Newbie posts

From Gamedev.org wiki

Why am I here? Why are you all wearing hoods and trying to sacrifice me to the crops?

If you're here, it's mostly likely because you made a stupid or ridiculous post and a gamedev.org member sent you here. You may not know why your post is stupid or ridiculous, but the people of gamedev.org are generally quite clever so you can be sure they're correct in their judgement. If you find yourself getting angry and don't want to read further, the chances are you either have a problem with honesty or you are Unskilled and Unaware Of It (http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf). No malice is intended, this page is simply to stop us typing the same thing more times than is necessary.

I have a great idea for a game, everyone join my team!!one

Example 1 (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?board=10%3baction=display%3bthreadid=3495), 2 (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?board=5%3baction=display%3bthreadid=3492). The simple fact is that starting a team shouldn't be your first resort. You should be able to build at least something on your own to show off to attract more people, even if it takes you a long time. An "elevator concept" is very easy to pull off; implementation is horrendously difficult.

And for the love of God, before you try to recruit users, at least participate in the forum first. Nothing is more irritating than having a one-post-wonder declaring himself to be the king of all game development and looking for plebs out of the forum to help out. Ideally, you should be well known as being a relatively clueful (or at least capable of asking smart questions (http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)) member, who knows other members well and can speak to their strengths. Leadership is more than just making arbitrary decisions.

But my game is a MMORPG, it's better than all the other MMORPGs

Example 1 (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?topic=2021.0),2 (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?board=16%3baction=display%3bthreadid=3119),3 (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?board=16%3baction=display%3bthreadid=3512). Yes, MMORPGs are very popular, but the fact that you think you can make one with a small team suggests that you don't know a lot about them. This is the single most complicated (and expensive) genre to develop. Trust us when we say "they're really hard", because they are. Try making Tetris or Breakout, work your way up from there. Starting on a MMORPG with little or no programming experience isn't diving in at the deep end, it's diving onto the concrete at the end of the pool. Face first. From the high board. With 200lbs of semtex attached to your left testicle and a tiny bollock-sized thermo-nuclear device attached to right. Some specific bits of advice:

1. Don't start on MMO. Try to think about how hard it could possibly be for a new programmer to write all the things required for this genre of game. Not just game logic and rendering routines. But AI, audio and more importantly networking (hell, this ones a field all on its own). Reading the first two chapters or "C++ in 24 minutes" will not be enough. The big guys have tens or hundreds of man-years of developing experience between them, how many do you have? So start simple, get a few things going. Make a few clever, but small, puzzle games.
2. Don't look for team members yet. Nobody wants to work with somebody as inexperianced as you, its not personal, its just common sense. An please, trust us on this, anybody that does want to work with somebody so inexperienced is not worth working with - so you don't want to work with them. They will be useless to you.
3. Playing MMO's does not give you experience in created and/or designing MMO's. Ever. This is true of every genre. Knowing programming, and while we're at it content creation, is where you gain the experience of design.
4. You're not doing it off your home Wintendo. Developing a MMORPG is brutally expensive, and you're unlikely to get people to sign on to pay unless you have something to make your game loads better than the free stuff and vastly different from the pay stuff.
5. You need to be able to set aside a very large amount of time to even get anything off the ground. MMORPGs are no small commitment. The big game companies have many people working almost around the clock just to stay on top of the market. You will not be able to develop or maintain an MMORPG after school or over the weekends, you'll need to make this your top priority (which pretty much rules out the possibility of schoolkids doing it).

There are plenty of other reasons not touched upon here, but suffice to say you really shouldn't start off with a MMORPG as your first project. Learn to program, make some smaller games first.

But some other guys wrote an MMO!

Granted, there are some exceptionally talented independent teams out there. They're usually stocked with one or more talented programmers who have been working at the software for a long period of time, fixing bugs and getting full use out of their several years of experience.

If you start with an MMORPG, you're already starting without any kind of experience. And it's unlikely you'll gain that experience while trying to mess with the higher level concepts in an online game. The only thing that will give you that experience is building your way up from simpler, uglier games all the way to more complicated projects. If you're not willing to do that, it's pretty unlikely you'll have the dedication to finish an online RPG either.

What do other people have to say about MMO creation?

• MMORPG Anatomy, our series of articles on the innermost technology and design of an MMORPG.
• Game Producer article (http://www.gameproducer.net/2007/01/23/ask-game-producer-how-to-make-my-first-mmorpg/) on MMORPG production for newbies.
• Roboguy's MMORPG article (http://roboguy.net/mmorpg.php)

It's too hard to program

Waaah. Game development is one of the most complex activities humanity has ever developed. You must artfully blend dozens of different disciplines into a complex whole, make sure it works, and keep it maintained so people don't complain about your game too much.

If you're not committed enough to your idea to actually go through with making it, yourself if need be, your idea is worthless. You're not going to be able to recruit professional workers with your poorly-spelled post and trite, cliched story alone. You won't do it with pretending to be a company, either.

You'll do it with a demo.

But I have to know programming to make a demo!

Not necessarily -- some excellent prototyping can be done with Game Maker, at least far enough to demonstrate to a potential programmer that you know what you are talking about. Even if you throw it out afterwards, you've now recruited someone who knows what they're doing, and, more importantly, they know you are committed.

So I can use a game maker to make my game?

Example (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=40a17033f8a69e00b9d2e52508559ea0&topic=3745.new). Well, no. Sort of. But mostly no. Game makers tend to be very limited in what they can actually produce, though generally they can do simple 2D RPGs. We get requests for all sorts; flight sim game makers, skateboarding game makers, MMORPG makers, the lot. Basically, if you can't find what you're after via google, it most likely doesn't exist. Have a look at the game makers page for a quick rundown.

Now that the positive stuff is out of the way (yes, that was positive), let's cover the negative. Game makers will most likely be of very low quality if they are free. It takes an enormous amount of effort to create a game maker, much more than creating a game. Hence, anything of much value will have a price tag. The type of game you can create will be quite rigidly defined by the maker you use - don't expect to do anything out of the ordinary. Your editing of the game will most likely only extend to changing the graphics, maps, items and characters from some broad template. That revolutionary new battle system you want to implement (where people move and fight at the same time!) will be nigh on impossible to create. If you want to have something truly different you'll probably need to program the whole thing yourself, though you should consider the use of appropriate libraries to help you out.

How do I make console games?

Example (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?topic=3774.0). Generally, console games are made with the permission and tools of the console developer. This can involve many thousands of dollars, annoying business meetings, and hu-man interaction, which is no fun!

• Sony requires at least one published game, secure and solid office premises, as well as a significant amount of business infrastructure and/or funding. Then you get to pay out the nose for the actual development hardware and software.
• Microsoft requires the same things as Sony, but they're generally more lenient if you have a published game beforehand, and now run the Xbox Live Arcade system, which has potential (however, larger budgets are moving in).
• Nintendo... well, nobody really knows how to get a Nintendo development kit. I suspect it involves grave personal sacrifice.

Are there homebrew development kits? You bet! But...

• They are missing features (OpenXDK only allows you to use C, there is no dynamic memory allocation, hardware accelerated graphics or networking).
• They are difficult to use for new users.
• They involve complex, bare-metal programming which is often obscured by more mature APIs on the PC. Console development is intensive and is definitely not for newbie developers.
• Oftentimes, it's difficult to distribute your finished game. Most console developers these days have extensive copy protection, and subverting that protection means violating a federal law (DMCA) in the United States.

Learn to program on the PC first! You'll find it has a much nicer community.

How's about some general tips for posting?

Okay, here goes:

• Post in the correct section of the forum. Generally if a mod has to move your post, he's not going to bother to help.
• Provide useful information about your game, people will not be interested otherwise. Some helpful sub-tips:
  • A storyline and some concept renders in a pirated copy of Max are not enough to make people care.
  • Nor is talking about your ideas.
  • People want to see that you are dedicated and responsible before they sign their lives over to work with you on a project. Find some evidence of this; if you can't find any, you probably shouldn't be asking for people to join you right now.
• Putting numbers in your nickname is a sure way to make people not care about what you have to say.
• Correct capitalization and grammar go a long way to making people care about what you have to say. Talent and grammar nazism often go hand in hand.
• Have a sense of humour. One of the first ways experienced programmers detect lamers is by their lack of humour. If you can't poke fun at yourself and take a joke, then you probably won't be able to keep your sanity when the limitations of technology crop up.

This is a good example of a post for recruiting team members: Help Wanted: Gangster FPS (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?board=5%3baction=display%3bthreadid=3453). Take note of the good grammar and spelling, excellent evidence of work underway, and plenty of information about the project.

Lastly, posting nonsense (such as this thread (http://www.gamedev.org/forum/index.php?board=12%3baction=display%3bthreadid=3427))is a sure fire way to put people off. Read through your post before you click 'submit', if you can't make sense of it then don't even bother.

Will you come work for me?

No. I'm a dynamically served webpage.