Quote: "shamguy4
Also I have a quick question. A book is made by one author but a game- at the end you have like 50 credits, does that mean a good game cannot be made by one person?"
A good game can be made by one person. The question is how much time are you willing to put in to produce your game. Users here have turned out playable, but simple, games in a day to a week. Some of these games are fun, but you can tell that they are quick efforts.
Other users have spent months on games and turned out projects that were visually nice and have deeper game play. These were by users that have most of the skills needed to produce a professional level game, but do it for a hobby.
Quote: "Sven B
I have to admit that DBP is actually more suited for hobby purposes instead of professional game creation.
Yskonyn
I don't think this is entirely true. With DBP you can create games of professional quality, although you may have to alter your view on what 'professional' actually is"
I think if you are real good at all the required skills required to make a game; the game will be impressive, and professional looking. But you have to be good at
1) Programming
(know the language all the way through and know how to get everything possible out of it.)
2) 3-D modeling
(make well designed models that don't waste polygons and processor power but will look exceptional when textured.)
3) Texture Making
(Using textures to make a good model look exceptional. It has been said many times here that a great texture can make a good model look fantastic and save cpu cycles that would go towards rendering a more complicated model.)
4) World or Level design
(You have to have an interesting or unique place to play.)
5) Artificial Intelligence design For a single player experience.
(Many a retail game has all of the above but the AI of the single player mode was so disappointing that the game fails. These are usually First Person Shooters where the enemy just stands there never noticing you or that he is getting shot. It kills the level of immersion that you have to build to make a professional game.)
6) Animating of 3-D Models.
(If you animate a model poorly, no matter how fantastic the model and texture, it will look unprofessional. So this is a skill that will help very much. Animating in a smooth and fluid manner will add a professional touch to your game.)
These skills are usually handled by teams of paid professionals in software development. Keeping a team of unpaid volunteers together is a challenge if you don't all have the same vision and dream.
DarkBasic makes game making easier, but you still must create your program. The good news is that you can buy or find free models. You can find free textures online. There are many free world builders on this forum as well as some very nice, low cost commercial world builders. TCG offers an animation programs for the humans in a game. as well as some low cost commercial applications. You can produce your game, and it can be good.
A professional game does not have to be written in C++ with a lot of in line assembly code to be professional. You just have to design a good looking, fun to play, unique experience for the customer to enjoy. Every item listed above is a resource and you don't want to waste resources unnecessarily.
Quote: "Yskonyn
I think many people don't realise that most of the games we buy in our gameshop (especially those by big publishers like EA, Eidos, etc) are multi-thousand dollar projects with huge teams comprising of programmers, artists, scenario writers, etc, etc."
Actually I think the budgets reach into the Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think that some games now days that are expected to sell huge numbers may spend a million or more to expedite the release, but I don't know that for a fact.
Quote: "Yskonyn
but that doesn't mean that the potential of DBP is any less. Especially with the Physics engine, Shaders and GDK, DarkBASIC has far reaching possibilities.
"
Yskonyn is right about what is available to stretch the boundaries of DarkBasic Pro. Not to mention the DLL's that some members have freely shared to speed up areas of DBP or add functionality that was not included.
The good news is that if you show a passion and desire to produce your design. Produce the code and make your models and world. Have something to show the community that you have that passion to complete your project and that it is good. Someone will generally offer some help. Someone that can model a little better may offer some models. Someone who makes awesome textures may offer to fix a textures to make them even better. Someone may offer a suggestion to make your code smother. But they want to see you care enough first to take the project to the finish line.
Making nothing for the forth straight year; or is it five years now?
