How to start a Game-Project?

[ronsen]

Greetings,

in the last couple of years I always wanted to see my old favorite game with a new engine/techologie. And I was thinking, after I heard about the release of the udk, why not make that happen with the udk. I'm pretty impressed of the udk.

I'm willing to learn how everyting works, or I'm looking for people who know how to make things possible....

What I would like to know, is there "best practice" way how to start a project something like this? Is there a "proper sequence" for all the worksteps?

This is what comes to my mind right now:

1. level creation/mapping
2. creating/importing 3d models
3. creating the ui/hud
4. coop-multiplayer coding?
5. coding the player camera view
6. ...

How to find the right order? Or no matter how to start, and you'll "plug" everything together when it's done?

As you can see, I have a huge lack of knowledge
and sorry for my english

thanks

[UnspoiledWalnut]

or I'm looking for people who know how to make things possible....

Like... the mafia?

There isn't really anything more important than anything else, and there isn't a set workflow that you have to follow. You need to write the story, design levels and content, create the models, animate the models, create textures, work on the game itself, etc. Generally the first thing I would do with the actual engine is probably the main menu while working on models and textures, but I go slow with my own projects. Coding the camera view will probably not take more than a day to do everything, it's the rest of the coding that you're going to be screwing with for the various events and plot drivers.

The multiplayer, not really sure how much you actually need to do on that side other than the levels and stuff for the UDK. You won't need to code much, I don't think, since as far as I know the server and client stuff is already available, you won't need to write you're own and really can't do so anyway.

I'm kinda bored so I'll make a list for you:

1. Pre-production - Concepts, early visualizations, draft out plot and characters
2. First Stage Production - Rework and finalize drafts and concepts
3. Second Stage Production - Work on the art, design the level structures, work on basic systems in game using placeholders (like the cameras, combat and movement, AI)
4. Third Stage Production - Replace the placeholders, hammer out glitches in AI and combat, work on the levels in the engine
5. Post-Production - Search for bugs, anything at needs touching up, advertising (probably won't be an issue on your first game), anything that needs to be finished up or last minute changes.

And then add in whatever else appropriately, since there's a bit more to it than that. Depending on what you're doing, it'll probably take a long time to perfect (for the game I'm working on, I have seriously been doing math for five hours almost every day for the last month and a half and almost nothing else on the game. Just for 2D weapon trajectories, haven't even started working on 6DOF or lighting or anything else, just writing and checking algorithms for parabolas). It gets really boring really fast, especially if you're just learning everything because you don't know how most things work, so I find it best to have several projects at once personally, or at the least be working on several pieces of one project instead of dividing it up and saying "I'm only going to do models, and then I'll work on textures, and then I'll work in the game." Because that way sucks and it's boring and you'll hate it.