game like clash of clans in unreal or unity

privateunlimited

I want to make a board game which looks like clash of clans, this is fourth shot for making any game, all the games that I have tried till now are third-person shooter game, every time I have completed level design and character designs but at the end project turns big and I end up with the overwhelming feeling and I give up this time I have decided to start with some small board game with low poly art style, some of the requirements and software I know are mentioned below please suggest how should i proceed.

Things I know;
-UE4 (level design, not that good but above-average knowledge of Blueprints)
-Cryengine
-Maya
-All the designing software available
- no knowledge of music

Things I am not sure of;
-Which game engine will be best for this stylized board game
-Which game engine market has better low poly asset packs (and also cheaper, because I am not in a great financial condition as of now)
-Is there a tutorial or blog I can refer to if someone else had a similar query

Let me know if there's anything else worth mentioning or anything that I have mentioned is confusing or contains less information required for answering this question.

Lots of love to the community  

rollin

Hi there, You are asking a lot but to get to the point: How do you set your project scale to be able to finish it.

Seriously I would make it very very small bc even a small project gets big. Maybe set you a first milestone where the game should be playable with bare minimum specs. Like a vertical slice and then just 10% of the very most important aspects to get anything running. Don't waste time on art or anything. Just a bare prototype. If you got that far you can grow from there.
You can code? Ore are you doing it with node based logic?

And btw.. you should really check out the quality of the asset packs yourself. Bc you will use them. Imo they are equally good or bad.

sprunghunt

You're really missing what's difficult about making a game like clash of the clans. 

Making the art assets look like that is easy. You could use unreal or unity - it wouldn't matter.

The hard parts are: 

• creating the network infrastructure so you can play against millions of people around the world
• creating the AI that drives the movement of the opponents during combat

the networking part in particular is an immense task that requires extremely specialised skills and expensive infrastructure (servers).

Mark Dygert

Unity and Unreal can both get the job done so it really depends on which one you are comfortable with. It sounds like Unreal I would probably go that route. 

I totally agree with rollin and it seems like you have come to the same realization, keep it small because even the simplest game has a way of turning into something huge with a lot of little details that grind production to a halt. Which is why games are usually made with teams of people that specialize in certain areas.

I also agree, don't focus on the art so much as getting it all roughed in and built out. Figure out how you're going to build buildings and landscape, use just enough geometry to test your prototype. I would avoid using simple cubes and primitives. Instead I would make something very quickly that gets pretty close to the final shape, poly count and texture budget that I plan on having. That way you can test your whole pipeline and you're minimizing the things that could blow up in your face later.

A game is fun even if the art looks like ass. Good art can't cover up a bad game but it can make a good game look amazing.

So art isn't really necessary and if you do the prototype correctly it can be easy to add in later. It can also make it easier to go to an artist and say "make these pieces in this style" and let them replace the ugly with something better. You've test it, you know those pieces fit together correctly, you know it all works, it just needs a bit of style.

If you do the art first, or get some packs, you're starting to set yourself up for failure. Not only are you stuck with what you've got, but it could be difficult if not impossible to modify it because you won't have the source files, just what was submitted to the asset store, usually triangulated fbx files or unreal assets.

So yea, prototype it just enough to be able to vet all of the things you need to then once you have a functional game you can make it look better.

sacboi

+1 to all replies thus far and have you a target platform/s in mind? which will also be a consideration, quite possibly a primary one to boot.

Alex_J

How I finished and published my first game which was a clone of old school turn based strategy game (in 10 weeks):

2 people. Myself doing art, sound, and level design. Partner writes code.

Game design is almost carbon copy of decades old game, which itself was copy of a board game. Only difference was we stripped out half the units and late game content.

Make plan for every week and decide what content will be stripped if necessary to make deadline.

Make clear standards for quality so that you waste no time going further than necessary. This is called a backstop.

Commit to finishing. If you don't finish this, you may as well give up entirely. Get serious, otherwise you wasting your own time.

Multiply all time estimates by three.

No multiplayer, nothing complicated at all. Straight old school.board game made to look like a physical board game. No rigging, minimal fx, simple input. Everything is bare bones.

3/4 of time should be playtest and refinement. Get production done fast. Production is not making the game fun. It's importance is limited.

For myself, I make enough complete art just to settle on theme, but then build game out with rough art and only finalize once you know there is no more changes.coming.

Work your hardest but listen to the body. Maintaining the noodle at optimal condition is key. If you working tired, you make many dumb mistakes that compound and make life suck.

Commit to finish. Publishing is highest priority. Whether you like or are proud of game does not mstter. GET TO THA CHOPPA.

Keep a public devblog. If you do it here and tag my name I will harass you if you miss deadlines. Free service.

Oh, one other important thing. If working with a partner, make a contract before doing anything. Define not only what to do on disagreement and separation, but what professional standards of conduct will be. If partner is lackadaisical about this, big red flag.

sacboi

Yeah OP, Mr @Alex Javor WILL pester if you're showing any signs of being slack with this potential game project

privateunlimited

rollin said:

Hi there, You are asking a lot but to get to the point: How do you set your project scale to be able to finish it.

Seriously I would make it very very small bc even a small project gets big. Maybe set you a first milestone where the game should be playable with bare minimum specs. Like a vertical slice and then just 10% of the very most important aspects to get anything running. Don't waste time on art or anything. Just a bare prototype. If you got that far you can grow from there.
You can code? Ore are you doing it with node based logic?

And btw.. you should really check out the quality of the asset packs yourself. Bc you will use them. Imo they are equally good or bad.

Thank you so much for replying, all your points make sense and I wish i had come here earlier. After reading all the response I too think that I am asking for too much and small projects getting bigger has been the key problem. Last game that I stopped working on started as a side scroller but ended up being a full-fledged third-person shooter in side scroller it became overwhelming and I got frustrated with not able to achieve the deadlines. One big issue I have to get over is I always look to make things perfect and that never happens.
I am good with code but know node-based logic too (As the shooting game's mechanics I did in blueprint only)
I will surely take your advice and will plan things accordingly.
Love

privateunlimited

sprunghunt said:

You're really missing what's difficult about making a game like clash of the clans. 

Making the art assets look like that is easy. You could use unreal or unity - it wouldn't matter.

The hard parts are: 

• creating the network infrastructure so you can play against millions of people around the world
• creating the AI that drives the movement of the opponents during combat

the networking part in particular is an immense task that requires extremely specialised skills and expensive infrastructure (servers).

Thank you for replying, I think I should have phrased myself a little better because it looks confusing what I meant is just the art style like clash of clans and not the game type, which anyways I am not thinking about at the moment after reading all these replies. And I won't even think about making a game that big at this point where I am failing in everything and projects getting bigger and bigger and getting difficult to cope up.
Love

privateunlimited

Mark Dygert said:

Unity and Unreal can both get the job done so it really depends on which one you are comfortable with. It sounds like Unreal I would probably go that route. 

I totally agree with rollin and it seems like you have come to the same realization, keep it small because even the simplest game has a way of turning into something huge with a lot of little details that grind production to a halt. Which is why games are usually made with teams of people that specialize in certain areas.

I also agree, don't focus on the art so much as getting it all roughed in and built out. Figure out how you're going to build buildings and landscape, use just enough geometry to test your prototype. I would avoid using simple cubes and primitives. Instead I would make something very quickly that gets pretty close to the final shape, poly count and texture budget that I plan on having. That way you can test your whole pipeline and you're minimizing the things that could blow up in your face later.

A game is fun even if the art looks like ass. Good art can't cover up a bad game but it can make a good game look amazing.

So art isn't really necessary and if you do the prototype correctly it can be easy to add in later. It can also make it easier to go to an artist and say "make these pieces in this style" and let them replace the ugly with something better. You've test it, you know those pieces fit together correctly, you know it all works, it just needs a bit of style.

If you do the art first, or get some packs, you're starting to set yourself up for failure. Not only are you stuck with what you've got, but it could be difficult if not impossible to modify it because you won't have the source files, just what was submitted to the asset store, usually triangulated fbx files or unreal assets.

So yea, prototype it just enough to be able to vet all of the things you need to then once you have a functional game you can make it look better.

I can't thank you enough for this response, this is so motivating and inspiring that i feel like starting the work now (even though i am in Studio working on someone else's game ). I really like how constructive and neat this is.
Turns out i don't have an expertise in anything except animation and designing, and i understand this concept better now as in Studio we have a whole department for swimming and jumping and emotes and what not.

Planning prototype like this sounds super cool and efficient to me, this way i will be able to see the game in work atleast once which should be motivating, then i can make necessary changes.

Thank you for mentioning this art packs thing, glad to hear this beacuse when i planned on buying assets i dont think i actually thought it through.

I am glad you took out so much time to reply, i am gonna read this answer everytime i get stuck or the game starts becoming big.

Love

privateunlimited

sacboi said:

+1 to all replies thus far and have you a target platform/s in mind? which will also be a consideration, quite possibly a primary one to boot.

Thank you for asking, as of now i am going for android, not sure how much extra work will be needed for IOS.

sacboi

@privateunlimited Ah, OK...well in my honest opinion if your goal is completion end to end then I'd recommend concentrating your efforts on just releasing the game via android, at least for now anyways. It's more than likely if you're approaching this project as a solo dev and speaking from personal experience a single targeted framework will often times mitigate a more feasible timeframe in which to finish rather than having to deal with multiple sets of APIs...etc

rollin

privateunlimited said:

rollin said:

Hi there, You are asking a lot but to get to the point: How do you set your project scale to be able to finish it.

Seriously I would make it very very small bc even a small project gets big. Maybe set you a first milestone where the game should be playable with bare minimum specs. Like a vertical slice and then just 10% of the very most important aspects to get anything running. Don't waste time on art or anything. Just a bare prototype. If you got that far you can grow from there.
You can code? Ore are you doing it with node based logic?

And btw.. you should really check out the quality of the asset packs yourself. Bc you will use them. Imo they are equally good or bad.

Thank you so much for replying, all your points make sense and I wish i had come here earlier. After reading all the response I too think that I am asking for too much and small projects getting bigger has been the key problem. Last game that I stopped working on started as a side scroller but ended up being a full-fledged third-person shooter in side scroller it became overwhelming and I got frustrated with not able to achieve the deadlines. One big issue I have to get over is I always look to make things perfect and that never happens.
I am good with code but know node-based logic too (As the shooting game's mechanics I did in blueprint only)
I will surely take your advice and will plan things accordingly.
Love

Btw. you should totally skip everything network related. Make a local game. It can be kind of multiplayer but only running on one local device. 

privateunlimited

Alex Javor said:

How I finished and published my first game which was a clone of old school turn based strategy game (in 10 weeks):

2 people. Myself doing art, sound, and level design. Partner writes code.

Game design is almost carbon copy of decades old game, which itself was copy of a board game. Only difference was we stripped out half the units and late game content.

Make plan for every week and decide what content will be stripped if necessary to make deadline.

Make clear standards for quality so that you waste no time going further than necessary. This is called a backstop.

Commit to finishing. If you don't finish this, you may as well give up entirely. Get serious, otherwise you wasting your own time.

Multiply all time estimates by three.

No multiplayer, nothing complicated at all. Straight old school.board game made to look like a physical board game. No rigging, minimal fx, simple input. Everything is bare bones.

3/4 of time should be playtest and refinement. Get production done fast. Production is not making the game fun. It's importance is limited.

For myself, I make enough complete art just to settle on theme, but then build game out with rough art and only finalize once you know there is no more changes.coming.

Work your hardest but listen to the body. Maintaining the noodle at optimal condition is key. If you working tired, you make many dumb mistakes that compound and make life suck.

Commit to finish. Publishing is highest priority. Whether you like or are proud of game does not mstter. GET TO THA CHOPPA.

Keep a public devblog. If you do it here and tag my name I will harass you if you miss deadlines. Free service.

Oh, one other important thing. If working with a partner, make a contract before doing anything. Define not only what to do on disagreement and separation, but what professional standards of conduct will be. If partner is lackadaisical about this, big red flag.

Thank you so much for writing detailed answer and sharing this story, this one too is really motivating and inspiring. This whole answer is like a ted talk for me.
Can you share the name of that game, i am relly curious to see that. 
I am working on deciding deadlines and doing some rough artworks for today.
Backstop sounds helpful and i will surely set a quality standards for it. Have made a note of all the points mentioned by you and others will commit to stick to deadline.
Regarding Public Devblog, i am not quite sure if i actually know how can i do that, is there a page to have a track or you are referring to something similar to this question that i have posted.
Will surely make sure this partner thing if i get one.
This was surely helpful thank you so much for taking out so much time to actually write all this, i really appreciate this gesture.

Have a nice day ahead
Love

Alex_J

You can just make a thread for your game here or may be on game dev forum. If you do it here I think you need to mostly focus on the art.

My game you can reach through my signature links.

One last piece of advice: don't try to do it all alone. Leverage experts as much as you can.

rollin

Alex Javor said:

You can just make a thread for your game here or may be on game dev forum. If you do it here I think you need to mostly focus on the art.

My game you can reach through my signature links.

One last piece of advice: don't try to do it all alone. Leverage experts as much as you can.

Your game link is double http.. btw..

privateunlimited

Alex Javor said:

You can just make a thread for your game here or may be on game dev forum. If you do it here I think you need to mostly focus on the art.

My game you can reach through my signature links.

One last piece of advice: don't try to do it all alone. Leverage experts as much as you can.

Thank you again, will surely look for some coders and someone who can do asset work in the late part of the production.
And I have already started the prototype so thank you for the motivation to all of the people who said some really cool things.
Gamedevs only understand the problems we face, rest all motivational videos and people quoting big lines sounds stupid at this point, so all these messages were really helpful and I have a smarter plan this time.
Love to all of you and I understand how difficult it is complete any title, so if you have done just one also I believe you are a hero