It's a struggle. I think the most important thing you can do is plan thoroughly. If you want a  story intensive game, start by writing the story, at least that's where I would go first. Once you've got that out of the way, work on game mechanics. I like to use stand-in graphics (blocks and basic shapes) in this phase because I can get a better grip on whether the gameplay is actually fun on it's own, without the distraction of art dictating how it looks vs how it feels. This also gives you opportunity to make the framework as clean and efficient as possible so it's easier to layer on functions and features later. Then start getting story-relevant graphics made. If the story starts in a house on a snowy mountain, well... We know what we need to create! If you can, manage your time to accomplish these phases in the planned order and try to not deviate too much (I know ideas flow in the process!). That's not the "correct" way or anything, that's just how I handle this stuff.

But yes, I know how you feel and I've been feeling it for awhile. I've been spending the bulk of the last 6 months working on my game and at this point, It's not even fun or very rewarding, but I knew it was going to be like this with the plan I've made. But I also know that in the long run, it's going to make the creation much easier and by extension, fun and rewarding. Like you, I think my standards are to blame the most.

I'm not sure what to suggest for you, though. Just ask yourself which genre would you get more satisfaction from.

If you want to create a game in a month, you are in a difficult position to begin with. You really need a game engine already built to accomplish much. Even with a built engine, the time tunning everything to be fun and insteresting could easily take half the time. If you creating all new assests that again can consume large amounts of time.

For the indie game making constest 2018, I tried to create a new engine. My plan was use existing assests but I ended up creating a fair amount because I couldn't find what I needed. In the end the game lacked combat and the world lacked content.

Could your stories be too big to complete in a month? Maybe try to cut it down to only tell part of the story. The RPG Maker forum has the One Map Challenge. Maybe something like that would help you tell a story. I keep meaning to give it a try but as an open source developer it feels wrong to use RPG Maker.

Yeah, I think you might be putting yourself in a box without a lot of wiggle room. Rushing through a creation is going to be apparent, and game design? There's just too many elements that will collectively stand out as "rushed". I'm not at all saying good games can't be made in a short time, but sacrifices will certainly have to be made and planning is crucial. Check out Pixelboy's (the dude that made the superpowers assets) ludum jam games, they're wonderful, imo. Even the game Inked. It was made in three months, but both of those examples it's clear sacrifices were made in one area or another.

As for RPG maker, it's a good engine for beginners and I've seen people use it in prototypes (check out Solarus), but it is incredibly limiting. Simple code changes can be quite a task and the end result is still going to be "Oh, another rpg maker game". I think, you should make a framework or maybe even buy one (maybe there's a free one somewhere) for gamemaker so you can make it more unique, since you're already made good games with it. I get it, though. Impatience etc etc, but patience will pay off.

As for me, I am not making my game for larger audiences, exactly. I'm just wanting to make a good game, taking elements from my favorite titles and throwing in a few of my own, so I can look at the finished product and feel a sense of pride. If it catches on, that's a bonus, but I doubt it will since I have no advertising plan and I hate social media haha

If you're focused on telling your story and are really wanting quicker results, visual novels might be the way to go. Your dialogue systems are solid from what I've seen, so you'd already know what you're doing. Another option to possibly consider is webcomics. Personally, I'd prefer to check those out than sit through another rpg maker game.

I just wanna throw this out there too. I really like the idea of an rpg platformer and think you're onto something there... But like, I just love platformer games, so I am totally biased. If you need an example of how to approach something like that, have a look at child of light. They did an outstanding job with it and kept the game short enough to where it ends before the mechanics get too tiresome and removed the typical rpg "grind for exp before the boss" thing. So, it's more story and environment than it is a typical rpg, I think.

Yeah, I'm going to commercialize my game, yes. It's just not a part of a "get rich quick" scheme nor do I have expectations or anything crazy. But yeah, I think it's one of those things where it costs pride to get pride? I dunno.

Seriously, check out child of light. It has some neato innovation and it certainly stands out. The only thing I didn't really care for is the dialogue is all rhymes, so they tend to make some cringeworthy stretches to make it happen. It can totally be done, it's just a lot of thinking outside the box, and it's the only game I know of that's in line with what you have in mind. There's so many things you could do with that and it doesn't necessarily need to be turned based or anything but I do like the idea of isolated battles. Maybe make it like the roaming map enemies in mario where you get pulled into a room where you gotta beat the hammer bros or something. That'd give plenty of opportunities to apply dialogue to typical platformer dealios. I dunno, you're creative and you'll figure something out, I'm sure.

Here's a link to a review, I think it might get some wheels turning!

https://youtu.be/DNOfWMBTJDk

Hello everybody, thanks for these interesting advices.

I have a question about game engines. 

Actually, I programmed my game Phoenix Hunt in C language with the SDL library.

It is OK in order to program such a simple game, but I think I need to learn using a game engine for my future games.

Which game engines do you use in order to program your games?

I don't know a lot about game engines, I am searching for an open source and simple to use engine in order to make 2D games of different types : RPGs, platformers...

Which one would you recommend me?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

I have only used engines written specifically for a game. I would probably try godot. However, I don't think most engines qualify as simple to use. For simple to use you need to restrict your game options to some degree. A simple rpg engine is very different from a simple platformer engine.

I've looked at rpgs and have been disappointed at the state of things. OHRRPGCE is available but it has many limitations due to it's age. I created Bt Builder but it is a reimplementation of the Bard's Tale Construction Set. While it is much more capable at implementing a game like the old Bard's Tale games, it can't do a Final Fantasy style game. I didn't find a lot of resources for modding Flare when I looked at it but that seems to have gotten better.

@spring I'm really sorry, I didn't even pay attention to that video. IGN is pretty gross lol I'm sure you'd set a different vibe, your awesome music alone would set you apart. The point was just to see their mechanics and how they bridged rpg and platformer.

@xcom That's probably off topic but I'll bite lol

As for game engines, I've done a good deal of research and dabbled in quite a few engines to find the best one for me. I'll be honest, though... I haven't really paid a lot of attention to licensing.

As for simple to use, dulsi hit it on the head. If it's overly simple to use, then it's probably going to come with heavy restraints.

I'll throw out the two I like the most, based on my personal experience and that I know are open-source (MIT)

Godot

As dulsi also mentioned, godot is a great engine and it's relatively simple to use.

Pros:

I'm sure there's tutorials but even without those, there's built in, off-line documentation that conveniently resides in the script editor tab, so it's pretty easy to figure out what you need.

It's incredibly lightweight, responsive and relatively quick to prototype.

You can change any aspect of the engine itself and the framework code is well organized and easy to understand.

Package sizes are probably the smallest I've ever dealt with, outside of flash-based engine.

It has python support, which reall expands on what's possible!

Cons:

GDscript (the native scripting system) has an odd tabbing system that goes against the grain with how most other coding languages are, and you have to use it.

Also with GDscript, you can't use other code editors (to my knowledge) and copy/paste isn't really an option because you have to go through and tab it all out...

Using mono or c is just... Unstable at best, but it's optional.

I had an unreasonable amount of problems with android ports, some of which I was never able to solve.

There's an inconvenient terminal that runs along side godot UI that kind of interferes with alt+tab flows.

Unreal

I'm still fairly new to this one but I absolutely love it and it's what I use on a regular basis for 2D.

Pros:

The blueprint system is incredibly easy to use and debug, because you can visually trace where your code is running to.

Like godot, you can change any aspect of the engine itself.

You can easily make beautiful particles, shaders, fog, occlusions, etc by just clicking on stuff and dragging sliders around.

Making HUD, UI and dialogues with their umg system has been easier than any other engine I've ever used.

It's getting a lot of and frequent optimization and compatibility updates, which comes down-wind from their tried and tested fortnite work.

Cons:

It's not royalty free! (I think it's fair, though, if that counts for anything)

They don't actively add new paper2d (their 2d system) features. Even their tilemap system says "expirimental", though it's fully functional.

Blueprints can get messy if you don't maintain a "neat" workflow and making some math formulas in blueprints can be annoying compared to just typing it out.

If you decide to use the C++ method, it can get complicated and it's not really easy to figure out what goes where (even if you already know C++).

Package sizes tend to be bigger than if it were on a native 2D engine.

For another discussion, I made a little video comparing how quick and easy it is to get a block moving on the screen on Unreal vs Gamemaker. I'll leave that here so you can see what I'm talking about.

https://youtu.be/eyXoTj70tAQ
edit:I don't know what happened to my spacing, so I'm sorry for the wall of text.

@VinnNo: spacing fixed(ish). This forum does that sometimes to pasting formatted text. :)

@medicine Thanks, that's better than what I did initially lol Yeah, I have problems when I'm doing forum stuff on my phone in the body directly too, so I dunno.

@spring You're music is always good. Unfortunately, it meshes best with pixel games and I don't do very well in that area, so I haven't been able to use ''em :/

Hello, thank you for your replies, and sorry for my (very) late reply.

So, according to your advices, and to my own research, the game engines which I could use for future projects are :

Godot, Unreal, Game Maker, RPGBoss.

I also noticed that Android has a lot of game maker apps : see here for a list.

I hope I will have enough time to learn using some of them, and that it won't be too hard.

If yes, I would be able to make more elaborate games for jams.

@Spring:  I just want to say thanks for opening this thread and being so honest about your development struggles.  I don't think the topic is too personal, making games is hard and we've all had similar struggles.  I think it's actually very instructive for others to hear about the problems you've had and the ways you've tried to combat them.  I also commend you for taking such a critical look at your own work.  I know that's not an easy thing to do but I'm sure it's a process that will serve you well over time.

Outside of that, I don't have too much to say that VinnNo.0 didn't already cover.  The visual novel idea is certainly an interesting one.  You could maybe try doing a story that way just to see if you find it satisfying. 

@VinnNo.0: I hate to be a hater, but I can't resist offering a counter point, I love the look of Child of Light, but I seriously played it right up until the first battle and never touched it again.  I found the switch from real time action running and jumping about to turn based combat stifling and frustrating.  So I am in the camp that the game is not a great example of mixing platforming and RPG gameplay very well.  But then again, you can check Metacritic to see I am clealry in the minority on this, so maybe it just shows what I know.  ;)  

@Xom Adept:  Not much to add, I would just say start with what's free.  Honestly, if you've already done bare C and SDL any of these engines should feel like a cake-walk.

@withthelove Really? Well, that is a bit reassuring. I was thinking learning to use a game engine was harder than this.

Anyway, I will create a new topic about game engines when I start using one of them.

Thanks everybody.

I'm doing 2 games right now in Unity. It's actually pretty easy. Here they are compared. I started creating packages so once I have a feature, I package it up. This way I can add it to new games with a single import.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbcLuYBxbIE

Hey, late to the party, but you should try Love2D for 2D games. It is super quick to get going and can actually be used for commercial games, although I guess you'd probably prefer sthing like Unity when you hit the big time. I have had a huge amount of fun just messing around with it.

@Spring:

> I've tried the visual novel idea and it wasn't great

Well you tried anyways, at least now you know you're stuck with game making and not just story telling! :)

> , but I still have no ideas about what to actually put in the game O_o especially level design,

I've definitley been here.  Actually if you ever wonder why Yulpers has such a well developed level editor, it's because I spent a lot of time working on that as a way to put off making the actual levels because I felt like when I closed my eyes I drew a complete blank for what I wanted the levels to look like.   That said, once I got going I found the levels came pretty quick.  It was really just a matter of establishing some of the base rules and then playing around with all the toys I'd built for the game (eg. different enemies, crates, power ups, etc).  So don't worry, even if you feel lost at first, once you start pencilling some things in, I'm sure the creative juices will start flowing and before long you'll find you have more level ideas than you can fit in the game.

One of the things I did to get started on the Yulpers was just to spend some time staring at the original Super Mario levels:

http://ian-albert.com/games/super_mario_bros_maps/

I didn't want to copy those maps exactly, but just like we all do with pixel art, I spent some time studying them, looking at the tricks they use and trying to think about how to apply similar tricks in my levels.

I'll add that as far as 2D platformers go, one of the big take aways I got from looking at those classic SMB levels is how stretched out they are.  Each level has just a few sub-sections to it each with it's own 'idea' behind it.  I found I had a tendency to try and cram too many ideas into one level, eg. 'a few crates and baddies, then a sequence of jumps, then a staircase, then some pits with baddies over them, then some more crates, etc. etc'   After looking at the SMB levels I realized I needed to user fewer ideas per level and stretch those ideas out further, making platforms longer, spacing out jumps and baddies more, etc.   The result is a win-win: you don't need to come up with so many unique ideas to fill a single level and areas/ideas have more weight and are more memoriable to the player because they don't zip by as quickly.

Well, I don't know if that bit helps at all, but I'm sure studying the SMB can help.  :)

> it's actually easy to be too critical of your own work, rather than the other way around?

Yeah, I know what you mean, on the otherhand, you certainly don't have to look too far these days to find folks who are clearly not nearly critical enough of their own work (eg. steam) ;)

@Xom Adept:  Look forward to hearing where your engine search takes you!

@theidiotmachine:  Wow!  thanks for the recommendation.  that Love2D does indeed look like a really good!   I love how the home page itself has three line tutorials for drawing text, loading and drawing an image, and loading and playing a sound.   If they added one for reading the joystick/keyboard they'd have everything you need to get started in less than 20 lines.    Very simple and to the point without a lot of structure and/or orginizational theory to learn before you get started.  I'm sure the bigger engines get you better pipelines and such, but for some one starting out, this looks golden!  Been looking for something to use to introduce my boys to the magic of game programming and I think this could well be it.

btw: for those interested url is https://love2d.org/

@Spring

I haven't read all the discussion, just your initial post and about the next 3 pages of back-and-forth. When I stumbled on OGA (this site) and first created an account I was already ~6 months in process of creating a game using Flash Builder (paid a lot for it). After I spent countless hours crawling every possible graphic, animation, sound byte, song, and the like, I had spent over a year just in gathering content and scratching together a basic framework with no clear story or final decision on gameplay style. I eventually dumped Flash Builder (oh darn, money wasted) and even dumped action script as the language of choice (found Haxe pretty useful) when I stumbled on the framework that I've been using ever sinse (Flixel).

I'm droning on but here's my point: you'll never be happy with your first, second, third... nth attempt at something until you feel like it's perfect and commercial grade super star quality. I've been writing software (professionally) since the early 2000's and I'm still not perfect but I keep trying. What I have now is a pretty solid RPG framework and decent mechanics (to include menus, battle sequences, cut scenes, ability to change language of dialog on demand, and lots of other cool things but I still lack story/character development. At this point I do it almost as a personal therapy to feel better (and to avoid posting endless volumes of memes and junk to facebook).

Don't beat yourself up if you're not perfect. Do it if it makes you happy. Worst that anyone can say is you tried and failed but at least you tried.

@William.Thompsonj To add to that i'm a mobile developer so I use Xamarin all day. I did DOS games in the late 90's. I have a roguelike i've done and like you I had games I worked on and spent years tweaking.

Although recently after going through OpenGL Android, SpriteKit for Apple, and Direct3d for Windows I found writing your own engine is a waste of time. Yeah if you're rich and  have maids keeping your house up, but with a job no way.

I.m working on 5 games that start out easy then I turn them into a novel. I spent months making an engine basing it on SpriteKit and it was good. I was 50% done.

I looked at some engines and did Unity because my other developer co workers were going that way. At first I was like what no code. But, now it's really fast. I'm 70% finished with my main game that I re-did because it was my first in Unity. 2 weeks total so far and should be in beta hopefully in 2 weeks.

So here's what I changed to be faster. Trying to optimize so that once I have an idea for content. I can roll out a medium sized game in 1 month.

I create all my props for scenes in their own package. Char, animations, state machine. Export that to my main PC server at home.

When I start a game I import all the things I need Tilemaps(multi layered levels like Tiled ), chars ( has all the animations, states, and scripts ), A game controller I made with an object pool for grabbing items.

This has worked really well so far. I like Unity because it does almost everything for you and I just write small c# scripts for anything custom.

But, this new strategy forces me to keep things generic in that I have to abstract everything, because a specific char or item may not exist and I don't want to solve bugs after importing. I got it down pretty well.

@Spring

Have you read this https://bossfightbooks.com/products/spelunky-by-derek-yu

That book is amazing and goes deep into the game develiopment and creating procedural levels. He also goes into game design and how to improve story telling.

This guy based his level maker on https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/strata-easy-2d-l...

I find when I'm making a design, I have a lot of Warhammer, D&D, and other fantasy book for ideas and battle systems. I also watch crazy movies to get ideas and drinking with friends you can come up with strange ideas. Some materilize some dont.

I have a scrapbook with about 10 ideas of games and just keep it there.

Just my take on things. Games are like a lifelong learning process and growth I think.

Just give them more depth and spend more time on them.  Easy as pie!

Finding solutions: it's what I do ;-)

@theidiotmachine :

I found Love2D when I was looking for a game engine, but I forgot about it.

Thanks for reminding me about this one, it really seems interesting.

@withthelove :

Thanks, but it will take some time.

I have to :

- know which type of game(s) I would like to do

- know which language to learn

- according to all this, decide which engine to use

- start to learn both the engine and the language (for example, Lua / Love2D)

- make my first game

Furthermore, I have a project to finish before I really get into this.

I am not sure I will be ready for the next jam.

But next time I participate in a jam, I will make a more elaborate game, I guarantee that.

:-)

@withthelove That's exactly what I used it for! We put it up on github, here (and @Spring was kind enough to give some feedback, which I still haven't done). #3 son is still badgering me to do some more level design. If you want, DM me, and I can give you a brain dump of what worked and what didn't for us (and PRs very welcome!)

@Xom Adept: So my strong suggestion is you take it nice and slow. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Play with a couple of different things, and write your own version of a classic (asteroids, worm, pong) in a couple of engines, just to get a feel for it all. It's really nice to go from one engine to another, and look at how, say, Tiled integrates with each one of them, because it gives you a grounding in some of the core concepts. At the end of the day, there are a whole bunch of common themes (like collision detection, shaders, draw order, game state, path following, update loops, and so and so on) that you find over and over again, and each time you relearn them in a different infra, you get a bit better, until eventually you will be able to pick up any game engine and get going quickly. So, in conclusion, don't stress about the engine or language right now, pick anything that you think looks fun and is well documented.

Don't despair Sping!  

Game Developement is fraught with peril, but you don't have to go it alone!

I just PM'd you, let's work on a something together for the Spring Game Jam!

You do have to have a lot of pateince and perserverance. I know it's all easy to just keep going at it and you feel it's not moving fast enough, and the motivation can be lost, espicially when coming up with new ideas during development. My advice is to take a break and come back to it, i found myself working a lot faster and progressed better when i took a break from my games im working on, instead of grinding it out for hours staring at a PC screen to not actually getting anything done. Monstropolis is a prime example, ive spent many months/years working on it, but not getting anything done because my motivation was with another idea i had. So i worked on that idea, and then the next, but i went back to monstropolis as intended and my work flow was so much more better because of the break, i got more done in a week than i had done in a month. Not saying it will work for you, but think im trying to say, don't rush it, and if you need/want to take a break from a game, then do so, it's perfectly fine, don't put unesscary pressure on yourself because it's really not helpful to your game or your wellbeing, and can be quite demoralising at times, if you ever feel that way then its a good sign to take a break Spring. Trust me you will feel a lot better for it, renergised and ready to go again! 

If you don't feel up to the Game Jam, if someone else offers to do it, then let them if you not feeling up to it, noone will think any less of you for doing so. But if you do do it then thats great. Chin up it will all come good in the end. :)

"can only find solace in the furry universe"

You know what, I hear you loud and clear, and the depression part too. As much as i love game development and creating Pixel art, reading, researching and everthing, it very much hides or musks what is actually going on in my life. It is an 'Escape' from the reality's of my real life, and the more stressed or depressed my real world becomes, the more i bury my head into my game development world. i suspect you may be the same. Over the years though i have come to realise that this is not so good for me, my family, or my game development and there was a cross over where my 'real world' was meeting my development stuff and i found myself being just as depressed if not more because of the monotnous way game develpment is and can be, it is, espcially when working alone, a very lonely place. You situation is probably most likely somewhat different to mine, but depression is depression, and it has many forms. whats important is if you can find help then use it, i did, and i am so much better for it now,just talking to someone, or even just to have a bloody rant! and let off some steam now and again works wonders. :) my poor Pug gets moaned at all the time. :) but he don't judge me for it bless him. anyways i could go off on a right tandgen here and talk a load of rubbish.

in short:

take a break, break up the monotomy, try not to take on to much, eat well, excercise(nice walk) and don't sweet the small stuff. what will be will be. :)

be safe.