What is the article about and its purpose?
An article about developing a computer game alone using the UE5 game engine. The purpose of the article is to find both moral support and criticism addressed to you. After all, when you develop alone and from 6 to 12 hours a day, you look at your project and stop adequately assessing what is happening and everything gets mixed up into one continuous mass of code and pictures.
About me (Honest review)
I’m 36 years old, and I’ve come a long way from a player to today’s article, 14 years into creating my own game. During this time, I started making a game 4 times and quit for various reasons, but I always return to starting a project.
All this did not go in vain and I gained experience that today helps me achieve my goal, taking into account the mistakes made. Now I have a family, a child, and there are agreements with my family, which is the most important thing for me and which does not allow me to show weakness and quit what I started.
I’ve been playing the game for 7 months now, and at the same time I’m working in a company not related to game development. How do I combine? I sleep little.
Now below will be videos of what the game is like today and how much money I have already invested.
The game is untitled, haven’t given it a name yet.
Description of the game and its features
The main character of the game – engineer and it’s you! Once you get a new job, you are immediately sent on a work trip to the island. The company you joined to carry out an environmental mission to save the planet, although as they say, good intentions can hide evil intent, I hope this does not apply to your employer. Once on the island, you have to do a lot of work: maintaining the functionality of the equipment on the island, maintaining and providing electrical equipment, interacting with and helping local residents, and you will also have to master all the farming skills and set up your own farm.
The island is located right in the middle of the ocean and there are no inhabited islands nearby, resources for performing work duties are limited. Once a year, a ship sails to the island from the continent on behalf of the company to replenish supplies and materials, but of course they are not enough.
Agree, waiting a whole year is a bad idea, you need to survive. Don’t worry, there is good news, another engineer worked on the island before you, he managed to do a lot in a year and left you tips on how to set up proper work for a comfortable life, while fulfilling your work responsibilities.
Also, there are locals on the island who are willing to help you if you are willing to help them in return.
Show ingenuity, patience, hard work and literacy in the distribution of resources, so the year on the island will fly by for you.
Game Features
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Electricity system (as key objects are connected to electricity, additional features open up that expand functionality, and some simplify your stay on the island)
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Farming
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Control and provision of resources for non-player characters who produce the main resource for your needs (supply of supplies to the settlement, without supplies, local residents will not produce plastic, wires, metal for you) artificial intelligence requires two conditions for work, the presence of supplies in their warehouse water and food, and day and night they do not work.
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Day and night system affecting the game environment (Only at night a smuggler can sail to the island for trade, residents do not work at night, etc.)
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Weather system. (When it rains, the plants in the street beds are watered)
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Temperature system (Influence on the character, you need to wear both warm clothes and take them off if it gets hot)
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Crafting (creating various items and equipment)
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Construction (installation of various objects in the open world)
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Survival (Your character is thirsty, hungry, needs sleep)
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Exploration (The island, although not large, is full of various finds)
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Gathering (searching for useful items (mushrooms, berries, etc. that appear randomly in different places)
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Cooking (Cooking food that better restores your performance)
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Economy (Selling, buying items from merchants, with the right economy, the game can be completed faster)
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Quests, dialogues, puzzles.
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Drone system (You can fly around the island and take beautiful screenshots, or you can find something interesting where the main character cannot reach)
How the game is created and what difficulties I encounter
No matter how difficult it may be, today it’s easy to make games.
How is the game created?
I completely removed the concept of a design document (design document), I work alone and I don’t need it, I have the basic concept of the game, a bunch of sheets of paper with sketches and notes, a board in trello and that’s enough. What is important is understanding what I want to do and what I can do. Game development is a collective project from the UE marketplace, which is combined and edited to create a single game, supplementing it with your own developments. This speeds up the development process and saves a ton of money. for example, from video DevBlog 001: water is Fluid Flux, its price is $350, developing it yourself or hiring people for this will cost more than $10,000, etc.
What difficulties do I face?
One of the difficulties I encountered was the ambition to make an AAA MMORPG, which is why the project was deleted and started again with a clean face. Diminishing your ambitions, ultimately arriving at an electrician/farmer simulator with survival and single-player elements.
How much money has been invested in development to date?
Expenses are mainly related to the purchase of assets (models, mechanics) and today amount to 213 thousand rubles over a 7-month period. and it’s cheap if everything was done from scratch by hiring staff, it’s scary to imagine salary expenses for which there are no funds.
Another video demonstrating artificial intelligence
Plans, deadlines
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By the end of 2024, complete work with the main mechanics of the game
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Early 2025 make the first demo build for testing with user participation
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It’s too early to talk about the start of the alpha version of the game.
My advice for those who want to start creating their own game alone
Note: My advice and they may not be correct, use them at your own discretion, fear, risk and responsibility.
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If you want to make your own game, you have to decide for yourself and determine the possibilities. Developing a game for two hours a day and whether you are in the mood or not, this is not game development, but can be attributed to learning and maintaining your skills so as not to forget how to do it, but not as not developing.
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Design document. You don’t need to waste time creating a design document. If you have an idea, you clearly understand what you want, create, treat the game as creativity, evaluate your capabilities and knowledge; all you need is paper and a pen or services such as Trello, miro. During the development process, you can come up with a cool idea that will fundamentally change the concept of your game, and this means rewriting the design document (minus time), value your time.
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Throw away all financial indicators if you want to make a game only to make a profit and look at popular successful projects and want to create your own clone. Please don’t, don’t kill your dreams and desire to make games, you will be disappointed. Be creative, experiment, I’ve already stepped on the rake of my ambitions to make an overwhelming project, looking at well-known studios with billion-dollar budgets.
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If you can’t make a game yourself and want to find someone who will do it for you with enthusiasm at the percentage of sales you promised, don’t. Perhaps it’s just a desire, like once in childhood you wanted a bicycle, but now it’s not interesting and not needed.
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If you want to make a game, do it yourself, and if you expand during the development process, then involve additional developers for narrowly focused tasks, level design, interfaces, specific mechanics, etc. and pay people to work. An idea can be used to build a project in one out of a million cases (aerial figure).
Conclusion
This is my first experience in writing an article, please do not judge strictly, but you have to start somewhere. During the development process, I plan to share information about the project and will be grateful for comments and your ideas or criticism, this will help me improve and pay attention to what I do not see. Thank you!
Acknowledgement and Usage Notice
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