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Ask Slashdot: How To Find Expertise For Amateur Game Development?

Posted by timothy on from the learning-experience dept.

New submitter es330td writes "I'd like to write a program that takes the old cannon game to another level, but instead of the path being a simple parabolic arc, the projectile will move through a field of objects exerting gravitational attraction (or repulsion) and the player will have to adjust velocity and angle to find the path through the space between launch point and the target.In an ideal world, this would end up as one of these Flash based web playable games, as that would force me to fully flesh it out, debug and complete the app. I doubt this will ever be commercial, so hiring somebody doesn't make sense, and I wouldn't learn anything that way either. I have been programming for almost 20 years, but the bulk of my work has been in corporate programming, primarily web (Cold Fusion, ASP & C#.Net,) or VB6 and then C# Windows GUI interfaces to RDBMS. I have never written a graphics based game, nor have I ever written something using the physics this will require. Once upon a time, I could program in C but I think I would be much better off to work with someone rather than try to roll my own unless good books exist to flatten the learning curve. Any advice on how to proceed?"

4 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Er no they're not. I'm an expert amateur photographer. I do not make a living doing it, but I take works of art compared to professional wedding photographers.

  2. Stackexchange by Letharion · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/ is a great place to ask game development related questions.

    1. Re:Stackexchange by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm currently a student studying game programming, and http://www.gamedev.net/ has been a godsend. The forums are by far the best I've found. There is a Help Wanted section, and it varies in how serious or deadlined the projects are, so that could be a good place to find a potential partner.

      If you're familiar with C#, look into XNA. The framework is built in C#, it's free and its projects can be run on PC/XBOX Indie/Windows Phone. Other options would be Flash or the Unity engine (can run in browsers, scripted with C# or Javascript).

      I like your idea, could be a fun casual game.

  3. Re:Too late! by pjt33 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I did it three years ago as an entry for the Java4k Game Contest: Gravitational Fourks. And my inspiration was a game I played on the Acorn Archimedes in the early 90s.