What they did to WoW pissed me off…
What they did to WildStar pissed me off…
What they did to ArchAge pissed me off…
Almost every game that has come out in the last 10 years, even non MMOs, are “always online” “micro transactions” “loot box with 0.000001% of a game breaking drop”.
They ALL do it! And despite what some may claim, none of them “does it well”, but some might skim that line… PoE and GW2… I’m looking at you with your immersion breaking cosmetic BS… hiding NECESSARY bag and bank space behind pay walls… for shame…
Anyway… I finally snapped and said “To hell with it! I’m gonna make my own damn game!”. And, I’m here to encourage you to do the same! Will it be easy? No… but its certainly a lot easier today than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago! The tools are all free, and have been getting more user friendly with every new version… G.I.M.P and Krita for art. Blender or Wings3D for 3D modeling. Even game engines are either completely free (Godot, GDevelope) OR licensed so that you don’t pay unless your game reaches a certain threshold in sales (Unity/Unreal)
How cool would it be… to make a game that has all the things we want it to have… and cuts out all the Tripple-A bull crap? Imagine if every major gaming community did it? We’d have an absolute gaming renascence! So what are you waiting for? If no one is going to build the perfect game for us, we’ll just have to do it ourselves!
EDIT: if you are interested in doing this kind of thing, or even just looking into it, I’ve listed all the stuff I use below… consider this a guide to making games from a dude who never published a game.
Art n’ Such…
First off, you’re probably gonna need art. Krita and Gimp are my go-to applications for this. They “can” function in much the same way, but their are some key differences in their use-cases. Krita has built in pen-pad support allowing it to react to how much pressure you apply to the pen to dynamically change the brush. Gimp can do this, but only with the aid of an add-on. Conversely, Gimp has far more utility in the way of fine image manipulation. I like to use Krita for sketches and concept art, then import those ideas to Gimp to fine tune. And of coarse, if vector drawing is more your thing, InkScape has you covered. It’s got all the same functionality of Adobe Illustrator without the price tag. I don’t have much experience with vector drawing so I can’t really go in depth on it, but I hear it’s nice if not a little janky to start.
3D modeling and animating…
Next, if you happen to be going for that whole “3D” thing, I very much doubt that you haven’t already heard of Blender. Very good, very powerful, new updates have even make it much easier to use than it’s earlier iterations. Not much else to say, but their IS one alternative I think is worth touching on. Wings3D it’s very simple (by comparison) and simple is good for me. I like it for low-poly modeling. My only real gripe is how the website doesn’t appear to be using HTTPS…
Sounds n’ stuff…
Gonna need some music too… Now, I’m not great at composing music… But, I also subscribe to the “fake it, till you make it” mentality of everything. So, to do that I use BeepBox. Again, simple is good. but you can make it as complex as you like via the settings. My favorite part is how everything is saved via the URL. I’ve used a few fully fledged DAW’s (that’s Digital Audio Workstation, not trying to be condescending, it just took me a while to realize it myself), and most are a bit too complex for me. But of those I’ve used, LMMS seemed to hit the closest to my mark.
On the topic of sound, you may want to use something like SFXR to make you some sound effects…
Stitching it all together…
This next bit seems pretty important, Game Engines… You got a lot to pick from depending on your plans. And although I appreciate them, the biggest and most popular ones aren’t really “FOSS” tho (but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to use them anyway). My personal engine of choice however is Godot. Good for both 3D and 2D project types. It’s just the one that really clicked for me… It uses it’s own in engine language called “GDscript” which is based on the Python programming language, and Python just happens to be one of the easier languages to get started with because of the way it reads. You’ve also got PyGame which is a 2D engine using pure Python. (btw, I’m not sure what the actual differences are between GDscript and Python…) Another good option is GDevelop, but it’s also purely a 2D engine.
Free Stuff
Lastly, if you’re looking to save some time, you can search OpenGameArt for free art and music assets contributed by other users.
That about covers it. Have a good one.