I Developed A Commercial Game In Literally 2 Weeks!… Without Coding…
I was able to develop a FULL COMPLETE game in 2 weeks… Something which takes years to do! I’m talking about a game with stories, levels, action, and what not…
This… is not a joke. I put on my hacker-style glasses, connected my good old monitor to my good old laptop, and got started with it. A project which could mean something to everyone. Let’s not waste more time and just get started… Ok…… I have to remove my glasses after some time.
When You Would Find This Useful
Let’s just say you are developing a game that is purely meant for game feel. The game you want should be finished as soon as possible(for various reasons), and your major priority is speed, efficiency, time, and… the game feel
Ok… What Is Game Feel?
I’m sure all (or at least most of) the game developers know what this means, but, simply to brush it up, let’s say you are playing the game. The game feels decides how addicting/drawn you are into the game. It decides how much you are pulled into the “game world” you are playing and a game feel is not achieved using AAA quality, the frame per second, or the performance hog. It’s usually done using some small subtle things like a vibration of a camera(when you get hit), a really good or unique animation, or maybe just a good responsive environment.
My Priorities In This Project
My order of priority in this game is optimized completely for speed and the time it takes to develop the game. My second priority is just the game feel and the quality of the game itself. I want the game to be mid-sized, with about 2–3 hrs of playtime.
What are NOT my priorities? The quality of the game. Here, I don’t mean the actual quality of the developed game, I mean the actual “quality/performance” of the game, as in the fps, px count, resolution… you know… all those stuff… So in short, I don’t want the game to have AAA quality, but rather some good logic and scheme in it as a game in general.
What Game Engine Would I Use?
Let’s be honest. Unity, Unreal, Godot, Game Maker, or any game engine like that gives you these awesome high AAA quality renderings, but they are probably the worst when it comes to the time it takes to make a game or the speed to make the game(at least when compared to what I am gonna choose). SO… After some “careful” discussion with… Well… myself, I decided to go with Coppercube Game Engine. Why did I choose that? It’s simple… Really… Coppercube game engine is simple, easy, fast, and does one thing(and does it right). It seems like this is simply the engine made for some quick tweaks, some drag, and drops, some quick changing the options and you are done with your game!!!
Some Confessions
This will not be the next CSGO or valorant (or whatever). It’s an attempt and a simple try to see whether I can do this. I would be releasing this game to the public after some time though. (I need to make it has no bugs). Also, my goal here was to do it in 2 weeks. I will be making more videos on all of these on my YouTube so… head over to the YouTube channel “FadinGeek” and stay tuned for that… I… did it in 2 weeks and 1 day(just in case this makes any difference to you).
Getting Started
Choosing a Theme for the game
After banging my head to the table, I finally decided to go with the usual theme of sci-fi fps. “ALIEN INVASION”……
I started off with a simple color scheme. What are the major colors which would stick out in my game? Is it going to be highly saturated quality? What makes people drawn to this game(power, authority, darkness, sympathy, or maybe even lust…). I decided to go with the satisfaction the player would get after killing the enemies. This means that I need the enemy to be killed ruthlessly and should have good quality animations with satisfactory sound (Since that is literally what the player would be drawn towards…).
Planning For The Game…
I opened up my favorite planning app (zenkit) and then just got started with the planning part. The game is gonna have 10 levels, with each being about 15 minutes long. In the first 4 levels, the player would just warm-up, in a calm, tropical forest for what’s upcoming. The next 4 levels would be some brutal battle and chaos between the player and the enemies in a complete neon/sci-fi world. The next level would be the complete boss fight which the player has to deal with, and FINALLY, the last level is going to be a complete relief for the player for completing the game by going back to the good old calm tropical forest(, and the game would end there).
The Name Of The Game?
Honestly, I don’t know. And it’s all for this, I will be completely relying on YOU… Yes, you… I need you to go to the reply section and just give your suggestion for the name of the game. I would go with whatever is the most creative one… Just make sure it matches a sci-fi alien-themed game.
Developing The Game In CopperCube
This was SOO easy. I mean… This is how it goes in this game engine.
You have to create a new scene and start by creating a terrain. The terrain comes pre-done by default with trees, grass, wind, animation, and so on. Now, drag and drop your animated enemy which you would have created using blender, add some texture, and the enemy is done. Since this is an fps game, you don’t have to also worry about the player since the game engine has a pre-built fps module which you just have to… well… click on create. Some changes in the terrain map, some changes in settings, add some fog, bake, change the skybox(clearly the default skybox of any game engine makes anyone uninstall the game) and you are done with one level. This is how I made the whole game.
Most of the time was literally spent on other applications like blender, gimp, Inkscape, and so on…(mostly blender). The game was just a place to assemble what I had built. Every other element was created using other software as you can imagine.
- Developing the 3d assets — 8 days
- Creating the 2d sprites for menus, game interface, and so on — 1 day
- Creating the game — The rest of the time
The Drawbacks…
Although this seems to go smoothly, some drawbacks to this were not so good for me. The first thing is that the game feel was not up to the mark. Well… it was certainly above average, but it would not cancel out the terrible game quality it comes with. The game quality was a huge problem. It kept poking me every few minutes(btw, if you want quality and you chose coppercube, you probably forgot how to develop games or you were born yesterday).
The Best Part Of Coppercube
The best part of the engine is that it gives you this simple interface to deal with. For example, the shortest way to have an enemy is that you literally have to drag and drop the prebuilt, pre-animated enemy into the scene, go to the options, change the settings like movement speed, health, damage, and so on. Finally, just specify the player which the enemy has to attack. You get my point now…
Finally
Behold… after some hard weeks, after killing thousands of enemies, after deleting the default cube in blender for thousand times. I finally created the game. It’s going to be released, again after I make sure that there are no bugs and finally, I would love to hear more comments on this.
If you are interested in more content like this, then make sure you check my YouTube channel where I post videos on Tech/Development/Design/Editing and so on… With that said I would finally end this article………
You’re Awesome :)
FadinGeek
