My first video game!

[janevblagoj]

Hello!
Quite a while I’m working on my product “Poppy and Rose” which you can download it here: http://www.download.com/Poppy-And-Rose/3000-2111_4-10638405.html?tag=lst-0-3
The game is made in the program language Delphi 6 and I hope that it will take your attention.
Please, after you try the game and study it a little bit, if you can answer the following questions:
- How can I find a video game tester, the best case is that to be some volunteer who will test the game and it will give me critics about the game.
- How is your opinion for the essential value of the game?
- What do you think about the UI of the game (it is made in Delphi 6), can I make it better and can I get some suggestions of how can I do that?
- In which category will you put this game (maybe puzzle!)?
- Is there any company that in cooperation with me can commercialize the game?
- I think that playing on this video game in network can be a real challenge! Do you think same?

Thank you,
Janev Blagoj

[TisLord]

In all honesty I do not belive this is marketable as there are other games out there which do similiar. Very rough. I would not pay for it. Nor do I belive others would.

[Lord_Magus]

Hi Janev,

I think your game is a great first effort, but unfortunately I don't really see it being that marketable either. Players these days want games that have flashy graphics, and expect more interactivity than just clicking on buttons or entering numbers on a form. The players also want to feel rewarded for their efforts, and in today's multi-billion dollar game industry, a simple "you have succeeded" (or similar) message just doesn't cut it. Also, you need to have objectives or goals for the player to achieve, which will give them an extra incentive to play. In puzzle games you can afford to not work too much on this part, but even a simple back-story (e.g. "find the secret number to stop the bomb before it's too late!") combined with some extra visual feedback can give the player a sense of accomplishment every time they finish a level/puzzle - this makes a huge difference for the fun-factor and longevity of the game as well. As it stands though, for these reasons (and several more) Poppy and Rose feels more like an entertaining utility than an actual game.

Have you experimented with making more graphics-driven games, such as perhaps a simple Tetris or Minesweeper clone? Also, have you had any experience with C/C++ and DirectX/OpenGL? I think Delphi/Pascal is a great learners platform (Pascal was my first language as well), but unfortunately by today's standards it's very outdated and can't really be used for efficient game development. If you are serious about getting into the industry at some point and marketing your games, then you might want to start learning what the industry expects you to know: pick up a copy of Visual Studio and a good C++ book, and maybe start reading up on 3D graphics techniques some time down the track as well. The net is also a great resource for tutorials and information on pretty much any game-related topic you can imagine - for a start, make sure to check out gamedev.net or flipcode for example. If you're going to look into 3D as well, I highly recommend NeHe's OpenGL tutorials, but maybe I'm going ahead of myself here.

The good thing is that you seem to understand the basic algorithms and logic of a game, so it won't be too hard to adapt or expand that existing knowledge to a different language and API, and maybe even start writing a simple side-scroller or something. It might sound intimidating, but there's no reason to rush: you can start out from a single pixel on screen, then a square, then a sprite, then an animated sprite and so on. Now, I know that most programmers are rarely artists as well, but thankfully there are plenty of resources on the net where you can dig up some free sprites and sounds to use at first.

Programming games can be a very time-consuming task, but ultimately there are few things more rewarding than seeing your game running in all it's glory once it's actually finished :) So even if you didn't receive the positive feedback you were hoping for, don't be discouraged! You're already over the hard part, which is showing that you have the determination and enough discipline to actually finish what you start, and that's arguably the most important quality to have when doing anything creative.

[ssjlance]

I'll help you as soon as I get Wine running. Can't run it at the moment, I'm on Linux and need Wine to run Window's programs.

I haven't done much programming myself, but I can tell you from what I've done, it doesn't start out easy. My first programs were all text based things I made in BASIC when I was bored on a Commodore VIC-20. And a complete composition of Enter Sandman that took me several hours....

Anyways, just keep on with it, and as has been suggested, try some C++ or Java. Or if you just want to make games as quickly and easily as possible, look up Game Maker, and once you get used to the interface, you can use it's programming language as well and get better results. There are a ton of tutorials for it. Thats what I always used to use to make games in Windows, and I might mess with it later and upload an example.