Push for Game Development & Editing (Post Forum Request)

RopeDrink

First of all congratulations, the request for a Game Development Forum has been approved and met with high positive feedback.

I'll let folks know that following on from the closure of the Development Forum Request thread (Which was approved) I've been on the hunt and prowl to push hard for a Game Development & Editing Fora to encase all possible discussions regarding Editing or Developing all under one roof - It seems that there's been absolutely no negative feedback on the concept beit User, Mod, CMod or Admin so I'm hopeful, with exception to one or two debateable niggles.

Having one or the other (GE & GD) as individual forums is restrictive and doesn't achieve much other than lessening traffic to either/or Forums, I do not want that - This industry beit full on companies or individual/indie scenes are a goldmine of potential that I'd hate to restrict into sub-discussions no matter how much people feel they are capable of being individual - Afterall, as popular a topic as it is, Game Editing itself for example has lessened in traffic drastically over the years and I expect having a lone GD Forum would suffer the same in time if both existed.

I hope to change that and, preferably, do so with a clean slate and not a mere rename of an outdated Forum - Not sure if the Admins would agree to that (If the combined Forum itself was agreed to in the firstplace, we have to wait and see) but that would be my preference - To start over from scratch and make it it's own Forum instead of trying to change one Forum into a different one.

If it does go through then I'm hopeful whomever the Moderator will be (I can't assume it'll be me, although I would really want my foot in the door as this is my dream area that I take quite seriously as someone who would love nothing more in life to have this as a career as well as someone who has had it as a general hobby from a very young age) will open this up and be able to provide any and all information regarding learning Editing, casual Editing/Modding, or the more indepth look into working towards a career or educational means of full on Editing or Development and discussions that relate to it, business wise and whathaveyou.




My last point here is that I'd like to ask if you Game Editors and anyone with experience or desires as far as GDevelopment are concerned, could compile any lists of information, links or worthwhile sites they feel would be a welcoming introduction to the upcoming Forum - Whatever the outcome of the creation process is, it'll be put towards a good start for whatever the new Forum may be and get it going nice and smooth and as quick as possible - The more informative, the better.

Thanks everyone.

RedXIV

Well the obvious first resource has to be gamedevelopers.ie for anyone looking into the industry of game creation in Ireland. This website doesn't deal purely with the development aspect but with all aspects of the game industry. Surprisingly, this site doesn't have a huge amount of information about how to actually develop games, it really is geared towards existing developers or people close to joining their ranks. Good to start with and they have a lot of meet ups (in Dublin) but they also list all the game dev companies in Ireland as well as highlighting any events people would be interested in.

For those more technically inclined, a great resource is http://www.gamedev.net which has a good online community, very helpful for those stuck on a particular problem when trying to do something. Very much geared at the more hardcore coders, those interested in writing their own game engines etc.

Most of the other resources I know are tool specific, Unity, GameMaker etc.

I do have one question regarding this though and that's what to do about the massive trend toward mobile game development, which we already have a forum for?

satchmo

Great to hear it's been approved. I've collected a crapload of links over the years, I'll try and organise them in some sane manner between builds.

Torakx

A few random links.

https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/tutorials/programming-basics
Khan academy, this link is great for learning the very basics in programming with a helpfull realtime screen on the opposite side to see the results.
I believe its java based or visual at least.
For example, if you dont know about If/Else statements,Bools etc, then this may help you understand those types of basics,using a visual interface aswell as a person explaining in audio too.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=3142.0
Heres one I stumbled across and didnt get round to studying.A collection of tutorials for GameMaker.
Seems to cover alot of key areas, especially for beginners.
So I think a handy start for people looking to get into the 2D/mobile scene.
From looking around, In my view if I had to pick a game maker it would be "GameMaker".


http://www.digitaltimes.ie/start-up/a-definitive-list-of-irelands-start-up-incubators/
This article was posted it seems in june 2012.But maybe of use, I dunno.
It is for me anyway

I havent got much general stuff after that.
But feel free to take whatever may be needed from the above.


For the more business minded game devs.
http://blog.flurry.com/default.aspx?Tag=Usage%20Statistics

Stats on users of different mobile platforms and genre types etc
Alot of info here for marketing purposes,so not sure if people associate that with game dev or not.

Great job so far.Im happy to see this type of forum here on boards getting a shake up

returnNull

sorry only seen this thread now.

Had loads of links but hdd died so getting them back together now.
a link to a few java tutorials for 2d/3d java games(space invaders&asteroids)

http://www.cokeandcode.com/index.html?page=tutorials

Another good is site is java gaming-a good few industry level coders post there and also their version of a captcha is worth while seeing:p
some great tutorials on game loops,animation,using timers in games etc
http://www.java-gaming.org/

Had a load of tutorials for pixel art so will track them down again as well as some links for copyright free sprite sheets

Kilgore__Trout

Perhaps a thread on engines/frameworks could be good. Finding the right one (or the nearest approximation) can be really difficult and time consuming, as it takes weeks if not more to get familiar with the nuances of each. Anyone that has used an engine/framework could talk a bit about things like capabilities, cost, complexity.

satchmo

Ok I finally got time to gather some links and write them up. I'm a 3D graphics programmer, so they're mostly biased towards programming - we'll also need sections for art, design & audio (and maybe QA and production too). Most of the developer blogs are from other 3D graphics programmers.

• General links - Useful sites for every game developer, regardless of discipline
  
  GameDevelopers.ie - Irish game developers community site, good for a broad overview of the current state of the Irish industry. Semi-regular meetups & other event details can be found here. Also has comprehensive lists of current Irish games companies and gamedev-related college courses, as well as a jobs board.
  
  Gamasutra - News, post-mortems and articles/features on all aspects of game development. About to get bigger now that Game Developer Magazine is no longer being published.
  
  GDC Vault - Repository of all presentations from recent Game Developer Conferences, with videos, audio & presentation decks. Decent amount of free content, but a lot of it is only available to GDC attendees (or for a hefty fee). Great resource if you can get access.
  
  GameDev.net - Long-running game developer community site. Lots of articles, and a very active forum community.
  
  DevMaster.net - Similar to GDnet, lots of articles & active forums.
  
  AltDevBlogADay - Gamedev blog with lots of different contributors, founded by Insomniac's Mike Acton. Quality of posts can be very variable, but there are some gems in there.
  
  CG Cookie - Collection of high-quality tutorials for software like Unity, Blender, 3DS Max & others. Some content only available to paying subscribers but the free stuff is well worth checking out, especially for beginners.
  
  
• Programming - Resources & tutorials for programmers
  
  LearnCPP.com - Great C++ tutorial site, well laid out and easy to follow. Goes into some good details that other tutorials don't. Also has some recently-added C++11 sections.
  
  CPlusPlus.com - Another C++ site with a good tutorial, and some handy library references.
  
  CSharp-Station.com - A good C# tutorial for learning the language from scratch. Some aspects of the site might be confusing for novice programmers, but useful if you're coming from another language and want to quickly pick up C#.
  
  StackOverflow - All-knowing question-and-answer site for programmers. If you have a programming-related question, it has probably already been answered here.
  
  RealTimeRendering.com - Home of the comprehensive 3D graphics book Real Time Rendering. Also has a good index of links to various rendering pages, but they're not very well organised and somewhat out of date. The blog is worth keeping an eye on.
  
  AiGameDev.com - Some good resources for AI programmers. Some content is only for paid subscribers.
  
  Visual Studio Express - Free version of Microsoft's IDE & compiler for C++/C#/VB.NET.
  
  Clang/LLVM - An alternative C/C++/ObjectiveC compiler under active development. C++11 feature complete. Chosen as the compiler for the PS4's toolchain.
  
  
• Engines - Free* game engines for various platforms
  
  Unity 3D - Highly popular package for creating cross-platform 3D games on many different platforms (PC, OSX, iOS, Android, and others). Game scripting done via C#, Javascript or Boo. Known for being relatively easy to use without sacrificing complexity. Complete games can be created and published with the free version, but the Pro version ($1500 per license) is required for more advanced functionality. No royalty fees. Notable games made with Unity include Temple Run 2 & MechWarrior Tactics.
  
  UDK - Free version of Epic's Unreal Engine. More advanced than Unity, but comes with a steeper learning curve. Supports PC & iOS target platforms. Game scripting done via UnrealScript. Free to use but $99 fee required for publishing, and revenues in excess of $50,000 are subject to a 25% royalty fee. Notable UDK titles include Hawken and Antichamber.
  
  Project Anarchy - Recently-unveiled game engine specifically targeting iOS & Android, developed by game middleware company Havok. Based on the Trinigy Vision Engine, acquired by Havok in 2011. Free to use and release games with, no royalties. Details still emerging.
  
  CryEngine - Free version of the engine used by Crytek, makers of the Crysis series. Can only be used to make free games commercial use requires a license to be negotiated with Crytek. PC only.
  
  GameMaker - Primarily 2D game engine for desktop, mobile & web platforms. Fee required to publish on mobile platforms.
  
  Torque3D - Fully-functional open source game engine, under active development. Supports PC and browser target platforms.
  
  
• Developer publication - Pages maintained by various studios containing their conference publications
  
  DICE
  Crytek
  Insomniac
  Ubisoft
  Valve
  Splash Damage
  Guerilla Games
  Bungie
  BitSquid
  NVIDIA - developer portal
  AMD - documentation & articles
  
  
• Developer blogs - Various gamedev-centric blogs from individual developers
  
  mischief.mayhem.soap
  Andreas on Coding
  c0de517e
  Aras' website
  Sébastien Lagarde
  Timothy Lottes
  6cycles
  Blind Renderer
  Bruno Evangelista
  direct to video
  Filmic Games
  Graphic Rants
  I Get Your Fail
  I'm doing it wrong
  Industrial Arithmetic
  Iñigo Quilez
  Meandering thoughts of an Addicted Games Programmer
  Miles Macklin's blog
  Olick's Pulpit
  Sebh's blog
  Self Shadow
  Shawn Hargreaves
  Solid Angle
  Some Assembly Required
  Spuify
  Steve McAuley
  The Danger Zone
  ZigguratVertigo's Hideout

returnNull

satchmo wrote: »

...

tl;dr

only joking!

Im just starting out coding for java and getting some vector graphics together,then 2d using an engine before I even get on to 3d!

Is 3d maths heavy?

Esterhase

If anyone's interested in some good old-fashioned books, here's a few I have found useful:

Collision detection:
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Collision-Detection-Interactive-Technology/dp/1558607323

Rendering techniques / OpenGL:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Time-Rendering-Third-Tomas-Akenine-Moller/dp/1568814240 (satchmo has the website for this one linked in his post)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OpenGL-Programming-Guide-Official-Learning/dp/0321552628

Game programming:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Engine-Architecture-Jeff-Lander/dp/1568814135

These can be quite pricey but are a few of those staples that have been recommended to me left right and centre, and are well worth the money IMO.

There was at least one other book about physics I've used but I can't for the life of me think of what it was called. I'll update if I remember.

satchmo

returnNull wrote: »

Im just starting out coding for java and getting some vector graphics together,then 2d using an engine before I even get on to 3d!

Is 3d maths heavy?

Yes it is, but none of the fundamental stuff is particularly complicated. It's all basically vector and matrix algebra, along with some trigonometry and geometry. Nothing you don't learn in school (although more interesting because now you have a practical application).

I started out by doing pretty much exactly what you're doing at the moment - using basic vector maths for 2D line graphics, and then some simple trigonometry for rotations. Once I got the hang of that, I started using matrices for the transforms, and then projection to extend it to 3D. Once you can do that, writing basic vertex & pixel shaders is pretty straightforward, and you can build from there. Or write a raytracer - surprisingly simple, from scratch you can get really nice results from a couple hundred lines of code.

Genghiz Cohen

Ray Wenderlich is an immensly useful resource for the mobile devs. He takes a game, like Tiny Wing for example, and then shows you how to build it from scratch.

Mostly iOS but with some very helpful Android tutorials.

Irrlicht is a nice open source engine.
Ne-He does good, if slightly outdated OpenGL tutorials, more than enough for the beginner to get making games.
Then the nice people at Learning WebGL ported them to WebGL.

I've made more than one game with OGRE3D. It's well laid out and quite powerful. Keep in mind it is purely a graphics engine. If you want any game logic, AI, physics, networking or anything else, you have to implement or integrate yourself.

Girlfriend made some money on Freelancer.com making some simple games.

You can find some good 3D models for free on TurboSquid too.