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Crash Course in Game Programming?
Lullabye_Muse asks: "I want to write a game program for an independent research class I am taking at my High School. I have until June to deliver a final product or a good demo. I'm somewhat new to programming and will be doing work at home, and at school (Linux and Windows, so cross platform OSS is best). What is the best language to learn to code games in, and do you have suggestions for any useful sites, on game programming?"
Since you said you are new to programming, you might want to consider taking on an OSS game that is already out there and modifying it to suit your purpose. It will help you learn a lot of the basics of programming, but it will also give a great starting point.
If you are dead set on writing an entire game yourself, best of luck to you. Even for an experienced programmer, throwing together a game (or even a demo) in three - four months is a feat.
Johnkoerner.com
Languages aside, SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) is a great library for graphics/sound/network programming. Simple, easy to learn, cross platform. For a class project, it should do the trick.
I'd suggest C++ for programming languages, but that's probably just because it's what I've used for years.
--trb
Since you are doing this in high school, and want it cross platform, it obviously doesn't have to be a high performance 3D super game of awesome. So make it in java.
The design pattern for most simple java games is model view controller. You create an object oriented game model with map, player, item classes etc. Then you create a view, or the gui that looks at this game model and translates the data into graphics or text on the screen. Then the controller portion interprets player input and modifies the game model accordingly.
This is a very good pattern to follow for games, especially for research projects. This is because the game itself usually isn't the research, but some underlying CS principle or algorithm. And this makes very simple cross platform games to which you can attach or embed your real research very easily.
You can also follow this same approach with python, or ruby or even C++. Python might even be a better choice since it might beat java in performance and is used quite often in the game industry.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
You should definitely get Python and Pygame. Python is both easy to learn and more powerful than most languages. Better yet, there are plenty of example games to study. If you want to do 3D, also get PyOpenGL, and get the started with the NeHe tutorials (Python code available).
The downside with Python is that it can be slow (a fact that can be remedied to some degree, but not entirely, by also installing Psyco). Fortunately, the slowness doesn't matter (unless your aim is to compete with the next id Software engine). I've written a simple engine for a 2D platformer in Python myself, and even with a game logic and collision detection, 90% of the processor time is spent blitting the graphics to the screen. Since Pygame (written in C) does the rendering, using C++ for your game code won't provide any big advantage.
Good luck!
If you're new to programming, and actually want to code this yourself, it's going to need to be a simply game with little to no graphics. Implementing a OpenGL game is NO trivial task. A game I did in Java was the simple squares game where the object is to arrange the pieces like so ..
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 *
So I wrote a Java app that would mix up the squares like so
4 7 2
* 1 8
6 5 3
and allow you to move the pieces around via the *blank* square. This still wasn't trivial, especially for someone new to Java, much less programming in general. Not trying to disparrage your efforts, but being new to coding is probably your biggest disadvantage.
We used to program games in Basic, on BBC Micros! First game I ever wrote was a donkey kong clone, and a poor one at that - about 1500 lines of code, max.
Also, back in my day, we had to burn our feet as fuel, we were so poor. And we had no monitors. And we only had one keyed morse-code based keyboards. Bah!
http://www.blender3d.org/t ml
.EXE or web 3d games viewable with its own (small) plugin.
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Game_Blender.365.0.h
It's a 3d design package, that gives you a game engine, so you could have the graphics part solved, and can worry just about the actual game. I believe you can program for it with python.
It works on MSWindows, GNU/Linux, and other platforms, and it can generate
My suggestion would be Java, simply because the graphics libraries are pretty decent and it's not hard to write a decent GUI. Additionally, it's cross-platform and would probably help you in the real world later.
But the real question is, how much experience do you have currently? I started programming in HS by doing games on those little calculators (TI-81 to 85 completely self-taught) and enjoyed the experience so much I decided to do CS in college (graduated last year). If I were in your shoes, you may want to think small. Many of the early video games were text-based, many made by one person. Nowadays due to complication, you need teams. So it may not be a bad idea to write something simple and textbased in whatever language. Text-based doesn't need to mean uncomplicated or compromised gameplay; chess, othello, hearts, and dungeon-crawlers were all very popular and I still know people who prefer these over newer games.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Check out the community sites garagegames.com, flipcode.org, and gamedev.org to meet other people in similar situations. The forums are really good for getting quick answers to beginner questions.
-m
Without a doubt, Simple Directmedia Layer (SDL) is the best platform for writing cross platform games. It provides a very clean abstraction layer to the high performance APIs (DirectX, etc.) available on each platform. Many people who code only for Windows use it since the API is a lot nicer than the COM based DirectX API. A number of commercial games have been ported to Linux using SDL.
For serious game programming, you need to learn C or C++. I would guess that 99% of all commercial games for the PC are written in mostly C or C++. This doesn't mean you need to write all of your code in a low level language. Even the original Quake used an interpreted language (QuakeC) for the game logic. But almost no language other than C or C++ will provide the speed or memory usage necessary for most commercial games.
If you'd rather concentrate on writing your game rather than learning C, try Python with Pygame. Pygame is a Python binding to SDL. It is fairly fast since all the low level graphics stuff is done using SDL. Certain things will be slower in Python (collision detection, physics, etc.) but most code isn't speed critical anyway. Some things will be harder in Python since it's easier to manipulate bytes and bits in C.
Also check out PyOpenGL if you want to learn OpenGL. It can be used in conjunction with Pygame. I used this when I was learning OpenGL and it's quite nice. The API is almost exactly like the C based API, but it is easier to use. At least one of the popular OpenGL tutorials has been ported to PyOpenGL.
Before the locals gather their pitchforks to run me out of town, here's why:
-If you don't know much about programming, even something basic like vectors or graphics libraries could be more than a little daunting. Flash makes graphics dog-dumb easy, leaving you to focus on the logic. A lot of the abstractions (game speed, display parameters, collision detection) can be handled easily, leaving you to learn how to program.
-You can do some OO programming with Actionscript, so you can start with a simple program, and when you get skilled, learn how to extract that functionality into libraries or classes.
-You should be able to focus on some simple programming aspects like game physics, or making it fun (which doesn't have much to do with programming).
-There are a zillion sites out there with bits of code that you can learn from and modify. Granted, lots of it sucks (i.e. it works, but it will not show you how to be a 'good' coder). Offhand, I don't know what to recommend to become a good coder, but at the least, I'd recommend plowing through at least the first 3 chapters of Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++ (free online). Once you get through pointers and address references, actionscript will look like child's play. Sure, there are sites out there with sample PyGame/Java/etc. code, but Flash code is easier to cherry pick and drop in.
-You have to realize that what you're doing is similar to saying "I've never turned a wrench before, but I want to build a car in 4 months." Game programming can be exceptionally difficult on a number of levels.
it's funny, but you'll probably get flamed or modded to oblivion just for posting about the only reasonable solution to his conundrum. i seriously doubt this kid is going to learn the Java API and throw together something on the scale most of these people are talking about in the 3 months or so of after-school time he has to work with.
Flash is a great medium for 2D games. the graphics are drag and drop, and the actionscripting is a perfect introduction to handling the logic associated with managing a game.
but, this being slashdot, anything mentioning Flash in a positive light will probably get modded downward and derided by the community.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Javascript, CSS, and DHTML are each well documented on the internet, and there are numerous books to get you started, as well.
Finally, before you cry out "but Javascript won't let me create a cool game!" - take a look at this:
Illumia RPG
and especially this:
TRIGLAV RPG
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Ignore everything you've read here about graphics and sound libraries, existing game code, existing game libraries, and (for now), choice of languages. If you've never done any programming before and intend to use this as a vehicle to start programming, read this first. Clear your mind, and ignore the details for now.
More important than anything else you can ask right now is to find out what you're trying to achieve. Saying "I want to write a game" isn't specific enough, as humanity has invented tens of thousands of games over the years using all sorts of different mechanisms (cards, dice, boards, pieces, pots, beans, joysticks, vector graphics, role playing, puzzles...). So first, figure out what you want to write.
Next, take the game you want to write, and stick it on a mental shelf. Everyone would love to write Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as their first game, but it isn't going to happen.
My first piece of advice: don't try to create a new game for your first project. Take something you already know, and know well, and implement it first. Try to pick something that has finite states that are easily describable, and then work from there. Preferably something that has mechanical rules and won;t require too much "artificial intelligence" on the part of the computer (ie: you may know Chess really well, and it has a finite number of pieces, the logic required to decide how to have the computer move is exceedingly complex. Companies like IBM have spent millions trying to perfect such algorithms).
Two classes of games which are typically excellent candidates for first projects are card and dice games. Both are fairly easy to program, as they involve numbers, and have a finite number of possibilities (ie: 52 cards, 6 sides per die). When selecting a game to implement, find something you enjoy, but preferably something that again, won't require an M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence. Blackjack is an excellent candidate (many Universities use this as a first year programming assignment anyhow, so you'd be getting a leg-up on others if you plan on persuing Computer Science in higher education), as the compter can act as the dealer, and has very specific rules it always follows (requiring no AI at all). Don't worry about how many times the game has already been done -- your goal is to learn programming, and not to create the next Halo 2.
Once you've selected a good candidate game, you need to code the game mechanics before you code anything else. So again -- forget everything anyone here has told you about graphics and sound libraries, or even languages. You won't need these until later.
Continuing with Blackjack as an example, here are some of the things you need ot think about first:
If you can get all of this down in code, you'll be off to an excellent start. From here, you can graft whatever user interface you want atop the "game engine" you've just created. And you'll find you'lll learn a lot about the basics of programming (variables, arrays, functions, objects, random numbers, sorting, comparisons, etc.)
You'll probably want to be able to test things out as you go along, which will require a minimal user interface. To start, you'll probably want to use just text to represent everything (ie: "10 Hearts", "A Spades", etc.).