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April 07, 2005
Gamedev Technology? Get over it!
Most game developers probably have spent some time in the often under-estimated 'technology phase' in which you are building a library, platform or engine to write your next great game in. Browse various game development forums, or flipcode's 'Image Of The Day' gallery, and you'll see lots of engines, scripting languages, ray tracers, tutorials, IDE's, etc. etc... All the technology you (and everyone else out there) will ever need to design and implement a game. Sometimes, someone will post a screenshot or a beta of a game, but it seems lots of aspiring game developers (most?) are still inventing tech.
Speaking for myself, I know I have poured lots of valuable energy in various frameworks, most of which are collecting electronic dust on my hard disk. Did I gain experience by doing that? Sure. Did I finish lots of games with it? Nope.
2 years ago, I made the move towards professional game development, since then I have been working on downloadable/casual games for/with nuclide, and guess what? Writing games has little to do with implementing technology! Sure you can write a library that fits your own programming style best, or has an über-elegant design, or makes better use of the latest pixel shader API, or has a way-cool software fallback, so your game can run on a 8086 too! But you have to ask yourself, do you want to write games, or do you want to write libraries? If the former, choose an existing library or framework, there are lots of high quality open source and or commercial alternatives out there. Pick one, and start writing that game! Get over it!
Posted by Dominique at April 7, 2005 09:32 PM