9/12/10

Starting developing games

This year I will start developing some games. The first one is a game made with C# using XNA 3.0 (I yet don't have any idea what it will be like!) and the second one, a larger and more ambitious one, will be made using C++.

But first something little about me. I am 20 year old student in University of Oulu, majoring in Information Processing Science and also taking courses in mathematics. I have pretty much very little experience in programming, thus far I've programmed with Java for about a year and C/C++ for three months. I've great ambition in making games, although I understand that right now these projects will most likely be more than I can chew, but what I've learned about programming in this short time is that one must learn from one's mistakes. And what would be a better way to make mistakes than creating a game?


Well, as mentioned above, I'll be developing two games this year. The one made with C# will be made within 6 weeks as an assignment for an introduction course of "Introduction to programming through game developement". I am not yet sure what to make, but I've been thinking about making some rather simple platformer. Hopefully I'll have the time to update this frequently enough to share my views and feelings about developing a game in such a short period of time. I have no prior experience with C#, but the first contact with it seems nice enough, especially with these developement tools. It takes very little time and coding to make it possible to draw sprites on screen and enable user control for the sprite. Maybe I'll work more with C# and XNA in the future, but after this first project I'll probably just lay it off for some time.

The another game, which is also in developement (and probably will be for a long time!) will be a roguelike, made using C++. It will be rather complicate thing, as roguelikes usually are, but hopefully I'll learn a thing or two from the project. Why C++, some might ask? Well, I thought about developing it on Java, but I feel Java to be somewhat clunky language to use for the project, although it is highly portable. C on the other hand just doesn't feel like the language for this, because of no classes. I ruled C# out because I want to release the roguelike on both Windows and Linux. I will try to keep you updated with the roguelike as progress is made. The first thing I'll be making is a random level generator, that adds rooms to the level and connects with corridors. Then I'll be adding player character into the game and enabling moving around. Then, well, I guess some kind of AI and interaction with NPC, and so forth.

I'll be releasing the versions of roguelike (once it reaches the point of actually making sense to release!) for both Windows and Linux, and making it open-source. Why? Because I feel it will be the best way to receive feedback about one's coding, and it also allows those interested enough to reveal bugs and maybe even fixes for them.

Well, that's all for now, I guess.
Feel free to ask anything, and if you have any tips, I'll be happy to listen.

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