Ideas for a new game
I have a few ideas for a new game thats somewhat a homage to an old 80s DOS game. I am not a programmer or an artist. I am a dreamer.What I want to see that I haven't seen in years is a roadwar2000/ roadwar europa/car wars type game with a story to it. Roadwar had a limited story once you peeled the onion back and it put you on a turns "timer" to complete the game. I hated that about the game. I enjoyed plundering Chicago several times and looting and the mechanics of the car battles in manual mode to collect better rewards and vehicles than the computer generated combat. I would like to have the fear of the unknown in my game as well is the anticipation of getting a unique unit that can possibly be killed or taken from the player w/o there being any documentation about it. i.e. You aquire a scientist and he raises gang abilities but after plundering a certain city, it has a chance to send an assassin to kill him off. Thus the player always has to be on their guard or save often. Multiplayer could be cool but I would like to see if I can get any momentum first.
I have gone back and fired up the old DOS game (roadwar2000) and even tried to do manual combat with it. I can't believe we enjoyed those graphics! Those were awful! haha I couldn't figure out which way the car was facing to move it. I remember I enjoyed it and would love to do something similar like it. I loved the old SSI games. We didn't have outstanding graphics and our imagination carried us thru almost everything.
I would like to have various vehicle units as well as people. I am prepared to jump in and try to become an artist the best that I can be for this project. What would you suggest for making vehicles and or a game engine that I can drop this into ? I would love to think about making money off of it and put it on steam or possibly my own site but that is way down the road. I would like to see if I can get this off the ground and need advice for engines with my limited knowledge and insights to go from there. I wouldn't have an issue with giving people credit and or sharing royalties if I can get it off the ground and it becoming somewhat of a success.
my advice:
make it yourself. soliciting ppl to work on your passion project is unlikely to be successful. if there is a large community around these games (i have never heard of them personally) that might be a place to start to look for a team.
as far as making your own games, i urge you to not start with your passion project. build your dev skills up. start small. little arcade games. platformers. simple stuff. when you have that down and understand how to program logic and systems in your chosen engine, you could start to make something that might attract others to your project.
as for engines. there are plenty. it depends on your skill level and the type of game you wanna make. my recommendation for beginnners will always be gdevelop. it has an intuitive condition and event visual scripting system, and learning it will actually teach you rudimentary javascript code if you are paying attention. it is 2d only, but i would never recommend anyone to start game dev in 3d. start with x and y axes, then think about the z axis.
best of luck!
Whilst reading your post it brought back good memories of x86 assembly for the 386. :D
I definitely don't recommend writing this in assembly language, it could be a fun project though.
For someone getting into game development one could try Godot.
I agree with Ragnar Random, start with 2D! 3D is significantly more difficult.
I'm looking forward to your first prototype!
Well thanks! I wanted to start with 2D and somewhat mimic the older game but have it be more updated with vehicle facing, etc.
Will Godot also have the art built inside of it ? Where do I go to DL a art program to draw up my pieces, map assets, etc ?
I DLed Gdevelop and am currently muddling my way into it.
You could use isometric graphics, they look 3D but are actually 2D pictures.
I use Gimp and Krita for most of my image editing, but there is more specialized software available. (Pixel art software)
I have found Tiled map editor a useful resource for prototyping maps.