Building Games
How to sharpen your skills while having fun!
Introduction
As part of my personal growth, I have decided to go back to what captivated my attention in computers when growing up. I was introduced to computers in the time of the ZX Spectrum at around eleven years old. I was sick at home, during the summer holidays, with nothing better to do then to read the computer’s manual and write a game. Have you ever tried to write a computer game using BASIC? Looking back, it doesn’t look as fun as it did back then 🙂 I wrote a game that was like whack-a-mole, but without a hammer to whack them: you would shoot them. Since then, I have never stopped programming and never lost the love for it.
I will start making some games, going from the most simple one to the more complex one. I always wanted to use Entity Component Systems and a game engine, this will be my opportunity.
Applications or Games?
There has always been a split between application and game development. On the application side, you have requirements and functionalities that people want out of a computer to make their lives simpler. On the gaming side, you have more art and story-telling. This means that we have lots more experimentation and innovation on the gaming side, or at least we used to.
Today, this line has been somewhat blurred. We have games that are built like applications. We are not expected to have every game use a game engine. Most games, especially casual games that you can play on your mobile phone, can be built without a bespoke engine, simply by using the frameworks and tools that you would use to build an application. This is where I want to start.
Action Plan
My plan is to start small and then grow. As with all things, it is better to eat in small slices, to learn step by step. I believe that to make games, the best step is to start with something small and simple: a classic game that can easily be developed without any special framework or game engine.
After having the first games built without an engine, then it is time to take a bigger bite and go for a game engine. I will not be using the most famous ones, but sticking to open source engines. I will be sharing my journey and maybe event making some videos of it, if you want to see it in action.