Hi! 

So, I've recently thought of a nice twist to a hack and slash-type zombie game that I'd love to make (mostly so that no one can steal the idea I'm not gonna elaborate to much on the story, but that should be no issue to help me, I think).
But my problem here is that I have little to no knowledge of coding. I AM willing to learn, but I'd rather not have to develop 50 games before I've learned how to develop the game I actually wanna make. I'm just a hobbyist. I don't have that kind of endurance for this.

The game I'm looking to develop is basically just your typical Player having to fight their way through masses of zombies in a city towards a certain safe place, going from location (check-point) to location.
The only controls I really want for the player to have are:
-to interact with objects (like talk to people aka trigger a dialogue or cutscene, pick up objects like weapons, have commentary appear when interacting with something (like the player clicking on a corpse and triggering the player thinking "Please, don't attack me to. ... Thank you very much, Sir.". All of this could be established with simply triggering a cutscene though.),
-move with the arrow keys or ASWD,
-have a health bar (not necessarily displayed, I just want the player to actually be able to die if they get gnawed by too many zombies)
-and hack away at zombies coming towards the player. Just let out all your frustration by bashing in their faces, maybe have a satisfyingly-bloody animation when they die. 
-Hopefully have companion characters fight zombie hordes with you. (Although I could get creative and find excuses not to have the side-characters fight with you)
-No jumping required.
-Inventory would be nice but not necessary either. 
-Saving your current game progression manually would be great, but could be done with check-points, too.

Primary focus of the game would be just having fun hacking away at zombies and getting to know the characters, who I hope to make worth getting to know. 

I've been researching the internet for game engines for weeks now but I haven't really found one that seemed helpful to me, mostly because the reviews are full of vocabulary that as an absolute newbie I understand none of. So, whenever I read the cons for an engine in the review I understand very little of it.

Although an engine that requires absolutely no coding and still be able to perform all of this would be an absolute dream come true, I believe that's quite impossible to find. The only non-coding engines I've come across so far are absolute garbage due to limits, buggy, underdeveloped, or abandoned by their creators. I'm willing to learn coding, I'm not afraid of it as long as there are tutorials and templates out there, too. 

As I'm a hobbyist I'd rather not pay for an engine or to export my game. I'm most-likely not going to sell my game for money and if I do it won't be expensive at all no matter how much time I'd invest in it. 

Obviously the game would need to either be open source or let me publish and distribute the game freely.

The only game engine I've found so far that I believe I'd understand is Adventure Game Studio, but I haven't used it much yet, just watched a couple tutorials on youtube. But it's a point-and-click only engine as it seems so it won't be of much help for this type of game, unless I get really creative with my controls (I'll keep this engine in mind for other possible projects in the future, though).

I've tried Godot as well, which seems to be really hard to learn for a beginner of my level, especially as the coding language is completely unique to the engine from what I've read (and noticed myself).

I did come across Unity and UE (Unreal Engine) and from what I've read it seems that Unity is better, but, again, I understand very little of any reviews I've read. What's mostly scaring me away is that services that have Premium possibilities you pay for are usually really limited in a stupid way. But if this is not the case, hey, let me know!

Pixel-art-ish animation would work well, too, so an alternative to RPG Maker would be fine (or at the very least a cheap alternative where I don't have to pay monthly for).

The art for the game I can provide and create completely by myself if it's 2D. I'm an artist mostly and I have experience with making comics and digital drawings (fanart mostly hahaha) and I've gotten into animation which I'm fairly decent at (I'd be willing to learn 3D animation, though!).

So, that's about all the info I think might be of importance, but if there's anything more you need to know to help me, I'll answer as quick as I can!! And if you tell me I gotta give up on some of the features I want the game to have, I'd be willing to listen to suggestions. 

Thanks in advance to everyone who is willing to help me!

5 hours ago, callmevivi said:

Adventure Game Studio, but I haven't used it much yet, just watched a couple tutorials on youtube. But it's a point-and-click only engine as it seems so it won't be of much help for this type of game

Only small engines like RPG maker are stuck in one function. Adventure Game Studio can be used for your game, it is all just how you use the tools.

Edit: RPG Maker was designed to be like that. It intentionally blocks you from making other types of games.

5 hours ago, callmevivi said:

I did come across Unity and UE (Unreal Engine) and from what I've read it seems that Unity is better

Unity's 2D engine is better and it is easier to use.  Unreal rules in anything else.

5 hours ago, callmevivi said:

Although an engine that requires absolutely no coding and still be able to perform all of this would be an absolute dream come true, I believe that's quite impossible to find.

GameMaker is the only one that I know can make high quality games with no code from the developer, not free, the other ones are more than enough for what you need.

GameMaker has a trail and it supports code if you want to use code. It has a free trial that only limits what you can use when you want more it only costs $40 a year.(don't buy licenses you don't plan on using immediately.)

Your game has very low requirements so anyone would work, Adventure Game Studio is fine:

Have you seen Stencyl: http://www.stencyl.com/ ? Down side is it can only make flash games for free

PyGame: https://www.pygame.org/news ? All you need is to learn Python, one of the easiest languages in the world. Still going to take a long time to learn.

RenPy: https://www.renpy.org/ It is focused on visual novels but you can make other games with it. One really nice thing is no art constraints. Also uses Python. Easier than PyGame.

Learn Unity or Godot is a good choice if you don't plan on publishing anytime soon; they take a while to learn.

Any engine that supports 2D art should work for your game. Just stay away from Construct. It is a buggy engine and not worth the price they charge.

If you don't want to code just go the UE4 Blueprints route. They are just predefined nodes with inputs and outputs, and you connect them visually with lines to build your logic. You already have the neccesary nodes for this simple features you mentioned, and you don't need to code.

Neither Unity nor UE4 are better than each other, they have different scope most of the time.

If you knew any coding or were willing to learn, I would advise you to use Unity, however. Since it would be easier to learn/use C# or JavaScript instead of that "kind-of-C++-with-tons-of-awful-macros" monster UE4 is.

Besides that, as you have been told already, Game Maker is supposed to be super easy and 0 code. I can't tell since I have never used it.

Hope it helps.

Hey

Welcome to the circle of crazy people that call themselves game developers ;D

I think, if you can avoid the inventory, you found a pretty good idea to get started with. No need to do 50 more games beforehand. Anyway, it still sounds like a lot of work in terms of arts and animation. You might want to go through that again and decide what's really necessary.

Regarding UE or Unity, I agree with my previous speaker: None of those are particularly better than the respective other. They both have their pros and cons. And it might help to know about that. So here's a little excerpt:

Unreal performs much better while at the same time looks much better than Unity does. And thanks to a concept they call "blueprint", one can avoid most of the coding. Although there are pretty awesome demos available, third party assets are quite expensive - especially if you're a hobbyist.

Unity is much more flexible, engine-wise and is really easy for newcomers to get into. Assets are very affordable (many of them even free). That UE looks better does not mean, Unity wouldn't would be capable of doing the same things, technically - often times even easier to implement.

Both their business/payment models are fine, so you shouldn't have any problems, making your game on a free engine. Although, both engines support several languages, UE mainly uses c++ whereas Unity uses C#. In my opinion, C# is the easier and more beautiful one, but that might only be personal taste.

There's a new third options coming to the market, an engine called "Godot". It's free, easy-to-use, light-weight but still very capable. Might be worth a look as well.

I'd choose Unity, if I were you, because it's probably the easiest to get into making games with and because of all the free assets available. Still, if you plan to do games for a living one day, having experience with Unreal will oftentimes rank higher than having Unity experience.

Hope, this helps a bit

20 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Only small engines like RPG maker are stuck in one function. Adventure Game Studio can be used for your game, it is all just how you use the tools.

I've found very few tutorials on how to work with Adventure Game Studio so far, but the ones I've found are quite informative and easy to understand, the engine seems to be easy to figure out as well, so if you say it's possible, I'll look further into it then! Just need to figure out how to change the controls from point-and-click to keyboard... 

20 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

GameMaker is the only one that I know can make high quality games with no code from the developer, not free, the other ones are more than enough for what you need.

GameMaker has a trail and it supports code if you want to use code. It has a free trial that only limits what you can use when you want more it only costs $40 a year.(don't buy licenses you don't plan on using immediately.)

I'll keep GameMaker in mind then, too! As of right now I don't wanna spend money on this (I'm a poor uni student I have little time and money anyway haha) but $40 isn't a lot at all for an entire year anyway! Especially since it does allow code if I decide I want to! 

20 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Have you seen Stencyl: http://www.stencyl.com/ ? Down side is it can only make flash games for free

PyGame: https://www.pygame.org/news ? All you need is to learn Python, one of the easiest languages in the world. Still going to take a long time to learn.

RenPy: https://www.renpy.org/ It is focused on visual novels but you can make other games with it. One really nice thing is no art constraints. Also uses Python. Easier than PyGame.

I haven't yet heard of Stencyl at all! Do you have experience with it to recommend or dismiss it or have you just heard of it? 

I might look into PyGame one day as I did want to learn some coding and decide to try myself at Python. Here's to me admitting I studied Informatics for a semester and although I figured being an IT major isn't anything for me, the coding is the only thing that stuck and was fun and I didn't absolutely suck at. But learning coding languages, that's a dream for far-future-me. Same goes for learning Godot or Unity.

I actually have RenPy on my PC right now and I've played around with it a little bit because of a visual novel idea I had. The coding I used so far was mostly limited to giving different dialogue options with little consequence through if-clauses. Project is on pause for personal reasons, though, but yeah. 

15 hours ago, jjimenezg93 said:

If you don't want to code just go the UE4 Blueprints route. They are just predefined nodes with inputs and outputs, and you connect them visually with lines to build your logic. You already have the neccesary nodes for this simple features you mentioned, and you don't need to code.

I'm a tiny bit afraid of

15 hours ago, jjimenezg93 said:

that "kind-of-C++-with-tons-of-awful-macros" monster UE4 is.

but I'll keep UE4 in mind if I go the absolutely-no-coding route. Right now I think I'll stuck to AGS, and maybe GameMaker someday.

12 hours ago, ptietz said:

Hey

Welcome to the circle of crazy people that call themselves game developers ;D

Ahahahaha thanks, I'm very happy to be here! 

12 hours ago, ptietz said:

I'd choose Unity, if I were you, because it's probably the easiest to get into making games with and because of all the free assets available.

I think I'll stick to AGS for now, but I'll keep Unity in mind if I decide to really learn coding alongside making games. But yeah, I believe that's a thing for far-future-me.

Thanks so much to you guys for giving me so much advice and being so nice to a noob like me haha! It really really helped me a lot and gave me some clarity, too. As of right now I think I'll try AGS and try the GameMaker free trial to see for this particular game. 

10 hours ago, callmevivi said:

I haven't yet heard of Stencyl at all! Do you have experience with it to recommend or dismiss it or have you just heard of it? 

I have played with it Stencyl and Scratch. Scratch is the original, but mostly aims at kids so it was never refined. Stencyl aims to be a easy to use game creator and as such is more optimized and serious than Stencyl.

It is easy to learn and the snap system is a small visual scripting style; it isn't as extended as say Python but it is a good way to grasp variables etc.

Making your first game with Stencyl will allow you to fully grasp how flexible variables are, this will later benefit you when you move to a more complex programing language.

10 hours ago, callmevivi said:

I'll keep GameMaker in mind then, too! As of right now I don't wanna spend money on this

I fully understand, but that isn't a bad thing. I see too many new developers spending huge sums of money buying software that has no use to a new developer.

I am a hobby developer and learned using whatever free resources I could find. My own hobby pays for itself, as I made games using free resources and earned money to buy more resources.

16 hours ago, ptietz said:

And thanks to a concept they call "blueprint", one can avoid most of the coding. Although there are pretty awesome demos available, third party assets are quite expensive - especially if you're a hobbyist.

Please don't go around telling people that Unreal can be used without coding.

I use unreal and can tell you the Blueprints exceed by far what Python is. It is just a visual coding language. Unlike Stencyl's snap visual code, Unreal's blueprints requires a person to understand code principles and logic thinking.

I help new Unreal developers a lot and I often make them learn Python or JavaScript with it, so they can get a grasp of coding. I have a example of Unreals Blueprints VS Unity's C#:

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class TheUnityVersion : MonoBehaviour {

	int AddTwoNumbers(int NumberA, int NumberB){
		return NumberA + NumberB;
	}

	void PrintEveryChar(string InString){
		foreach (char Character in InString) {
			print (Character);
		}
	}


	// Use this for initialization
	void Start () {
		string TempString = AddTwoNumbers (100, 20).ToString();
		print (TempString);

		PrintEveryChar (TempString);
	}

}

A person who doesn't understand how the code part works, won't be able to use Blueprints either. Unreal's Blueprints is on a similar level as Unity's C#; above Python or JavaScript in complexity.

I would recommend to start with Game Maker because I saw it simpler than the others, not sure if you can slash zombies with Adventure Game Studio, it was done for Adventure Graphics games where you don't slash, just research and use objects in "turns" not "real-action". Please correct me if I am in mistake, I am not sure.

1 hour ago, retrometron said:

I would recommend to start with Game Maker because I saw it simpler than the others, not sure if you can slash zombies with Adventure Game Studio, it was done for Adventure Graphics games where you don't slash, just research and use objects in "turns" not "real-action". Please correct me if I am in mistake, I am not sure.

So, yesterday night I did some light research about AGS to see if anyone had ever either made a published RPG game with it or at least attempted and somehow mentioned it on the internets (haha) and what I found is that there have been apparently a lot of people doing that around 2009 to 2013, or at least that's the dates of the forum entries and the (unfortunately so far faulty or incomplete) tutorials I found. BUT at least that means people HAVE attempted and successfully done combat games with it. I also saw a module to make it possible to use keyboard controls instead of the point-and-click mechanic (although I don't know how to implement modules atm and hope to figure it out when it comes down to it). Then again, in retrospect I might be willing to even just use point-and-click controls. Like, clicking on zombies to attack them, for example. 

So, TL;DR it's possible to make an RPG-like game with AGS. Just, you gotta get into the coding a little and maybe get a little creative (but I expected that, hahaha)