Game Design Insights

[AfterlifeStudios]

Good evening all, wanted to pop this in here. Figured off-topic would be the best place as it does not concern a currently existed game or mods for one.

 

But, I am in the process of designing a game, I want it to have both first person and 3rd person elements. It will of course be an adult game. Now, there are many different classes and styles of games, but what I havent seen much of, is a survival/RPG hybrids. Maybe partially because they are a pain to design, but, I was wondering what all you guys would think about something like that. It would have some of the following aspects/machanics listed below.

 

Survival

Crafting

Inventory System

Heads Up Display (Of course)

-Health

-Hunger

-Thirst

-Lust

1st and 3rd person view

Roleplaying Aspects

-Story

-Open world

-Quests

-Combat

Capturing

Storing Captures

Bondage

Intercourse

Breeding/Population

 

Those are what I have worked out so far, all of which are doable and not too much work in the beginning to get programmed in. Of course as the game is made larger it will require more extensive work on those systems. But please let me know what you guys think. It wouldnt be a visual novel or anything like that. It would be 3 dimensional, voice acted and such when closer to being made into a playable beta.

[Guest]

I would love to be a voice actress if you need.

[gimmedope]

Well, I think ideas for ambitious games come up quite often, but it's the execution that is the problem.

 

But to not be a negative nancy and be more encouraging. I'm not sure what Engine you are going to use, or want to use. So I can only give information based on my Unreal Engine 4 and 5 Experience. I chose Unreal due to the blueprint scripting, which allows non coders to get things done. An actual coder with programming experience could probably work scarily fast in getting a prototype done.

 

Most of what you want to do, can be done with some ease in Unreal. In fact, it depends mostly on how willing and capable you are in terms of coding, or if you can spend some money.

 

As an example:

 

You can get a building system like Conan Exiles for free from Unreals new Fab store. No money needed. Or you could pay money for a nearly fully ready survival template to start working on. Unreal used to have free for the month paid assets, but then things changed a bit. A lot of asssets are still free though. Just like loads of tools and plugins that can help with either level design or other areas. But all of them demand a lot of time investment from the developer to learn and understand.

 

So the problem is less about what is doable or interesting, and more about how much time you can spend on each area. And I can tell you, even with some money spent you would be doing a lot of work. Unless you can get more people on the team who are specialised in certain areas.

 

As an example what I mean:

 

I own an Open World RPG Template, that is effectively Skyrim for UE5. It has almost all the bells and whistles needed to go start making a new game. Even other tools, like procedural biomes and many free assets would help in making that game. However, even with all the things already done or available (which would take a skilled programmer weeks or even months to get to), I still would have so much work to do that it would take months even for smaller changes. I would need at least 3 or 4 people in different areas who know what they are doing coding or art wise in order to get anywhere with the project.

 

With that said, if you are a skilled coder, you can get very far with Unreal solo. In particular because you can make animations inside the engine now. The tools needed are freely available. You can also use programs like DAZ Studio and import them into unreal. I managed to do that, but failed with animations though. Still, there are more options than ever to make a game. But you either need more people to work with, or have enough time and dedication to learn everything needed to do it yourself.

 

As for Unity or other engines. I don't know them, so I can't comment on those. But with Unreal, you can make the game you want to do. But it's going to be a lot of work regardless.