Hi, everyone I am a noobie on the game dev scene. Im looking for some help / advise. I have been making websites for years (php & mysql), however game development has always interested me. I am completely new to the community I have no friends or people that can help me along my game making path. Me and my wife are raising 5 kids and I have never meet anyone who is geeky like me maybe due to my geographical location (SE London). I dont usually join forums or anything like this I just thought I would give it a go and see if I can make some new friends.

Hello, Wayne and welcome to the GameDev community.

Games development can seem easy at first, but so many issues creep in and if expectations are not kept in check, they can overwhelm one.  Being the proud father of five is quite an undertaking in itself, so adding games development on top of that is going to be quite the challenge!  With that in mind, start small and look at simple games such as Space Invaders or Tetris, and depending on what language or engine you go with, I recommend giving yourself about three months.  Its not so much the game but getting to grips with the development environments, sdks and of course the graphics and sound software to go with it.

As for meeting fellow "geeks", theres a site called "Meetup" and for the London area there appears to be plenty of groups to join.

Cheers.

Steve.

Thanks for the reply, I completely agree it is easy to get carried away with grand ideas of big games etc. I did make a game once a couple of years ago for the play store using flash/action script with adobe air. I have been watching alot of tutorials on unity and am able to follow along without any problems, C# seems to feel pretty natural which is always a good thing.

I have a simple idea for my 1st game but I must admit the game mechanics are giving me a hard time. I am trying to program 2 circles that are connected var spring or hinge joint and the 1st circle will pull the secound circle, however I am getting mixed results with none of them what I wanted -_-'. The game is meant to be simple but there is no tutorials I have found that I can use to help.

You can also join the GameDev.net Challenge group.  Lots of people on this forum can help you out.

If you've done a lot of PHP then getting into another language for game programming wont be too hard as you have a programming foundation already established. If you want to remain programming then look into something like C# and Unity, otherwise you can try Game Maker Studio 2 with GML as an option for scripting.

There are countless languages and tools to create games with.

If you need more resources let me know and I'll link relevant content.

Thanks, I will join the group I have also just posted my 1st question on this forum regarding the issues I'm having trying to make my game idea in unity. I'm sure I will get there, in the end, it's just a matter of me getting a couple games under my belt

After a lot of research, I have decided unity and C# are the way forward I had a look in unreal and really like the editor, however, it seems a bit overkill for simple mobile games I'm trying to make.

With a previous game under your Belt, Wayne,  I think you'll do just fine.  Speaking of Unity and C#, I've just started learning it myself and I think you have chosen wisely there.  C# is quite the professional language these days and Unity certainly puts the fun back into making games.

It sounds like you are trying to do a parent-child relationship( no pun intended! ) with the two circles.  Is it just a case of when moving the first( parent? ) circle that the second( child? ) circle moves exactly with it - like an offset - or kinda "catches up" with it in a more graceful manner?  Oh, and are these two circles represented in a 2D plane or a full 3D space?

Thanks, Steve my 1st game wasn't amazing, however, I feel like I have learnt a lot since making it. Problems I found is making it in flash and porting it to the apple/android store was not a good place to start. I wanted to make a very simple game mechanic where the goal was you just have to keep your finger on the devil while it moves and shows animation to distract the player to remove their finger, IE clips of spiders falling, clowns and fake incoming calls pretty much anything to make the player let go of the devil. I want to keep the theme but make it more interesting by having 2 circles where the devil drags your soul constantly to the right with random up and down pulling force and the distance gets longer over time and the camera zooms out. The player will be able to drag the soul circle up and down to collect things to shorten the distance and I would like to have enemies spawn and fly in from the right to try and break the chain.

I am trying to do it in a 3d world as I think I might have more options this way with a fixed side view camera following the soul and devil circle.

Here are some pictures of my 1st game.

It sounds like a reasonable project, Wayne. Definitely go with Unity as it will do a lot of the donkey work for you - even the 3D stuff, and you'll be able to make proper android/ios games.

Are you comfortable with 3D apps such as Maya or Blender?

I have played around in Maya and Blender I feel relatively confident I should be able to make the assets I need for the game (fingers crossed) to be honest I do feel like I am hitting walls early on, I'm just hoping that will change after I get the hang of using unity.

Wayne, It seems you have all the core skill you need and so long as your models are clean and tidy then you shouldn't have a problem.