How to make games?

Here is a list of 10 steps I put together to help focus your efforts in making games. And to give some idea of a process for creating games.

Step 1: Get an idea for a game, do some storyboarding, some web diagrams even.

Step 2: Choose a technology you know or want to learn Game Maker, Unity, Construct, RPG Maker, Ogre3D, jME, Irrlitch, XNA, directX, opengl, jogl, lwjgl, pygame, Source SDK, UDK, CryENGINE and for modding visit ModDB or search for how to mod games you own.

Step 3: Choose a image editor that you know Paint.NET, PhotoScape, Photoshop, PaintShopPro, GIMP.

If you want it to be a 3D game choose a modeling program

Step 4: 3D Studio Max, Maya, Blender, ZBrush, TrueSpace, Softimage, SketchUp Pro.

Step 5: Depending on the technology you chose, you need to choose file formats, image sizes and of course other scope issues, make sure those file formats are supported by the technology you chose. Other scope issues like how many levels, weapons, types of enemies, types of characters, different screens. This will help keep things structured, and give you a good idea when your done.

Step 6: Design a 1st level this must be complete all the way through no gaps. Don't hold yourself back because you think something can't work, just try it and change it later if you find it doesn't work.

Step 7: If you are programming it yourself or even if you are doing a MOD or using a game making application, work on making the core gameplay mechanics first such as shooting enemies and gaining points. Getting and completing quests and leveling up etc.

Step 8: Once you have a playable 1st level with place-holder images and models and other content. It's time to finish it up, with placeholders of course, just use place holders everywhere don't worry about it looking horrible you can always make it prettier.

Step 9: Now you can make it pretty, smooth out the graphics a little, do some performance enhancements, etc... Make the art style consistent add in more effects, to make players give the "cool" and "I like it". This would be known as polishing. Remember it's only that first level.

Step 10: Depending on which technology you chose you want a Level Editor unless all your content is randomly generated in code in which case this list may not do anything for you. This is the step where you churn out content after content, basically the part of the game making you really wanted to do.

Site traffic report

I know I like seeing this on other blogs to get an idea of where I am comparatively. So I figured I'd post some averages for those who have their own blogs.

I get on average about 10 visits per day, 15 pageviews leading to a high bounce rate which probably means I don't have enough cross links or interesting posts, hehehe sorry about that gotta work on it a bit. I've always kind of struggled determining the what to post. Hope to improve that in the future.

So as you can tell from the daily average I get around 300 visits per month. My adsense revenue is extremely low due to poor site placement and for a while I had way to many ads and can't get them into more prominent positions. If your interested in reading on improving your own adsense revenue I found this article confirmed all other research I have done on the subject.

Simple Changes Doubled My Adsense Revenue

So my adsense revenue is less than 5 cents per month. Sorry I can't quit my day job and become a net millionaire just yet, lol. My goal is to provide more useful posts that help you make games from my own experience and knowledge. I can't say that I am the smartest game making hobbyist but I have been programming games in my spare time for the past 10 years or so and have picked up a few tricks, as well as learned more programming languages than I care to admit, hehehe.

I hope that anyone visiting the site for whatever reason can help me help them, spend some time make some comments, what would you like to see more of, where have I failed, what needs improvement etc...