Quote: "What engine you made it with is of very lil concern to the people viewing that site where your selling it. What dose matter is how it looks...."
precise...very precise.
That is why I keep saying that you need to put in amazing efforts in a FPSC game to make it sellable.
For those who are talking about how games made with FPSC can sell as well as others, I don't mean to doubt you. They can, yes. But it would take years of effort to make something of that quality. That same game could be developed using a slightly higher priced engine in half the time.
The decision is yours. What you value more...a year of effort (just debugging and testing basic stuff!!) or spending maybe $100 more.
According to me...there are a few things needed for a game to sell.
1) Looks : This is what a person sees first in a game, before deciding to buy or even dowload a demo!
This includes models, textures, lighting, interface.
2) Awe : Once your demo is downloaded, this is what makes the player like your game. The start, the features, the first level etc. You need to impress your user as much as you can at this point.
3) Game play : This matters ONLY once your game is bought, or you user sticks long enough to your demo.
This is what will get you reviews, word-of-mouth sale etc.
But without the first 2 (mainly first) factors, its hard to sell a game (atleast to me)!!
Now the
'Looks' are not very related to FPSC. They are more to your modelling skills...but then how good can everything look boxed up? You need a variety of terrain, environment etc to get the 'looks' factor up. FPSC, for now, is quite limited to indoors. Outdoors, jungle, streets etc is possible, but with much difficulty with framerates. This is where FPSC lets us down.
The
'awe' factor is a bigger problem with FPSC. You may make great screenies and models etc to get your demo to the user. But when he start playing...do you think he would be impressed when :
a) He shoots at the enemy and the enemy does something stupid like walk to a wall?
b) When the player or enemy gets stuck on some terrain?
c) He enters a room with decent furniture and some nicely placed debris etc...and suddenly he gets framerate issues?
d) When he plays for 15 minutes, but he keeps seeing the same rooms, corridors, stairs and no change in enironment?
I dont think he will stick to playing the demo after that.
And you think he will buy your game now??
There goes your gameplay and replayability. Your game may be real fun to play as the levels progress. It may be fun to try different routes and strategies to complete your game. But how will the user know all this unless he buys it first??
-- game dev is fun...but taking up too much time --
