I want to create a game but...

[talon19912]

I want to create a game, but I only have a vague idea of where to start. I know for a fact hat I'll need people willing to volunteer their time to help, the simple fact is that I have no practical skills that I can contribute.

The game itself will be a sandbox no real goal just do what you want. The setting is going to be in a persistant world, with a large variety of biomes to explore, villages, towns and cites to visit. I'm thinking of a random quest generator, so that you can always have something to do and every npc could potentially have a quest. I'm thinking of doing the game in a similar aesthetic style to dwarf fortress, and I really like the idea of a random world generator. I want a genetics system in place, so any child born in game will be a mixture of it's parents. I want a time system, so that it feels like time passes, from days to months, to years, to centuries, and the world around will change accordingly. I want a political system in place, with random kingdoms, races, and cultures, for instance your character is a wolf morph born in a kingdom with modest values, but decides to travel to another kingdom, only to find out that the new kingdom is highly sexualized, with different laws and punishments. I want a generational system in place, kind of like phantasy star 3 where you can take on the role of your child and play through their life if you wish. I want a random event system similar to rimworld in which the game will give you random problems that can be solved in any number of ways. You can travel the roads, the mountains, the forests, and meet a number of randomly generated NPCs, from simple travelers to marauding bandits. I want every action you as a player make to be able to influence the world around you. You could become a dark wizard and raise an army of monsters to take over the world, you could be a peasant and seduce a member of royalty and either live happily ever after, or manipulate your way to the top and take over the kingdom, and change the face of politics the world over. Really anything you want to do you theoretically could.

These are just the basic ideas that I have but like I said before I have none of the skills necessary to even start it, so really volunteers with the appropriate skills would be helpful.

 

[<><]

Maybe it would be better to set a more realistic goal, instead of grasping for the impossible and setting you up for failure. try making a small game one some engine that does not require coding, and see how it goes from there?
I know the feeling of wanting to make something is strong, but its better to make something simple you can finish, then get a source of depression and stress from an unfinished project.

 

[asestado]

Talon I feel too many rainbows and dreams mixed on what you said...

Ok here is the thing, you want to create a game?, then start with rpg maker. There are many tutorials on how to do x or y and free assets to use in the game.

Making a game is a complex thing, even more what you want to do. First of all you have to make the maps, and they are very time consuming, creating a good map, adding npcs, seeing that they won't block the exit for the player, add dialogue, quests, items...

To be fair each map can easily take a lot of time, between 4 to 8 hours depending on experience, and that's a basic map with just encounters, I have been playing around RPG maker for a while and even if it's easier because it requires knowing a bit of coding, it's always great to have custom menus and many things so in the end you still need to know how to code a bit.

Even more you want a system that gives you at random quests, npcs... well I would actually say that it will feel very boring in the long run.

Even more, you may not have any good skill in making a game, but you can always start with writing about how you want the world to be, things like races, the characteristics of those... what we usually call the "lore" of the world, that's an important part.

Finally just saying but what you want to do requires an incredible effort and from experts, you aren't asking about easy things. In the end even if you don't have any basic skill you can learn one!, do you like to draw? then draw what you want and improve over time, when you are good enough try to partner with someone. If you are awful at art then try writing, here we have an rpg that started with just writing mostly called the last sovereign.

Sorry if I sound a bit like a dick, but what you are saying isn't "I want to create a world", but "I want others to create the world as I want them to".

 

[plkmjn]

Because the other users tried to be polite I feel the need to be a dick:
1) Ideas are cheap.

2) The first version of Dwarf Fortress was published in 2006, and since then it was continuously developed by two skilled people working full time on it (well, at least for the last years). Why should other people dedicate a decade of work to make YOUR dream come true? And yes, game development is work, no matter if it's porn or not.

3) Having only one system of randomly generated things in place is relatively easy. Having everything randomly generated is begging for combinatorial explosion: You have to make sure that ALL systems interact correctly with ALL other systems. If you are lucky, you end up with funny bugs like DF's old dungeon master wearing up to 10 cloaks at the same time. If you are unlucky, your game turns in an unplayable mess.

 

[Fogel]

Doesn't sound like you want to make a game.
Sounds more like you want people to make you a game.

 

[Cormick]

Don't plan big and fail, try small and get better.
Pick up RPGMaker, Twine, Ren'Py or whatever, and start out by making something simple. First rule of learning to create, keep it simple. Unless you have a very clear vision, an impressive skillset and a dedicated team, not to mention funding, your "persistent-world multi-biome with procedurally randomly generated quest content that actually makes sense + kinky stuff as well" is a pipe dream and is CERTAINLY not going to end well as a starter project.
Sit down, figure out a small and self-contained story, condense that story into a numbers of scenes (if you're bold, try multiple paths through the story but that's already going to get complicated) where you have a clear idea of what outcomes does what and where the narrative is supposed to go from there, and then pick a gamemaker to try and make that short story happen with. Personally, I like RPGmaker since it comes with plenty of stock assets and is pretty easy to convert more stuff to.

 

[Pixelmancer]

I know for a fact hat I'll need people willing to volunteer their time to help, the simple fact is that I have no practical skills that I can contribute.

So you want other people to do all the work and you have nothing to contribute to your own game?

The game itself will be a sandbox no real goal just do what you want. The setting is going to be in a persistant world, with a large variety of biomes to explore, villages, towns and cites to visit. I'm thinking of a random quest generator, so that you can always have something to do and every npc could potentially have a quest. I'm thinking of doing the game in a similar aesthetic style to dwarf fortress, and I really like the idea of a random world generator. I want a genetics system in place, so any child born in game will be a mixture of it's parents. I want a time system, so that it feels like time passes, from days to months, to years, to centuries, and the world around will change accordingly. I want a political system in place, with random kingdoms, races, and cultures, for instance your character is a wolf morph born in a kingdom with modest values, but decides to travel to another kingdom, only to find out that the new kingdom is highly sexualized, with different laws and punishments. I want a generational system in place, kind of like phantasy star 3 where you can take on the role of your child and play through their life if you wish. I want a random event system similar to rimworld in which the game will give you random problems that can be solved in any number of ways. You can travel the roads, the mountains, the forests, and meet a number of randomly generated NPCs, from simple travelers to marauding bandits. I want every action you as a player make to be able to influence the world around you. You could become a dark wizard and raise an army of monsters to take over the world, you could be a peasant and seduce a member of royalty and either live happily ever after, or manipulate your way to the top and take over the kingdom, and change the face of politics the world over. Really anything you want to do you theoretically could.

That's an insanely over ambitious plan for a first project. I've been programming for close to a decade and I wouldn't take that on unless it was my full time job.

 

[Cormick]

That's an insanely over ambitious plan for a first project. I've been programming for close to a decade and I wouldn't take that on unless it was my full time job.

It's an insanely over-ambitious plan even if you were a billion-dollar triple-A development company. Maybe if you're the adult game development version of Watchmen's Ozymandias this would be feasible but as it stands, it's just hot air.

Talon, we all have/had insanely ambitious ideas like this I suspect, first baby-step of developing is realizing that you need to think smaller and limit yourself to using what you have or what you can REALISTICALLY get, like paying a starving artist to do some graphics, spritework or getting a fan of your concept to volunteer some proofreading.