Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
Don't forget http://www.gamasutra.com/ and the PCGPE, even if it's older than dirt.
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.).