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felipepepe

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So, I have a friend that graduated in Eletrical Engineering, knows her C++ and now wants to try her hand at making a game.

She likes jRPGs, so I told her she should try making a roguelike in ASCII or something like it, as it would force her to learn and apply many game design concepts ... any bro has any other recommendation for first steps into game programming, or perhaps tutorials on the matter? :)
 

Hirato

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A roguelike?

Why not try to get her to learn Lua and poke around in ToME's engine?
Getting into games programming is ideal with knowledge of at least one scripting language next to whatever lower level languages you've mastered.
 

felipepepe

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I think it's more important to know WTF you're doing then to just know how to do it. Having to think and implement character creation, classes, weapons, enemies, combat, dungeon layout and all that from scratch seems way more "educational" than just poking around a finished game. One wound't even be able to understand what they did right or why they did it. I like the approach of making people "fail" first, and only then show the solution... is better than "do this because is the right way because I say so".
 

Hirato

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ToME's engine is very rudimentary, you will need to handle everything about character generation, weapons, combat, dungeon layouts, etc if you don't make a mod for the base game itself, or derive from it.

At best the engine saves from dealing with audio frameworks, input frameworks, image frameworks, the OpenGL rendering pipeline using a core context, designing map/savegame formats, and so forth; assorted things that get in the way of making the game itself.
 

felipepepe

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Bro, I'm talking about a very simple ASCII roguelike, like those made in those "7 day roguelike contests"... what you say could be something for a 2° step, but I think is important to suffer through every hardship before taking shortcuts. It's the same logic of why you need to learn math before they give you a calculator.
 

Hirato

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https://github.com/Hirato/roguey

That is a basic graphical roguelike I made over the course of 3 weeks.
it's a miserable pile of secrets hacks, but maybe you or your friend can find some use for it.


But really, for 7-day roguelikes, you're really shooting yourself in the foot if you don't use an existing engine.
 

J1M

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She should make something she is interested in.

Her first project will fail, or be really lame, so she should have fun working on it.
 

Niektory

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I agree with felipepepe that making simple games from scratch is a better way to start than using existing engines. It makes you develop a low level understanding of how stuff works, which I think is important. At least assuming you're serious about this and not just trying to kill some time.

I think making a text adventure is a perfect warm-up. The basics won't take much time. After that you can add some simple RPG mechanics to spice it up a bit or move on to the next project.

A roguelike is a good idea, since the basics are still very simple, and you can implement additional mechanics easily without having to worry much about the graphical representation or interface.

I think it's also a good idea to make some sort of an old school arcade game, like a Breakout clone, a platformer, or a shmup. They involve collision detection, simple physics, real-time animation and controls, important things you won't learn from a roguelike.
 

CrazyLoon

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It depends on what she wants to accomplish ultimately. If she is seeking to build games from scratch, then making simple games is the best option here. Work your way up, hone your craft, go for a more complex project each time.

And one thing any would be game maker(solo and small teams) seriously need to know, is to understand the goal, the goal to create a game, and what it takes to reach that goal. When you are specialised in one particular aspect, in this case say programming, you tend to very easily underestimate the work needed to complete the the other parts. The most obvious, go to MODDB or any other modding websites, 95% of the mods say they have this "great idea," post some 3D models, and now revisit after a year, they're all dead. The reason is, although they all know how to model a character, none of them have even the slightest of idea of how to make a game. Programming, like modeling and setting up rule systems, is only ONE aspect of game making. Knowing how to program means you know how to program, it doesn't mean you know how to make a game. In fact it doesn't mean shit. Coming up with "teh awesome concept" doesn't mean shit. Modeling the coolest character the gaming industry has ever seen doesn't mean shit. The implementation of all the above in the game itself, THE GAME is what matters. If your goal is not to make a game, but to be part of the assembly line, then work as a specialist, as an asset to a game development team or corporation. Know the difference between the two and where your skills lie.
 

tiagocc0

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Felipepepe, maybe an engine is too much work, but a framework is something she can use.
She should look for something that can make her prototype fast without coding too much, a lot of people use unity 3D for prototyping, I prefer Qt with QML.

If she knows portuguese and likes Qt I can teach her the basics to get some pretty cool stuff done pretty quickly, then she can train herself into learning the basics of gaming without losing time with the language.
 

shihonage

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My first game was a Soko-Ban clone. You are alone in the static dungeon and there are boulders you have to push into preset places without getting stuck. I did it in ASCII because in 1988 Soviet microcomputer didn't have graphics.

In retrospect it was just the right kind of game to do. Because you can easily start building on top of it and convert it into a roguelike, yet it is simpler and is complete by itself, which gives an early sense of accomplishment.

Building a roguelike is a rather infinite process.
 

Destroid

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It depends on what she wants to accomplish ultimately. If she is seeking to build games from scratch, then making simple games is the best option here. Work your way up, hone your craft, go for a more complex project each time.

And one thing any would be game maker(solo and small teams) seriously need to know, is to understand the goal, the goal to create a game, and what it takes to reach that goal. When you are specialised in one particular aspect, in this case say programming, you tend to very easily underestimate the work needed to complete the the other parts. The most obvious, go to MODDB or any other modding websites, 95% of the mods say they have this "great idea," post some 3D models, and now revisit after a year, they're all dead. The reason is, although they all know how to model a character, none of them have even the slightest of idea of how to make a game. Programming, like modeling and setting up rule systems, is only ONE aspect of game making. Knowing how to program means you know how to program, it doesn't mean you know how to make a game. In fact it doesn't mean shit. Coming up with "teh awesome concept" doesn't mean shit. Modeling the coolest character the gaming industry has ever seen doesn't mean shit. The implementation of all the above in the game itself, THE GAME is what matters. If your goal is not to make a game, but to be part of the assembly line, then work as a specialist, as an asset to a game development team or corporation. Know the difference between the two and where your skills lie.



Programming can make a game alone (although not a pretty one). Not so the other disciplines. How do you think roguelikes come about?
 

Midair

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Dive in and make the jrpg, if that is what she really wants to do. Or make a test of the combat system or other part of the game. There is no need to waste time on educational projects if this is a hobby and, as pointed out, supposed to be fun.
 

J1M

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Programming can make a game alone (although not a pretty one). Not so the other disciplines. How do you think roguelikes come about?

No it can't, you are using two skills here: Programming and game designing.

Not true.

Directly translating a game like tic-tac-toe to digital format only requires programming skills.
 

tuluse

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Unless she is really into engine design and low(er) level code, I see no reason to build the project from scratch. If for example she wants to work in the industry, starting with a premade engine is actually much more helpful. Working with other people's code, being able to read and understand documentation, and building off what they've done is more important that having done everything yourself. On the other hand if she's interested in game design programming an engine is going to be painfully boring to her.

Every time I've heard or read an industry veteran talk about what to do if you want to make computer games is to mod existing games.
 

Galdred

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Most tutorials focus on learning some useless stuff like openGL or DirectX 3D, which is not really viable for a small team (2D openGL can be though, but it is much work for little advantage IMO). I too would recommend using an existing library or engine.

I tried about everything at some time : high level GFA basic on Atari, TI92 calculator language, Java with Swing, assembly, embedded smallC with cathode ray oscillograph output (this was fun to develop, but the result was completely worthless of course), PyGame, Pyglet, raw openGL, some engine + Lua.
The do everything approach always ended up giving poor end results compared to the time spent, so it all depends on her objectives :

If it is to develop games for fun, to be part of a small indie team, or to develop a whole playable game in a relatively short time, then writing a mediocre graphics engine entirely makes zero sense.
If it is to learn how to work on a specific part of a game to be later part of a larger team in an established studio, then she should focus on that part, which might be the engine, the AI or whatever, and use existing libraries as much as possible for the rest.

With C++, I guess the standard recommendation would be to use SFML for 2D. But learning some scripting language (Python or preferably Lua), to bind on an existing language would not take too much time to learn, and would give good results too in the long run.
 

Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It depends on what she wants to accomplish ultimately. If she is seeking to build games from scratch, then making simple games is the best option here. Work your way up, hone your craft, go for a more complex project each time.

And one thing any would be game maker(solo and small teams) seriously need to know, is to understand the goal, the goal to create a game, and what it takes to reach that goal. When you are specialised in one particular aspect, in this case say programming, you tend to very easily underestimate the work needed to complete the the other parts. The most obvious, go to MODDB or any other modding websites, 95% of the mods say they have this "great idea," post some 3D models, and now revisit after a year, they're all dead. The reason is, although they all know how to model a character, none of them have even the slightest of idea of how to make a game. Programming, like modeling and setting up rule systems, is only ONE aspect of game making. Knowing how to program means you know how to program, it doesn't mean you know how to make a game. In fact it doesn't mean shit. Coming up with "teh awesome concept" doesn't mean shit. Modeling the coolest character the gaming industry has ever seen doesn't mean shit. The implementation of all the above in the game itself, THE GAME is what matters. If your goal is not to make a game, but to be part of the assembly line, then work as a specialist, as an asset to a game development team or corporation. Know the difference between the two and where your skills lie.



Programming can make a game alone (although not a pretty one). Not so the other disciplines. How do you think roguelikes come about?


GameMaker has gotten good enough that you can make a decent indie game. You still need to know how to script if you want to make more than a shitty space shooter or something but I'm told scripting isn't programming. :troll:
 
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I think way back then I tried to clone the classics, stuff like Pong and Space Invaders and such. Something like that can not really take long and she will learn some important basics.
 

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