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How I (finally) Made My First Video Game

How I (finally) Made My First Video Game. By Chris Sanyk. How I (finally) Made My First Video Game. By Chris Sanyk. About Me. First exposure to computers c. 1980 Atari 2600 , Commodore 64 , Apple ][ Game concepts on paper at age 6 10 + years in various IT roles. Programmers…. ( Me ).

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How I (finally) Made My First Video Game

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  1. How I (finally) Made My First Video Game By Chris Sanyk

  2. How I (finally) Made My First Video Game By Chris Sanyk

  3. About Me • First exposure to computers c.1980 • Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Apple ][ • Game concepts on paper at age 6 • 10+ years in various IT roles

  4. Programmers… (Me) Great 0 ∞ f(x) = Greatness++

  5. Backstory

  6. Christmas 1981

  7. (Bad?) Influences

  8. (Bad?) Influences

  9. (Bad?) Influences

  10. (Bad?) Influences

  11. Early Paper Designs Sadly, most of those original conceptual docs no longer survive… …if they had, this slide would have been a really awesome collage… :(

  12. BunnyBots, c.1982

  13. I have no idea what architects really did with this… I used mine to make video games.

  14. Pixel Dreams

  15. College

  16. 1993…

  17. 1990’s… Game Industry “maturing” =

  18. Fizzle • As a result, I questioned whether the game industry had a future for me that I still wanted. • I put programming aside… • …graduated… • …thought about grad school… • Played around with computers instead, until I ended up with a career in IT.

  19. ~2005: Independent Devs

  20. The Dream Lives 2006: IT took me back into software development. 2007: Tried, failed. 2010: Tried again…

  21. My First Game 30 years in the making…

  22. Better late than never

  23. Boobie Teeth!

  24. Concept

  25. Tools

  26. Game Maker

  27. Game Maker Pros Cons • Cheap (Free/$25). • Quick to build simple things. • Easy learning curve. • Its capabilities grow with you. • Developer community is relatively strong. • Slow script interpretation. • Object-based rather than Object-oriented. • All variables are public. • Weak on debugging. • Weird data typing.

  28. sfxr

  29. Paint.NET

  30. Process How I happen to do what I do

  31. My Development Process • Vague list of ideas • Pick one • Build it • Test, Tweak • Freeze • Document • Build • Release

  32. What I learned

  33. Stuff I learned • You are ready. • You are not ready. • Now is the best time. • Take small steps, make many of them, start right away.

  34. Stuff I learned • Programming is harder and easier than I thought.

  35. Making games is more than programming

  36. Unsure how to proceed? • The best thing to do if you’re not confident about how to proceed is to DO ANYTHING and watch. • Do the smallest/simplest part of what you think you need to do that might possibly work. • Run it. • Learn. • Iterate.

  37. Heed your calling. • Do what you were meant to do.

  38. Be a development fiend • Read like a fiend. • Code like a fiend. • Test like a fiend.

  39. Document Everything

  40. Make mistakes!

  41. Game craft is the art of fakery

  42. Refactor at every opportunity!

  43. Learn to ask for help

  44. Talk to People

  45. Money… so what? • Stop worrying about whether and how it can make you money. • Do something cool first, figure out how to monetize it later.

  46. Do things that you would happily do for free.

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