Video Game making has evolved dramatically over the past decade. It used to be a world filled with tedious hours of programming in a language like C. But today there are readily available tools that do all this programming work for you and allow you to focus on the creative task of building a fantasy world game.
Finding and Using the Software
There are many free for public use video game software suites and they are all very similar. If you learn how to use one of them you can readily transfer your skills to the others. And if you are serious about your video game making, the skills you learn with the free software are a good foundation for working with the high-end software tools that the professionals use. You can easily find any number of these free software applications by using a popular search engine. Two of them that I have used are the Genesis game engine and the Reality Factory game development suite.
Five Steps to Making a Video Game
There are five basic steps to making a video game. These are the steps that professional developers take when making a cutting edge game and they are the same steps you take when making a small game that you and your friends can enjoy.
Step One - Design on Paper
The very first thing you have to do when designing a video game is to get it down on paper. This is the most over-looked step and it is also the number one mistake that many budding game designers make. If we compare the process of making a video game to the process of building a house this step would be like drawing up the blueprints. Before building a house you have to get everything into the blueprints so you can know exactly what you are building, where everything goes and what everything looks like. This holds true with game design. Before you start making your video game you have to conceptualize it. You have to draw out on paper what the game looks like, where everything goes and to take this one step further than home building you have to write a script so you can understand what will happen in your game. This script doesn't have to be complex. It can be as easy as "The player has to work his way through the dungeon and find the Sword of Happiness to complete the game".
Maps and Sketches
Your video game is a complete world that a player will be able to walk around in and this means that the first thing you should make is a map of the whole world whether it is an outdoor world or an indoor dungeon-like world. When you do this it gives you a base to start with. When making your video game one of the first things you will do is create a large box that contains your whole world. Inside this box is where you will place all of the various objects of your game. If your map has outdoor areas you will put in it the terrain features like mountains, rivers, bridges and building. If it is strictly an inside world you will map out all of the various rooms.
After you have your overall map completed you can work down into the details. Draw floor plans of any buildings and dungeons. Place the rooms and all the structures. To aid in the visualization of your buildings and rooms you should draw sketches of key areas. Are there temples? What will they look like? What are the unique things about your game? Draw sketches of these. Once all the concepts are detailed, and your vision of the world is created you can begin the actual software creation of your game. This translates your game from its paper version to its computer version.
Professional video game design companies spend an enormous amount of time in this phase of game development. They work out every detail and make drawings and sketches of every room, every character, and every scene. You do not have to design your game with this level of detail but you should make it as detailed as possible. Every hour of work you do in this stage of the process will save you several hours of work in the next step.
Step Two - Building the wire-frame of your game
In this step of creating your video game you make an overall shell that the whole game will be played in. These are the boundaries of the game world. Inside this game world you place all of the inanimate objects whether they be outside terrain features or inside objects like rooms and furniture. This stage is where all of the inanimate objects are created and placed in your computerized world. It is a complete world without any animals, beasts or characters. When you do this you are simply building and placing all the objects where they belong and defining their shape.
This-step is commonly called "wire-framing" because the end result will look like a drawing with many wires in three dimensional locations that define and show all of the various shapes and surfaces of your game. After the wire framing is complete you will bring it to life by applying textures to all the surfaces.
Step Three - Texturing
This "texturing" of the game is a simple process of selecting a surface then choosing a texture that will be applied to it. All game development software comes with a library of ready to used textures that you can choose from and apply to surfaces with a single click of your mouse. Professional game companies spend an extraordinary amount of time creating their own textures and applying them to the wire-frames of their games. It is this texturing that gives a game it's own unique look and feel. It is a very important part of game design and companies have people dedicated to just creating textures for their worlds. Games can be composed of thousands of unique textures and on any professional game development team this job of creating textures is a full time job.
Step Four - Placing entities in your world
Entities are the players in your game or objects in your game that either move or interact with the player. These entities have two unique components that have to be designed -what they look like and what they do. With today's free software you get a whole host of pre-built entities and characters that you can simply drop and drag right into your game. They are complete with their behaviors and their look. A good example of an entity is the avatar of the player. There are available characters that have all their properties already assigned to them. You simply place the character in your world and it is ready to use -and complete with a host of characteristics such as running, jumping and using weapons.
Step Five - Creating your own characters and behaviors
If you want to make a video game you can do it without this step at all. All of the tools are already designed and ready for you to pop right into your game. But if you want to develop your skill further, or if you have very specific requirements of your game that are not readily available, you can create your own characters with programs such as Milkshape. And utilizing scripts that come with your software you can assign unique characteristics and properties to your characters. This will give your game a sense of uniqueness and an individual look and feel. Using the scripts that come with your game does take some time to learn. A script is a low level programming language and you have to learn the rules of how to use them.
Creating a video game is not hard
Once you have downloaded the software you can have a one-room game completed in less than an hour. You can save this game then run it and play it -even share it with your friends. And the beauty of the software is that once you have learned how to make one room the process is exactly the same for making ten or a hundred rooms. You simply stitch them all together and cut doorways between them and you have a big and complex world that you and your friends can adventure in.
The Sky is the Limit
Once you have a good understanding of the basic skills there are any number of directions you can take in your video game making. You can further work on your conceptualizing of games, you can further your artistic skills by creating characters with modeling software, or you can create your own textures for your game. The only limit to your video game making is the scope of your imagination.
Will Kalif is the author of two epic fantasy novels, an avid video game player, and an amateur video game maker. Visit his website at:
Storm The Castle.com - Creativity with an Edge
Or his fantasy blog at:
The Heroic Dreams Fantasy Blog
Review of PC Diagnostic Shareware
Although, the most popular operating system at the present includes a sort of Computer diagnostics tools, such as PC Health, Dr Watson, and others, those applications are not exactly what the consumer expects from a full PC diagnostics suite to protect their costly equipment an the invaluable information contained within.
There is a large number of PC diagnostics software offered on a shareware basis. This software is usually provided fully functional for a limited period of time to allow consumers to test the features and if the program fulfills their expectations, the programmer typically is paid a one-time fee. Some of those PC diagnostics applications offered under this mode are:
TuneUP Utilities
Computer diagnostics applications provided by TuneUp Software International, one of the pioneer companies in PC diagnostics software since 1997, and the top utility producer in the German speaking area of Europe. From its headquarters in Darmstadt, a city close to Frankfurt, Germany, TuneUP Utilities has literally "saved the life" of many computer systems by detecting conditions that can be easily fixed by the end-user.
As of 2006, more than 300,000 copies of TuneUp 97, the original, has been sold, creating one of the most successful PC diagnostics utilities available on the German market, usually referred as the mother of all tuning and computer diagnostics tools. With the release of PC diagnostics TuneUp Utilities 2003 the product was introduced internationally.
Today, the acclaimed TuneUP Utilities 2006 PC diagnostics software is available in German, French, Dutch and English language, as innovative as the first day, offering one of the most complete and friendly computer diagnostics solutions, with free trials software and affordable registrations fee.
Dr. Hardware 2006
Another one of the pioneer companies founded in 1994, but running on MS-Dos platforms since the earlier days. Dr. Hardware is considered among the most advanced PC diagnostics system information programs on the market, made for both the beginner and the expert user.
This PC diagnostics software runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 200x, XP, XP and x64 operating systems, and offers improved analysis of multi-Core CPUs. Computer diagnostics include detection of AMD SVM feature (Secure Virtual Machine), plus support to new Athlon 64, Opteron and Sempron processors and Pentium4 trace cache.
ASTRA, Advanced Sysinfo Tool and Reporting Assistant
Another featured PC diagnostics software running in all Windows versions, like the other two mentioned above, but this is one of the last offering MS-Dos support for system restore purposes used by repair professionals
PC diagnostics performed includes computer configuration analysis and general Computer diagnostics returning detailed information about your computer's hardware and devices operational modes, including reports on motherboard, CPU, hard disks, memory modules, chipset, PnP devices, monitor, video card, etc.
Find the Best Adware and Spyware Removal Software - Maybe Free
Many people have difficulties finding the perfect adware/spyware removal program that is powerful while not expensive. You have probably seen all those software packages that claim to offer free scan and free download, completely free adware/spyware removal software, however, are very hard to find.
You can expect two kinds of programs. One might let you try the software for a few days before you must buy an expensive version of the software. A few days is usually not enough to find if you are comfortable with your adware/spyware removal program or not. Another disadvantage with this kind of software is that when you purchase an expensive adware/spyware removal product, you will most likely stick to that program even if the program becomes outdated or a better program is offered on the market.
In other cases, you can use their really free adware/spyware removal programs for as long as you wish, but it only offers very limited protection from adware and spyware. You are then forced to buy a better, but pricey, version of the software. Sometimes it is actually a really great free adware/spyware removal program that you are offered, but the updates cost quite a lot of money. Since all adware removal programs need to be updated frequently to stay modern, this can be very costly in the end.
Be vigilant when you see a website that claims to offer a really free adware/spyware removal product. There are a lot of dishonest sites offering fake adware removal programs. These fake programs are promoted vigorously on the Internet, and many computer users are lured into installing what they think is protective. But what really happens is that they secretly install adware, spyware and other types of malware in your computer and force you to buy their so called adware/spyware removal products later.
You can minimize the risk of downloading a fake adware/spyware removal program by only downloading really free removal programs from trustworthy web pages with a good reputation. Our adware and spyware experts have personally tested all the major adware/spyware removal tools on the market and compile a detailed comparison chart. Please visit our website listed below for the best adware and spyware products.
Nicholas Trout is an expert in adware/spyware and the webmaster of AdwareAlertNoMore.com. Get free tips and info on adware/spyware at
http://www.adwarealertnomore.com
