If i were a game developer i will..learn..
Recently, I talk with others peers how EA made their Need For Speed series, how UbiSoft create the Splinter Cell series and how several newbie people can learn to create a game. Basically creating game is just another programming form that need mathematics, data structure, and sometime physic. Yup its somewhat different with the desktop or web programming is need more than UX and Event handler, it’s need to simulate the realistic effect through physic and mathematics. This blog post is for you who want to quick fast review what you need to learn to create a game.
I summarized eight things that you should learn if you want to become a game developer. so let’s check it out.
- Simple Data structure, you need to know what is stack, heap, queue, linked list, etc. Forget OO first this is the thinks that you should learn first. It’s a basic stuff for most basic gaming programming like game rank, or rating.
- Operator and Operand, ah yes its simple just remember the + % * and others :). Ah yes… experience point in a RPG game is module of 11 to create a power level of character. So if i have 121 exp, my character will have power level 11
- Ah iteration, many of story board is using same effect and its repeated so be sure to know about while … and others iteration like for :)
- OO, yes OO is come in 4th rank…at least you know Inheritance, abstract class, interface, and others pillars of OO. Many characters is inherits from the base model. Just think about Ryu and Ken or Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima :)
- String manipulation, yes this is a must have skill. You should know about how string is manipulated..just thinking a place holder for a character for example The winner is “Ryan Cooper” yes Ryan Cooper is a placeholder after you do several things like index of, substring, length and others
- Key mapping, have you see a game without a button ?… even a mouse need a click button :) so be sure you know how your character read the w,s,a,d button
- Transformation, yes just remember about how you can make a character animate (sprites) using a simple method like animating, skewing, flipping and others. A game like Fatal Fury, Tekken, or others side scrolling like Rockman use a lot flipping to see a consistent picture when character moves to the right and to the left
- Shape and Collision, crashing…your Lancer Evolution in NSF is never done without a calculation how several shape can be intersection with the others…from simple equality of x and y, until a velocity and impact of damage in your car
That’s it! if you want to learn in crash course as beginner developer like me, why don’t you learn about these eight thinks..