Hello Gamedev Community.

My name is Arthur. I'm about to turn 21 and will spend my first year into a Dev. specialized school.

I found the website searching for answers and advices about any "project path" or "professionnal path".

Forgive my poor English, I'm French and trying to upgrade my English level.

So here we are. I started working on a humble project a year ago. My first goal was to understand how the Game Industry worked and why it works this way. I succed in a way and as you can guess I was very disapointed because I though things would be easier.

Anyway, without any technical bagages, i started working with a pencil and a book, writing down any ideas i had about my project. Well after a few dozen pages and a hand burning, I switched to PC and re-started writing.

As days passed, I realized that dozen of pages became a hundred and it makes me feel great...But then what should I do with it?

I now have around 600 pages descipting my project, some very fines aspects of it and some larger ones. They are all organized by sections like a program would be I guess. I was actualy able to play it as a "paper role play", using my bible as a guide and rules. I know it's a little sutpid idea but it worked and was funny.

I'm now about to start some Game Dev. studies and feel quit alone with this bible in my hands, the result of a year of daily hard work, explaining how nearly every little thing must work, etc...

Is this a "good" start? I mean, is my work going to be useful if i want to make this project?

So this is the main question here: What should I do now, how should I do it and most of all, when should I do it?

I'm really serious about this and choosed this forum because i though it was the perfect one to ask you this questions.

I'm waiting for your answers as I thank you for the time you spend reading this post. I will be very pleased to tell you some more but I would like to have thoses answers first.

Thank a lot, GameDev Community!

Hello Arthur and welcome!

First I'd like to say your work will be useful when and if you chose to make this project, though I would suggest to be flexible with the design as it may be difficult to implement all of the features when the time comes.

Now to address the question of what to do now. My suggestion would be to learn all you can about development and to find your path in the development cycle. Are you an artist with code or with polygons? Do you feel more comfortable writing back stories and plots for the game and its cast of characters or do you like planning out the different ways the players can solve problems and what they can do? Answering these questions will come with experience that you can gain from creating smaller, very simple game projects. You will (hopefully) create some of these projects in your education.

Your approach of playing your game with pen and paper is a great idea that has been used by many successful game developers to get an idea of if their game is even worth pursuing. I think it's very intuitive and brave of you to take that step and taking the chance that your game might not be fun even after investing so much time in its design. But, you should look at your design bible and be willing to cut content if it doesn't fit the game.

Finally, don't try to tackle your 600+ page design document until you know what you're doing. It will take some time for you to gather the skills needed to create your game even with help. If you fail with your dream game, it becomes harder to revisit and see what is wrong. You might lose faith in your abilities and abandon the game all together. If you fail with a simple game, its easier to analyze what went wrong and where. You will have more knowledge and know what needs to be done to remedy those mistakes if they happen again.

Best of luck to you and feel free to ask for more feed back in the forums.

We're a very helpful community here. A tad blunt in our responses at times, but we're all here to help one another.

Also don't stop designing. Like anything it is a skill that becomes better with practice, knowledge and experience.

Thanks for answering.

To go futher, i'll answer that I'm really interested in all the aspect of the game creation. As you said, The idea is not to start with a fully complicated game but a light version of it.

I would like to find the best way to start my coding education but don't know what to choose from. I can use html, css, php and java but i'm not sure it's appropriate, right? Should I start learning C langage or something else?

To go futher, i'll answer that I'm really interested in all the aspect of the game creation. As you said, The idea is not to start with a fully complicated game but a light version of it.

I would like to find the best way to start my coding education but don't know what to choose from. I can use html, css, php and java but i'm not sure it's appropriate, right? Should I start learning C langage or something else?

I would look through the threads in the For Beginners forum as this question gets asked quite often in there. You should find appropriate advice in there as to what languages may suit your needs best.

To go futher, i'll answer that I'm really interested in all the aspect of the game creation. As you said, The idea is not to start with a fully complicated game but a light version of it.

I would like to find the best way to start my coding education but don't know what to choose from. I can use html, css, php and java but i'm not sure it's appropriate, right? Should I start learning C langage or something else?

I would look through the threads in the For Beginners forum as this question gets asked quite often in there. You should find appropriate advice in there as to what languages may suit your needs best.

Thank you a lot for your advices. I start reading it right away.

Dave is correct when he says that it is not wise to begin implementation of your dream project while you are still becoming familiar with your tools. However, I do believe that it may be possible to make some useful progress on your idea while you are still learning your language or toolkit of choice.

The usual advice to aspiring game programmers is to begin by learning the basics of your chosen language, along with general programming concepts. You can use books, school courses or online tutorials. Typically this involves creating simple text-based programs as you familiarize. You might then progress to manipulating simple 2D graphics. Learners are often encouraged to try and recreate classic games like Pong, Tetris, Bomberman or Pacman.

Perhaps at this point in the learning process you have an opportunity to dip into your dream design... Does your design involve any simple mini-games (e.g. lockpicking or crafting)? Do you have an idea for an interesting NPC conversation system? Maybe a character/item stat system? These are all elements of a game design which could potentially be isolated and experimented with in a series of learner projects:

• A mini-game could be implemented as a standalone game with simple 2D graphics
• You could hand-craft some dialogue for a particular encounter in your story, and create a simple graphical system to play back the text and allow the player to choose dialogue options
• You could create a stat calculator which allows the user to enter initial character stats, select combinations of equipment from a list you have created and view the effective stats of the player

The idea is not to actually begin work on the final code for your game at this stage, as you will no doubt feel the urge to re-write it once you have a bit more experience. Instead you can experiment with (and perhaps refine) individual systems in your design as you learn the technical skills. I would encourage this approach because:

• Projects like the examples given above are at about the right difficulty level for a programmer who has reached the stage where they can create a basic clone of Pong or Bomberman
• Taking small steps to realizing your dream can be motivating, and learning programmers are often anxious to "get to the good stuff"
• Creating simple mockups of isolated parts of your grand design can still expose flaws and provide inspiration. If a mini-game is not fun on its own, it probably doesn't belong in the larger game!
• Working on different systems like this is good experience which you might not obtain solely from cloning classic arcade games

Dave is correct when he says that it is not wise to begin implementation of your dream project while you are still becoming familiar with your tools. However, I do believe that it may be possible to make some useful progress on your idea while you are still learning your language or toolkit of choice.

The usual advice to aspiring game programmers is to begin by learning the basics of your chosen language, along with general programming concepts. You can use books, school courses or online tutorials. Typically this involves creating simple text-based programs as you familiarize. You might then progress to manipulating simple 2D graphics. Learners are often encouraged to try and recreate classic games like Pong, Tetris, Bomberman or Pacman.

Perhaps at this point in the learning process you have an opportunity to dip into your dream design... Does your design involve any simple mini-games (e.g. lockpicking or crafting)? Do you have an idea for an interesting NPC conversation system? Maybe a character/item stat system? These are all elements of a game design which could potentially be isolated and experimented with in a series of learner projects:

• A mini-game could be implemented as a standalone game with simple 2D graphics
• You could hand-craft some dialogue for a particular encounter in your story, and create a simple graphical system to play back the text and allow the player to choose dialogue options
• You could create a stat calculator which allows the user to enter initial character stats, select combinations of equipment from a list you have created and view the effective stats of the player

The idea is not to actually begin work on the final code for your game at this stage, as you will no doubt feel the urge to re-write it once you have a bit more experience. Instead you can experiment with (and perhaps refine) individual systems in your design as you learn the technical skills. I would encourage this approach because:

• Projects like the examples given above are at about the right difficulty level for a programmer who has reached the stage where they can create a basic clone of Pong or Bomberman
• Taking small steps to realizing your dream can be motivating, and learning programmers are often anxious to "get to the good stuff"
• Creating simple mockups of isolated parts of your grand design can still expose flaws and provide inspiration. If a mini-game is not fun on its own, it probably doesn't belong in the larger game!
• Working on different systems like this is good experience which you might not obtain solely from cloning classic arcade games

Thanks for all these advices, I find myself very Lucky to get all of your experience.

I don't want to go too quick because I think it's not the right way to acheave your goal. However, I can't forget all my work and will think about making mini-games as you said, starting with learning the langage and code some "simple" game.

But I'm really thankful for all you said, it helped me a lot and as I'm reading the beginer forum I'm starting to see what would be the best choice for me.

I will be posting in the right section of the forum what my project is when I'll know the basics of a few things, I wish in a few weeks.