I’ve always loved video games since I have on the computer of a friend in the afternoon to read to elementary school. There is something magical about the fact that we are moving pictures and interact with virtual worlds, a living fantasy presented for us but we interact with please. Also, I’ve always wanted to make games myself but, until recently, lacked the technical knowledge to do so. Now I am a student in the second year in software engineering, so if I’m not in a position to have a game without too many dramas code something fundamentally wrong. But what about the common person: the person on the summons, the term memory leak “pictures of her grandfather,” pipeline “is the place where water flows, and ‘blitting’ It’s never seen? Now, everyone can get their hands on to get the game development process, and you do not even need to learn “to do real” programming.
To do so, where to start games? With an idea. Games, like any fiction, require an idea to success. Of course, the same way you can just sit down and write, a story without foresight, you can jump in and slap together a game. However, if you are lucky ridiculous, the best works are usually those who have well thought out in advance.
There are two methods of planning a project. You can also from a technological perspective and experience with the construction of a project to, or you can simply go to the design, add as many features and ideas you want, then you delete them you can not use if you are on the technology will be decided you implement the game. In general, the second type is probably the best to go in the design of games. When you begin, however, is the first option will save you many headaches.
So, for a first game you have a pretty simple idea. Do not get me wrong, are mini-game go-nuts fantastic ideas, and it should, there are several of them, but you will not be able to provide a real world simulator with fifty billion people to create virtual interaction of all real-time with your actions a butterfly effect on the future of the virtual universe, where it is your first game. Really. Many people try it, that I know of none succeeded. Imitation is the best way to start. simple games like “Space Invaders”, “Tetris,” “Pacman,” or even “Pong” are excellent places to start. All are largely simple to create but have some inherent difficulties. “Pacman,” for example, requires path finding for the ghosts. I recommend that you start even simpler than the first attempt. “Space Invaders” is a good place to get in. You can use a simple game and to make it complete, to jump without much effort and it is almost infinitely expandable.
If you are stuck for an idea to choose a genre you like. You love adventure games like “Monkey Iceland,” “Grim Fandango”, “Space Quest”, “King’s Quest, etc.? Design one of them. Are you in the fighting games like Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, kombat, mortal, “and so on? with an idea for coming. Do you like shooters like” Quake, Half Life or Doom? “I do not recommend it as a first project, but you can always give it a go . Feel free to be as generic as you want, it is a learning experience after all.
Now that you have your idea, it is time to expand. Do not worry about the technology, or because you do not know how to actually implement a game for the moment, take just a sheet of paper and a pencil and crazy ideas. Describe the main characters of the game, goals, interactions, history and key bindings, you can think of. Make sure you have read enough information for everyone, notes, and play in their head with relative accuracy. Changing game design during the coding is almost always a bad idea. Once that is resolved, they must stay together until the fine tuning phase will go (I later into) or you are required to enter ‘development hell, where the project is continued, the work is less and less results.
At the end of this period, the creation of your game, you need the following:
- A written description of the dark characters of the game and perhaps a sketch or two (they are space ships, yellow circles, cars or the prince of the Kingdom Falgour, you need to know who or what are the players and who they compete against)
- A written description of the story (if there is one, it is not too critical, “Space Invaders” or “Tetris,” but for ‘Uber Quest: An Adventure of Awesomeness’ is a very good idea)
- A description of the game, in writing or storyboard. Storyboards are visual representations of ideas. Draw your characters in actions, with arrows to the flow of action and short written descriptions detailing the events that occur in your image (because some of us are not fantastic artists and our images a little … open to interpretation .. .)
Now you have an idea on meat, it is time to work on how this all together. If you arrived at this point and are worried that you fear for years learning complex programming languages to implement your idea not you! Others have already done the hard steps for you. There are many RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool for game development, some of which are available free online. Some of them have to learn a scripting language “A” (a simplified programming language for a specific task or not), but in general it is not too complicated or involved. I prepared a short list of some of these I found at the end of the article. Free ones are listed first organized by the style of the game
Well, that would be enough to make the start should be noted when creating your game the most important thing if you have changed so much that you need to complete your game, many people start a project and then lose interest and it fails, or they continue to move to a new project after another, without fittings nothing. Start small, build a functioning (albeit simple) game that is completely against everything. If you fix to get to this point, you always have a lot of things that you want to change, etc. but you will feel great to know that it has in its way, finished.
From that point, you have to start tweaking phase. Play your game a few times and encourage others to do the same. Take note of what is not funny, or that could be better and things are changing here. At this stage it is more important than ever to keep backups of previous versions, so that if a change does not work you can go back and try something else, without your work. At this point you can use any new features, improved graphics and sounds, whatever you want, safe in the knowledge that you work on solid foundations.
If you are satisfied with your game, why not share it with the world? There are many places to get cheap or free it to your files on your computer and then jump to the link lists and forums, and know you have all of your foundation. Well, I hope it was a useful introduction to the art of creating games. There is a lot of fun, and can open new avenues of artistic expression for you to explore. Join us and enjoy!