Hello Players and Developers, I have always been interested in games, whether they are board games, video games, or even mind games. Lately, I've been interested in game development. Browser games especially. I expect that one must know a lot before even beginning to develop a new game: coding languages, databases, internet protocols, etc. Like with any new venture, there must be many more lessons to have been learned than what can be learned from just a book. My experience in this community since the release of CH three months ago has been really positive. So I want to pose this question to the community: What does it take to develop a browser game? Feel free to post whatever you like or follow my following outline: What knowledge is required? Flash, Javascript, PHP, etc. What references do you suggest? Books, websites, videos, etc. For game developers, how has your experience been in developing CH, or other games? What do you wish you had known before undertaking your game? What was your first game, and how was it written? I only have one expectation for this thread: for this to be an open space for game developers to discuss their experiences in hope that inexperienced developers, new developers, or prospective developers can learn something. Thanks all in advanced! Adolf Tickler
Goodluck! Its very hard to make a game like cardhunter by yourself. There is a tons of stuff you need to be able to do. I suggest start simple with something like pong and tetris. If you are targeting browsers, you can use javascript, flash or unity. I suggest start with javascript, its a very permissive language that can run in all browsers. Make sure to put "use strict"; on the first line tho. Will save you alot of headaches later on.
Yep, exactly that. Start really, really small, and just keep at it. Don't worry too much about what languages and APIs you use at first. They all blur into a haze after a couple of years as you find yourself hopping between them.
Another method (one I got suckered in by), is to volunteer to help test and develop a free open source game of the type you're interested in. You'll learn a lot, and get to know people who will often help you in return later on. You might even want some of them on your development team.
heh, I wouldn't use the word 'suckered'. Been a tester/sucker (on and off) for about 10 yrs now. As far as browser games are concerned, whether its flash/as3/haxe/html5/java/mysql/php/C++/C# etc isn't as important as making sure that you get your game across to the target audience. For instance, I did some AI for Dota (yh, the DOTA) some yrs back, which doesn't use any programming language taught in school. Does it matter ? Not to me... But when the AI pwns someone, knowing its your code makes it all worthwhile. And for references, nothing beats real-life testing real products from all sorts of publishers/developers/games. You'll get insight into how each game is different no matter what its exterior is. If you find critical bugs, devs automatically want to know how you broke their game which opens up a door of dialogue. Do it on an everyday basis and it becomes second nature. And that will really help in the long run...
Thanks all, but keep it going! I like all the testing advice. Keeping in mind <<---- Noob developer. How do I get to test new games? Are there websites that have listings of games that need testing? If so, which ones do you guys belong to? Also, I feel like a lot of this advice is directed towards me as a single developer. What advice do you guys give if I can find a cohort of like-minded coders/gamers that want to make a game together? Sounds like a lot of your advice is marketing related. Has that been everyone's main headache? Thanks again y'all.
