GETTING STARTED 1: STEPS YOU NEED TO TAKE IN MAKING YOUR OWN GAME

                                We live in a world which makes most things kind of possible, a world which has every potential of becoming better, a fun filled one to be precise, and we possess stuffs and tools to facilitate happiness and even to serve as a means of making our world better ,what we call A game, As primitive as game may be, from the Pacman of 1980’s to high end action games like the crysis 3 game of 2019,we seem to have gone far from the world of 2d to the world of 3d ,depending on the concepts of game, primitive game software started with simple coding languages such as html and CSS, but it has become much complex with programming languages such as JAVA, C++, C# and more, With the kind of world we live in today, Game development has become a major skill in which anyone can decide to work with as a career option, you might not even need to go to academies to learn game development, you can also learn it yourself, so you want to create your own game, I know you have got concepts here and there, ideas and creativity bumps, let’s get you started here.

1. CONCEPT AND CHARACTER DESIGN

The first thing you need to take into note is the storyline of your game, you have to determine the genre of your game and also the characters itself, the genre and the storyline of the game would determine whether you are to make it in 2d or you are to make it in 3d,for example, if you are making a puzzle game, you can’t make the game in 3d,it has to be 2d,same thing with mystery games in which you will have to search a picture like room for clues, but if you really want real action stunts  you would need to make a 3d game, same with adventure  even to racing games, the character can sometimes determine how your game is going to look like, some games might just need simple 2d characters to run and jump most time and that means your game would be in 2d,if your character would need to work towards the front or back, then your game would have to be 3d ,but if it only needs to walk left and right, then it is only 2d,your character and your game concept will always determine how your game would always look like, pay close attention to these

2. MODELLING AND ILLUSTRATIONS

When making your games, you might be thinking it won’t relate with much of character drawings and creation, but the real truth is that you  need characters and they are a lot of work, you can’t just use set of codes to build a 3d character and expect it to  automatically start to move, walk and jump, it doesn’t happen that way, you would need some illustrating and modelling skills, you need to learn how to model a character using apps such as Autodesk Maya, Cinema 4d or free open source apps such as blender, if you are doing a 2d animation, you will need to learn apps such as affinity designer, illustrator, Photoshop and more, now after creating your 2d character you can easily export it, but you need to know that when creating a 3d character you would need to rig and animate it for movements such as running, jumping, walking and more ,also you would need to texture it, you can do this with the app itself or you can use substance painter/designer or even Photoshop itself. And the view of your camera will determine how the character might look, if your character can be seen, you will need to add more details to his body like clothes, muscles, skin features and more, but if he can’t be seen, just modelling pair of hands to hold guns will do most of the trick and for 2d character you most likely wont need a lot of details.

3.PROGRAMMING SKILLS

After the creation of your storyline and characters, you can now start the necessary programming, you can use programming software depending on the dimension of your game, if you are using 2d,you can use game maker studio, unity etc., but if you are making 3d games, you can use UNITY, UNREAL ENGINE, CRY ENGINE and more, and to work with these software, you would need to have knowledge in programming languages such as C++, C#, java even to python, you would need to be able to work with loops, functions, methods, strings and also coroutines(timing),all this languages are applicable to most game engines, but some engines have their own programming language in some cases and you will need to learn them too, you can take programming courses from w3schools,Sololearn,programming hero and you can also try paid platforms such as programming hub ,mimo, udemy, skill share and more

4.THE CONCLUSION

If all the tips listed above were followed, you would have your game in no time, but depending on the character and storyline, it might still take months to finally publish, but it is still worth it though, you can post your games in places like steam ,so that people can check it out  for you and report bugs, and try to fix few bugs that are important because fixing some bugs can lead to even serious bugs, and so that’s all you need to know about creating your own game, so, go ahead, try game development if you love games, you could be a game maker in the making.