Hi, I have an open world game I’d like to start developing. I’ve written the story line for most of the game and have a good idea visually what it will look like and the gameplay. The closest example of an already made game is Red Dead Redemption. I have a couple questions. 1) can I build the entire world on UE4 first and once it’s complete then integrate the rest of the game i.e. Levels, side missions, characters etc? 2) to create an open world game similar to RDR will C++ be needed using UE4? 3) as at the moment it’s just myself in my wolf pack what kind of developers would I need to bring on board to make a game like RDR possible? Thanks in advance, as you can tell I’m new to this and any help would be much appreciated
So, this type of question comes up all the time, there’s a few things to consider
-What skills do you have? If you don’t have any relevant game development skills and experience then that makes it much more difficult to pretty much impossible.
-What resources do you have? RDR cost millions of dollars, took like 5 years and hundreds of people to make, do you have anything comparable?
-If you don’t have much to offer, then it’s difficult to get people to join the project, they will want to know that you are contributing as much as they are, and that you aren’t just the “idea guy”
-most projects where people are working for free fail, even ones that are much easier to make, if someone is not being paid to work on the project and the team is working remotely (everyone in different locations) then it’s really really difficult to keep people motivated and working.
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can I build the entire world on UE4 first and once it’s complete then integrate the rest of the game i.e. Levels, side missions, characters etc?
Yes, you can create/cultivate landscape, then you can add the other stuff later -
to create an open world game similar to RDR will C++ be needed using UE4?
With UE4, technically no, having C++ or ANY programming experience will be helpful. There are certain tricks in programming that just universal. -
as at the moment it’s just myself in my wolf pack what kind of developers would I need to bring on board to make a game like RDR possible?
You would need everyone!! Or you could make it by yourself, which would take a long time time.
And you would need voice actors.
First of all I recommend you start with the character, take the third person template, add the ability to shoot, to mount a horse, to cycle through weapons and access some kind of inventory, if you don’t know how to do it, there are plenty of tutorials on youtube.
Continue developing the character with all the necessary functionality like climbing, etc. until you have everything you need, for this process you can test everything on a small map, you can build a small town out of cubes and test everything there.
When you’re happy with how the character works you can start modeling the environment, or you can purchase some assets on the marketplace, this will be the most time consuming job if you model the assets yourself.
To answer your questions:
- you can start in whatever order you want, but it’s best to start from the character as it is the most important, if you model a huge world and then don’t have time/money to develop the character then you worked for nothing, while if you develop the character first you can start building your world, and if you get bored you can always stop at the world size you got to and make a smaller map.
- you can make a game like RDR completely in blueprints.
- Start by yourself, create a prototype, a map with placeholder items, when you have something you can show it to people and convince them to join you. You’ll mostly need artists at that point to make 3d models and textures.