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I am referencing this post, mentioning about how xbox 360 games are made.

I want to know, from start to finish how are major games made. If we take the latest GTA5 or the latest SimCity. Both games have virtual worlds. The games learn from user interaction; and this affects the games outcome. Now I am just curious as to what goes on. If we take GTA and SimCity they have mutliplayer city features and these features affect mutliplayer environments - so this data is synced.. then you have all the graphics.. animations.. sound and all the data and saving and management. I mean what teams and how are such games made and planned? Hope this is the right place. I am looking interesting at the gaming industry. The programming especially and the final releases (give or take updates and bugs) is impressive..

From what I understand Autodesk 3ds Studio Max, Cinema 4d, XNA.. C++, Java.. SoundBooth?

Daniel A. White
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TheBlackBenzKid
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They are known as AAA games. They require a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of developers to make. Basically, everything you see -trees, cars , people etc are created using a 3d software such as 3dsmax, maya or blender. Then they use something known as a game engine to define properties (for eg, make the car go forward when the user presses 'w'). Many games use a game engine exclusively created for it. So its art+code=game. If you are interested in making 3d games maybe you should try panda3d. Its a free game engine for python and its easy enough. http://www.panda3d.org/ : for the game engine And I'm sure there are a lot of python tutorials flying around. Python is the easiest thing you can learn (other than html, of course!) And www.mygamefast.com has one of the best tutorials ever. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of people to build games like GTA and Warcraft and Simcity. But there are a lot of one-man indie games around that are quite impressive.

The best way to know something is to try it out. All the best.

EDIT: The Unity game engine is probably the best way to start these days. It lets you write your game once and then compile it to run on many different platforms.

Kevin Martin Jose
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  • What programming do they use? So if I make all the models in 3ds Max.. does include Animations, explosions.. Adobe After Effects.. I thought Blender and Maya was for movies.. like Lord of the Rings?? – TheBlackBenzKid Jan 28 '13 at 12:50
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    It depends on the game engine you are using. OGRE uses c++, panda3d uses python. You can write your own game engine, but its quite a daunting task and i would advice against doing so. Animations and explosions etc are made using tools like maya3d and blender. Movies use a lot of 3d models too. Rip all the interaction from 3d games and you'd be getting an animation movie right? And 2d games require images - no 3d modelling involved – Kevin Martin Jose Jan 28 '13 at 15:00
  • Ahhh so game engines must be complex; physics, maths for objects, weights, memory, prices, performance, storage... portability.. functions.. is their a cross compliant game engine like HTML5 that most companies use .. like example HTML5 in it's basic format works on all platforms and devices... – TheBlackBenzKid Jan 29 '13 at 09:35
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    Html5 is not a game engine. Its just a markup language. Python is not a game engine, its a programming language. But Panda3d is a game engine, and its written using c++, and it uses python. A game engine is basically a software that contains all the tools you need to build a game. They are more or less like the different libraries available for programming languages. Anything written in java will be cross-platform. Try processing. Its not a game engine but it can be used to make some simple but neat games. www.processing.org – Kevin Martin Jose Jan 29 '13 at 17:30
  • @TheBlackBenzKid They probably use C/C++ judging by their careers page http://www.rockstargames.com/careers/openings – Neil Jun 30 '14 at 17:40
  • @Neil Most AAA games use C++. Not that java can't get the job done, but C++ already has all the middleware required to create a great game. – Kevin Martin Jose Jul 01 '14 at 13:11