Introduction to game development
This document provides an introduction to game development. It defines what a video game is as an electronic game involving user interaction and visual feedback. Game development draws from many fields including business, art, science and technology. The document outlines some of the many roles involved in game development. It traces the growth of the video game industry from early classics to modern 3D games. It then presents several popular game engines as tools that developers can use to build games, avoiding writing code from scratch. The document encourages creativity beyond what engines can do directly and emphasizes good coding practices like avoiding spaghetti code and refactoring. It introduces GameLab as aiming to spread knowledge about game development through small project-based seminars.
Introduction to game development
- 1. Introduction to Game Development By Gaetano Bonofiglio gaetano.bonofiglio@gmail.com
- 2. What’s a video game? A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor.
- 3. What’s a video game? • Difference from other software: user entertainment
- 4. What’s a video game? • Difference from movies: user interaction
- 5. What’s a video game?
- 6. How do we develop games?
- 7. Game development got it all! business art Science and tech Video game development
- 8. And may be difficult… gameplay sfx scripts engine shaders gui light maps models animations vfx story voiceovers soundtrack post-processing multiplayer testing microservices encryption clustering marketing
- 9. … But also rewarding First week revenue The Dark Knight 239 million $ Grand Theft Auto IV 500 million $ Source: video game industry trends by Alex Ferrara
- 10. … But also rewarding Careers in game development: • Producer • Project manager • Game tester • Game designer • Level designer • Writer • Programmer • GUI Developer • Specialized developer (networking, AI, etc) • Art director • 2D/3D artist • Musician And many more…
- 11. Game industry has grown Pong (1972) Classics (Atari, NES, SNES, etc…) Doom (1993) CPU powered 3D games (1995) Unreal Engine and GPU powered 3D games (1998)
- 12. Game industry has grown Source: video game industry trends by Alex Ferrara
- 13. So what do we do? We can write Pong in assembly…
- 14. … Or use tools!
- 15. • Graphic editor based on proprietary drag & drop • Engine for 2d games • Game Maker Language (GML)
- 16. • Graphic editor • Engine for 3d games • C++ and blueprints • 5% royalty based on gross revenue
- 17. • Graphic editor based on drag & drop • Engine for 3d games • C++ and blueprints
- 18. • Graphic editor • Engine for 2d & 3d games • C# and JavaScript (kind of) • Free with premium options
- 19. Engines can’t do everything, be creative!
- 20. Life tip: don’t do «spaghetti code»
- 21. Life tip: and refactor a lot
- 22. What is GameLab? • The aim of GameLab is to spread knowledge about game development and fields connected to it (graphics, game design, storytelling, scripting) to members of any level of experience. • During the seminars we will follow a small game project from start to end, teaching the basics of game development. • Please share with us your feedback!
- 23. Thank you for your attention!