🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮
Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?
To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:
SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!
Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it):
THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further
✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles!
✨Cons: None really <3
Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup
Twine:
Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want)
✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch)
✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain.
Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity
Bitsy:
Little topdown games!
✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small!
✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing!
Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty
RPGMaker:
To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!!
NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post.
✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here!
✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale!
Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)
engine.lol:
collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden!
NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?
✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨
ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :
Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!
GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!
Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!
BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!
-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!
-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff.
So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.
-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.
-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.
-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!
I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye
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after the events of season 4, steve just wanting SO BADLY to be friends with eddie. just LOVING the idea of them getting closer and having eddie as a friend because hell yeah! a close male friendship with someone that is actually my age, and who i don’t have a weird history with involving bruised eyes and love triangles? count me IN! and eddie is FUN, he is actually hilarious! the way they share the same glances of understanding when dustin is being an absolute shit head, rambling on and on about some obscure topic, expecting everyone to always be on the exact same page as him. of course. and, although steve suspects that eddie actually probably is keeping up with everything dustin says, much better than he ever could, he knows that above it all eddie can appreciate the antics for what they are, and roll his eyes with steve at dustin, i concur, you dustin henderson, are a total butthead.
steve just about junps RIGHT IN to being friends with eddie. hey man, what’cha up to tonight? wanna watch a movie? get drunk, smoke a bit? hey eddie, how have you been, man? he starts calling eddie up on the phone regularly just to check in, shoot the shit, he loves it! he loves having this new friendship with eddie munson and he loves how much the other boy has surprised him with how much he actually enjoys being around him. he’s not a freak, really, well ok maybe he is a little bit, but only in the best ways. he’s kind, thoughtful, and is always looking out for the people he cares about, which is something steve can really respect in a dude. but he’s also so funny? steve never could’ve anticipated just how much eddie has managed to make him genuinely LAUGH over their short amount of time spent together. and he’s really, out there? with the way he presents himself, the way he takes up space with these big THEATRICAL movements, leaving no room for regret or shame or god forbid embarrassment. steve isn’t even sure munson is capable of feeling it at all.
eddie munson is a good dude, and steve could use a bit more of that kind of person around him. he loves all of his friends, the weird little bonded family he’s found himself apart of, and they are all good people, but it never hurts to have afew more added in here and there. it never hurts to know there are more good people out there to find.
so steve is all over eddie, it seems.
at least, from where eddie is standing. nobody else seems as phased as eddie does at this sudden change in steve’s demeanour, in his interest in what eddie munson spends his time doing these days. it seems like, to everyone else, to steve, it’s just a natural progression in their relationship, after being sort of role model figures to the same group of kids, both being the two single dudes, who fought the same monsters together last spring, it seems nobody questions too much that they’d start casually hanging around eachother more. especially since eddie has found himself to fit into his own special spot as one of the group now after it all, after he unwillingly became tangled in this whole upsidedown-superpowers-supernatural-monsters and demons debacle, and tangled quite dramatically at that, the rest of the group that’s been with this since the beginning seemed to find no trouble in taking him in and seeing him as “one of them” now.
so, steve asking eddie to smoke, to watch movies, to go for a drive with no real end destination, it’s not really something that earns them too many double takes. dustin makes a comment or two in the beginning, because steve since when did you like hanging out with eddie? you guys are like so opposite, you don’t like any of the same stuff he does? and steve barely gives a shrug and a dismissive yeah yeah whatever man in response, with a signature eye roll, and dustin had said it seemingly also not too seriously, poking fun at steve wherever he can, not really meaning anything by it, as he fidgets around and rambles in the backseat of steve’s car, eddie riding up front. after that, though, he’s dropped it. it’s never brought up again. part of eddie thinks, too, that dustin would actually be enjoying that his two older friends are becoming friends themselves.
robin seems to be the only other person to look a bit harder at their situation, lingering stares at their interactions, all squinted eyes and eyebrows raised, though from her all this seems to be almost always and only ever directed at steve. eddie’s not sure what to make of that. isn’t he the weird one? i mean, he’s the one that stands out, right? he’s the odd denominator that makes their friendship strange. why would steve harrington want to hang out with Him? HIM? but robin doesn’t spend her time studying eddie to try and search for what about him could possibly have piqued the interest of cherished steven harrington, no, shes always looking at steve. like she’s seeing him differently, almost. eddie doesn’t even think that steve notices it, either, because he doesn’t seem to be questioning or doubting anything odd or strange or out of the ordinary with their newfound time spent together. and maybe, maybe robin is seeing him differently. eddie knows he definitely has been. seeing him more, intensely. deeply. human. seeing the person that steve is, as just steve, not this idealised version of a boy that eddies starting to question ever really even existed at all, or if everyone around him just needed to believe that he did, and who was steve if not happy to comply to the wants of the people around him for who he should be?
eddie likes having steve as his friend, too. don’t get it twisted. he loves how unexpectedly expressive steve is about everything, even really small things. steve LOVES to raise his voice, rest a hand on his popped hip, scolding the kids for something stupid with no real heat or malice behind it. and steve is, like, kinda bitchy too. eddie knew he had the capacity to be a real asshole when he wanted to be, that’s all he knew steve for back in the day, when he was back in high school, hanging around tommy h and the basketball boys, the jocks. eddie would spend his days hearing only whispers and gossip in the hallways of the parties at king steve’s house and the fights king steve had started and won on the court or out in the fields, only ever getting as close as a shove into a locker with the guy at the time, but eddie knew how it could go. he knew all about what steve had done to jonathan, what he’d said to him, the words he’d used. eddie knew it all. he’d seen enough, and been through enough himself, to know how these guys acted in response to guys like him, like jonathan, people who were lower on the social food chain. so, eddie knew about steve’s “mean streak”, if you will, but this kind of snarky bitchiness was something new to him. harrington was almost, sassy, when he wanted to be. it was less so cruel and more just, just sass. if he’s being completely honest it kind of blew eddie away, at first. he thought steve was one of those dull headed jocks who thought with their fists more than their actual brains, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. steve’s insults were well thought out, they were FUNNY, he was smart with his words. and silly. oh my god steve harrington could be so fucking silly, real honest to god goofball when the moment called for it, when he felt comfortable enough. eddie had caught on multiple occasions steve mimicking lightsabers to play fight with dustin, or the stupid fucking shit he would do or say just to make robin laugh, singing along to a song playing on the radio with a funny voice.
it was all a little, intoxicating, to watch. eddie didn’t know what gave him the right to be in on this now, to get to see this side of steve and better yet to be at the other end of some of his best qualities. it was fun, all the time they spent together, but there was always something else tugging inside eddie everytime they spent close time together, too. something, he knew steve wasn’t aware of. something he knew steve wasn’t equipped to deal with. something he knew, was him. was him, making things something more than they should be, because, nobody seemed to be questioning that they could become friends, so why ruin that? why disrupt it?
- robin and steve
“Steve.”
“-but then like, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to watch it I just thought, hey, y’know, let’s try something different for a change, but then he- oh my god he honest to god TACKLED ME Robin — I mean, it was so fucking funny and it happened so quick — and all over a fucking Tom Cruise movie-“
“STEVE.” Robin lightly slammed a hand onto the counter. She had been standing behind it for no short of 20 minutes, watching Steve as he paced around, supposed to be stacking tapes onto shelves, but ended up spending the whole time going on and on, and ON, about how movie night went with Eddie last night. She thought she was bad…
Steve jumped, almost running into a shelf and knocking down his hard work, and seemed to snap out of whatever trance he had found himself in after starting to tell Robin a story about something funny Eddie had done last night.
“Shit, sorry. Sorry, what were you saying? Were you- were you saying something?”
To this, Robin just rolls her eyes and let’s out a laugh, “You, sir, are goddamn hopeless.”
“Sorry. How long was I talking for?” Steve wandered his way over to lean his arms onto the counter from the opposite side.
“Oh, I dunno Steve, just about half an HOUR?”
“That is an over exaggeration Robin, it’s only been like-“
“Honestly, man, i’m concerned for you. You are like next level OBSESSED with Eddie. Eddie Munson. You do realise this right??? You are obsessed with him, Steve.”
To this Steve sputters, lazily waving his hands back and forth.
“No, Robin, what the hell are you talking about? I am not OBSESSED. No need to be jealous, alright, Stevie-Boy here can have more than one friend. Your spot in my heart isn’t any less special now that it’s beginning to be shared by another.” He bats his eyelashes up at her, holding both hands over his chest as if to cradle his heart.
“Oh my GOD! You even SOUND LIKE HIM!”, she playfully slaps his shoulder. “Steve. You are obsessed.”
“I am not obsessed! He’s just a really great guy, alright-“
“Blah blah, yep whatever you say, lover boy.” Robin quips, plopping down onto the chair chair infront of their staff computer, turning herself to face it.
“Wha- what? Lover boy? What the hell Robin, that is not- that doesn’t even make any sense!”
She is just smiling at him now, enjoying seeing him spiral like this. Steve let’s out a sigh as he puts his hands on his hips, and shakes his head, looking at her right back.
He opens and closes his mouth afew times, like he’s really thinking about what he wants to say next. Or like he has no idea what to say next, and his brain is not moving fast enough to formulate the next sentence his mouth knows he wants to say. He wasn’t obsessed. That’s not- that’s like- no. No he was not, Robin was just playing around with him, she knew how to get on his nerves. Get him all wound up over little things just to see him react like this.
After a minute or two, Robin realises Steve was not going to reply anytime soon, so she turns fully back toward him. Saving him from his spiral.
“So, what are you’re plans for tonight Steve-O?”
He lets out a chuckle and walks around the counter till he’s behind it with Robin, leaning his back against it so he can stand across from her and face her.
“Well, not really sure. Parents aren’t home, no early shift tomorrow, might drink afew beers, listen to some music, —“
“See what Eddie’s doin?” Robin finishes for him, quirking her eyebrows up and down as she does it.
“Oh shut up!” Steve just laughs and softly throws a tape from the counter at her chest. “As a matter of fact, yeah I will see what he’s up to. Because we are friends now, Robin. Is that a problem? Actually I was also gonna ask you what you were up to after work, too, but you know what after this I’m having second thoughts, I mean, the way you’ve been treating me lately-“
“Oh my god, you are the worst. Yes, I’m free, of course I’ll hang out with you dingus. You and your tweedle dee.”
Steve laughs at this, then tilts his head.
“Wait, does that make me dumb? Tweedle dumb?! That’s how you see me?”
“Yeah it is actually, got a problem?”
“Oh wow, she’s feisty today. Can’t believe you think I’m dumb, Rob’s. When you come knockin’ tonight, do not expect a warm greeting at my front door.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take my chances.”
- later. steve’s house. to be continued?
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