Making Your First Game

So if you've come to this website looking for information on creating an MMO or other game for yourself, there's a good chance you have limited experience in game making and want to know if it's even possible. Here's the good news: Thanks to the internet and thousands of intrepid developers worldwide, game design has never been more accessible. There are loads of resources online, including pre-built games, editable engines, and no-programming-required interfaces. Of course, what you get out of any of these systems is up to you and the time you devote to making it.

If you've been browsing Netflix, lately, you may have come across the two Indie Game movies. While most game developers could appreciate the movie and the independent titles it featured, I personally can imagine a few people might have been left with the wrong impression about the majority of devs in the industry, today. A few of us have been lucky to get a game out which did well and perhaps won a few accolades, but the majority of us are still slaving away on perpetual works-in-progress that don't bring in more than a couple hundred dollars in revenue a month. Sure, we all want to be huge commercial successes, but most of us are just as invested in making the best game we can, which engages the most people possible. It's anything but a quick cash-grab, and no matter how easy the software you're using to do the gruntwork is to master, you're going to be putting in the time to make it happen.

So if I haven't scared you away yet, you may be wondering what, exactly, will you need to create your first game? Without stating the obvious, which is that you'll need a computer and without getting too heavy on details, there are a few basic components every new game designer should have in his toolkit. Here's what you need:

• A game engine -- This is the heart of your gaming software which lets your game actually run as a game. Without an engine, a game couldn't perform even the most basic function. This allows the developer to focus on programming the various interactions, events, and design elements of their game, without worrying about the framework code -- things such as login menus, interface buttons (called GUI) and even the very basic operation of making a window which displays the game on a computer screen.
  
  Engines are often custom built, but there are many good ones beginner developers can use right off the bat. Age of the Four Clans currently uses the Intersect Engine, which is specifically for MMOs in a 2D environment. We'll be focusing on using Intersect for the majority of this blog. A4C was started on a customized version of the Skywire engine before its current incarnation, however. Other popular MMO engines include Unity, Atavism and others. When you select your engine, it's important to know what you want from your game. Is it 2D or 3D? Is it an MMO, platformer or FPS? Knowing these things will determine which engine you can use, or if you need to make something from scratch, yourself.
• Something to program in -- Most game engines which are advertised as easy-to-use with minimal or no programming knowledge required to use them, will offer their own environments to program in. If that isn't the case, or you want to edit the engine itself, most programming tasks can be accomplished in a bare-bones text editing software. Many a line of code has been written in Notepad, which comes with every installation of Windows. There is also Notepad++ which is specifically constructed to format lines of code for ease of use
• Art/design software -- If you're going to be taking on the art chores for your game, yourself, you will need software to work in. If you're programming something as simple as a 2D game, you might opt to use the very basic Windows Paint program for creating characters and elements for your game (called sprites). Most designers have at least one copy of Photoshop handy, to work in layers, create transparencies, and other more involved tasks. There are also programs like Blender, Maya and more which are used for 3D graphics and environments.

Naturally, this blog's purpose will be to showcase tricks and tactics for creating an MMO, and utilizing the Intersect Engine, specifically, but that doesn't mean you won't be able to pick up a few pointers here and there if your desire is to create a wholly different type of game on a different engine.

When your game is finished, you'll also need a place to deploy it, and a marketing strategy to get the word out about it. We'll be talking about this in more detail, as well.

Happy designing!