Working on a first game for Android

[Ulnarevern]

Hello everyone, me and my friend are working on first space shooter game, pretty basic things.

I'm graphic designer and friend is programmer. I'm not the best designer and I'm still learning approaches and new things.

So I've got few questions ...

When you start designing how do you approach with designing for different screen sizes (for android)?

Especially I'm struggling to make effects like explosion, shootings and backgrounds for a game. Do you do that kind of things in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, how do you animate? Do you use adobe flash for that?

Here's the "design" of game, this "plane" will be much smaller.

Any kind of tutorials (links, tips or more) for game design would be more than welcome

EDIT: Looking for some answers please

[Ulnarevern]

Sam is in charge of the graphic design and uses Inkscape.
He made a few time lapses if you're curious : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8y7Tx ... rwgjYh8eEA (it's their channel)

As for animations, Sam designs the objects in parts (like body/wings/hands) with a few images (fixed wing / moving wing) and then Seth codes the animation through Game Maker.
If I recall correctly, they plan on using Spine ( http://fr.esotericsoftware.com/ ) for their next games, which is an animation software for games that helps doing automatically what Seth does by hand, and it can be used with Game Maker.

About the screen sizes, I think that Game Maker handles the stuff?
And the more pixels you have, the more stuff you see (I think). If I'm not mistaken, each object has a fixed size, meaning that having more pixels in your screen = more objects shown. BUT I'M NOT SURE.

Some talks and articles about GAME MAKING on this page:
http://www.butterscotch-shenanigans.com/p/about.html
Not sure they updated it lately? But there's a lot of stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5LAVl ... CIQ/videos
Channel with some of the talks that occurred in St Louis.
If it's still not enough, a google search could help you! ^^

Also, one thing the bros stressed a lot: You should not publish your first game(s) on Android or iOS or something like that. Make a few small games and jams so you get used to the tools, and then make your nice game!


HOPE THIS HELPED!

And, welcome here!
If you like, you can introduce yourself over here: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=885&start=240

[wargasm3]

Wow thank you for your reply, programmer is working in other program called Unity.

Yes I kinda agree, but this game is almost "finished" it will be just robust game "3 lives - go as far as you can with social sharing options, end game to see score and high score"

This esotericsoftware looks great, but it cost quite allot.

So first few games we'll be working on will be 2D, but probably after some time will jump into 3D games.

[bscotchseth]

WHAT ULNAREVERN SAID! Watch our talks and videos and read our articles further down on the page at http://www.butterscotch-shenanigans.com/p/about.html.

I'd recommend reading the book "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" by Jesse Schell.

If you are planning on becoming an independent game developer as a career, I'd also recommend reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.

Your focus early on should be on learning the ropes by making a whole bunch of small games as quickly as possible. Be very self-critical and always be trying to improve. The question you should always be asking is, "If I saw this game in the app store and it didn't have my name on it, would I play it?" If the answer is no (and it should be, at first), try to figure out why that's the case and analyze where you can improve.

[Ulnarevern]

@bscotchseth
You may want to add those links to this topic: viewtopic.php?f=44&t=874 (I'd prefer if you do it, there are too many links and text for me to proceed, otherwise I'll do it maybe tomorrow), so we can link directly to it