My first game: lessons learned (I)
As most of you I also wanted to develop a game when I started to program. As a few of you, I managed to make that objective come true… at least partially.
The language
When a friend and I felt that we were ready to embrace a project like this we started looking around for advice on programming languages and frameworks. We knew Python as well as others (C, C++, Java) and decided that with it we could focus more on game developing than on language learning. Python has a smooth learning curve for novices and provides flexibility and performance to the pro, as we found out later.
The Framework
The other choice was for the framework. We wanted to learn as much as possible but without reinventing the wheel at all. We choose Pygame. This let us take control of the basic inner working of a videogame while automating processes in a custom way. You have to be careful when balancing flexibility and out-of-the-box functionality and I think we were successful at this point given our needs.
The Story
The next step was thinking about the game itself. We wanted it to be easy to play and easy to develop, so the best solution could have been a 2d game, but we always loved isometric games. Finally we made the choice: an isometric action game inspired on Matrix but with lots of fun (a parody).
The Planning
Our first error. Well, in fact, the error. Believe me, if you think you can build a game without good planning, thats because you’ve never tried to do so, really. And better don’t try it without any plan at all. It’s a big error to think that if it’s the first game it’s not mandatory to settle at least the main guidelines of the project. We did so, but so weakly that we crashed even before we knew.
I leave for the next part of the article a deep explanation of our errors and would be solutions.
Do you have any experience related? then why don’t you post a comment?
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on May 4th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Hi,
Funnily enough I am in the middle of documenting my project plan for a simple rpg project. I will say, that without a concrete Game Design Document (GDD) to begin with, you will have trouble getting very far in the long run.
My next post will be about what a GDD is supposed to be. If you like, you can check it out at my site.
Cheers
Chris
on May 6th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Hi Chris,
I visited your blog. Very nice and useful one. I hope your project will come true and that we all could play it. You have your ideas clear and that’s essential for a game developer.
Good luck.