Hi,

For the last year, I've been dedicating myself to learning game development. I'm using a game framework (libGDX), and I know how to almost all of the features of it, and have made some prototypes. However, now as I find myself trying to make my first actually game, I've become stuck on how I'm suppose to implement it.

From what I've read, when using a game framework, you need to implement your own game engine, which could take a long time. I've realized that I have no idea on how to do that, and am wondering if that's really what I need to do. I'm trying to make a production-grade game, and want to use the best practices in it. Is it okay to just create the game like I would prototype (Game object with Player and Enemy array), or do I have to create a working game engine (Where I can insert an Entity and have its sound and physics managed).

Thanks!

I would suggest you attempt to clone existing games and forget about making any "engine" at this stage. If you re-made Pac-Man for example you would learn about path-finding, movement, collision, level states, basic level setup. ect...

If you're struggling to implement the required methods to create your own game then it's very clear you lack the experience. Cloning basic games will gain you such experience so I would suggest putting your own game on hold for now.

I agree with Rutin on cloning existing games if you want to make your own engine. Don't dedicate all your time to it, just get a learning project rolling so you can understand what you're going to need for your production grade game.

Don't worry about building an engine for the game. Just turn you prototype into the game the least complex way possible. You're not reusing the code for different games, so no need to think about common code yet. As you build more games you'll gain more and more of an idea of what an engine would be like that would work best for your games.

I've already prototyped many games but I want to develop one, but from what I hear, I need more practice. For now, are there any good example games that follow good practices (Ideally in Java or C#) that I can have a look at to get a grasp on how things work? Thanks for all of your advice!

What do you think the difference between 'prototyping' and 'developing' a game is? If you made a game, you developed it.

Games are too complex for us to say "here's an exemplary project that you should emulate". Almost every game that gets shipped is a mixture of good code and awful code.

What I think you need to do is to just get started. Every game you make will have better code than the one before it. Ask specific questions as you go if you get stuck.

Hi, Libgdx is not that great if you get into networking and 3d graphics, you could spend decades writing code people have already written that's why I moved onto using an engine, writing your own server can be very difficult, I used Libgdx years ago you don't get the equivelent power at your finger tips e.g. an excellent physics engine, multi-platform support, and dedicated servers

Hi!

I've also developed games with LibGDX. If I can write something - think about simple game and just code it.

For example I make game based on Tapper (https://github.com/kklocek/PixelBeerFever). Code is not great, but hey - game is finished ;).

So create something simple and finish. Probably during development you'll think about throwing project away, but every game developer faces it :).

Good luck!

Try to make simple games (like Tic-Tac-Toe and Snake) for two players using sockets. I am writing the Tic-Tac-Toe game using this stack: Phaser, TypeScript, Node.js, Express, Handlebars, SocketIO, MySQL with free hosting on Heroku.

Wow, thanks for all of the suggestions! I think it's clear that I need to start coding and stop worrying about things, so I'll get started!