Just out of curiosity, what game genre of typically the easiest to make? Usually I don't get a lot of time to invest in programming my game, due to homework, etc. Yet, even knowing that, I end up trying to make an RPG. I'd thought it'd be pretty easy--after all my game wasn't intended to be particularly long--but at the rate I was going, I knew I could never get it done.
Are some kinds of games easier to make than others? Is an overhead action/adventure game easier to make than an RPG? Or the other way around? What a platform game? And what about all the other genres?
By far the hardest to make is a fully functional RTS.
There aren't many.
RPGs can be both easy and hard, depending on the amount of detail you put into it (number of characters, character stats, weapons items and their stats/functions etc)
The most common are platformers, but they, like RPGs can be easy or tricky depending on the level of detail you go through for the engine.
Basically it all depends on how much detail you want to put into the way a game works.
You say that the most "common" are platformers, but we don't see many "pure" platformers here! Games like Noitu Love and Eternal Daughter don't really count as pure platformers in my eyes.
No, the easiest types of games to make are 'Look at the white screen' games, where you have to look at a white screen. They aren't very common though because I just made that genre up about three seconds ago.
Things with crazy algorithms and calculations etc and lots going on at once are naturally the most complex games to create.
Nought's and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe) is (in my opinion) a REALLY hard game to make well, along with Chess and Checkers. Computer AI is often the hardest part of game making. Once you conquer AI, the game making world is at your fingertips .. probably
Platformers may be the most common here on TDC but, while they may seem quite easy to make, they're damn hard to get right. RTSs are hard to do because they're technically complex: Pathfinding algorithms, level editors, artificial intelligence, mass management, etcetera. RPGs (MMORPGs) are hard to do because they typically involve quite a lot of content, like weapons, places, characters and items.
RTS's have been done in click before and they weren't to bad at all, but it has been to long someone created a good one.
Andromeda 7, Terminal Orbit, Virus Elimination & Myrmecia were pretty good RTS games in their days and all made with TGF/MMF1 and no one yet has surpassed either of them, even though TGF/MMF has improved a lot. TO & Myrmecia never made it to a full game, but Andromeda 7 & Virus Elimination were released as full games.
But creating a good RTS is quite a job and probably the thoughest genre to create.
Well, I dunno... Depends if it's supposed to be retro or not I like those adaptations of pong, like that 'curveball' flash game. A 3D approach - cool stuff
I wanna see someone make an RTS now, I've just finished playing Command and Conquer 3 too
"Platformers may be the most common here on TDC but, while they may seem quite easy to make, they're damn hard to get right."
> ALL genres are hard to get right (cept maybe pong). Try getting an arcade game with proper AI + pathfinding + collision, that's tough. An RPG with inter-character interaction, conversation, skill gaining by usage.. even tougher. Top-down shooters with AI, senses, elevation, explosions, also tough.
I dunno, I guess it all depends on how much detail you put into them. I'd say Turn based strategy games are the hardest, even more so than RTS because you have to arrange the turns. If the game divides the world into hexes, squares, whatever.. all the more tougher.
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