iOS Creating a simulation game?

[3349793]

Hi all,

I'm new to game making/coding, and I would like to create a game for iOS. The theme for the game would be really similar to the Sims (where you have to play with people, and create their life), etc. I don't (really) know any coding, but I'm willing to learn. If anyone could please let me know of what I need (apps for Mac [because I have a Mac ], and what I need to test it on my iOS devices)?

Thanks, Alex

 

[1458279]

I would go to YouTube and search for "Unity game engine" and watch some of those videos. Then download the program and start looking at the tutorials. That should give you a pretty good idea of what's involved.

Last I checked, Unity seemed to be the forerunner.

 

[AxoNeuron]

Lots of people want to learn how to make games and how to program. But wanting to do it isn't enough. Most people who want to make video games fail because they don't acquire a love for programming, which is basically a requirement. It also takes a hell of a lot of hard work and dedication, not to mention a huge amount of time. There's much easier ways to make money even in the video game industry.

You need to be prepared to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work before you will be ready to make a real advanced game. Don't waste your money on a course if you're not ready to commit a huge amount of your free time to learning. But it's totally worth it in the end.

I'd suggest starting with an online course for unity. Learn about the basics of programming, modeling, etc. Then you might move on to server-side programming to support your games. It might be as simple as using Photon or teach yourself server programming with something like Node.js. Personally I prefer Node.js but I've heard it's not ideal for real-time video games if you expect to be sending raw binary data over a socket or something like that. I'm not a game developer, just a regular app developer, so I don't have much experience in Unity myself.

I suspect that only a certain group of people can be good programmers, and that it has little to do with intelligence. I think it has more to do with having an obsessive personality. This is normally a bad thing in regular life, but programming is such an abstract art that it requires everything of you to create something truly exceptional. Most people without this personality trait (most would call it a personality defect) can't be really exceptional programmers because they would never spend an entire week obsessing over the most efficient way to transmit large amounts of data online, for example.

I personally never thought I would become a programmer, I was originally educated as a biologist, but I took a course in iOS development for fun and I've never looked back. Now my skills are all over the place, I've written software to control autonomous drones (combining data from various low-level sensors and radios), I've learned node.js to create some pretty neat servers, etc. etc. and it's been the best choice I've ever made. If you were meant to be a programmer, you'll know it pretty quickly.

Best of luck!

 

[1458279]

+1.
As a business analyst, I see a parallel between people that want to start a business and people that want to start programming. I look at the motivation, if it's money, they'll likely fail at being good at business or programming, but may achieve the money goal.

Spot on about obsessive personality, I've actually spent years working on just one aspect of a program to get it to work a certain way. It's people like this that come up with the .MP3 compression code and other landmark work.

Usually a free market will sort all this out over time.

Back in college, my degree was in business and is was pretty clear that most didn't want to program. Back then the two hot degrees were MIS and CS, the MIS people only took a handful of programming classes and most hated it. Most just wanted a business degree and knew that computers where used in business, so they suffered thru the classes.

Just read an interesting work on STEM personality types, and it mirrors what you said. Some really have a tough time adapting to the open floor plan of some new tech start ups that focus more on social than work.