It can be hard work, no doubt. But, I have a heart passion for it and love every second of every challenge. Writing, modeling, texturing, designing… love it all.
Zaphod, what’s with your opinion about this?
Nothing much to add - it is still the initial “message” that more or less said something like “make money with Ued, it is enjoyable!”
First it is not possible, you would have to sell your MOD’s. Ok, make some good MOD’s and maybe you draw attention. Small chance.
And then: I’ve seen some ppl that thought doing grafix for customers would be a relaxing, easy thing. They know better now.
You loose the best part of your creativity, and you mostly do NOT your thing, you perform actions because you are told to.
OK, if you enjoy making textures AND your job is making textures - fine.
There are some things in this discussion, that might bring up some wrong impressions to someone that had no relation to games and “the making of”.
Some of those I tried to explain, knowing that I am NO pro but someone that enjoys MOD-making in spite of knowing that THIS will never earn me one single cent.
It’s fun, nothing more, nothing less.
Sometimes, yes… you’re right. It’s nothing more than that, and you’re also right that some people have the wrong idea of game work, that it’ll be the same as mucking around. But, there’s the other side of the coin that shows people can work to make games, and never tire of it. And sometimes, just sometimes, they even ENJOY it 
Fun is all this topic is suposed to be about 
I am by no means the upmost authority on game content creation… I am a profesional, but that dose not mean that I always do things the Optimal way… there are 10 ways to skin a cat I never claimed to be the authority on game content creation. Just a guy with experiances to share with noobies
…
BTW for those of you that dont know this, Unreal sells licences to indie developers also it is not cheep tho… also you can develope a demo in unreal and then move your content to other game engine later.
Infiltration, Tactical ops, and Postal 2 are great examples of this, the people that published them licenced the unreal game engine.The united stares government licenced unreal for Americas Army free online game… so to say you cant make comercial things with unreal shows that some people dont know what they are talking about. unreal licences are for sale, and you can make comercial content with it…Quake 3 engine is also for comercial licences if you have enough money. OR if you make a good enough game with it you might get published and someone else buys the game engine for you. I am only suggesting them for education purposes tho There are alot of big companies useing unreal products, so if you get good in one direction or another you have a better chance of getting a job with unreal experiance…
It is also a great way to keep a portfolio, unreal is an impressive game engine and if you are a texture artist or modeler unreal is a great way to show off what you can do… When I got my first comercial modeling job I used my unreal maps in my resume, and they are what sold my boss on me…and realy made my talent shine.
The tutorials at Buzz 3D are a great start for anyone… the concepts are great to learn and can be applied to other game engines… there is also training on popular comercial applications like maya, houdini, 3d studio, and even stuff for gamespace (the gamespace tutorials can be applied to any 3d application it shows how to make a quake 3 charictor…)…
If you are a Noobie, you should get over to 3D Buzz and start watching tutorials
I am going to start a new gameing thread… Maby I will start it with some example maps I know how to make the new Onslaught game mode, and can post some examples…
I am not going to debate 3D game studio for the simple fact that it irritates the hell out of Dan that I am not going to play his little game, and turn this into a debate thread. I dont cater to control freaks. LOL!
I am going to stand Firm on my statement that noobies should try easyer game engines first, to learn with…LOTS more documentation, lots more tutorials…
start a debate thread please I am trying to help people here 
Just Jokeing
I am going to start a new gameing thread and keep 3d game studio out of the conversation…it has realy disrupted the flow of this thread. and should not be mentioned in a thread dedicated to noobies in my opinion…Sorry My mistatke… LOL!!! I am only going to talk about the easy ones…
Later I am going to make a thread in the main forum about content creation totaly in Z2 and porting into a game engine… probably makeing some trees, and foliage things… Z2 is realy cool for makeing thease kind of things…textures are a Breeeze also! I have a bunch of new alphas I am makeing also for texture creation I like shareing my experiances in this forum it is realy cool
I want there to be a Free source on the net for getting things from Zbrush into milkshape and then into game engines… it is possible with a free alternitave called lithunwrap for non-comercial things, it supports native formats for some game engines includeing RTCW (tweaked out quake 3 engine)
anyways… I gotta get back to pathnodeing I wanna release my first ut2004 map soon
Bringing game creation to newbies so that they might have fun, ok >> this can be understood.
But, please, if you tell a newbie that she/he can make money out of this - just tell them about the license they must buy a long time before they even can think of any profit they MIGHT make, tell them of the abilities in coding they will need (thus avoiding hiring a coder), tell them of the plots they will have to think of (“shoot it, it still moves!” may be a bit to small for a commercial thing) - and then go and make MOD’s like the rest of all those hobbyist (like me).
I agree Zaphod ,
it takes a team to make a good game… and years of practice…
For noobs Modding is a cool mway to go… also there are alot of TC’s out there to get involved in also… a TC is a Total conversion… a wee bit more complicated than a mod, but you can make a complete new game doing a TC…
I am a profesional, and yet I still set aside time for makeing game content, and showing kids how to get into gameing… I have been helping people do this for 5 years now… I realy enjoy it
there are a few earlier posts I have done on getting stuff from Zbrush to Milkshape… I am going to make a more complete tutorial soon some older game engines do not support smoothing and there are some tricks on makeing things look right ingame…
I am going to spend some quality time learning Z2 a bit better first tho…
I still do not see the advantage of first building a typical ZBrush mesh (we all know how huge they can get), and then reduce it in a way that it can be used for a game.
Seems to be much easier/logical, to do your model in gmax, in Wings3D, even Truespace.
And for those total conversions: NO newbie thing either!
Because of being a professional: we all are in one way or another - maybe you could illustrate some of yours?
There are times where it is nice to make a high poly mesh and then reduce it… for textureing reasons…
most of the time I do my models in wings and then just paint them in zbrush…
but now looking at some of the new modeling tools in Z2, I may not be useing wings at all in the future…
Z2 is extreamly powerful modeler… I am getting blown away with some of the new effects… and abilitys… the semitry functions are totaly outstanding!
anyways… yea, a TC is a bit more complicated than makeing a mod… with the 3d buzz videos tho there should be no problem for anyone to learn in a few days the basic concepts…
there is no easy part of game creation realy … it all takes skill, time and practice…
thease videos should be a good start…
Zbrush isn’t that good a poly reducer, but if you do have access to a good one, you can often achieve some very lifelike low-poly results by building a high res mesh and then reducing it. A lot of depends on what you’re better at- high poly or low poly modeling. Also, working on a high res mesh means you can produce detail levels for certain models in the game itself, as well as use the high poly version for things like cut-scenes.
Here’s the bottom line :
If you think the individual is going to make money on their own producing and publishing a 3D game, forgetaboutit.
To me FPS (first person shooters) are mostly boring and the ones that aren’t take a lot of money, time, people, and a Hollywood like budget to pull off.
You don’t need glitz and glam and super deluxe technology for a great game, you just need a great idea and a great execution of it.
Do it for the love and fun of it or not at all.
If you want to make actual games, not just level mods etc. Then DO NOT start out in 3D.
Start with Pong and make it in either Flash or C++, I recommend VC++ 6.0 or higher for C++. I’d do it in C++ first, then do it in Action Script(Flash) later if you wanted to.
If you can actually make it past using an IDE, and COMPLETEING Pong, congratulations.
When I say complete I mean: sound, score tracking, a win and lose condition, start game, end game, and being able to give the game to someone else and it works!
Are you STILL intersted in making games? Great! Now make Breakout. Did you finish that?
Now make PacMan or Missle Command.
No, none of these games are stunning to look at or going to make you famous. They will do something better, start you understanding what goes into making a game.
All of these games I have mentioned are simple, no A* path algorithms or hard math. But the creatign the logic to make them work will give you brain cramps. Not to mention you are now working in the realm of a game loop!
If you choose C++, I recommend using CDX Library, it is an easy abstraction and encapsulation of DirectX, mainly DDraw, DSound, DInput, there is no real support for 3D in this library, but it is really easy to use and comes with examples, plus it is FREE. Plus it works really well.
http://www.cdxlib.com/
There are loads of great free libraries out there. I do not recommend DirectX on it’s own, it will make you want to quit game programming immediately, for 99.999% of you.
Here are some great links for the enthusiast:
http://www.flipcode.com (check out the columns) http://www.gamedev.net http://www.allegro.cc/ (free libraries and great community)
then if you still like game programming and want to get a great pro tool for cheap, well semi-cheap, check out:
http://www.fastgraph.com/ (used to make a bunch of lesser professional games)
KingSalami:
could not have said it better !! But, you can make games (think of Kings Quest and Monkey Island) WITHOUT the burden to learn to code
http://www.visionaire-online.de/
Ok, it is German, but the editor is easy to handle - and: if we took some lessons just to be able to work with some English eddies, why not vice versa? 
EDIT: forgot: BTCS, FRUA, even NWN and it’s editor help you to see what game making is all about.
EDIT: Oops, didn’t see the post date on this. Post removed, sorry about that XD. (I was linked to this topic)
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