Game Development 101

Abstract

Game development is hard. Not so much because it’s rocket science, but because there’s a huge amount of information to digest before you can actually start writing the game of your dreams. On the programming side, you have to worry about such mundane things as file input/output (I/O), input handling, audio and graphics programming, and networking code. And those are only the basics! On top of that, you will want to build your actual game mechanics. That code needs structure as well, and it is not always obvious how to create the architecture of your game. You’ll have to decide how to actually make your game world move. Can you get away with not using a physics engine, but roll your own simple simulation code? What are the units and scale your game world is set in? How does it translate to the screen?