Starting with game development

Posted By: Christian Liensberger | Sep 10th, 2007 @ 6:26 AM

Ever wanted to start with game development? What technology could you use? There are several around. In the last months we have heard very much about XNA and XNA 2.0. But there are also other libraries around that are very interesting: two of them are DirectX or OpenGL.

For university a friend of mine and I had to write a small game named FishSalad. It's a simple game and we had to write it in OpenGL. DirectX was theoretically allowed but everybody looked weird at you, if you considered using it (university life). I don't regret having done the class and having written the game in OpenGL. The API has an easy to use model (it’s ideal to start with) and makes it easy to switch to DirectX afterwards: the calls are very similar. It's always the same hardware in the end...

There are some very good OpenGL tutorial sites around. I like the collection of tutorials at NeHe's site. It has all the important lessons from how to start with OpenGL (and C/C++) until how to write shaders, cool looking fogs and particle systems. Another interesting read is the OpenGL documentation: the so called Red Book.

DirectX on the other hand is also interesting if you want to program a game for Windows. There's plenty of information on MSDN and there are a lot tutorial websites around. If you have time (and the required hardware) you should have a look at DirectX 10. The geometry shaders look very powerful and interesting.

If you want to start with XNA you should have a look at the link section at the XNA Development website or the creator's website. XNA Development itself has also some interesting and easy to understand tutorials. What makes XNA very interesting is the way how everybody can write small games in a few hours. Very cool!

As for techniques I really wonder when people start to implement relief mapping. It looks awesome and would be the next step after bump mapping. Anybody willing and having some free time?

Tags: DirectX, Game development, OpenGL, XNA

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madd0

If you want to learn more about XNA, learn about its advantages and limitations, take a look at these great webcasts from Gamefest 2007:

http://creators.xna.com/Headlines/presentations/default.aspx

Mauricio

littleguru

In reply to madd0

#Sep 11th, 2007 @ 2:46 AM

Nice - Thank you for the link.! They have been posted also here. Btw the creators club is also a great resource for tutorials on XNA.

Dark_Halmut

Releif mapping... very interesting. I wrote my own normal mapping engine and normal mapper tools(i drew 2 pictures in red-scale in mspaint and ripped them to normals) as an undergrad. This would be a cool version 2 of that.