How are major games like SimCity and GTA5 made?
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?
Answer
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.