Quote: "ahahah, your just sour because a few of your threads, which were also pointless, were locked"
Stop beating up Exu Corporations! You may be right, but I think he also has a point. Not to question a mod's authority/judgement
Welcome to the forums El ejercito de Mayris Reyes! Wow, that's a long name to type
. Is it ok if we call you Mayris, for short?
There I go again, going off topic! Sorry about that. Anyway, let's get on to your questions! That's what were SUPPOSED to be here for, right?
Glad to hear you like FPSC, I was enjoying it too... until it recently decided it would crash everytime I loaded a character! Tech support and I are close to a solution (I think), but now FPSC won't install, which tech support told me I needed to do! You can read about it
here.
But enough about me. Here we go with your questions:
Things you should know to make the most of FPSC:
1. Read!
Read what? The Official Community Guide by Nickydude! If you have updated FPSC with v1.13 or later (I think) you will find in the "Docs" folder a file called "ocfpscguide." READ IT!! TONS OF USEFUL INFO IN THERE. You will feel like an FPSC pro after reading that. There is a Part 2 for v1.18 as well, you can find it here:
http://www.madladdesigns.co.uk/fpsc/guide/ocgfpsc2.pdf
2. Modeling!
You will not go far in the community if you cannot get your "custom" media (entities, segments, etc that do NOT come with FPSC) into your own games! There are two ways to solve that. You can look on The Game Creator Store, where you might find what you need but it may not quite fit your needs, or you can make your own! The latter option will be much harder (as I am still learning it!) but will undoubtedly pay off in the end. That is, if you do the following things right
You will find that Milkshape is dominant in usage around the FPSC forums, and it has a 30 day free trial, but Blender is also commonly used. Check out my thread
Your favorite entity making programs to find out about other programs and gather some tips from forum Pros on modeling!
There is a forum user named Anayar (a BIG help to me) who is creating a series of tutorials on how to get a model from Milkshape to FPSC. They teach you how to:
- make a model using milkshape
- UV Map the model
- Texture the model
- Make it FPSC-ready
- and maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting.
Very easy to understand and follow.
3. UV Mapping and Texturing!
This is just as important as modeling! If you cannot UV Map and texture, then your models will be worthless; you must have a texture to see your character/object in the game, and you must have a UV Map in order to create the texture! If you look at the thread in my last bullet point, you will also find some UV Mapping programs and links for them in there. I know one is UV Mapper Classic, very basic, and not the best, but it's free. For texturing, use GIMP, I love it.
4. Animating
This is, of course, not required for all models, but it will be useful in the future if you want to create characters with custom animations or even just create a suitcase that can open. I can't offer much help on that without getting too bogged down in details, and I haven't done it either. Just focus on modeling right now. When you get good at it, you can learn animating.
5. Scripting
This is crucial, especially if you want to make your games stand out from others. Once you do scripting, you can do almost anything! I once made my own night vision script, complete with battery life! With scripting, you can do many, many more things than you would typically be able to do. Part 1 of the Official Community Guide has six tutorials on how to script near the beginning. They are much easier to understand than the ones in the FPSC Manual (in my opinion).
6. Level Design
Level design is also important. This includes light placement, proper enemy and entity placement, etc. Make sure you put the right objects in the right place, or else the player will get the designer-feared "unprofessional" and "unbelievable" feelings. You will find some tutorials on the details of level design by FPSC user and Community-legend "Wolf". Read them, they're great!
7. Story Development
This is important for just about every single game. You must have a good story for the player to want to keep going on with your game! Even tiny, one level app games will have stories behind them (not always, but sometimes!); where your job is to keep the island from being bombed or whatever. This is very important if you want to make a good adventure game as well, so don't brush it off as unimportant!
8. Game Play
By this I mean keeping things fast-paced. A game that drags on at 10 FPS (frames per second) will chase me away from it faster than anything else! Fast-paced play is excellent for not just adventure games, but ANY game! If the player can predict every movement of his enemies, then it is boring! 30 FPS is optimum for good game play, although this is hard to keep with large levels (depending on what kind of computer system you have). If you have a very large level, try to keep your FPS at 25.
That's my take on what you need to know to make the most of FPSC. I'm a newbie like you (as you can see by the date I joined), so I may not have covered everything here. But others will pick up whatever I accidentally left off.
Don't forget to use the search function! You'll hack some members off if you don't...
Have fun,
Captain Coder
One of the most humbling days in your life will be the day you discover you AREN'T the best at what you love to do.
- Me
