Get Started Making Games

As it should be noted, I am no authority on game programming. Most of my programming has been either desktop applications or web scripting. So, not being a master of the art puts me in a great position for growing the talent and taking notes for all who might be interested in pursuing game development. Even though I had never written an entire game, I spent several years putting together four different concepts of infinite terrain loading in Java. I had also made partial games, not full functional, but interactive. I have also worked on several theories of simplifying 3D level building using JOGL, but never got it fully functional.

My first full game was VOTA. VOTA was based off of an idea I had a few years ago and never implemented. When I discovered the 4k competition, I immediately began working on VOTA, had the game fully playable in 2 days, refined game play within the week, and the rest of my time was spent learning sound programing and how to shrink everything down to 4k. It all took less than a month. For the most part it was a success, but several things still bother me about it.

My biggest bother was sound. Sound was not easy to implement (much less squeeze into 4k). It took some serious work getting sound programmed into the game. When everything seemed finished, I rebooted to windows to test it there, and no sound. After several weeks, sound was choppy in Windows, and the music would not mix well. Very disappointing, and I had done all I knew to do without using a soundbank, and soundbanks were against the rules of the competition. So there it was, one of the few games with sound, the only game with music, and no dice either because of my poor skills, or Java's poor sound implementation.

A week before the contest was going to be over, I had another idea. Choppacide, a chopper style video game with some very fake physics. Since I only had a week, and been burned out by Java sound, I decided to make this one purely based on game play. I had a lot of fun making this game. The pressure was off, I already had submitted a game and this one would be extra. This game was fully playable in just a few hours. In three days I had refined the game play to what I felt was close enough to perfection, and submitted it.

Neither of the games are doing well in the competition, but they were a great learning experience. I would encourage any new game developer to start with some small projects and get them working quickly. Do not bother with impressive graphics at first, save that for the refinement of the game. If you know of any upcoming competitions, enter them. You may not win, but if you are having trouble finishing, a deadline often times helps get you motivated to complete it, and you might get some good constructive criticism of your game.