How to Create a 3D Game? | 5 Essential Steps

How to Make a 3D Game?

By following the steps listed below, developers can efficiently make immersive and engaging 3D gaming experiences.

1. Start with an Idea to Create a 3D Game

• Just like with writing, it can be difficult to put something on paper even though your head is full of ideas. Start with sketches. Don’t try to put everything together in one day. Come back to your sketches and try to lay out a story. Once you have a cloud of ideas for game designing, you can start putting together your Game Design Document.

2. Choose Your Engine and Development Stack

• I will be referencing Unreal as the engine of choice although there are many other great ones out there like Unity and CryEngine. Luckily, with Unreal 4, getting access to hundreds of masters is now at your fingertips. The engine samples are a great source of assets and should last you well beyond the prototypes of your game. 
• If you have one or more programmers on your team or are handy with Python yourself, take some time off and review your pipeline to see where improvements can be made. It’s best to do this early on in production and have multiple reviews along the way.
• Be open to feedback from your artists and actively ask if you can help them out. Writing small Photoshop scripts to simplify exporting or writing a tiny launcher to make multiplayer testing and setting up play tests makes it easier for your entire team (and possible testers you have got involved). 
• Automation is your friend and for a little bit of upfront pain, it pays massive dividends on the backside to remove human errors from a process that happens hundreds of times over and over.

3. Get Organized to Manage Data

• Even the most experienced game developers know that no matter how good an idea is, project mismanagement can wreck everything. Project management is a complex subject and is as important as art, programming and design. While it’s generally accepted that a simple “waterfall” model of development isn’t enough for studios, flexible development models for your vertical are harder to implement than they look and require daily patience.
• When setting up your project management tool, make sure you can customize milestones and project statuses to how your team operates.  Game developers know about big files so you need as much storage as you can get for your game development. Go with a tool that has unlimited storage for all your media files. You want to be able to visualize progress within the tool without having to leave the app. It’s important to consider a project management tool that can scale so you don’t have to worry about migrating data in the future.

4. Start Coding your Game

• Once you’ve finalized your idea, what engine and development stack you’re going with and how you intend to stay organized, it’s time to get into the actual development of your game. There are frequent discussions about “which language is better” and I believe there is no straight answer to this. It depends entirely on the scope of the project, the team and proficiency with either.  
• If you’ve never coded in C++ before it may very well be quite intimidating at first. I would recommend starting to start learning the editor environment, game framework and basic Blueprint first. It will make the transition into C++ easier since you’ll be more familiar with class names and conventions that apply to both Blueprint and C++.

5. Get yourself Involved

• There are countless events, virtual and in-person, free and paid, where you can go out and meet other game developers. These are opportunities not only to learn but to also find people to join your team. I also recommend reading lots of documentation. The good thing is there is lots of it, the challenge is knowing which articles to read and why. 

Conclusion

Creating a 3D game is a complex but rewarding process. By following a structured approach, utilizing the right tools, and maintaining organization, developers can create engaging and immersive 3D games. Continuous learning and community involvement are key to staying updated with the latest trends and techniques in game development.