Amit's Game Programming Information | Hacker News Reader

Amit's Game Programming Information

www-cs-students.stanford.edu

317 pointsWoodenChair29 comments

Seeing my game programming bookmarks page up on HN is unexpected. :)

Yes, I started it a very long time ago (most likely 1994 but that's before Wayback Machine, and I don't have my own archive). I should update the links on that page, but I've been focused more on my new site (http://www.redblobgames.com/), where I'm writing tutorials with interactive diagrams.

Longevity is a goal for my site so I try to focus on algorithms, design, and techniques, rather than specific platforms, languages, or code.

Thanks for putting together this incredible resource. I started programming about 8 years ago, making games in high school, and I owe a lot of my early learning to your site.

been a fan of it for years, and i don't even do game programming :)

Damn, I can't recall how many hours (and phone bills!) lost to playing SRE and BRE on all my local BBS's, thank you dude.

I remember implementing A* during first year uni holidays thanks to your guide. Thanks for the great resource!

I learned a ton from these articles back in the early 2000s. Thank you :)

Just had to sign in and say a big "Thank You". Your site was the first real resource I found that taught me what I know about game/graphics development. Back then it was predominantly on a Psion 3c in OPL, but hell, taught me to work within constraints. Thanks again!

I'd just like to chip in with the thank yous. I can only imagine how many people learnt about A* from your website. I know I am one, and I thank you sir.

Thanks you very much. Your A* search article was quite helpful recently.

Thank you for Barren Realms Elite. You owe me many hours of my life!

Sorry but gotta jump in to set this straight. Amit programmed Solar Realms Elite. His brother Mehul did Barren Realms Elite. SRE came first, then later BRE was the more popular one thanks to the inter-BBS play.

Yep. I wrote SRE, and then wrote a game engine (modem communication, bbs interface, logins, menus, inter-bbs communication, ansi color, etc.) so that Mehul could write AC6 and BRE. He continued writing games (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swirve.com). I had gotten bored of BBS games and decided to try a hex-board strategy/sim game. That didn't go anywhere but I learned a lot. Fun times.

Hi Amit,

I came here to vote this article up. I didn't expect you to be posting here. I love your site. It has been an awesome resource and I have referenced it for other people multiple times.

I really enjoyed your piece on procedural terrain generation. It's so well written that it's the first thing I think of when I want to help people understand that concept.

I also really liked some of the work you did with the interactive diagrams, especially the article on modeling dice rolls.

The way you have made this information accessible is very impressive to me. You make me want to do the things you do for others.

Thank you!

It's an incredible resource. We leaned heavily on the hexagon section specifically in the creation of Hexiled (http://hexiledgame.com) - we marvelled each day at how comprehensive and helpful it was. The interactive diagrams throughout that section are visually simple but still very cool:

http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

Awesome, I remember reading Amit's page many years ago in ~2000 or so as a student. Nice to see it's still around all these years later. Here's a wayback link to the page 15 years ago, still pretty similar info: https://web.archive.org/web/19991111192444/http://www-cs-stu...

Looks like we both had the same thought ! :)

Haha yep--now I'm going to go on a nostalgia trip on the wayback machine.

Gamedev.net circa 2001: https://web.archive.org/web/20010608083939/http://www.gamede...

NeHe's OpenGL tutorials, I spent a ton of time playing with these: https://web.archive.org/web/20010214030327/http://nehe.gamed...

LOL. Yeah !

upvoting ! I remember reading Amit's blog like 7/8 years ago as well .

I found this particularly amusing: "I'm working at an Internet startup called Google. We're looking for really good programmers, so if you're considering getting out of the games business and going into the Internet business, check out our job listings!"

How did that work out?

I think it must have been almost 15 years ago, when I first stumbled across his page. Nice, that it's still around.

See this link in the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/19990117080207/http://www-cs-stu...

This comes up on HN every so often. It is a very high quality guide. The redblobgames.com seems to be a good companion to the Visual Algorithm site posted the other day [1].

[1] - http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~stevenha/visualization/

A few other good resources:

Bit hacks: https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html

Algorithm implementations: http://www.keithschwarz.com/interesting/

Wow I remember going through Amit's site almost 7 years ago and it was really really useful even for non game related stuff. Never realised Id be bumping into it again! Awesome work mate.

Another great resource for learning about game programming: http://gamemechanicexplorer.com/

Looks like an awesome resource! And just in time for the Ludum Dare this weekend!

Great. There goes my month.

It is inadvisable to start with Tetris. The Tetris Company LLC owns the copyright to the game concept; any falling n-omino game is potentially infringing, especially for n=4. Yes, I know that copyright law theoretically doesn't apply to game concepts; that won't stop TTC from suing you and winning by attrition (TTC has enough money to litigate well after virtually indie developer has gone broke).

I don't think most people plan on selling the first game the make. They probably just want to get some experience writing games and Tetris is one of the most gradual ways to get into it.

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