Hello, I’m in the progress of making my own horror game, but I feel stuck. I’ve been scripting on and off for about 2 years (not counting some periods from before that), and it honestly feels overwhelming to think about having to also do the building, animation, lighting, sound, etc.
I’ve been working on this project for about 3-4 months now, and I don’t feel like enough progress has been made.
Honestly don’t know what to do, I’m looking for some sort of structure/roadmap that i can follow that suits my work environment and time?
All I could say is be patient and think of a game concept that you’d feel like you & others could enjoy. Normally, when horror games take months to do - that means you’re putting effort into it. Your typical, average horror game takes days to you - while the most interesting takes weeks or even months to do.
So make sure you know what type of direction you want your game to go. Patience is key, so just think of a concept & ask for advice to anyone you know that may be of help!
I’ve made a notion space for the project, I’ve documented the things I need to do, but I still feel overwhelmed because I don’t know what i should do in what order basically
Yes I’ve alredy done that and I’ve got an outline for what I want for the game story and direction.
The thing I’m having problems with is actually executing the stuff I’ve alredy thought about and written.
Like, do I make my builds first? Or the scripting? Should I work with other people or alone? How much time should this or that take? etc.
Ah, that really depends on which workload you’d think takes the most importance. In my opinion, I try to do the stuff that I believe may be the most time consuming to do first. In order, these being:
Building
Models (AI, Items, etc)
Scripting
Animations
UI/GFX
Other stuff I didn’t mention (Sound, VFX, etc.)
This is just something I WOULD DO personally, since I believe building is the most time consuming factor. I put UI/GFX last cause I specialize in that field and can make appealing UI fast. So I’d say construct a list that you think could help you in your development and go on from there.
That sounds like a good idea. I specialize in scripting, but I also believe I shouldn’t work on much of the scripts until I get most of the map done (excluding stuff that ony has to do with the aesthetic of the game).
Haven’t tried doing blockouts for a map, and I’ll probably start doing that tbh. I’ve done it for smaller builds, but haven’t thought of the big picture lol.
Animations is a big problem for me since I’ve always had an idea that theyre hard to do and implement. Haven’t really experimented with animations at all, they seem scary to me.
Do you know of any good tutorials/resources that could help in that matter?
As an animator, everything I’ve learned (my experience) has been self taught.
You can follow tutorials to understand the basics of animation and how to create them, but you’ll be putting in a lot of time into actually making them look good
If you have moon animator, i strongly recommend you use that. If you don’t, learn how to use default animator. Once you’ve gotten good enough with default, move on to Blender.
Yeah I do have Moon Animator, and yes it does take a while to become a good animator just like it takes time to get good at anything else, but my issue is with actually scripting the animations and implementing them directly into the game. Thanks for your help though, you reminded me of a few things I should focus on!
Something important to remember is that once the game is decent enough you should almost always release it straight away and then provide updates instead of waiting for it to be perfect. Think about what happened to Hytale.
Dunno what Hytale is lol, but yeah i get your point and it’s 100% true. I have loads of features and things that I want to add, but there will be time for that after I actually release the game with the necessary features.
Well if you specialize in scripting then implementing the animations should be pretty easy for you, there’s lots of sample code here on the devforum and tutorials describing the process as well