In what order should I try to make simple games ?
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/In what order should I try to make simple games ?
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| I've only just got back into having a go at making little games to amuse myself, and so am starting with the basics again. I've not really made anything useable since a version of Pong using Blitz Basic on the Amiga quite some time ago. I have some ideas of more advanced games I'd like to do, but I'm being realistic for now. I've decided to remake simple versions of the 'classics', and wondered if anyone had any advice on which games to do in order of complexity. At the moment I'm thinking: - Pong, Breakout, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Kong, Mario Bros, Defender, Nemesis/R-type . . . I'm obviously not going to attempt exact reproductions (my graphical skills will not allow that), but was asking for advice on which order to approach them in order of new skills required, or other games covering basic concepts I've not considered. i.e. collision detection, keeping track of game assets, AI, gravity, more complex assets such as bullets, power-ups, etc etc. I've already found a few tutorials covering the basic points, but want to try to figure out as much as I can along the way. Any ideas? (p.s. Can anyone recommend any good language-agnostic books on game programming that slowly introduce these kind of concepts of game mechanics?) Thanks :-) |
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| Start with pong or simple shoot 'em ups. Platforms, walking and jumping add an extra layer of complexity, so go for them later. Scrolling adds another layer of complexity. |
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| Agreed. You could also try Tetris. |
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| maybe try a match 3 after tetris... working with a grid would make it similar just with a few more skills involved. |
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| I think you already have them in about the order of difficulty I would expect, except maybe mario brothers would be more involved than defender. |
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| Don't be put off by the title; these books are really quite good. Game Programming For Teens T |
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| Thanks a lot for the advice everyone. I never thought about Tetris - that involves a completely different game mechanic, so I'll try that after the shoot 'em ups, and then try platformers (the gravity and physics scares me off) much later. Probably got a good years worth of coding to do there, but I've got to start somewhere :-) I've already got the Maneesh Sethi book, and it is really good. Almost read it through once, then I'm going to start again, looking at all the examples in depth. Almost got a Pong game up and running at the moment, without resorting to anyone else's code. Is the Sloan Kelly book any good? I've heard good and bad things about it . . . http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0955377102 Thanks again, and any more advice would be greatly appreciated ;-) |
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| nice article for you: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/makegames/ |
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