Slashdot Mirror
Getting Started with Game Development?
Knight2K writes "Recent articles about casual gaming have given me the itch to try my hand at writing some games. I haven't written any since my college projects, and they never followed any formal game design practice or patterns (unless it was unconsciously). I'd like to start just by writing simple board games and card games that my family liked to play that have no digital counterparts as far as I know. Eventually I might want to branch out and do 3D work. I mostly work in Java right now, but I'd re-learn C++, if needed. My question: what books would you recommend to a beginning game developer? Good introductions to game theory would be welcome, but also language or platform-specific suggestions are useful as well: OpenGL, Symbian, C++, Java, J2ME, etc."
What is your target? Do you want to write a game for a Windows PC? If so, then maybe you should look into C# and Direct3D. If you want a cross-platform game that you can compile on Windows, Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X, then look into SDL and OpenGL.
. html
You might want to start here if you're going the cross-platform route:
http://www.libsdl.org
http://andrew.textux.com/tutorials/tut1/tutorial1
http://www.kekkai.org/roger/sdl/
While my project is still in its beginning stages, you may wish to take a look at Improbable Drive. The basic concept is that I'm going through the game development process following formal techniques for project management, and documenting things as they go along.
Everything's based on a CCL license, so you're (mostly - see site for details) free to take any part of the process and alter it to suit your personal needs.
The Project only started a couple weeks ago, so I'm still in the project specification stage. The first milestone (Initial Specification document) is already complete, and I'm well on my way to getting the next one done (a full high-level plan of what needs to be done, and where future milestones are going to sit.)
Is the whole thing overkill for such a small project involving a single coder? Of course! But, that's really half the point - the project is small enough that the basic principles I'm exploring can be understood by anyone coming into it.
For small, personal projects like what you're describing, you may not want to go to the lengths that I'm going to, but it might prove helpful to see what sorts of steps need to be addressed that are commonly forgotten about until it's too late (sound design, for one).
And, of course, it's not too late to add your own $0.02 (US) to the project's design, as I'm soliciting input via the forums on the site.
That green slime had it coming.
You and a partner commit a crime, and are arrested. In the interrogation room, you learn that the two of you will each go to jail for 2 years if neither of you says anything; however, if you testify against your partner, you'll get off free while he ends up with 6 years. If both of you confess, you both go to jail for 4 years. What do you do?
You are playing a game where you are given $50, and then asked whether you would like to take it as is, or flip a fair coin. If you make the latter choice and turn up heads, then your total amount will be doubled to $100; if you turn up tails, then the amount will be halved. Do you take the $50, or take your chance with the coin?
You appear on a game show where, at some point, you are told to pick one of three doors. Behind one of these doors is a prize; behind the other two, nothing. You pick a door. The host then declares that he will open one of the empty doors. Having done this, he offers you a chance to switch to the other, single remaining door. Do you switch, or do you stay?
I agree that just doing it is best.
I started looking at the SDL Wiki example page, and after looking over the code and browsing the game programming wiki I just started coding.
My first game, and first use of SDL is mousetrap - the graphics suck, but at least one person liked it.
SDL really was a pleasure to work with, and suprisingly easy to get started with.
Now I'm working on a more graphical platform game.
www.pygame.org
The perfect way of starting a simple game.
Flash is a good alternative, but just make sure you use Actionscript 2. The IDE is poor so use your own wherever possible.
What about Flash? is a great paper on wiritng games in Flash, from a programmers perspective.
The real advice I'd give once you've decided what tools to use, is to finish the project. Games aren't easy to write as they end up in play testing and bug hunting like any other app so put in the hours and finish off the game. If you never do it again at least you have a working game.
As an IT professional with not a whole lot of time to miff around, I prefer using Multimedia Fusion, a product created by Clickteam. You might have heard of their more popular install maker program.
www.clickteam.com