Written by Alex Vypirailenko
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Got an idea of a game and want to create it yourself? Don’t know where to start?
If you have any experience in programming, you probably know that there are more sides to consider when developing games. Physics, animation, rendering – the stuff that doesn’t usually come up when building, say, an e-commerce platform.
And if you’re a newbie developer, well, there’s still a lot to learn about game development that’s specific to the industry. But on the bright side, you have a clear purpose for learning to code. So let’s see what you need to know to get started on creating games.
What Goes into Game Development: Key Components
Game development refers to the whole process of creating games. It involves more than just programming, but each of its components affects the code.
You can create a game individually or in a very small team, in which case it will be referred to as an indie game. Or you can find your way into a big company. Whether on your own or within a team, the following components are essential to games:
- Story – a game can have a linear or non-linear structure. In the case of the latter, the game plot will change depending on the actions that a player makes.
- Characters – the entities that players use to act out the plot. Characters have a physical appearance, abilities, and personality.
- Audio – all the sounds in a game, including the background music, characters voiceover, and any sounds triggered by actions like unsheathing a sword.
- Art – all the visual elements like texture, colors, or representation of natural phenomena.
- Lighting – another visual element that sets the mood with warm, cold, neutral, muted, or bright tones.
- Levels – the gameplay element that can be achieved through different floors, buildings, countries, or other locations that pose varied or increasing difficulty.
How do you form a game out of all these components? You need a toolset.
Choosing Software to Get Started in Game Development
Games involve a lot of audio-visual elements. But along with the graphics tools, you also need a game development environment to make these elements come to life. So here are the key software tools you need, with some examples:
- Game Engine
- jMonkeyEngine – written in Java and used specifically for 3D development.
- Unity – a 2D and 3D cross-platform engine popular for creating mobile games.
- Phaser – a 2D framework for web games.
- Art Program
- Adobe Photoshop – one of the world’s most popular graphics editing tools.
- Pixelmator – a graphics editor for Mac.
- GIMP – a cross-platform and open-source image editor for raster graphics.
- 3D Modeller
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