By Matthew Haas
Instructor of Computer and Information Science
Corning Community College
contact: haas@corning-cc.edu
Creating Games Requires
A plan
A plan: what are you making?
is it feasible?
A particular set of skills
creativity
problem solving
troubleshooting
programming
reading / observing / comprehension
attention to detail
experimentation / research
abstraction - be able to dive deep into many levels of thought
writing - ability to express thoughts
math / numerical literacy - know how to manipulate numbers in a favorable way
Follow-through
ability to focus and pay attention to minute details for long periods of time
ability to work on a large, multi-faceted, and complex problem without being able to necessarily see tangible results until it is much closer to completion
ability to experiment and dabble; there's no “recipe book” you can follow to make a game. You need to understand underlying concepts and know how to apply them in a particular situation
Avoiding dead-end temptations
GameMaker
Unity
What development environment / system / game engine you're going to use
while many of these things are productively utilized by professional game developers, they ultimately require a knowledge of the underlying basics of logic - the process of instructions the computer is performing to accomplish the task at hand.
focusing on these gamedev tools without a fundamental underlying understanding of programming and problem solving will lead to dead ends, as you will be “boxed in” with respect to what you can do
you can have the finest, latest, and greatest jet, but if you don't know how to pilot it, you're not going to be able to do all that much with it.
CREATING games is NOT the same as PLAYING games
whatever “fun” you experience playing games will NOT translate to creating games:
creating games can be frustrating
creating games will result in many failed attempts
creating games involves coming up with ideas
I daresay creating games is MORE fun than playing games, but it isn't possible until you disconnect from it needing to be as fun as playing games.
the more you want to create a game (at the cost of anything else), the less successful you will be. To become good at creating games, you need to focus on many things that don't seem game-like (programming, reading, writing, math, thinking) for an extended period of time before you are able to successfully undertake such an endeavor
CREATING games IS possible
It just takes perseverance and effort.
In my Spring 2019 Computer Organization class, we learned aspects of how the underlying hardware of a system works.
This semester, I chose (well, I asked, the class enthusiastically agreed) to explore the 1980's Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), where the aim was to create games (ROMs) as a demonstration of concepts learned and efforts expended.