Game creation and roadblocks

General Discussion
1

Correct me if a poll list like this already exists (or if it’s supposed to go in another category) BUT:
edit: recreated the poll in order to show who voted (kinda wanna compare it to other answers)

TLDR: Some questions in a poll.

What

I’ve played quite a few games created within this community and thought I might be able to add something to the pile, so, a few weeks ago I started looking into game creation.
While looking around, I started to wonder about this same process others have gone through or someday might. So I had a few questions for the community.

For those that have created games (both complete and incomplete), did you come across any big roadblocks? where were your biggest struggles? did anything delay your game or even stop it all together?

And for those that wish to create games but haven’t yet, what’s holding you back?

Why

While looking into game creation I quickly came across my strengths and weaknesses. While I love programming and figuring out code, I’m no good if it comes to writing or putting graphics together.
Functionality is no issue, giving everything a feel is.

And while I’m fine (I think) with figuring things out and eventually ending up with something sub-decent, I can imagine people struggling on one or more parts of the entire process and quitting or delaying their project.
(I’d like to see if that’s the case, and maybe figure out something? idk)

The poll

Have you created a game before?

  • Yes (finished)
  • Yes (unfinished)
  • Yes (cancelled)
  • No

0 voters

Do you wish to create a game?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

What kind of game did you make / do you want to make?

If you pick ‘other’, please react with what style of game you would like to make

  • Visual novel style (Ren’py)
  • Game maker style
  • Unity style
  • Other

0 voters

In what area do/did you struggle, or are you uncertain about?

  • Programming
  • Finding information about subject (e.g. how much calories to gain x kg/lbs)
  • Writing
  • Searching/Creating graphics (backgrounds / models / sprites)
  • Time / Motivation
  • Nothing
  • Other

0 voters

Do you know where to find the information you need?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

After word

I’d love to help myself and others to get their creations out, I like creating but of course I like playing the games of others even more.

Feel free, even encouraged, to add anything to this, be it questions or other feedback, it’d be amazing if someone gets something out of this.

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As one of the few responders (at time of comment) to have said they’ve completed a game, I probably should offer some insight into my answers and some general feedback on your topic.

For reference, it’s been over a year since I made my last “game”, which was “A Heavy Influence” for the 2021 Gain Jam. Prior to that, I made my only other game, and the one I would consider “complete”, “Cursed!”. Both of these were Twine games because I knew I would be capable of 2 things on my own: writing, and programming (well, programming above novice level). Doing solely text based games allowed me to put some great practice on skills I presumed I had while avoiding making a shoddy product by using skills I lacked (aka art). They also were created in very tight windows, which helped them actually see the light of day. “A Heavy Influence” was made for a Gain Jam, so that should be self-explanatory. “Cursed!”, on the other hand, basically struck me like a bolt of lightning and almost forced me to rapidly create it in order to flush it from my system, lest it fester in my brain. I believe I did about 80% of the game in just a few days, with the rest being done over subsequent weeks, and that was mostly functional tweaks and a bit extra content. Again, that speed was critical, because without it, the roadblocks set in.

Ah yes, the roadblocks. I’d probably have made more games by now if it wasn’t for these. Hell, my user name is based one of my personal biggest roadblocks: Scope aka Feature Creep. For those who haven’t heard the term, it’s a very common one in just about any project based industry (software, engineering, etc.), where a project expands (heh) out of control because of the developer/team constantly increasing the scope or adding new features beyond the initial plan. Left unchecked, all of a sudden your project has far outstripped your time/budget/skills/whatever, but parring it down now feels sacrilegious to your vision. And then it sits in the back of your mind, wasting away as you keep hinting on a forum that you’ll be working on another project or update Soon™… but I digress. Point is, if I give myself too much time to think about an idea, it becomes too massive and I lose the motivation to actually bring it to fruition. I’m quite sure this happens to many devs, be it before getting a project off the ground or smack dab in the middle of it.

Perhaps an even bigger roadblock for me, however, is answering this question: Does this need to be a game? If you’ve been over on DeviantArt lately, you may have encountered me having started posting literature over the past few months, and that ties directly in to my game development. I have had plenty of narrative ideas, which I have my own creative struggles with just turning into satisfying stories, but when I’ve asked myself “Does this need to be a game?”, I usually answer “no”. Thus, they become literature instead. Part of my personal philosophy on games is that game play must come first. What does the experience gain from being a game as opposed to just being a story, or a gallery of images to flip through? Did you actually earn the story pieces or images you reached, or did you basically click “next” with varying amounts of extra steps? I mean no shade to many projects on here, but I get so bored of seeing a game with little reason to exist outside of “fat of she, but game”. Why have a fat-fetish based RPG if the characters weight doesn’t affect stats or moves (or, worse, has a mostly negative effect)? Do your choices in this VN actually matter, or do they merely change the speed at which you reach the next image in the gallery? Is clicking on a food item until a number goes high enough to get a scene really an engaging way to convey a story? These are some of the questions I ask when seeing if something I think of should become a game or literature. I like to thing I achieved that to some degree with my games, but others may disagree. I also can point you towards games that I think have exemplified incorporating player agency and the fetish into the games, like “The Weighting Game”, “Big Fat Vore RPG”, “The Witch of Gluttony”, “Eat the Dungeon”, “Super Fatty Office Administrator Simulator”, “Spacethumper”, and quite a few others that I can’t name off the top of my head right now. I fear that sometimes this question never gets asked, or gets asked far too late in a project to answer it meaningfully.

Alright, wow, this got to be quite a ramble, I’m sorry about that. Lots I wanted to get off my chest and for some reason this seemed like the right place. Ultimately, my advice for making a (fetish game) project that actually happens is to go through this checklist:

  1. What’s your story? - You should at least have a vague outline of characters, a beginning, a middle, and an end (not really necessary if you are doing something more arcade-y). These can obviously be fluid and change as development goes on, but at least have a rough gameplan for what the game will look like.
  2. Does it need to be a game? - You can frame this question in multiple ways (What is my core gameplay loop?, How does weight/expansion impact the gameplay?, etc.), but at the end of the day you should have some explanation as to how your idea/story is better served as a game than as literature or an image gallery.
  3. What are the limitations of myself/my team? - Be honest with yourself and figure out what you or your team is capable of, and what you might not be.
  4. How will I/my team handle my/our limitations? - Will you limit the project to what you are able to do? Will you seek another team member to cover your gaps? Will you put in the time and energy to learn how to overcome your deficiencies? You need to know these things in order to not give up at the first major obstacle you face.
  5. Do we have time and/or budget constraints? - Never a fun question to ask, but always a necessary one, obviously.
  6. What is the scope of the game? - Based on all your answers above, what does a reasonable 1.0 of this game look like? What might be nice, but isn’t necessary to getting the game done? Setting parameters of the project at the beginning will help you avoid straying to far into the weeds as it actually gets going. If you set a scope early, you will actually be able to see when it starts creeping!

I could go on for longer, but I feel like I’ve gotten the major things out there. Hopefully this helps, and best of luck to all in their future endeavors!

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A lot of good point being made, I’ll try to avoid reiterating those. To expand on the “does this need to be a game?” point from above, I find that that philosophy can be applied at a smaller scale as well. Stuff like “do the game need a poison swamp?” or “are random encounters necessary?”

It’s very easy to go down the road of thinking a game absolutely has to have certain mechanics or tropes that can trap you into working on things that you don’t need, and sometimes even worse, things you don’t actually care about making.

When I get stuck on making anything, I always ask myself if I’m enjoying the process of creation with that element, and if I’m not, then really scrutinize whether or not I actually need it. And if the game breaks completely without it (on a technical level, not “can’t make an rpg without combat” type stuff, sometimes you gotta break the mold) then the next step is to figure out the quickest/easiest way to get past that.

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Whole lot of information to unpack here for sure, but I’m really happy we got a conversation rolling here, so thank you so much!

You bring some amazing points I honestly hadn’t considered yet, especially the ‘does this need to be a game?’ question. bringing more options to the table than only games.
I’ve purely been considering making a game as the main option, which honestly might not be the best of views to have. Some thinking fuel right there.
I won’t go into the other points for now, gonna take some more time to reflect before I do that, but do know I’m very happy with the response

also thank you to you @Chubberdy

I feel like this indeed does expand on the point given above. Thinking about what a games make the game worth playing and if all the mechanics are worth creating.
I do wish to add onto this with another question

when I work on any kind of project or task I get told to ‘not reinvent the wheel’
aka: don’t put too hours upon hours into a feature that already exists

Do you think it would be beneficial to have a library of often used functions and features which can be imported to be used as a sort of template? or add-on or anything in that region?
or do you think that would work counterproductive?
of course, the possibilities would vary between engines, but just for an idea:

let’s say someone would want to create a Ren’py game, sandbox with day/night cycle.
instead of having to create that entire system, they’d import a file and use a premade cycle, only having to call the imported functions and having most of the work done in the back.
being able to call things like a checkTime() or a passTime() without having to create those yourself.

Aside from practical implications of creating/sorting said library, let’s just say it all works.
I think it could save a lot of time on creating certain ideas and giving time to focus more on building the story and other ideas. But considering some of the things mentioned I sort of wonder if it might stop people from breaking out of the standard
(for the people that already created a game:) how do you feel about this as a sort of creation support?

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In my experience games are just a huge undertaking and it’s easy to underestimate how intricate and delicate a game in the making is.
And if you’re working with a team, life tends to get in the way at some point.
Further complicating the matter is your own interest and motivation to the idea you’ve committed so much energy towards.

Personal experience is with Godot3D and Blender.
I thought i could make a game largely by myself but i was horribly mistaken.

My personal recommendation is to do a lot of the thinking beforehand.
Then document it to the fullest extent you can. (not just descriptively but also mechanicly, down to the numbers involved)
And if by that point the game still interests without having to adjust all that much then you’re ready to start developing a bare-bones prototype.
then expand from there.

Now that said, it very much differs on the engine you use and the people you get involved and your own personal traits. So it’s my 2 cents.

TL;DR
Dont let your hubris get in the way of planning.
Dont let your doubts ruin your planning.
Less can always become more.
Iterate iterate iterate iterate iterate…Ad nauseum

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Glad I could provide you with something to think about!

As to your follow up question, this certainly exists to varying degrees in video games already. For example, Bethesda builds a lot of its games on the same engine, which is why you see so much mechanical similarity between, say, the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. For a more relevant example, look at something like RPG Maker. It has a lot of basic game functions pre-built into it. Now, of course, you could always modify above and beyond those, but you can also just take those basics and run. You also already made a great point with tools like these: they’re absolutely wonderful time savers to cut out code time on a problem someone has already solved many times over, but they are also great re-enforcers of the status quo.

In general I’m supportive of them, as it lowers the barrier to entry and just simply allows for more energy to be put elsewhere in the game. But, if you don’t innovate in your own way somewhere else in the game, you’ll eventually become boring game clone #1234324.

TL;DR - Shared function libraries are a great idea that helps new devs learn and old devs same time. They should, however, be used as ways to make the game better, not as a way to be lazy!

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Oh yeah, definitely. Libraries are invaluable, doubly so if you can’t/don’t like programming/art/sound. You just have to keep in mind that the game should dictate the library, not the other way around. That kind of thing is why a lot of RPGmaker games feel very same-y.

Actually there are a couple things specific to RPGmaker that I want to address since it comes with so many of the assets needed to make a game out of the box.

I feel like on the fetish side of things libraries for code and sounds are decently fleshed out, not so much for art. However, for everything else please please please spend like half an hour looking at some asset packs for other stuff like tile sets, sounds, music, enemies, etc. (especially the menu sounds, they’re so piercing).

RPGmaker is a super popular program and there are tons of resources online specifically for it, and even more for games in general. Even swapping out a couple things will make your game that much more tailored the way you want it and hey, maybe you can make a couple minor edits to add the special statue/painting/potion/food that’s specific to your game. Plus you won’t be restricted to generic medieval fantasy for your story.

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again, in a fear that I’ll say something that already exists but I just looked over

Then might it be valuable to gather/make some and document those somewhere central?
Gathering from the poll, quite a few people WANT to create games but stumble across problems somewhere along the line
First and foremost, time and motivation. Kinda regret putting those two together now, but what’s done is done, might put another poll for that sometime, anyways.

The second most picked answer is programming, closely followed by graphics, and I personally believe a lot of people stumble across other problems you guys mentioned as well, albeit unknowingly, like the Creature Feep… uhh… Feature Creep.

So aside from having libraries, having some sort of general ‘advised’ workflow could be nice, like the checklist CreatureFeep posted:

But more written out complete / input from more creators that have had success in their projects.

So, we could have a standard workflow, of which you can deviate once you got the hang of things a little bit and access to libraries with often requested features made into easy to implement functions. (inventory systems, day/night cycles, organized stat systems).

Hoping we’re able to lower the barrier of entry that way, letting people focus more on actually creating their story (in an organized way) and not having to spend hours on the programming side of things in order to set down a demo (being able to set SOMETHING working down should also increase motivation I’d say)

For engines as RPGmaker, there’s enough to find, but we could document the handy to-go places, and for engines as Ren’py we could gather them as well / let the programmers of the community go wild.
I don’t know anything about Twine but if its difficulty is anywhere close to Ren’py the same could be done there.

Unity games always stay a lot more difficult, but for the brave among us some basic movement files and such could maybe help, even if just to bring order to the chaos.

If properly set up the 30% (at time of writing) among us that don’t know where to find the information we need would be helped a lot as well.
We have a beautiful forum here already, I’m sure something like that could fit in here somewhere.

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I did make a post that kinda did that here, obviously doesn’t cover everything but I think it’s a good place to start (I might be biased though). Hopefully the wiki can fill in some of those gaps better.

I will say though, the best resources for making games aren’t going to be found on a niche fetish gaming site. I highly encourage people to look at and even ask questions on other forums/websites/reddit, especially ones about the engine you’re using in particular. Yeah you might not want to show them the juicy stuff, but there’s way more people in general willing to give feedback and who think about game design/programming in those sorts of places. Not to say this site doesn’t have those kinds of people, there are just so many more beyond those doing it for a fetish.

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I’ll echo Chubberdy on casting a wide net on your knowledge resources. For game design theory, I actual gleaned a lot of understanding and some of my questions from Yahtzee’s Game Dev Diary series he did a while ago. There’s also entire active subreddits dedicated to just about any engine you’re interested in using.