Graphic Designer Wanted (VG)

It's great that you want to get involved in building games
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But I wouldn't want you to get discouraged when this project falls apart under it's own weight, rather than taking it slow, designing and building something achieveable, getting the satisfaction of looking at a finished project and saying "Yay, I built this! Now let's try the next level up". You're trying to run before you can walk, but if you learn it right you might get there one day
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If you're serious about building games, my advice is to do a smaller test-project first. Think like the kind of games you get on your phone; puzzle blocks, arcade, maybe a 2d scrolling shooter. Two classic first-games are tic-tac-toe and pong. You can add a little story between the levels if you want.

They might sound more boring than your current plans, but it will give you a realistic idea of how games are put together, how long it will take, what team members you need and how to organize and divide the workload between them.

I think the point that the others haven't quite got across is that if this is the first game you have ever worked on, you're batting too high. Even an experienced team of home developers would struggle to take on something this big.

But don't get dissuaded, it's fun to have dreams and come up with ideas when you're a kid. We've all done it; I wanted to make a platformer (which were pretty damn good in 1993). It was awesome coming up with all the level designs, ledges to jump on and enemies to kill, that kind of thing. But I made the classic beginner mistake that you've just fallen into; designing a game exactly like the kind of games I played without knowing how they're made. When I was advised to scale it down, I thought it'd be fine if I just did 10 levels instead of 100. Doesn't work like that; I now know that if a platform game is built properly adding extra levels is piss easy. As for my project, all I managed to do was get a sprite to walk left and right on a plain black screen. The difference between us is I didn't drag anyone else in before my little project crumbled. I didn't mess anyone else about, getting them to put time into something I'd never finish.

Rather than pulling other people in too early without a clear idea of what they need to do, I think you need to go, think it through and research the process of building a game a bit more. I don't think you know how a game is put together; to use an example from your thread asking to build graphic models before the programmers have worked out what size they need to be doesn't make sense to me. The story, characters, plot, setting, narrative, no matter how long or intricate it is, that's all only a very very tiny part of the equation.

As a player all you see is the story and graphics, but there's a lot, lot more going on behind-the-scenes that you seem to have missed. Do this right and you might find game development rather fun.
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You know, if you are really interested in getting into game design, I recommend you watch Extra Credits

It's a humorous and well put together web series that is based around understanding video games as an art form. The creators get games (one of the writers is an accomplished game designer) and really examine a wide range of issues, providing genuinely thought provoking commentary on the games as a whole.

If you want to get into making video games, watch the show. It'll definitely be a start.
 
Theiket said:
That is not what we meant, soulx. That is a cartoon made on paint. We need a 3D model preferably to base it off then a 2D picture for the game.
That was made in Photoshop with my blood, sweat and tears. I'm offended that you didn't like it.

No seriously, good luck with the game.
 
Ok. Gahars, Psyfira and machomuu, thanks for the help. I'll take your advise and see what me and the guys can do to get better at making games. WolfSpider, I don't. My friend who is helping, does. He can code in DirectX. He also knows almost all of WoW's code, but we can't use the coding language that they use. We'd need written permission for that. Gahars, I'll take a look at that video too.
 
Gahars said:
You know, if you are really interested in getting into game design, I recommend you watch Extra Credits

It's a humorous and well put together web series that is based around understanding video games as an art form. The creators get games (one of the writers is an accomplished game designer) and really examine a wide range of issues, providing genuinely thought provoking commentary on the games as a whole.

If you want to get into making video games, watch the show. It'll definitely be a start.

Yeah Im watching the Extra Credits now and it is very informative in a comedic way. I officialy have learnt something from the vids
 

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