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Complete noob...whats involved?
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29-04-2013 4:37pm#1Hi folks,
Can anyone give me an idea of the process of making a basic platformer type game? I'm completely & totally new to all of this, & have literally no idea what the steps might be to do it. I realise there's prob few different options, but in general where should I begin the journey? I've no coding experience, so I suppose getting proficient at one would be a good start? If so, whats the advice for the best one for beginners etc?
Games like Mario & Sonic etc would be close to my heart, so a Summer project of making an 8bit-esque platformer would be nice
Any & advice is appreciated
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NiallSparky wrote: »I'll be joining you in starting a game after my exams are finished. I've a bit of programming experience though so it'll give you a couple of weeks to catch up
Ah I'll be a long time catching up, when I say noob I mean noob!0 -
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Cheers man
What language would you advise for learning the very basics you mentioned? Will take a look at Scratch too
The very basics aren't really language specific, you'll find them in all languages, maybe with slightly different variations on syntax and phrasing.
For example, this is a simple "while" loop in python (a scripting language)while (count < 9): print 'The count is:', count count = count + 1
and this is one in C++ a very powerful but not intuitive one// Local variable declaration: int a = 10; // while loop execution while( a < 20 ) { cout << "value of a: " << a << endl; a++; } return 0;
I would recommend a scripting language to get used to the basics as the read more like conventional sentences, but you'll find most games when modding or building more powerful games tend to end up like C++.
If you're near a coderdojo, I'd def get involved, just see if you can even get access to their notes (I'll try and dig up some on my side too) as they break everything down to baby steps but these really are the things you need to know inside out.0 -
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For example, this is a simple "while" loop in python (a scripting language)
while (count < 9): print 'The count is:', count count = count + 1 print "Good bye!"
As I said..total newb, therefore; What the heck is a "while" loop?
But yeah, I get what your saying in that the basics apply to most languages, its the syntax that changes between them though.
Jeez, this could die a death already
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As I said..total newb, therefore; What the heck is a "while" loop?
Sorry, a "while" loop is a piece of code that continues to repeat itself while its condition is true.
sowhile (count < 9 )
is like saying "While the variable "count" is less than 9, keep doing this"
and then within your loop you'll have something changing the variable count presumably so it can break out of that loop eventually and do something else.
A common example of this would beWhile (player is Alive)
as your main game loop and then when something causes him to die, he ends this loop and moves on to the game over screen etc.But yeah, I get what your saying in that the basics apply to most languages, its the syntax that changes between them though.
Jeez, this could die a death already
Don't let it get to you, everyone is like this when they start I'll throw up a generic set of fundamentals later tonight and hopefully something like GameMaker above can help you keep interested without the code part 0 -
Before ever learning a programming language, I was using gamemaker to make simple 2d platform games.
Cheers, will have a look at that alsoI'll throw up a generic set of fundamentals later tonight and hopefully something like GameMaker above can help you keep interested without the code part
That'd be fantastic, thanks again!0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50058
You are best to learn some fundamentals of coding first. I'd recommend learning it through Java, it's a far easier language than something like C++ and also far better than learning a scripting language like Python, you are best to go on to them once you have the basics down. If you want to try an even easier one you can try scratch from MIT and then move on to Java. Just learn about variables, loops and if else statments and how they work.
If you really want to get started quickly then I'd suggest Gamemaker. You don't really need coding for it and you will learn it along the way but I'd recommend you get some fundamentals down.
The first and hardest step of getting your game to work is getting your character to move and behave right. Getting your character to anaimate properly and behave in the correct way with the right animations and hit boxes will take a lot of your time, creating levels is much easier.
You should learn how to make a character out of 2 sprites (you could go with more but keep it simple). It's a simple case of updating variables with the position of one sprite and moving the other to that location but it's a good start and will help when you wan tto move hitboxes with your character.
Another good lesson is to get your animation right. You'll need to use if statements controlled by booleans so that you character won't come out of an animation if another action was pressed.
They are just the two things I found most useful.
If you need any help at all then ask me any questions you have. I've been through it all already since I made that demo in stencyl which is a much bigger pain in the ass to use than gamemaker and I had to make it from scratch because the tutorial code was awful.
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Ok, I'm by no means a guru and some of this may seem obvious or be too over the top but this will hopefully get you to the stage where you can see the logical "bricks" used in all games and will help you plan your code before you actually start writing it.
I'm going to try and break it down as much as possible so don't be offended if I get to a point which is obvious, I'm just making sure you have rock solid foundations.
Ok first off, before you start learning this stuff, its important to define what it is. What I'm showing you is the most common logical processes used in practically all major programming languages. Things like outputting text to the screen and handling files changes from language to language, that's the actual functionality of each language. What we will be looking at is the concepts that remain consistent throughout all of them.
Variables
Variables are chunks of memory that either you or your code will assign a value to. This could be a:- Boolean - True or False values
- Integer - a numeric value eg. 4, -19, 23,234
- String - a list of characters e.g. "Hello World!"
- Custom - a jpeg, an mp3 track, anything you can think of, you can build.
So where you might see this in a game to make it more familiar might be
numberOfLives = 3
playerName = "EnterNow"
when you start the game. Variables are ridiculously important. You'll use them to track things like score, player location, number of enemies, graphics, visuals, everything. Some languages are very flexible with variables and all you need to do is declare them when you need them. These are usually scripting languages. Others require a bit more care. In C/C++ if you don't give your variable a value after setting it up, it will take a random value, which can do some strange things to your code. As standard, its good practice to make sure all your variables have a value you know.
Loops
Loops are repetitive pieces of code, contained by a condition. Loops tend to come in two varieties, While loops and For loops. The difference between the two would be best thought of as while loops are used when you will have varying lengths for the loop to run and For loops are when you know exactly how many times you want. In gaming terms think of the timer in sonic or mario.While (player == alive && levelComplete ==false) { time= time-1 }
Ok so whats happening here is that when the computer runs this piece of code, it will check first is the player alive (== being "is equal to"). Then it will check if the level is complete. The "&&" signifies AND in C/C++. What this means for our loop is that the code will only loop if the player is alive AND the level is not completed. If these are both true, the variale time will be assigned the value of itself minus 1. Or simply decrease its own value by one. The main game loop for most games is a while loop.
A For loop on the other hand is for specific cases. Lets look at this piece of code for example:for (count == 0; count >10; count=count +1){ createEnemy }
In this example, the for loop has 3 parts to it. the first part is the controlling variable. When this loop is read by the computer first, it assigns the variable count a value of 0. The second part is the end condition. In this case, the loop will end if the variable count goes over the value of 10. The last part is what changes when the loop hits the bottom of its code. In this example, the value of count will have 1 added to it. So if the count variable is set at 0, it goes up 1 after each loop and will ends when it goes over 10, how many times will the code create an enemy?12 times. This is because you've started at 0 and for the end condition to hit, you need to have count = 11. Thats 12 iterations of the loop so 10 enemies created
IF - ELSE
If-else blocks are basically the forks in the road, where the decisions are made in the code. These will be used to help determine how the game should proceed. An If piece of code does not necessarily have to be followed by an else, but they are often found together. an example of an isolated IF statement would beif (buttonA == true) { make player jump }
This is pretty simple, if the A button is pressed (this will register as true normally) then the player will jump. When we change it to an if-else block, we can get something a bit more versatile//sonic has hit spikes if (playerHasRings == true) Play ouchAnimation numberOfRings = 0 else player dies
Arrays
Arrays are ways of storing multiple sources of data linked together. An array might be best thought of to start with as a list of variables. Remember a variable looks like this:String PlayerName = "EnterNow"
but an array would look more like this:String PlayerNames [] = {"EnterNow", "RedXIV", "Sonic", "Mario"}
the [] after playerNames indicates that you are about to create an array. As with everything in programming they start with 0 so even though we have 4 names, they are:
0=EnterNow
1=RedXIV
2=Sonic
3=Mario
and you would reference Sonic by callingset currentPlayerName = playNames[2]
You can probably work around these for the first while but its good to know they exist.
Functions
These go by many names, functions, methods, subroutines, but they all mean the same thing. A piece of code that does a specific thing that you call on a regular basis. This is the sort of thing you use if you spend a lot of time working on something that you would use on a regular basis. For example, loading an image, resizing it to fit your expectation and assigning it to your player is something you might do on a regular basis in a multiplayer game, where the only thing that might change is the player it should go to and the location of the image. so instead of writing the same 50,100 or 1000 lines regularly, you save that set of lines as a function. and call it as similar://new player joined, name is "EnterNow" image in "EnterNow_location" setPlayerPicture("EnterNow", "EnterNow_location) . . . //where your function is saved: setPlayerPicture (String playerName, String locationOfImage) //do function stuff
So that's some of the foundation blocks to programming, there are ton's of places to help you get to grips with these and probably explain them better too.
Again, this will help you understand the logic that games take and most of the programs like GameMaker and Scratch use this logic just in a more friendly GUI than code
If you have any questions or want more info, just let me know and I'll throw up more. That should be plenty to sink your teeth into though 0 -
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If your just doing it from a hobbyist perspective I'd definitely use a game maker like tool unless coding and programming specifically appeals to you.
So far I'm thinking to start on one of these tools, get to grips with how it works etc. But would I be right in thinking your always going to be sandboxed in with these tools, ie they can only do what they can do? With coding, I presume a lot of the constraints of a tool are removed {& replaced by your programming competency or lack of in my case}
So maybe begin with a game-maker tool, & after a while maybe start looking at something like Java as Retr0 suggested?0 -
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Construct2 is a more organic newb friendly program.
Gamemaker looked to be more flexible.Cant remember in what way, might have been to do with coding or export plugins.
I did a comparison of 3-4 programs, for deciding which to start for 2d side scrollers, when I make one in the future and Gamemaker came up tops overall for me.Plugins and cost for exporting was one of the main factors in my decision IIRC.
But anyway, 20 mins on google searches, will tell you which you prefer and maybe save you alot of time stopping one and switching.
I got both and tried them aswell though 0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50058
If you arent too concerned what platform you are building for you could look at Corona SDK - its for tablet and mobile development. It runs on a simulator on your pc/mac initially while you are developing the game and then you can publish it to your device for testing and later publish to the app store/android market if you wish. It uses a scripting language called Lua and their website has loads of tutorials and resources and examples that you could go through. Some of those might be good to look through even just to try get your head around the coding principles and syntax.
http://www.coronalabs.com/ - main site
http://www.coronalabs.com/resources/tutorials/ - Resources
Currently doing corona myself in my course and wouldn't recommend it at all to a novice. The lua it uses is quite different from a programming language. I feel you'd be better off with other options mentioned since it would give you a much better understanding of how to code. If you are interested in seeing how scripting languages work then give corona a go. There's still quite a bit you can learn from learning Corona.
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