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beginner

Started by February 12, 2018 10:26 AM
3 comments, last by frob 6 years, 7 months ago

which games do you suggest for a beginner ?? 

kawther

Pong.  It doesn't require any fancy graphics - you can just use a couple of rectangles and a circle (or at a pinch even a square).  The gameplay is simple and well understood. It's a very small project. 

But it also has all of the basics every game has: you need to respond to user input to move a character (paddle), you need to have some collision detection, very basic animation, etc.

Make sure it's a complete game though, with an AI player, start menu, and high scores.  Optionally a pause function.

 

From there, Breakout makes a great second project. You can apply most of what you learned with Pong, but add a map with lots of bricks.

 

Check out our "GameDev Challenges" forum for some good simple game projects.

- Jason Astle-Adams

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Similar to Pong, this Tron-like game (the sample is for two players: wasd vs. arrows) is also a small but basic starting project, including input handling, collision detection, and basic animations.

As a small note: I programmed this game using the functional-reactive programming language Elm (which supports easy interoperability with HTML/CSS/JavaScript to start playing in your browser). The great thing about Elm is its debugger which allows you to travel between time points:

 

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If you aren't to graphics yet, I'd recommend "guess the number" as a first game as it gets you into the fundamental loop.  It is all text and easy to implement in languages focused around text.

Then Tic Tac Toe which gives you some play state information, more complicated win/loss conditions, and refreshing/redrawing the board and other information. You can also learn about game AI.

A Connect Four clone can also work well, giving turns to the player, redrawing the board, game AI, keeping score, detecting win conditions. 

Text adventures can be done without graphics, and can teach about managing state machines and objects within the game world.

There is no need to immediately jump into graphical games.  Text-based or console-based games have a long and varied history.  Text-based MUD and MUSH games were the precursor to modern MMORPGs.

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