A game...how?

General Discussion
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Sorry if my English is written incorrectly. I’m a Spanish speaker, and honestly, I find it a bit overwhelming having to read everything in English, and the translator is simply very slow or inaccurate.

My post isn’t about that, but it’s a necessary preamble if I want to clarify the reason why (if there’s already a post explaining it) I don’t know the answer to my question.

And what’s this question? Well, I installed Unreal Engine 5 because I had an idea for a short, small game with very limited fan service, but a project to start making a video game. RPG Maker costs me money; if I “hack” it, I’ll lose it again. It’s crude, and I don’t have sprites. And again, I haven’t been able to “hack” it, and I don’t want to.

The other programs require programming knowledge that even ChatGPT couldn’t achieve. I go to college and work, so using my study time just to learn how to configure a character’s crouching is unlikely. I know someone might say, “Well, if you don’t have time, do something else,” but seriously, very seriously, I want to make a video game, even if it’s short.

I have no programming knowledge, and Unreal Engine 5 is super slow to use on my computer. If anyone has any video game-making programs I’m ignoring, tips, materials, or whatever, I would love to receive that help and would be very grateful.

I won’t say anything about the “game” itself, since I hate those who send “demos” or “betas” of games. It serves no purpose, is incomplete, creates spoilers, and creates expectations that will likely die after seeing the canceled project for the third time. Furthermore, it’s a very bad habit as a content creator, as it gives you a level of satisfaction that could make you settle for an incomplete creation due to the applause of others. For that reason, I apologize if I don’t clarify anything about the game. If you can or know how to help me, I implore you for a little help. Thank you very much.

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Unfortunately studying is required for endeavors such as this, due to the intricacies that programming a game holds.
I made a post on here about tutorials for blender, and for the Godot and Redot engines. Personally recommend Redot since they’re made up of the original big contributors, programming and donation-wise, that made up a large chunk of Godot’s progress.
Reason for the split, long story short a community manager went on a power trip and started treating the discussions like their personal soapbox before kicking those same contributors for asking them to keep drama out of software development, and the owners of the engine didn’t reign the community manager in, thus leading to Redot’s creation.

Both softwares are free and open-source (meaning can be freely modified), so you have nothing to worry about regarding payment, you don’t even need to worry about royalty fees.

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No entiendo muy bien lo quieres decir con “hack” pero si puedo entender el resto de lo
que quieres decir.

El desarrollar un juego requiere tiempo y toma mucho tiempo, independiente de si es algo corto o no. A la vez requiere de aprender cosas mas complejas especialmente si se quiere hacer algo mas bonito y no usar assets predeterminados o pre-hechos que se ofrecen en programas como RPG Maker y Unity. Yo por ejemplo, llevo tiempo desarrollando el mío en RPG Maker y todavía hay cosas que no se como hacer y he tenido que buscar de vez en cuando el como re-crearlas, como añadir una función que mida el peso de los personajes o crear una simple trampa. Es tanto que me desespera el no hacer mucho progreso, pero trato de seguir.

A lo que quiero llegar con esto, es que te tomes tu tiempo en aprender como usar el programa que escogiste para crear tu juego o también aprovecha el hecho de que quieres crear un juego para aprender sobre la marcha, incluso si al final se ve feo o malo, igual aprendiste y ganaste experiencia. Entiendo el tema del tiempo, ya que también estoy en la misma situación, pero tampoco la idea es matarte a trabajar en el juego y sacrificar tus responsabilidades y darte tiempo para ti. Trata de darte un horario o planificar tiempos (no siempre resulta pero ayuda a ser mas organizado(a).

Existen varios motores de juegos, como gamemaker studio, ren’py, Unreal, etc. Por lo poco que dices quieres algo 3d, así que la recomendación de Skirret_Resetar es buena opción si te sigue complicando el usar Unreal.

Por si acaso, este foro tiene una opción para traducir el idioma del español al Inglés,
asi que, no te molestes tanto en tratar de transcribir lo que quieres al Inglés y hay gente que habla español aqui como yo. Cualquier cosa, siempre se puede preguntar.

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I’m guessing they mean pirating it instead of paying for it. And if so, steer clear of that topic, that’s an easy way to get into trouble.

ChatGPT is far from the gold standard of coding, but even disregarding that, anyone can learn to code in any game engine. It will take time and you will have to practice, but that’s true for basically anything in life. Just remember nobody is expecting the next AAA masterpiece from a fat fetish forum.

If you want to just write an interactive story you could use Twine, if you want to create a visual novel you could use Ren’Py. Both of those are free. Unity and Godot are great options for other genres of games, and all of these have tons of tutorials you can follow. Even RPGMaker is a one-time purchase, so if you get it while it’s on sale (nobody should ever be paying full price for it) then you have it for life.

I could go an a multi-page rant about this, but there are a plethora of reasons for making demos. As an indie dev, you will mess up, you will make mistakes, and you will create games or features that aren’t wholly satisfying to play through. That is all part of learning how to make games. By creating demos and shorter games you can get feedback from the community far quicker, saving you dozens of hours of development down a path that may not be fun to play.

If people like what you have so far, great! Keep doing that! If they don’t, listen to their criticisms and think of how to improve or adapt what you already have. It’s far easier to make smaller changes whilst in development than overhauling an entire game. That’s not to say that you have to incorporate everyone’s ideas, but if the majority of people aren’t liking a certain feature then it’s better to get that feedback sooner rather than later.

Besides, by releasing demos/progress builds you’ll also get bug reports sooner, which again are easier to fix before the whole game has been made.

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Gdevelop is open source and free, and uses an Objects, Actions, and Conditions model (if Ball touches Paddle, change direction) so is easy for non-programmers to get into.

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If you want something really simple, it’s hard to beat Ren’Py.

It’s free and has barely any programming knowledge required. And while it tends to be best suited for visual novels, Loren: The Amazon Princess is a pretty fun rpg made in it, albeit with some plugins.

Really, without knowing more about what you want to make it’s hard to know what you might need.

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I was also gonna recommend gdevelop. it seems like it’s what you want.
if it is a 3d game then godot might run better than unreal at least

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I agree with this.

With it being based on sdl2 and accepting python scripts, Ren’Py can actually be taken pretty far in terms of what it can do. It scales amzingly from the simple right up to a more complex rpg. Visual novels just work out of the box with the least custom code on your part. The real line for when you have to move on from Ren’Py as a engine is when there is more work to be done, than a single thread can do. Definatly would start here, porting python to c# or c++ for another engine is easier than one would assume.