next »

[sanwayzar]

I am an experienced game artist and designer, who wants to use Unity to prototype my game ideas. Preferably, without doing any coding.

I have spent many years working in the AAA industry and on indie games (digital and tabletop), both in art and design. I even studied programming (C++ and Java) during my first 2 years in college. But it has been nearly 20 years since I last did any coding. I do not want to devote myself to the several years of study and practice that it would take to become a good game programmer. Being a 3D animator, 2D artist, art director, and game designer is already enough hats for me to juggle.

So, what I am planning is to learn the basics of Unity by following their video tutorials (yes I know these involve coding), and learn to use a visual scripting tool (also through their tutorials.) I hope that by taking this approach, and purchasing extra tech goodies as needed from the Unity Asset Store, I will be able to hack together some fun game prototypes on my own - without being a programmer.

I realize that it is unrealistic to think that I could finish a game project 100% without any coding... but hopefully this approach would at least allow me to put together some impressive demos/prototypes that could help recruit interested indie programmers, or could help raise funding to hire some.

My question is, for those of you who have tried making games of your own with little or no coding, and for those of you who have programmed any of the types of games I'm about to list below, which of these game genres would be the easiest for a non-programmer to make? Which one would you recommend attempting first?

1) Survival Arcade Game - similar to "slither.io", a game with simple graphics and simple controls, where hundreds of players in an arena try to kill each other. To keep this easier to make than a massively-multiplayer game, the "hundreds of players" will be A.I. bots with just a single human player.

2) Tycoon Sim Game - a single player game that is mostly UI-driven with 2D illustrated (or pre-rendered 3D) splash screens for turn summaries and special events. Gameplay involves managing the stats of a bunch of characters and assigning them to different tasks for profit.

3) Abstract Strategy Game - a game like chess, using cards, where 2 to 4 players play cards onto a board and maneuver them to attack each other and control various areas.

4) Endless Brawler - a single player "Endless Runner" style game, (2D, or 3D in static side-view) where instead of running, you stay in one place and fight endless waves of oncoming enemies.


I am very happy to hear your suggestions, and your related anecdotes.

Thank you!

[Raptor85]

1 or 4, and honestly the two of them at the core aren't that different. With unity (or any game engine really) built in structures, 4 really wouldn't take much work at all.  2 and 3 involve deeper game logic where 1 and 4 all "logic" is basically contained in the player and enemies and their health.

[oahda]

#4 for sure.

[Ordnas]

Easily the #4, you just follow one of the Unity tutorial about making an Endless Runner and you are done.

#1 is not difficult the graphics / controls/ logic, but the hundrends of players, you need to have a solid network infrastrutures to avoid strange behaviours between server and client. It is not easy managing more than a couple of players, and hundrends of players are vastly more difficult.

#2 UI driven it is relatively easy making the graphics, but you need some coding experience having some knowledge of patterns you are familiar to manage UI events, or you are going to write spaghetti-buggy code really fast after you are going to implement the 3rd sub-window.

#3 actually it should not be too difficult, but I think coding is a must, because no tutorial can give you all the possible cases you need to implement the rule of you game, in case you are not making a solitaire game. 

[ferreiradaselva]

easiest: #4
second easiest: #2

The other two require a lot of work, not just on GUI, but also on AI, which isn't quite easy for a beginner.

[sanwayzar]

Thank you for the advice, everyone!

In regards to the "Endless Brawler" idea (#4), how much more difficult (on the technical side, not the art asset and game design side) would it be to implement a fighting game with fight complexity like "Street Fighter IV", than to implement a beat'em up game with fight complexity like "Double Dragon" or "Final Fight"?

[pmprog]

If you're going down #4, might be worth checking out PainTown. It's a beat-em-up engine like Streets of Rage. Might be possible to implement your game in that?


http://paintown.org/#/