What could have been a good career in game development

[fzkl]

Back in 1996 when I was learning C, disconnected from the rest of the world without an internet and no one to help me with and no books that decribed concepts of C in detail, I tried my hand in trying to make my own version of games like digger and dangerous dave. In the process of coding this game, I came across problems to which I couldn't find solutions and eventually gave up on game programming. Since then I have been into other things and I now want to start off from where I left things previously. Following are the issues that I faced when making the game:

1) The program code was linear and used a shitty switch/case construct to take keyboard inputs and call functions that would move my character on the screen. However, since moving the character meant redrawing bitmaps on the screen, a lot of CPU cycle was spent on this (on a 486) and I wasn't able to get fluid motion from other objects in the game screen. For eg: I would have a moving paddle that I need to jump on top off. However to do this, the paddle should move independant of my character. But if I pressed and held an arrow key to move the character, all CPU cycles would go into moving the character and then the CPU would have to wait for no inputs from the keyboard to move the other objects in the game. I was never able to get things work independant ofone another.

I now know that the solution to my problem is threading but I am not really sure how to create threads that have functions in them and call them. It would be nice if someone can point me to a beginners tutorial on threads that addresses the kind of problem I am facing.

2) I was always amazed at how games like dave and such had more colors than the 16 colors Turbo C would allow. I have now come to know that int13 is used to gain access to a larger color pallete. However the usage seems very confusing. Any links that can give me a good insight into this?

3) Considerable amount of CPU cycle was spent drawing bricks and blocks on the screen. I figured the way games did it was use tiles and replicate them. How do I get any bitmap I create to come up on the parts of the screen where I want it to? Are we doing a direct frame buffer write, if yes, how do I gain access to the frame buffer and what are its controls?

I am not a CS major and nor do I obviously code for a living but I would like to get back into it seriously. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[docmach]

Do you still want to program for the 486 or are you looking to program using a more modern environment? If you are going to program for a modern platform, which one would you like to target? No matter which platform you choose you will probably want to use OpenGL. For that I recommend http://nehe.gamedev.net. If you want to develop for Mac OS X then I recommend http://www.idevgames.com and in particular http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11896.

[rtf]

First of, I second the others. By the time I got around to seriously learning programming and specifically game programming I was using Python/Pygame on a 1 gigahertz machine and it gave me about as much power as a 486 would running optimized C code. (more in some instances, less in others) If you're after concepts and not retro-technical details this is a good route to go.

But as for the questions:

1. Threading is not the answer; it was a missing concept on DOS machines. Interrupt polling is what you want to look at. 2. I recall reading about this but never did it myself. These days you're lucky if both the monitor and graphics card support mode 13h. 3. The term you want is "fast rectangle blit". This is still relevant if you use software rendering.

[VinzO]

What are the advantages of an interpreted language for game programming? My idea is that it is probably much slower. I can't see the advantage. Is it that there are a lot of usefull libraries or else? ( I almost don't know python/pygame ).

[nostrademons]

Most games nowadays use a two-tiered architecture: they write the graphics, rendering, collision-detection, and other processor-intensive parts as C libraries, and then do the game mechanics, AI, physics, and other highly-changeable parts in an interpreted scripting language. That way, they get the maintenance advantages of a high-level language without paying the speed penalty.

Also, many people don't realize just how much faster computers are now than they were 10 years ago. As part of the prototyping for my startup, I wrote a couple games in JavaScript, which is roughly 1000 times slower than C. They were generally quite playable, except on Firefox/X-windows where an odd Canvas bug seems to be adding a lot of latency without pegging the CPU. I'd still use Flash if I were doing a production game (JavaScript's timing is inconsistent, with occasional long pauses presumably for garbage collection), but as long as you stick to 2D it's quite feasible to do games entirely in interpreted languages.

[marvin]

The distinction interpreted/compiled is largely moot these days, since most popular interpreted languages are actually compiled (or at least bytecode-compiled) before they are run.

The real question is whether you would want to use a modern, abstract, weakly typed language like Python instead of a strongly typed and machine-code compiled language like C++. The latter is, usually, considerably slower. The decision all depends on how serious you want to get. For small-scale experiments, Python is just fine because it takes half the time and half the effort to write and test a piece of code. Unless you are pushing the limits on how fast you want something to run, Moore's law works in your favor and you can very quickly create something which does what you want and is fast enough. If you need the speed, you will know, but at least then you will have a simple prototype which will keep you from falling in any stupid traps on the way.

So to answer your question, development speed is the factor that makes people want to use these languages. You don't have to jump through hoops unless you need run-time execution speed.

And yes, Python has excellent library support for doing just about anything that doesn't have to be blazingly fast. This, along with better language constructs (more dynamic classes and methods, weak typing, versatile and easy-to-use lists and mappings, list mapping functions etc), is what makes development much faster. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that you can dynamically test the things you've written, if you want to.

[VinzO]

Thanks for your reply. One more question, I am maybe old fashionned, but weak typing kind of scared me. I am more used to strong typing and I find it weird when I look at python variable declaration. In my point of view, strong typing helps avoid bugs and write cleaner programs. What advantages do you see in weak typing?

[jcl]

Some arguments I have seen for dynamic typing:

- Code is shorter and potentially easier to read.

- While static typing can identify some bugs at compile time, these are usually the easiest bugs to find regardless of the language you use. The hard bugs -- the ones not caught by the compiler -- only become obvious through testing. So if you have a good suite of tests, you will find both classes of bugs, whether or not you use a statically typed language.

- In a dynamically typed language, you spend less time wrestling with the typing system -- instead of casting in C or Java, doing long template-related declarations in C++, or convincing ML or Haskell that your program should be allowed to run.

- And, more theoretically, a statically typed language limits the space of programs that you can write. While most of the programs disallowed by static typing are buggy, some are useful, and a statically typed program with the identical useful functionality is longer.

Of course, static typing has its benefits as well. It's the reason our fastest languages are as fast as they are, and it's a comforting safety net, especially in large projects.

[procrastitron]

You have it backwards, actually. Python is strongly typed and C++ is weakly typed. You probably meant dynamically/statically typed.

[dhouston]

wow, time warp. (i think it was int 10h though, for the video bios, and you had to poke around different ports to change the vga palette :))

things have, um, changed significantly -- nowadays libraries like directx abstract away the details of direct hardware access and handle graphics, sound, input, timers, etc.

if you're just looking to play around with games, pygame is perfect for you -- http://www.pygame.org .

if you're really looking to learn the details, you should probably grab a couple books on amazon (hard to recommend one in particular without knowing what you wanna do.)

[pistoriusp]

I completely agree with you but I would rather recommend Pyglet (http://www.pyglet.org/) than pygame.

[whacked_new]

pygame obviously has better coverage (10-to-1 hits on google)... this is the first time I saw pyglet. What's better about it?

[pistoriusp]

I couldn't use pygame on os x because it required a dependancy that wouldn't compile, I'm not sure which dependancy is was.

Pyglet has no dependencies and I just found it a lot simpler than pygame to get started with.

[VinzO]

That sounds exactly like my story... in 1995-1996 I started to develop a clone of Football Manager That I had on C64. I used Turbo Pascal and the game was running under DOS. Like you I had no internet connection at a time and I found only a small book about a few graphic functions. I was never able to do a fluid animation of my games. It was too laggy only to draw the ball on the screen ! Then I dropped and unfortunately continue my studies as Electronic Engineer. I wish I could turn back... Now, like you I would like to continue the work I started, but I couldnt find backups of my source code :(

I wonder if I should start a new degree in CS, but I am 30, I have a child, and I am not sure if it's better to learn by myself or if it's worth doing a degree. Can online studies be a good idea? Or do you guys think it's just a waste of time?

[marvin]

There are plenty of guys (and girls) over 30 in my undergraduate CS class. A few over 40, as well.

[thorax]

Probably no better time to get into CS if you find a good program.

[VinzO]

Does anyone experienced online CS degree?

[wlievens]

Threading is not what you need right where. What you need is called a "game logic loop" (for want of a better term). Keyboard events should change only the "action state" of your game objects and entities, e.g. when you press a key to move left, the player should be in the "moving left" state, but the actual movement should not be handled there.

Parallel to the input (okay you will need a separate thread of keyboard listening and for game logic) you will loop over your entities and update their state, processing things such as movement.

[barrettcolin]

Have a look at this article for some useful links on VGA tricks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X

If you really want to pick up where you left off, I'd suggest downloading djgpp (gcc for dos - http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/zip-picker.html) along with the Allegro library, which wraps up a lot of the nastiness of direct hardware access.

[wehriam]

If you're interested in simple game design, you should consider experimenting with Flash. Websites like http://www.kongregate.com/ and services like http://mochiads.com/ could help with distribution and revenue on what might otherwise be just a hobby.

[VinzO]

Do you have an idea of how much renenue you can do for an average game on that kind of websites?

[wehriam]

From what I've heard, a very successful "casual" game makes tens of thousands of dollars.

[xirium]

Firstly, skip all of the low-level, platform-specific details and learn JavaScript. This will give you all of the colours and performance that you require for sprite based games. I've seen a very good version of OutRun done in JavaScript. A 2D platformer can definitely be implemented. Also, if you implement in JavaScript then you'll also get a wide audience for your work without requiring anyone to install anything.

Secondly, a real-time game is a turn-based game where the turns occur in real-time. Unlike a strategy game, the computer continues even if you don't make a move. Imagine AD&D melee combat at 30 rounds per second. This doesn't require threading.

[jcromartie]

I would say that JavaScript is not exactly the best language to learn for creating games. Aside from the Canvas tag there is no good way to do graphics with JavaScript (at least no simple way that isn't a bunch of arcane HTML tricks which wouldn't make any sense to a beginner).

And, if you're using the Canvas tag you're excluding IE users. If you're only going to reach a limited audience anyway, why not use Flash and reach a much bigger limited audience?

On the other hand, I guess Canvas teaches you about drawing to buffers, while Flash teaches you about more abstract things.

[Tichy]

When you say JavaScript for games, presumably what you have in mind is ActionScript and Flash?

[xirium]

Knowledge of JavaScript is transferable to ActionScript but I was quite specific about the use of JavaScript. There's a large amount of code and documentation which is ideal for the task.

[Tichy]

Any pointers? I have considered creating games in JavaScript (OK, arguably my boobs memory is a game in JavaScript), but I still would not consider it the obvious choice for action games. For a beginner, I would rather suggest something classical, where you have a screen/bitmap/whatever that you can draw to?

[xirium]

A good example to start would be BreakOut. You have a grid of tiles. Some are bricks. Some are spaces. This you can implement as an HTML <table>. The bat and the ball can be implemented as floating <div>s. You can detect the x position of the pointer and use this to control the position of the bat. When the ball hits a brick, you want the brick to disappear. If you label each tile in your grid then JavaScript can replace any tile with any other image.

[Tichy]

I was just thinking in terms of the original poster. There are lots of books and articles on writing "normal" games (game loop, sprites etc.). I think Javascript games would be a bit different, so I don't think they would be a good starting point. Unless you think that in the future there will only be Javascript games. For the time being, it would be much harder work to make a Javascript game look reasonably smooth, compared to other technologies.

[goofygrin]

You just gave me tired head.

Unless you really want to deal with all this blitting stuff, I recommend that you look at making flash games. You get to deal with the more interesting problem (to me) of making a fun, playable game vs. dealing with the nuts and bolts of graphics programming.

Also ask those guys at popcap how their financials look. I bet they aren't doing too poorly :)

For about 3 years, I've said that the minigame will rule the world and it it beginning to turn that way. Look at 90% of the Wii games and they are all minigames. Games like Peggle and the downloadable content for XB360 are all minigames that make bank.