Here's a few tips:

Find cheaper software to use.

Borrow money.

Get an extra job and save up.

Indiegogo.

What a weird question to ask on a game related internet forum. :S

Surely you must have been aware of the first 3 tips wilco posted?

Welcome to the games industry, check your life savings at the door, forget about time off for the next few years, and abandon all hope of commercial success.

If that doesn't sound like something you'd like then you probably shouldn't try to make a game, they are very expensive and very time consuming to make, and at best only about 1 in 1,000 games make enough money to break even let alone make a profit. If you don't have enough money to survive for at least a year without working then it's probably a really bad idea to make a game.

Of course if you are just doing it as a hobby or for a portfolio then you can just get the academic versions and make a game in your free time, but don't expect to be able to complete something any more complicated than a simple puzzle game or perhaps a rudimentary FPS game if you intend to use something like Unity or Unreal engine with their default art assets.

That wasn't really motivating... I am almost done developing my Half Life 2 mod tr1p (you can find it on http://www.moddb.com/mods/tr1p), and after that, I would love, as I mentioned above, to create a game with the CryEngine 3 SDK or the UDK. The problem is just the following: I cannot publish any game made with those legally if I don't own a licence of 3ds Max (which I will be using to create the models and assets)

As a student I don't have
A) money for a full commercial licence of 3ds Max
B) time for an extra job (I would only have time for school, the project and my girlfriend... an extra job would kill me)
...
I am checking out that indiegogo site though... Seems very interesting

Create a game that doesn't require hugely expensive pieces of software to create it. Sell game. Buy hugely expensive pieces of software with profits.

raphu604 původně napsal:

As a student I don't have
A) money for a full commercial licence of 3ds Max
B) time for an extra job (I would only have time for school, the project and my girlfriend... an extra job would kill me)
...
I am checking out that indiegogo site though... Seems very interesting

Indiegogo to get money to buy a program? Do you have anything to show or some magical pitch that will make people invest in your future without getting anything back?

I mean seriously indiegogo and kickstarter isn't free cash, you are trying to sell something there and selling that you will be able to make stuff in the future isn't a good pitch.


"the project" do you mean making a game or is this a school project? (is making a game a school project?). Is "the project" what you need the program for, or are you going to try to tinker with this program/game while doing "the project"? I'm a bit iffy on your time plan
Is there anyway you can postpone "the project" untill you have the program you need for it? Meaning after you have gotten a part time job and saved up money for it.


Your plans strike me as overambitious and I think you need to slow down a bit. Avoid any get rich quick schemes to get money and save up properly.

Why do you NEED 3dsmax? If you hate blender (which I STRONGLY recommend you go back and try again, as it truly is a great piece of software one you get over the initial hump), try Wings3D, or Cheetah3D. Or heck, use Sketchup if you have to. Or find an artist to team up with and just do the programming. There are alternatives. :)

Try and find free software. Unity is one widely used development environment for game dev. There are free image editing software as well.

mashedtatoes původně napsal:

Try and find free software. Unity is one widely used development environment for game dev. There are free image editing software as well.

You'd still need another program to create the art with Unity. Although, it does have the asset store, so you could just buy the art there.

Nazi Gold?
You seem to be looking for an easy answer... you'll be quite sad when you realise that doesn't work.

Not sure what your problem is. You want to make a game but claim to struggle with licensing 3D modelling software? You don't NEED this for game creation, just license or purchase models and model packs. There are LOTS of model creators desperate for comissions all over the internet. Media is the least of your concerns, since you can just use even primitives as placeholders - once the product is complete to a high degree of quality wit these placeholders, you have a very good chance of hiring based on representative of potential.

There was a dev on Greenlight I saw using Cheetah 3D and it seemed reasonable.

This guy's using Autodesk and it's fair:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=129560326

dont forget what it is you want,
always think about where you are going to end up in your future,
but dont think about how your going to get there.
thatll make it seem harder and further away.
as long as you do that and keep your goal in mind, everything else will fall into place.

so dont worry about that right now. youll figure it out bro

Blender's interface is a bit of a butt if you're more used to things like Maya, but you can customize all the keybindings to be like Maya's and fuss around with the interface. I'm a game development student going on my fourth year of college, and I'm working on a game over the summer using Unity with some buddies. I also want to go out on a limb here and say that though it's not exactly ethical per se, a short term solution until you can pay for the license could me to export the models in fbx or obj format TO Blender, and fussing a bit with them there, then using them in the game. The student versions let you do that exporting (though the dll that handles the obj[?] exporting is disables by default, oddly), but as I said it's very grey when you do things like that, so I don't advise it save for the short term of getting things to work.

Indiegogo is better than Kickstarter in some ways, but the issue here is that you can't use the content made in your 3D environment without paying up. So why not go to the company and be upfront with them and say "Hey, here is the deal. I'm going to release a game, I made it with your software, I need to make money on it first to pay you back." Seems silly, but sometimes it works. Seriously, don't knock it :) You're not dealing with Unity or Unreal, but hey, sometimes you get lucky!

Get friends/community members to make art and share credit/profits with them, look for open source work or free and usable models and get permission to modify them if need be. There are tons of ways to get things done if you're feeling creative.

And lastly, don't ever complain that when given an option that it isn't good enough for you. Frankly, it's poor form and shows you really only want to have someone provide an easy solution wherein you have little or no work that you'll have to exert. With that said, I do wish you the best of luck, and look forward to whatever it is you intend to release. Keep me in the loop :)