How to Make Pc Games

 If you want to make your own PC game (or console game) it’s going to take time, patience and lots of trial and error. Before you even begin the journey, take a few smaller steps to see if you really have the motivation to do it.

Making a video game is not an easy task and you can’t do it in a day. Even a game as simple as tetris or pong can contain over 1000 lines of code if you feel like doing it from scratch. Even if you buy a software such as Game Maker, be prepared to spend several hours, days, weeks and possibly months just figuring out how the software works. On top of that, if you’re crazy enough to actually want to sell your game for a profit then you better be good at photoshop, 3d modeling software and audio creation software. You will have to create everything on your own from the color scheme of the backgrounds you plan on using to the sound FX and music in each of your levels, unless of course you don’t mind being sued for copyright infringement.
The good news is that before you even make a decision like that, you can try your hand at something that will get you used to how all of the above works and it will cut down on the amount of time and effort you spend by 90%. I am talking about modding.

Relax, you won’t be decompiling any games and you don’t have to know any programming language. The only thing you need is one of the games listed below, a few hours and a little patience. The reason you should first start with modding is because all of the tools needed to make your own game are included in the tool the games give you to do such things. I could list several hundred games that come equipped with modding tools but that would just be silly and take the better part of 2 days. The list below shows you which games offer modding/editing tools, starting with the most flexible at top.

• Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3
• Doom 3
• Quake Series
• Never Winter Nights Series
• Titan Quest
• Warcraft Series
• Starcraft

The modding/editing tools above are used for making a variety of types of games. Unreal Tournament 3 being the most flexible and powerful allows you to make anything you can think of and you can basically create anything with no limits. The others mostly pertain to a specific genre. Doom and Quake would be ideal if you feel like making an FPS, NeverWinter Nights and Titan Quest would be more idea for making RPG’s and Starcraft and Warcraft would be better for making RTS games.

The tools provided in each game already provide you with the artwork, the weapons, the armor, the physics, the sounds, the music, the spells…..everything. Even a few of them allow you to add, remove or edit things that are already there. It’s also extremely well documented and very easy to help if you get stuck on part. Which is not something easy to do when your making your own stuff from scratch.

The reason you choose this path is because you can make your own game in 1/10th of the time and you get a better idea of exactly what it takes to make a game, after all the boring stuff is out of the way. Try one of the editing/modding tools in one of the games above and then imagine making everything (including the software you use to edit/mod) yourself. Then ask yourself if you still want to make a game.