Game Programming (Designing)

Game Programming
(Designing)

Gathering Your Tools
The Programming Tools page has a list of tutorials, with appropriate media development tools that can be found over on the content tools page. This should be useful for you.

Designing Your Game
Caution! Yes, caution is definitely called for when designing a game. Avoid newbie mistakes! Follow this advice:
Start small. Most newbie game programmers dream of making the next hit game. If you're just starting out, this is an impossible goal! It will only lead to frustration and defeat. You must start small; the only way to learn game programming is to be a game programmer. Try making a simple Tetris-style game, a breakout clone, or something of that nature. You'll run into enough trouble with Tetris if you're just starting out. If you have a little more experience you may wish to visit the game genres page to help decide on a game type.
Plan. If you have nothing more than some vague notion of making a "really cool RTS game" you are likely going to run into trouble about halfway through your project, when you realize that your initial assumptions were incorrect. Try to be as thorough as possible in the designing phase; it'll save you countless hours in the end. Create a design document for your game, and include a structured version of all of your gameplay and technical design notes. Think through your game from beginning to end, and document every gameplay feature, and how you plan to implement it technically. Having said that, I'll now suggest that no design document is perfect. Something unanticipated will always come up, no matter how thorough you've been. Just do your best!
Wait. I've always found that my ideas seem brilliant to me when I first come up with them, but a few weeks down the road they don't always seem quite so interesting. Be sure that you've given yourself ample time to mull an idea over, before committing yourself to it. You don't want to get bored with your game after investing hours in its development!
Get feedback. Find a group of gamers and pitch your idea to them. If they're not excited and interested by your idea when you're enthusiastically describing it to them, they'll surely not be excited and interested by the end result. Get feedback, and re-work your idea.

Creating Game Media
For many game developers, this is the hardest part! After perusing the content tools page and deciding on a set of tools, it's time to get down to the business of creating your game's media. If you aren't an artist, you may need to search around for partners who are skilled in this area. For beginner games, there isn't anything at all wrong with so-called "programmer art," however. You can also try some of the freely available art resources that can be found on the Internet.

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