Hello there, do you want to know how to make video games? Well, the answer is remarkably straightforward. There are many books on the subject that you can read that truly go in-depth with the finer points of programming, but what we’re discussing here today is a basic overview of just how to make video games. Yes, we’ve come a looooong way from the days of a joysticks, Tiger Handheld games and floppy drives. With the basic knowledge of what you need to do (and in some cases, what to learn to make it happen), you could be well on your way to developing the next Halo or the next Katamari Damacy.
Now, the first step in designing fun games is finding a concept. I mean, Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t just pull Super Mario Bros out of the sky. This can either start with a story you had in mind, or a type of gameplay you want to experience. What will your game be about and how will it play? What’s your hook—meaning, how do you intend to get the player into the gamezone and involved in the game? What kind of gameplay do you want to have, 2d, which is easier to program, or 3d, which is more complex? A big question is what system will you design the game for—or, more simply, what system will it be played on? Will you design it for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows ME, Microsoft Xbox, Xbox 360, Sony Playstation, Playstation 2 (PS2), Playstation 3 (PS3), NES, Super Nintendo (SNES), Nintendo 64, DS, DS Lite, PSP, Gamecube, Gameboy, Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo Wii, Mac OS, or even an emulator of any of those game consoles? A key consideration is just figuring out whether to go 2d or 3d. 2d is simpler and offers far fewer headaches, but with the advances being made all the time in 3d engines, creating a game in 3d is nowhere near as hard as it once was.
Also, here are some things to think about– What genre will the game’s gameplay fit into? Will it be single player or multiplayer? Will it be completely original or based on a movie, series of movies or even sports? What will be the story or plot be? What about an introduction? What will your character, characters, or sometimes non-character do? What about graphics—will you stick with life like, or maybe cartoon? What sort of interface do you want? What about general sound? You may have to decide whether there is going to be a cursor or an onscreen character performing the action. There are so many different avenues you can go down, and we’ll be going many of these and outlining just a few of the challenges that creating that type of game presents.
Now, let’s start with the RPG (no, not rocket-propelled grenade launcher), or role-playing game which is often very heavily story based, and usually involves taking a character (or team of characters, usually called a ‘party’) around a map, collecting items and defeating enemies and bosses. While not very difficult to develop, RPGs tend to be time consuming, as you need to think up what actions the character must do to progress in the game. Some examples of popular RPG games are Kingdom Hearts, The Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy VII, Grandia II, Secret of Mana, Warcraft III, Diablo, and Pokemon. These are nearly always really 2d, because the map is actually flat and while the characters themselves might be rendered in 3d, they are standing on top of the map, where the player, from the perspective of some observer in the sky, guides their actions and travel. Recently the advent of the online RPG has made the console and RPG into a multi-player experience, allowing players to form parties with their friends and adventure together.
Then, there’s the genre that once dominated video games: Platformers. These games are simple, usually nonsensical adventure games like Super Magnetic Neo, Super Mario Bros, Mario 64, Megaman (in all of his iterations) Banjo Kazooie and Yoshi’s story. The mechanics of a platformer are pretty simple—let’s take the case of the most popular platformer ever, Super Mario Brothers. The player starts out as Mario (or Luigi) at the left hand end of the level, and must travel to the far right edge of the level, jump on a flag (meaning reach a goal), and then move through subsequent levels to reach the boss of that stage. Mario’s ultimate quest is to save Princess Peach and Toad from Bowser’s evil clutches, but along the way he is thwarted by many different types of enemies like the goomba, thwomp, koopa troopa, piranha plant, Wario, Waluigi, boo, boo buddy, and lakitu. Platformers used to be primarily side-scrolling, but in the mid 90s, they have become 3d to allow you to more fully explore the environments the character travels through. The Mario games also took advantage of each new development in game technology and went to on release subsequent games like Super Mario World, Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Yoshi’s Island DS, Mario Kart Double Dash, Mario Sunshine, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Luigi’s Mansion.
Moving on, a once popular genre that seems to be on the decline is the puzzle game. Puzzle games are among the easiest to program because it consists of if-then statements, for instance if the player moves three red pieces together, then those pieces disappear, or in the case of Tetris, if the player puts together clusters of blocks to make a complete line of blocks, that line disappears . The player has to think of what to do, and some of the burden is taken off of you there. However, you might have other problems figuring out how to keep the player challenged and engaged for more than a few minutes at a time. This is a double-edged sword because puzzle games are usually what’s called “pick up and play” games, meaning you can just pick one up and play it for five minutes because you’re bored. The nice thing is that puzzle games usually require relatively little work, as there’s not usually a story or heavy involvement. However, there have been a few exceptions to this rule where games like Ico bringing the puzzle game into new territory. Famous puzzle games are the ubiquitous Tetris, Puyo Pop, Bubble Bobble, Sudoku, Memory and many others in the same vein. Also, as long as were on the subject of simpler games, let’s not forget to mention famous arcade games such as Pacman, Digdug, and Galaga (developed by Namco), Pong (developed by Atari) which is a sports simulator game simulating table tennis, and Frogger and SuperCobra (made by Konami). Despite the relative simplicity of Pacman, no one has ever been able to beat level 256 because of a glitch in the game where the left side of the screen becomes a jumble of letters and symbols that keep the player from being able to eat up all the dots and fruits on the map. Therefore, when coding a game, it is important to remember to double and triple check your code and beta-test for glitches.
Another genre of game similar in simplicity to the Puzzle game is the genre of Card Games, Board Games and other casino table games. These are generally pretty easy to develop because graphically, they are not very needy. You don’t need 10,000 polygons to render the Ace of Spades, if you know what I mean. They are easy to develop because the rules of the game are already set, so there’s not much else to do there besides graphics. There’s only one way to play Texas Hold ‘Em poker or play Chess or Checkers.
The most common type of game today is what’s called a first-person shooter. This is where games like DOOM, Castle Wolfenstein, Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Halo I, Halo 2 and Halo 3 and Unreal come in. This genre also usually features a mega-hero character like the Master Chief or Gordon Freeman, or an antihero like Duke Nukem or Wolverine. First person shooters put the player squarely in the shoes of the characters they are playing as, since everything that is done (shooting bad guys and opening doors etc) is done from the character’s perspective. In the case of Halo 3, developed by Bungie, the Master Chief and the UNSC Marines team up with the Arbiter and the Elites and their grunts to fight the Brutes and the Gravemind. Aided by the A.I. construct, Cortana, the Master Chief combats the opposing force of the Brutes in space, and the Flood as they show up on planet Earth. As the Master Chief we use such items as rocket launchers, sniper rifles, missile launchers, pistols, assault rifles, grenades, and enemy plasma swords! Conveniently for the Chief, he always finds extra ammunition supplies right when he needs them because the discarded weapons of fallen enemies and teammates are useable by the player and can be switched out with one of your two weapons. Then there are the pelican drop-ships which drop tanks for missions that require heavy artillery. Then there’s the third-person shooter, a rather new sub-genre of shooters including games like Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Red Faction, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, and Army of Two. In this game, the player is “watching” the character kill the baddies and do not directly experience things from the character’s point of view. These shooter games, whether first or 3rd person, are almost always 3d—they were 3d before 3d really was “3d” and the player really had 3 dimensions of movement. The gameplay is usually self explanatory—shoot bad guys along the completion of a storyline, while trying not to get shot yourself. Where this gets complicated is when one wants to start animating complex things like the physics of how blood and gore of a bad guy splatter on the wall when you shoot him in the face with a shotgun. Graphic and morbid, yes, but the fact that a game can include it is an achievement in and of itself. Creating a first or third person shooter is remarkably easy these days. There are many excellent pre-existing engines out there on which you can develop a game—the Unreal and Half Life 2 video games engines specifically come to mind—and so your work is in figuring out a story, weapons (and how those weapons work), characters, bad guys and health setup (regenerating or not? How many hits will it take the player to die?). For that matter, what will happen when the player dies? Is it Game Over and the player must start from the beginning? Or…perhaps, a statement of fact, a-la-Resident Evil saying “You died.”
As we continue discussing how to make video games and discuss genres of games and what it takes to create them, now we’re going to discuss simulators! Simulators can be a number of things: Golf Simulators, Flight Simulators, Pet Simulators (ie. Nintendogs Labrador Retriever Friends), Racing Simulators, Restaurant Simulators—the list goes on and on, and most of them will require a different engine than the other. Let’s start with racing simulators. Racing simulators are better than ever, with great racing games like rFactor, Gran Turismo 3, 4 and 5 (which will hopefully show up someday), Richard Burns Rally, Colin McRae Rally, Forza Motorsport 1, Forza Motorsport 2 and Forza Motorsport 3. In fact, physics are better than they’ve ever been. Engineering a realistic racing simulator is quite a difficult thing to do because it requires programming the physics of how a car will handle, and everything, from the amount of grip the tires will exert on the pavement before losing traction to the geometry of the suspension and the slightest rise or fall in elevation comes into play—and then there’s the whole aspect of modification, meaning a whole new set of physics has to be put into play. While actually modeling the cars and the tracks is not that hard, it’s the engine that really makes the game work and feel like driving a car. Yep, we’ve come a long way from the days of Pole Position. Then there’s the challenge of making it look good, and the physics of how the light strikes the car, where the sun is in the sky, making sure the car always looks like it’s perfectly waxed and shiny—all of that factors into making a good looking racing simulator, and typically with a racing simulator, players will want to race against each other (not just the AI drivers) and so you have to make two games running on two separate consoles talk to each other.
Sports Simulator video games are particularly popular and cover virtually every sport, from the extreme to the traditional in a variety of formats for just about every player. New unique sports are being invented all the time, so developing the next great title isn’t that big of a shot in the dark here (it is this author’s opinion that there should be more Surfing games). There are the blockbuster franchises like Madden Football and FIFA 08’ World Cup Soccer, to the more juvenile Super Mario Hoops 3 on 3. However, just because you want to develop a sports title doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to sell games. Often it is Seasonal Sports games (ones dated to the Season, ie. Madden 07’, NHL Hockey 08’ and so on) are often the most heavily discounted because once the season is past, they lose some of their perceived value.
Flight sims can vary radically in what you’re flying and where you’re flying it and the circumstances in which you’re flying. Are you flying for fun, or are you flying because you’re out to shoot something down? These range from Microsoft Flight Simulator for fun to combat sims like Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. and Ace Combat 6. These are realistic flight sims, flying real world aircraft over real-world locations, compared to flights of fancy like Star Wars Rebel Assault, Wing Commander and X-Wing, which put you in the cockpit of a starfighter engaged in a galactic war over some distant planet.
Then there are the really off the wall simulators. Things like Nintendogs, SimCity, SimAnt, The Sims, Phoenix Wright: Attorney at Law, Trauma Center and Harvest Moon. There is a simulator for just about every imaginable scenario or thing—even dating.
Then there’s educational games. These are unique games intended to teach you about something, but many of them end up being our sentimental favorites anyways, like The Oregon Trail, which has been rehashed over and over as computer technology develops, first as a crummy black and white game on the commodore 64 to a much prettier color version for Macintosh, to today’s version, which still teaches the same lesson, but does it in 3d. New endeavors into the educational genre (nearly all of which are for the pocket-sized Nintendo DS) include Brain Age, My French Coach, My Japanese Coach, Mind Quiz: Your Brain Coach, Gourmet Chef, Quick Yoga Training and many other titles.
Recently there’s been a big surge in music-based games. Games like Dance Dance Revolution, Taiko Drummer, Guitar Hero, Osu, Elite Beat Agents, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, and Samba de Amigo just to name a few. These games almost always involve the development of some peripheral device so that they player can move with the music—because hey, it feels good! The problem there is developing that device. But hey, if games like Audiosurf can be successful– so can you!
Well, there you have it…just some of the basics of what you need to know on how to make video games. Start with the basics of your idea and soon you’ll be playing away. Remember kids, believe in you dreams, follow your heart and the sky is the limit!