So I have this idea...

[anonymous_user_702aaa58]

@jordylakiere;518916

I will go with the honest answer and say: no, don’t. This will never work.

You have no idea what you’re getting into, and even if you were incredibly skilled, your idea isn’t even really original enough to justify working on it for a very *very *long time, full time. (which is what it would take)

I am aware this will seem like an attack to you, but it’s not. Start by making something like pacman successfully and you’ll have a whole new perspective.

I do not feel like this is an attack at all. I value your comment, one thing I seem to be picking up on is lots of people want to see original developments. I might re-work my idea in this case. Once again, I’m an individual which prefers straight up honesty answers.
Thank you.

@;518984

I agree that you should start with smaller projects; however I really do think you’re going to be changing so much of Ark if you were to mod it, that you’d need to learn the full Unreal Engine anyway.

The idea is getting tired, you’re going to have to really deliver on it or you’ll be frustrated with the reception. That being said, it will likely take you long enough to make that by the time it’s done we might be done with survival games, so the market might not be as flooded. Right now, I’m sure there are quite a few who are just tired of seeing survival this, survival that :P.

I want to develop my idea. It doesn’t really have to be in the form of which I’ve written it thus far. I just want to produce a city survival game where the player plays in first person and can roam around.
I will definitely be starting small. I’ll be making a map in 3DSMAX (at the moment, unless I learn of easier tools). Then I’ll work with the unreal engine to work on learning map design elements. then moving onto lighting, ambience noises, world triggers. Before even thinking about content.

@IcemanX;518993

Hey Elthirlwell, Welcome to the forums! Thought I’d loan my two cents, having actually completed a game on my own from scratch, solo in the past. I learned alot from it and I can offer my insight:

• I’d say start fresh, seperate from game mods. That idea you have does not sound like mod territory, That’s a full blown game.

• Your initial idea for the game in the description “MMO FPS Survival simulator” Sounds like a lot of different games coming together to make something else. I’d say start with the FPS part and get a working FPS first. Start with the first person shooter template, learn how it works/ why it works. Then from there, apply it to the third person template, see if you can add a gun/shooting to that.

• You say you’re a deep end learner, and I respect that, so I’ll tell you the best way to go about it for that approach in my opinion. Start with the pieces, like FPS. once you have shooting and moving together, get basic survival. A simple hunger/thirst meter. Then make the world. A rough, barely functioning version of all these things would be fine, don’t worry about each part being perfect, just make sure each piece works with the next. For example, to add thirst, make sure you have a way to drink and reduce thirst also.

• All of these things I mentioned in the previous bullet have loads of youtube videos showing you how to do exactly each part. You don’t have to sit down and watch 2000 hours of video, just bring it up on youtube when you get to that part, watch what you need, do it yourself, move on.

• All of that said…If you’re interested in paying someone/crowdfunding, etc, I don’t think you need to create the game yourself. All of the stuff above is only if you want to dive in yourself.

I only used unreal engine for two months now, and I’ve already made a matrix/superhot/any action game ever clone in 9 days (that I have not released yet, although game play is solid), so I will say unreal engine is not THAT hard to understand. I am a c++ programmer though, so I already had basic concepts before going in. This is just to put things in perspective. I believe in you!

Thank you for your kind words of introduction. I understand your point in not needing to make it when I can get some one else to do it. But as of the moment I wish to want to learn the tool which will be the starting platform for my game (hopefully) as it will be my project I’d like to get to know the inner workings of the software to help me know what I can and cannot achieve. I do this as a film director, I learn the ins and outs of all my crew and equipment so I can offer my insight and knowledge on every department.

I think the core issue is my game idea itself. you all seem to offer very good advice on my approach, which I gather is slow, steady and small. It’s just looking at my idea now. I’m in total agreement survival games are totally saturated, but I still feel my idea hasn’t been explored and could potentially give a whole new birth to survival games. Again, I’m not jumping into this idea yet, hence why I am on the forums…

I could have just downloaded unreal and attempted to make it without consulting the community, however I value any community and I wanted to gain some insight into the regular users of this software and potentially avid gamers to see if my idea is worth developing.
I think I will also visit a game making forum and see if I can refine my idea with the help of other gamers.

Thank you all for your advice.