Where should I start?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

I wouldn’t of purchased UE4 if I wasn’t intending to make a game. The only problem is that I don’t know where to start!
Could someone shed some light on this issue because I don’t know what to do.

Assets first?
Animation first?
Gameplay mechanics first?

What planning do I need to do as well?

Thanks!

2

I was in similar situation. I didn’t know what to make! It’s better to first plan the concept. Once that’s done, you can start creating assets and creating levels. Write out all ideas for the concept that you can think of. It doesn’t matter if they are stupid, dumb or useless. Once brainstorming process is done, you can go through the list and remove the ideas that you don’t like or you think that won’t fit in. After getting the right idea, as I said above, start making assets. You shouldn’t bother yourself with ‘OMG! This looks horrible!’ and similar things. It’s important to make a prototype first, to demonstrate the concept, and then fine tune it to your needs(choose the platform etc.)

Use example projects to rocket-start your project. They help a lot!

Above was written from my experience. Good luck making games :smiley:

3

Thanks AleksaSAvic. My main worry is creating a concept which is over ambitious!
Still, more specificity, is there a preferred order when developing a game or should it be done bit by bit randomly?
I feel as if gameplay mechanics are priority, right?

4

Very rough overview:

  1. plan the project (GDD)
  2. start with the basic assets, because you will need them for the gameplay (animations, meshes, skeletal meshes) -> for prototyping
  3. after that steadly improve your stuff -> add new meshes, create new animations, improve the gameplay,… :slight_smile:

So basically you will have to do several stuff at once, because somehow everything is a little bit connected (meshes/animation - gameplay; meshes - level; materials - meshes;…)

5

This is what confused me but yeh, thanks for clearly laying it out for me. Assets seem like they should be worked on first.
Thanks

Any other comments are welcomed!

6

Placeholder assets (just enough content to work on gameplay)
Gameplay
Final assets

That’s how I’d do it; what’s the point of making content for a non-existent game? I’m no dev but I’d assume it’s easier to sell good gameplay with no assets to an investor than it is to sell a game’s worth of assets with no gameplay. And who knows how long it’ll take you to make your gameplay work for you; two years later, you might look at all the content you created and think it looks outdated, unsuited to the gameplay you’ve come up with, etc.

It’s easy for me to imagine coming up with killer gameplay, and then finding investors who see it and say, “man, we’ve got to get this game made, it’s a winner.” Much harder to imagine, “wow, we’ve just got to build some gameplay so we can get all this great content published!”

I guess it’s kind of moot though, since getting all the content made (thinking AAA style games here) is where most of the money goes. I guess it all depends on the project.

I’ll put it this way: I’d bank on a bunch of good programmers and no artists making a good, playable game over a bunch of good artists with no programmers.

That’s my 2 cents.

7

Thanks JHighsmith, very insightful!