arrested (gaming) development: an introduction

ever since my dad bought me a commodore 64 when i was a lad, i’ve always wanted to make my own games. sadly the c64’s version of basic (written by microsoft, i should point out) was, well, very basic (sorry). to create graphics and sounds involved direct memory manipulation using the commands “poke” and “peek”.

assembly seemed too much like hard work. srsly.

in later years i tried using gui-based tools such as graphic adventure creator (by incentive software), shoot ‘em up construction kit (by sensisoft) and 3d construction kit (also by incentive software).

despite being a little more friendly, i still struggled to come up with anything playworthy. i had this nagging feeling that despite the tutorial booklets and in the case of the 3d construction kit a vhs video, the leap from making a basic box to a full blown game appeared to be missing.

cue modern day.

whilst idly surfing, i came across yoyogame’s game maker, which eventually lead me to a book co-authored by the creator of game maker, imaginatively titled the “game maker’s apprentice”. after browsing the book a few times, i came to the conclusion that this is exactly the type of introduction to games development that i needed.

it uses object oriented (oo) concepts and event driven programming to create a game from scratch. combine it with the actual game maker application – which quietly hides all the sharp edges such as sprite animation, memory management and collision detection – and you suddenly have a gentle but effective way to create games.

in order for me to learn something, nay, for me to grok it, i have to be given a specific task or problem to apply my knowledge to. so, as an added challenge, i will also be learning to port the demo games provided in the book into python using pygame (a module that is a wrapper to sdl.)

during the brief period since i’ve started messing around with python i now see it was a wise choice, its oo-ness enabled the oo concepts in game maker to port over easier versus a functional based language (runs from the burning fuse.)

so grab a seat, engage your seat belt and let’s makes games!

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