Godot engine

I believe I once heard that just getting started on a game, or any project really, is the hardest part—to be honest, I have yet to see whether or not that's true, but it certainly took a lot of time and effort to even be in a position where I could begin developing a tangible, functioning Antipath. Game development takes quite a bit of work, and if you're doing everything by yourself, quite a bit of skills that aren't necessarily easy to pick up; I had no knowledge of programming when I decided I wanted to make this game, and it’s taken 3+ years of education towards a degree in computer science to get me there. That's not to say that you need a formal education for any of this, though. While taking programming classes certainly helped me with the fundamentals, I've found that the best learning experiences come from simply experimenting with your idea, trying to create something with the abilities and resources you have and gradually increasing your ambitions as you go along. It's a slow process, sure, but unfortunately you just can't rush something like this, and I promise the time will fly by so long as you keep grinding. But with all that said, let's take a look at Antipath’s early stages and how I got set up!

Concept

As I said in my previous article, Antipath began its life as a Shin Megami Tensei fan game, and much of that influence is still present; it’s a first-person dungeon crawler with a branching plot where you recruit enemies into your party through dialogue. I'm not trying to “make the SMT that Atlus won’t” or anything, though. There’s a lot of personal stuff that I want to convey in this game, and it's evolved far beyond its original concept. So the point is, the ideas behind your game are going to change a lot, especially in the planning stage. Don't be afraid to run with new ideas or abandon old ones, because through that you'll hone your game even further.

Art

Drawing has always been a hobby of mine, though I’ve never taken an art class and I still don’t really consider myself “good” at it. For whatever reason, though, it seems like learning to draw is inexplicably scary to a lot of people—they think it’s just something you’re born with, and it really isn’t. What it is, is practice, practice, practice. Case in point, on the left is my first drawing of Camille from early 2021, and next to it is another drawing of her from exactly one year later.

Neither are exactly Mona Lisas, but I hope this demonstrates how far you can get in a short time just through regular practice. Draw your favorite characters, draw your own characters, take requests from your friends; the most important part is that you’re having fun, because if you ask me, that’s the number one motivator for getting better at something.

Music

Much of what I said about art applies to the soundtrack as well. Below are some songs from the game that you may or may not enjoy:

Honestly, composition might be my favorite part of the game dev process! Your compositional "voice" will define the game's mood for people, so it's very important that you put time into practicing this. That said, don't be afraid to reach out to a friend or someone else to help with the soundtrack if it's really not in your wheelhouse! There's no shame in getting assistance. If you do want to get into writing music, though, my preferred DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is Mixcraft, but you should experiment with different software to see what's right for you.

Engine

Choosing an engine is hard—you’ll need something that's both accessible (or that you're at least willing to spend the time learning) and robust enough to accommodate whatever idea you have. Originally I had my eyes on GameMaker, since it absolutely ticked the accessibility requirement with its proprietary language that was similar to Python, which was the only language I knew at the time. Plenty of popular games have been made with that engine, and it seemed like a great choice for a beginner like me. Unfortunately, I found that it doesn't do well with 3D games, so I had a choice to make: I could either rework Antipath into something 2D, thus losing my original atmosphere and vision, or look for a different and potentially more difficult engine. I personally chose the latter, but that decision will look different for different people, and I won't argue either way whether my choice was the right one.

In any case, I was once again in the market for an engine. Unity seemed like a good option, since I'd just started learning C++ in one of my classes so that knowledge could easily carry over to C#. Unfortunately this was around the time of that big controversy with the engine, so at the time I figured that maybe I should avoid it for that reason alone. And, like most people coming from Unity, I wound up on the doorstep of Godot, which is what I'm using today. Godot is just lovely, it's great with both 2D and 3D games and its support for both its more accessible proprietary GDScript language as well as C# for more “formal” programmers like me means that there's something for beginners and veterans alike.

Using Existing Assets

Never be ashamed to use whatever resources have already been made for you! As long as you're giving credit where it's due, you should absolutely take advantage of existing tools and assets so that you can focus on other things. For example, I don't have much modeling experience, so I was struggling for a while with how to go about making levels for the game. The only level design ability I had was making Half-Life maps, and lo and behold, the heroes behind the func_godot plugin had created a tool for importing them into Godot! So just remember that you don't have to do everything by yourself; if a resource exists for you to use, then use it.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading my little article! I hope it was helpful to some of you. I'm by no means the definitive voice on game development, in fact I'm quite new to it myself, but these were some of my experiences and tips as a fellow newbie. Please stick around for more Antipath news and info in the future!