Ask HN: How to get into game development if you already know programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to get into game development if you already know programming?

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I've been a developer for the past 6 years. I've been tryinig to get into game development but I seem to only find contend aimed at beginners. Do you guy know of a book or series of tutorials that can help me?

I'd like to know a bit about tradeoffs between game engines, graphical libraries and a few design patterns that could help me have a better view of the field.

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I can recommend the Unity Essential short course. Mod 4 micro games to get up and running in under 10 days. And there's really no downside to learning a proper game engine like Unity 3D. Looks great in your portfolio, empowers you to express yourself in 3D, VR, etc.

https://learn.unity.com/project/unity-essentials-live-march-...

If you're looking to go the other way, in a more lo-fi style, make a Roguelike. 7DRL challenge just wrapped up. Tons of free resources, wikis, etc. Ideal for learning data oriented gamedev. Best of luck ;)

The biggest question you need to answer at the beginning is if you primarily care about a getting a game done, or just want to play with writing game technology (graphics etc.), while maybe ending up with a finished game in the process. For the former case, you're always better off with an engine (the exception being simple 2d titles), while in the latter you obviously write everything from scratch.

I would suggest starting with something very simple like "command-line tic tac toe". Just by trying it you will already come across a few patterns that every game has. Then you port it to GL or something, and this will expose you to a whole new set of problems. Then you try to implement online support for two players, and so on. This should give you a nice platform to jump into the next things. Are you interested in every single aspect of game programming?

Best of luck!

As a short aside, the #1 thing about your game to worry about is "the main gameplay loop", even if its story based, the thing your player does over and over again should be fun. Yahtzee Croshaw does some great game element breakdowns, if you don't already know.

I found https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ delightful.

Great book (as with all of Bob’s work) but would hardly suggest it as a starting point. Perhaps good to visit after a few months of programming games.

Nobody has mentioned it yet but getting into an active modding scene is one way to ease into it.

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