have to have a key skill to demonstrate your worth and motivate the rest of the guys. Or a truckload of money to pay for their time.

If you decide to start a long distance project with others, make damn sure the source code and all other assets (art, audio, levels) are somewhere where everyone can get them:

• in case a vital member of the team decides to disappear.
• so everybody knows what stage the project is at.
• so you have some kind of redundant backup.

Do not under any circumstances let people keep the only copies of source material on their home machines. The last thing you want is to be told, "omg my HD died and the code is all gone".

For source code, this ideally means an internet-based SVN server. I found http://www.assembla.com/ after a recommendation by a forum member here, and it's great for my home projects.

Google code would work just as well if your project is open source.

There are probably loads of pearls of wisdom out there, but my brain is too fried to type any more at the moment. Try browsing the "Start Here" pages of GameDev.net and the FAQs on their forums.

Good luck!

 

I've been a part of quite a few failed start up projects in the past so I'll just add something I think is really important (because it get overlooked quite often)

Make sure every role has visible output (design specs, code, art... etc), if people don't know each other then volume/quality of work from others in the team is a big motivator/de-motivator.

That said, all the best!