Game Development: Getting Started

[Falco Girgis]

Youtube is blocked here, so I can't post the actual link. But yesterday I decided to get off my ass and finally redo my original How-To. I attempted to approach it much more procedurally this time. I tried to break it into easy to follow steps so that anybody can get going.

Mostly I made them for the people who keep bugging me for help getting started. I'm still trying to struggle with myself deciding whether I did it out of the goodness of my heart, or out of pure laziness stemming from not wanting to answer all those questions...

[Icjusty]

I enjoyed that video a lot. Hopefully, people like me will stop bothering you now. :D

[dandymcgee]

I enjoyed that video a lot. Hopefully, people like me will stop bothering you now. :D

When I first read your username I saw "ICrusty".. lol. [/hijack]
I'll watch the new vid as soon as I get home.

EDIT: 100th post hehe.

[MarauderIIC]

Goncratulations. Automagic rank upgrade for you! =)
Also, I haven't bothered to watch the video yet.

[jesterguy]

Awesome new videos falco, kinda wish you had made those earlier this year. Although if you had I might not have gone down the "hardest of hardcore" path without realizing it and I do like a good challenge.
Still nice videos and I predict many posts across dev forums everywhere linking to them.


BTW is c++ and sdl really that hard core? I could understand OpenGL but the others aren't too complicated, but Ive never tried any of those blitz, alegro, etc things so I don't know how simple they are.

[Falco Girgis]

It's hardcore in the respect of being a multipurpose language and an API. If you just use SDL, you're still making a game from scratch.

It's one of the simpler APIs, true. OpenGL is a more complex API (but it's also just for graphics). For example, we use OpenGL and SDL in our engine. OGL for graphics, SDL for things like input, sound, etc.

As far as the grand scheme of things go, C++ and SDL is on the hardcore path.
As far as the hardcore path goes, it's one of the easiest hardcore approaches.

If you get what I'm saying, haha.

[MarauderIIC]

C++ is hardcore because it's tricky and has some stuff that is easy without losing functionality on other languages.

Google C++ FQA for a (biased) document on its shortcomings.

[jesterguy]

well at least I can say im on the hardcore path even if it is one of the easy ones.

I just finished getting the video stuff for the tactics game Ive been making with a friend converted over to ogl ( which is no quick task when the projects already a ways in I might add ) and its already making alot of things much easier. OpenGL is certainly harder to use then sdl for graphics but Ive been having alot of fun playing with it, theres just so much more you can do not to mention it runs way way faster. Personally Id say for video sdl is great to start with but eventually you need more then it can give you which is when you switch but then again I don't even have a year of experience yet that's just my opinion at this point.

[Falco Girgis]

Yeah, even for 2D games (look at ours), SDL isn't enough for things like rotations, vertex manipulations, blah blah. There are tons of powerful things you can do in a 2D game with a 3D API.

That's also how we're handling it on the Dreamcast. We're binding textures to flat polygons and using the PVR (3D hardware) to manipulate them. I wrote generic render functions that resolve to either calls to the Dreamcast PVR or OpenGL API depending on what you're compiling for, so I don't really muck with OpenGL much anymore.

[jesterguy]

definitely agree on the stuff about sdl not working so well for rotations and so on, We started out using some sdlgfx lib that had this rotozoom thing and it was a major pain in the ass to get working correctly.
luckily my friend was doing that , but as an example of how annoying it was these are a few comments left in the code for our old rotation function:

Code: Select all

	//rotate the ship 90 degree's however many times we need to
	//FOR I HAVE THWARTED YOUR EFFORTS TO MAKE ME COMMIT SUICIDE ROTOZOOM

	// fuck you rotozoomSurface, this is to correct your black bar fuck-ups

but yea controlling the images is way easier to do with a 3d API since you can control every aspect of it from each vertex placement to size, rotation and so on, Right now our display function is a rather simple one that takes the units collision box and the textureID, so its not much more difficult to use then sdl once you have it set up right.


BTW what level of awesome does someone need to reach before they get the fancy "game developer" title?

[Falco Girgis]

Uhm, that's a very good question. I think that we need to have a committee of developers who decides (seriously, haha). It'll definitely take some sort of video, screenshot, etc. of your work. I think trufun is the only guy that we've just handed it to so far. The guy is a computer science major, and look at his Youtube videos. It didn't take much thought to decide that he needed one.

[MarauderIIC]

I wish we could override rank names (as opposed to making a new rank with a new image). I would like to have some special ranks but still have image reflect postcount :P

I don't think we can do that, least...

I think our game developer title generally has something to do with quantity of work produced and amount of stick-to-it-iveness. I mean, if we handed game developer title to every person who has made something game-like... everyone would have one. Completed projects are rare, though, and multiple completed projects are even rarer.

But that's just my thought on that.

[jesterguy]

Well the only screenshot Ive ever taken of the tactics game was already posted in my lua question topic and doing anything now wouldn't look so great since its still undergoing lots of display changes but once all that's out of the way i might just try to set up something like hypercam and record a bit of the game so far, although theirs not too much game play wise. Sorta like your rpg, you can move around use weapons take damage and so on its got the full fog of war, neutral teams and fancy floating damage numbers just no real game play. I might not be worthy of the title but at least you guys could rate my work and hopefully give some preferably constructive criticism.

Edit:
Yea I have a few other projects that were never really finished, they were sort of being made while i was learning and once i had learned what i needed i just moved on. My current project is the first ive started with the purpose of making something not just to learn how to do something, and also the first i think that will get completed eventually.