Your comprehensive guide to enter the world of gaming design
Designing games is not an easy thing at all, as the game design steps start with choosing an idea, then designing great quality images, as well as designing appropriate audio for each scene, then programming comes at the end of the game's script.
You can consider the following steps in the first section of this article as an initial guide for those who want to make a video game for the first time, while the second section we have mentioned in it the most important programs used in the games industry with links to educational courses for these programs .. and move to the section that you want completely freely.
Section one: the natural scenario of a video game industry
Any game starts from defining the vision that will communicate it to the players and ends with programming after designing the game components, visual effects from pictures and graphics, audio effects, game scenario, and making people the game's heroes.
First: overall game planning
1- Determine your goals in the game Before you start doing anything, you must first know your goals from the game; That is, to determine the result that the player will feel after the game experience, and what effect this game will have on changing the events surrounding you.2- Define your target audience This is an additional step for those who want to; You can make your game available to everyone, and you can define a specific target audience, which is first and more beautiful, but in the end, it is up to the goals you identified in the previous step.3- Choose the devices on which your game will work It is very important that you determine which devices your new game will be running on. That is, it determines whether the game will work on the personal computer only, or will work on Smartphone devices only, or will work on both, or will work on other devices.4 - Select the type of game There are many types of games, and you have to decide what kind of game you will be working on. So will your game be an FPS game which is games that focus on killing with weapons and in which the player controls one character, or is it a platform game in which the player must overcome barriers by jumping, or is it the Role-playing game in which the player absorbs characters in a fantasy frame Or, is it a social game that requires communication between people to play together. Of course, there are many different types of games, and your determination of the type of game will save you a lot later. And in the event that you started without specifying the type of game, this is permissible, but it requires you to be knowledgeable and expert in what you will do.5 - Set possible options for the player Write down the roles and options that a player can play, which will come from your determination of the type of game; For example, if the game was a type of platform game, the options would be for example jumping, squatting, running, walking, firing balls at the enemy, going back, holding a rope or the like.6 - Record the challenges of the game Where will the player start? What are the challenges that you will face? Also, the situation in which the player will have performed his mission? For example, Mario's game, starts with Mario on a path and has to surpass enemies made up of thorns, ducks, hedgehogs, and other enemies, also he has to skip pits by jumping, and he must also collect gold on his way to the finish line. Thus, Mario moves from one level to another until he faces the monster and saves his lover.7 - Create incentives for the player Any player who has a mission must have an incentive to push him to progress and achieve the level, and before you start in the game design you must first determine the incentives that the player will receive, and in the Mario game, for example, the player gets gold coins that increase his points balance, and in the end, he is released, Sweetheart.8 - Select the difficulty of the game The difficulty in playing the game must be weighed; There must be an existing challenge, but it is not impossible for the player to overcome. Some games offer different levels, easy, medium, and hard.
Second: Cover the game components
1- Tutorial design As you start any new game, you are presented with the educational steps of the game, as well as showing you as a player what you must do to execute your mission in the best way. You can make this tutorial in the form of questions and answers, or in any form you see appropriate.2 - Design the game world Start designing the world in which the character will be in, for example, the houses, street shape, roads, parks, and other places where the game's hero will be. Rather, it comes to deciding how to review these places in the game, how to display the house when the player enters it, and so on.3 - Set the internal rules of the game Any game has a number of internal rules that must be observed, and you must determine these rules upon which the game will work.4- Design game levels Most games consist of consecutive levels. So the player moves from one level to another slightly more difficult. Each level must have a specific level of tasks that the player will perform in order to be able to move to the next level.5- Designing the contents of the level By designing what the player will encounter within each level, for example, in the Mario game, the player faces ducks, hedgehogs, gold coins, boxes, and bricks that Mario breaks.6- Main game interface design That is, the interface design through which the player controls the game, including the main menu that mostly consists of a start button for a new game, a button to continue in the event of stopping playing for any purpose, another button to know the best players and another button to close the game, and so according to the nature of the game.
7 - Control buttons design Determine which buttons the player will rely on during gameplay; For example, if the game is for a personal computer, the directional keys will be used for movement, and the letter S to jump, for example, and thus determine the buttons that the player will rely on during gameplay. You can take a look at games that are similar to your game type, to have a larger background on these buttons.
Third: Designing visual aids
1 - Correct visual designs Create beautiful designs that attract attention, but those visual designs should reflect the type of your game, for example, if the game is a war; It is necessary to use visual designs evidencing that to be appropriate and reasonable for the player.2- Use appropriate colors There is no doubt that the colors in one way or another reflect different visions; As they say, for example, the yellow color pays attention, the brown color indicates confidence, and by studying some theories that talk about colors, you will be able to choose the colors that are appropriate for the game environment.3 - Game icons design Adding some icons will save the player a lot of time; For example, there is a question mark inside the game on something, and as soon as the player stands on it or clicks on it, a message appears that tells him the nature of this thing. You can also add a bulb icon to illustrate a simple helpful idea of what a player must do to get past the current situation.
4 - No excessive or negligent The photos are not important but the idea of the game itself is important; How simple is its simple graphics game like Flappy Bird, but it has achieved unparalleled success. We, therefore, invite you here to pay attention to your game idea and incorporate the appropriate visual effects.
Fourth: Hearing aids
1 - Audios suitable for every action You will need audios that directly indicate what is happening now, such as the shooting sound, the popping sound, the running grass on the grass, the acoustic sound in the event of an injury, and so on. So try to collect all the sounds that you can collect, provided that they are related to your game scenario.2 - Background sound Most games set an audio background like people's voices and noise from the surrounding environment, and some games set a musical background that prompts the player to adventure and start.
Fifth: the game scenario
The game embodies a reality in which we live, and the hero of the game can actually modify the reality according to the possibilities that the game gives him. In order for you to start programming the game as we will explain later, the game script must be written similar to the movies or series scenario. The scenario should explain everything about the game, from the beginning, through the events the player will go through to the end of the game.
Sixth: Design the game's characters
We now move on to designing game characters, and you probably won't need many characters if the game is simple, but if the game is complicated; You will definitely need to increase the number of characters and according to what is listed in the game story we mentioned in the previous step.
Seventh: Programming the game
After designing everything in the game as mentioned in the previous steps, we need to create a software system that combines all of the above under the management of one software system; So you will need to learn C # or C ++ to create this system.
Summary of the first section
We first selected the idea of the game and studied it well, then we designed the general structure of the game from menus, help, and instructions, and then we designed visual and then audio. Then we set out to choose the game scenario and apply it more closely to the movie scenario, and then came the step of making the game characters. After all this, I started programming the game in a suitable programming language like C #.
Section Two: Software used in the games industry
The programs used in making a game are many and varied, and each program has a specific purpose that is different from other programs. Below, we will show you the most popular programs used in making a video game.
1 - Game Maker The game maker is known for being extremely easy to make 2D games without needing a software background; Everything is done through the program’s simple interface through the menus available in it. 3D games can be made with the same program but lack some elements that make Game Maker not perfect for the 3D games industry, but it remains an ideal choice for making 2D games, also ideal for beginners. Among the most famous games that were made using Game Maker: Death's Gambit Game 12 is better than 6 Chicken Coop Chaos game Educational courses to learn Game Maker A free set of English language courses offered by Yoyo Games, the official company of Game maker, are also additional company courses from this same company to teach you how to create games with the software. Create a game in 48 hours using Game maker with this site dedicated only to explaining the program. YouTube tutorial consisting of 38 Game maker tutorial videos, also this course consists of 64 professional videos of the same program. Arabic course consisting of 7 videos to learn the program, and this is another educational course for beginners consisting of 3 videos.2 - Dark Basic This program is for anyone who really wants to master the field of gaming design; Dark Basic is a programming language that is closer to dialogue in English, and from it, you can create any kind of game in all its aspects as you want. Whether you want to design 2 or 3D games or mobile games, Dark Basic enables you to do just that with its huge graphics and sound library, and this is a list of games made by Dark Basic. Educational courses that help you learn Dark basic A set of tutorials to learn Dark Basic tools provided by the program's official website. A site dedicated to explaining the basics of Dark basic. This is a set of tutorials that explain dark basic, 26 videos to explain the professional version, 100 videos to explain how to create FBS games, 16 videos to explain the basics of the program.3- Graphics and acoustic software for games It may depend on the pictures and virtual sounds that are included with the game-making programs, but perhaps also you need to make the images and audio of the game yourself, in which case you will need one of these programs. Photoshop or Gimp replacement program for the manufacture of images and graphics Maya 3D graphics program 3D Max graphics program for 3D graphics AutoCAD program for the manufacture of 2D and 3D graphics and methods Program for making and editing audio and this is a list of the most important of these programs.4 - Programming languages for creating games These languages and engines have been added here as alternative drives that you can rely on in game design. Unity language for gaming and this is an educational course in Arabic consisting of 185 videos of how to create a game using unity3d, and this is also a set of helpful lessons from the official website to learn the Unity3d game engine. The Unreal game engine is one of the most important engines for the game industry, and to learn this engine I advise you to start through the help page from the official website of the engine. Cry Engine game engine made with many professional games and for more information about this engine follow this link. Java and C different languages allow you to make a game, and there are many other languages that you can search for if you like.
If you have the information you would like to add to this guide, or if you would like a game engine that was not mentioned in the article, you can share comments with us.
