What's Better to start with? Indie or Game Mod? Thread

Hey there,

So for a little while now, I've been taking out my journal and writing up a game idea I've had floating through my head for about a week now. I've been looking at all the greatest games I've ever played and seeing about tying all of the amazing concepts all together into one. However the main issue is that what I want to do I'm not sure if it's really realistic or even possible at that.

When it comes to working on a project, I've seen that more projects on Moddb seem to more popular than on Indiedb (unless I'm mistaken) and that people often times seem to get more attention when they mod a game like Half-Life 2. In addition, I've also noticed that people who mod on Moddb get a lot more votes towards their projects than in comparison with Indiedb. For me, my main concern is that if I were to head over to indiedb and make my project; that it would be the wrong location and wrong area for my mod to go. In addition, I've also read numerous claims on these forums that people who look for large groups of devs (Ex Post: I need programmers, web designers, voice actors, game designers, modelers, texturers, etc.) often times don't get very far and that's something I'd like to avoid. With that information, I want to be a leader who can do all of these things on his own so he doesn't have to look like a leader who just sits back and lets everyone else do the work for him.

I'd like to make an RPG-FPS (Like Fallout 3) except with the multiplayer mechanic of Arma II where you can have 64 players playing all at once on the same time and keep a campaign in the game. But my only issue I ask myself is, would this crash my project for it being too much?

If anyone could give me some insight on a fresh modder who wants to make the best decisions for his project with this sort of idea at bay, what would be the best recommendations?

Looking forward to seeing your guys' responses!

Hi Delcore,

I wouldn't be concerning yourself with popularity and votes at the moment, Indie DB is an excellent home for indie games and likewise for Mod DB for Mods. It depends on what type of project you are making and what you are hoping to achieve. Having said that an RPG-FPS like Fallout 3 with Arma 2 Multiplayer Mechanics would be very difficult to make. The workload of this type of game is very high and if this is your first project it would be utterly impractical to attempt. If you are looking to Mod something like this then you'd need at least a working knowledge of 3D modeling and coding as well as the ARMA 2 Modding tools, even then It would be a large undertaking and would need other peoples help.

If you are hoping to be the leader and grand designer then my best recommendation is to start way smaller and learn how to make a game yourself as people generally dont care much for other peoples ideas. As everyone has their own "Grand Idea" on what would make the best game ever, Hence the reason why the "ideas man" wanting to make an game but needs people is never successful. So with that in mind if you want to learn how to make a game start with something a lot smaller and more realistically, if you don't know coding then either start learning code with the help of an engine like Unity or Game Maker Studio (if you have no 3D knowledge jump into Game Maker, this is how I first started to learn how to code when I was younger). If you have a working coding knowledge then design a game within your skill set, have a wish list of things that if you manage to learn the skills required for them, then you can implement them later. But don't dive into a AAA game idea on expect to see much come out of it, there is unfortunately a reason why studios and 100's of people are involved in game development of such large titles as Fallout 3.

I hoped that helped somewhat