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Road to the Skyrim clone!

A topic by Marianne Letourneau created Aug 10, 2024 Views: 240 Replies: 7

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Marianne Letourneau136 days ago (6 edits)

TLDR: I'm a programming noob looking to learn game dev. Which games should I clone to get there?

Hey people on itch!

I worked in the industry for 3 years now as an environment artist. Worked on indie, double-A and triple-A projects, but now, I want to learn more.

I'm a total noob when it comes to programming, and since it's one of the most important pillars of game dev, I want to learn how this stuff works.

I came up with a crazy plan - I'll clone 10 of the most influencial games out there, in order of complexity.

And since my dream as a kid was to make a game like Skyrim, a Skyrim clone would be the end game!

Here are the games I would clone:

DONE! 1 - Pong (gotta start easy...)

DONE! 2 - Super Mario Bros (1985)

IN PROGRESS 3 - Doom (1993)

4 - The Elder Scrolls Arena

5 - Diablo 2

6 - The Elder Scrolls Morrowind

7 - Shadow of the Colossus

8 - Call of Duty WAW zombies mode

9 - Dark Souls

10 - Skyrim

The rules:

I must implant all the core mechanics that defined the game's identity;

The quality must be similar in all aspects (art, animation, sound, etc.);

The lenght can be shorter, eg. only one level, only a vertical slice, etc.

So, for now, I've made the pong clone. Yeee! 1/10.

Next up, Super Mario.

Do you guys have any suggestions of games that you think would be better than those, and, is anyone here interested to get updates on this? Eg. how long each clone took to make, what were the hurdles, what ressources I used to learn, etc etc.

Aaaand does anyone have tips to help along this journey? Curious to hear your thoughts!

Edit: Added TES Arena and Morrowind to the list. It would be smart indeed to make simpler versions of The Elder Scrolls first, before making something insane like Skyrim.

24-09-08 Edit: The Super Mario Clone is now ready! More info in replies.

Here is Super Capy Baras. :

Next up, Doom.!

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40wattstudio135 days ago

If the end goal is a Skyrim clone, then I would recommend that all subsequent clones also be in the same vein. Super Mario Bros is a "simpler" project, but doesn't have much in common. I would suggest a classic Text Adventure as that would give you practice with the branching paths and complex dialogue trees.

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Marianne Letourneau135 days ago (1 edit)

Hmmm, not wrong.

I could add something like The Elder Scrolls Arena - Daggerfall in there.

I think Diablo had quite a bit of dialogue stuff, but I haven't played it much.

Thanks for the feedback, will def check that out!

Edit - Added Arena and Morrowind!

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redonihunter135 days ago(+1)

1. Moving circle.

2. Platformer.

3. 3d shooter game with 2d engine

4. Real time action rpg.

5. 3d shooter game with 3d engine

6. 3rd person exploration game

7. more 3d action with less shooting

8. again 3d with more shooting

9. and again with less shooting

10. and more rpg

It is pretty much using a 3d engine at some point. With Skyrim there is even a blur between first person and third person, as you can zoom into first person and out into third person. But the later games in your list are more about the story they tell. You could tell Skyrim in rpg maker. Or even as a visual novel. It would be very hard to mimic their core in such a short game as you plan it.

What you try to do reminds me of this game Evoland.

And what is "missing" are a lot of genres. Like puzzle or racing games.

With something simple as pong you could use your own things, but in complex game engines, many lifetimes of programming went into them. While you might re-create some aspects or a barebone version of it, you simply have not the time for that to finish your project. Of course you might use more advanced graphic libraries, but the line between libraries and a game engine is fuzzy.

Programming itself is easy and very hard. You just need to know what you want to do, and solve it within the capabilites of the given environment. So "cloning" something as an excercise would give you some guidelines what to do.

You could arrange those projects as minigames within a game. Or do you plan to switch engines for each project?

There are just so many game genres and mechanics. If you had some goal in mind, you might work towards it by picking out mechanics you would want to see in your future game and play around with them. Things like item and ressource balancing and having a combat AI are hard. Creating a puzzle is a different kind of hard. And creating an interesting level layout yet another type of challenge. All part of game development, but less of a programming problem. More of a game design task. And then there is of course story. The Elder Scrolls series did benefit from engine upgrades, but ultimatly it is story and the huge world and all the details that made their appeal.

More games you could recreate your own take on, as an excercise:

Slay the Spire. Cookie Clicker. Maniac Mansion. Tomb Raider. Worms. Flappy Bird. Plants vs Zombies.

Oh, and Diablo had no branching of any sorts. It is an action rpg. You chose how to beat the boss. Not if you beat the boss. Same for practically all the games on your list. There are no choices but how you level up your character or what tactics to use. Branching is more like visual novel territory. Dialoge trees usually just give illusion of choice, or you select wich upgrade to get. Or flavor for rpg.

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Marianne Letourneau135 days ago(+2)

Yeah, looking at it this way, that will mostly serve to teach to use the engine (Unreal for now) to make shooters and rpgs. Not that many genres, I know, I know. But I think I'm fine with that? They're kind of the two genres I play the most. But we'll see, maybe I get bored of making the same stuff after a while. Tomb raider and Flappy bird are both interesting for sure.

And wow, I had never heard about Evoland! That's so interesting, it is indeed very similar to what I want to do!

In my case, the plan is to make a super short version of each of those clones and post them on itch as a standalone thing each. They won't be complete games, but more like tiny demos! Don't know how hard and time consuming that will be. Keep in mind I might just put and end to the challenge at some point if I see it's just not doable.

And since these won't be real games (at least not that I'm planning), but just practise tests, I'm thinking of using pre-made assets as much as I can whenever possible (like megascans for example). But yeah, again, we'll see how doable this is as we go.

Ooooooh and it's funny you mention cookie clicker because I made one a few weeks ago! It wasn't great tho and very incomplete...not even worth posting on itch. But it was good as a first touch at UE blueprints and UI widgets for a newbie like me...

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redonihunter135 days ago(+2)

Doing those seemingly unfitting concepts in an engine not meant for it, will be great for learning. If you are familiar with Unreal, most stuff would be just level design and one shooter/hack&slay is like the other. Sure, game design is very important and all, but you mentioned to want to learn to code. Having Dark Souls mechanics is almost meta to all this. You could have a Dark Souls mod in Skyrim. And now that I mentioned this and had a look, of course, such mods exist already.

And if you did a cookie clicker in Unreal ... wow. ~~Maybe~~ probably I am mistaken about the capabilities of the engine, but a 3d incremental clicker game is something I do not remember seeing.

But maybe I misunderstood, and you do want to implement core principles via level design and event scripting. You probably aim to learn both this and coding.

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Marianne Letourneau135 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Well, not familiar at all with Unreal when it comes to blueprint and coding, but I used the engine a lot to integrate 3D assets. That's why I'm going with that!

I also haven't done any level design in the past. That's an other thing I'm looking to learn and practise for sure. This and scripting indeed.

And yes, Dark Souls combat in Skyrim would be awesome! Let's just say Elder Scrolls combat was never a huge hit for me (and for a lot of people I think). That's making it easier to clone I guess...we'll see if it's something I'm capable of doing when and if we get to the Dark Souls clone. Maybe I could then reuse that as a basis for the Skyrim clone.

But I did a bit of keyframe animation when I was in school and it was really, really time consuming. So I'm not super confident on that front. Hey, one more challenge to tackle, right ?

As for the cookie clicker clone, there's a ton of those out there! Just check Steam's last released games and you'll find new ones everyday. Wouldn't be surprised if a few were made in Unreal ;)

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Marianne Letourneau106 days ago (1 edit) (+2)

Hey there!

It's been a month, and the second clone - Super Capy Baras - is now ready!

Here's a few snipets (GIFs are really compressed and poo-poo, the art looks better in game, I swear) :

First, a few takeaways I learnt, for those curious:

-No, you won't remember later.

It’s important to note and document things, especially in the blueprints, to understand what's going on when coming back to it later. By the end, I had a lot of stuff in the CapyBara pawn BP, and having to fix bugs 2-3 weeks later once everything was implemented was a bit painfull. And that's for a small, barebone game...

-Reuse your code, don't duplicate.

That was really hard for me. I couldn't find a tutorial making a full mario clone, only snippets there and there. So, I was experimenting a lot, going off multiple different youtube tutorials to create all the mechanics. In the end, a lot of stuff was duplicated, and then worked on appart. I also didn't really create reusable functions. This all became very apparent towards the end, when I had to fix the same bugs mutliple times over and over in mutliple similar blueprints (eg. the different blocks BPs, the different ennemy BPs, etc.), or accross mutliple similar custom events in the same BP.

-To be a good level designer, you need to play A LOT of games.

I barely play platformers, and so, I saw myself struggling to come up with ideas when designing the levels. It’s difficult to understand the fun when you don’t play a lot of games in the genre. I resolved myself to watching gameplay videos, but it’s not the same as having the controller in your hands, feeling the jumps, the level of control in the air, or the tightness of the collisions.

-Unreal is not really built for unlit 2D projects.

After searching online for countless hours, I couldn't find a way to play in Unlit mode. And without that, there's the tonemapper and default Unreal post-process (bloom and vignette) that mess up the 2D look and colors of your sprites - and not just by a small amount. People suggested using a custom post process and playing with those settings:

Turn off Bloom and Vignette, set Slope, Toe and Shoulder to 1.

Meh, it was closer for sure, but not quite the same, especially very bright and dark colors. On top of that, I later found that certain post-processes crash the whole game in HTML5 (play in browser). In the end, I realized that the tonemapper is turned off by default in HTML5 anyways, so, I was good to go in this case. However, for desktop builds, this seems like a pain in ars. Something to think about when making a full commercial 2D game in Unreal, I think.

Alright, now, onto the next clone: Doom !

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