After making Numbergun! with Sofia I realized that most people wouldn't want to play it but I bet there are a lot of parents out there who have kids in the under-ten range, too young to sit down and make a videogame by themselves, who might think it's a fun project to make a game with their kid. I'm thinking most kids, like Sofia, would be so excited to have their art in a game they won't mind that it doesn't look quite like Call of Duty or Halo when it's done.
So I decided to try my hand at making a video tutorial.
What a big pain that turned out to be. I knew it wouldn't be easy but it was an even bigger task than I imagined. Anyhow, after spending a day on it I decided I really should focus on actually making games, but I did manage to finish ... something. So here it is, warts and all. Really bummed about the recording levels, you'll probably have to turn your computer's speakers all the way up just to hear what I'm saying. And I just realized the mouse cursor is invisible! :( Oh, and now I've noticed that the YouTube video quality is terrible! (Any advice on how to fix that?)
Anyhow, if you can stand watching the video, to do the project, you will need a couple of free programs: Unity and Gimp. And if it turns out I'm going to fast in the tutorial, you may want to use some of their tutorials to familiarize yourself with those programs before diving in here. (And if you're already a Photoshop person, you may prefer to use Photoshop to Gimp.)Also - you'll need images of your kid's art. I simply took Sofia's drawings out into the sunlight, snapped photos of them with my phone, and e-mailed the photos to myself.
And, finally, you'll need these scripts I wrote that I've graciously put in the public domain: kidfpsscripts.
What's I'm covering here includes how to get a FPS up-and-running in Unity with some rudimentary AI using UnitySteer and a diorama-style (kinda-Wolfenstein3D-like) flatcard enemy.
I did record more footage, of putting more than one monster in the level and adding some front-end graphics and text, but editing is enough of a pain that I'm not going to make Part 2 unless someone requests it. So, if you liked this, and want more, let me know and I'll make it so.
It really is a lot more work than you'd think but the biggest issue from what I can tell is that the highest resolution available for the video is 480p.
Posted by: Michael Guerrero | July 22, 2012 at 02:14 PM
Thanks for posting this tutorial. I'll be creating something similar with my girls :) Personally I would watch part 2 if it was available.
Posted by: Ronnie | July 23, 2012 at 06:01 AM