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Beginners > How to develop a game step by step.

#14911 - Twindragon - Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:10 pm

One of the topics on this board says where do I begin but I would like to know how to begin with concept to completion step by step. I know the development of a game starts with an idea etc but where do you start with that idea. I would like to know everything! Example would be:

1. create an idea
2. map out the game play
3. develop a game engine that would work for said game? etc

but I don't want it to be this cut and dry..I have no idea about how to program so I want to know about compiling etc...what utitlities I need and what order I should use them. when I should start making sprites and tiles so I can see what my game is looking like. What would I use to connect to a gba so I can see my progress etc...any help would be great.

#14914 - tepples - Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:54 pm

A beginner at this stage may want to learn on a native toolchain with native libraries before trying to program for the GBA.
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#14921 - yaustar - Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:21 pm

I can give you a website that should give you more of an insight on how games are developed etc.

http://www.gamasutra.com

you would want to look for postmortems. Team members going through what went well and bad throughout the project

For programming etc

http://www.gamedev.net

GBA specific

http://www.gbajunkie.co.uk
http://www.theperntutorials.com
http://www.gbadev.org (of course)

and then we have the topic here

http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=2649
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#14923 - poslundc - Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:27 pm

Twindragon wrote:
I have no idea about how to program


Stop right there!

This is the first issue you should deal with, before worrying about compilers or design documents or flash carts or attempting to develop anything for the GBA.

Go immerse yourself in a couple of good C tutorials (search Google and you'll find plenty). Then go program a few very simple games for whatever kind of computer/OS you use (you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to find tutorials on that as well). Start with simple text-driven stuff (or point-and-click stuff if you're using a "visual" language/OS). Then learn how to construct a basic game event loop for a simple action game. Then come back and read the tutorials on GBA programming here.

I'm not just throwing a canned response to you here (although I've said stuff very similar to this frequently to other newbies); you asked what the process would be to create a game and the best way to learn it is to apprentice yourself to the process by working your way through the entire thing on a small scale.

Dan.

#14938 - Dreamer - Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:55 pm

The worst mistake you can make it to start jamming away with ideas until things start clicking. I'm pretty new to GBA programming (but not really new to C) so I grabbed Dev Kit Advanced, downloaded and read every tutorial and sample I could find, and slowly started making sense of things. Right now I'm still very very shallow in my knowledge, but I am working on creating Tetris for the GBA to learn and practice.

The things from gbajunkie, dovotos, Pern Project, here, etc mentioned above are for code samples, full game source, tutorials, etc for GBA information, but until you learn C (get cracking on Hello World), you won't be able to make sense of any of it.

#14945 - Twindragon - Thu Jan 15, 2004 2:11 am

Thanks for the replies guys. so I should first learn the basics of c+ eh? How long would it take to learn c+ language. When I begin learning will it be fairly easy to grasp or are there gunna be tutorials which assume I know a little already. For example make a simple calculator or something...will it explain why I put a certain code in? I remember programming when I was younger for this computer called a tandy very simple stuff...but it was so long ago and it explained everything step by step...its programming language was your basic "if this = this then this will happen and then goto this" bad example but is this what the C+ language is like?

#14946 - yaustar - Thu Jan 15, 2004 2:27 am

as I said above, this thread is probably the best to look at for that question
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=2649

for c/c++ tutorials you can look at www.gametutorials.com for source.

As for how much experience you need before starting to program for the GBA...I can only say that I started programming for the GBA before I fully understood the C language so I didnt understand half the code I was writing. After a while I started looking a bit deeper and found out a lot more about the basics and why/how it came together as a program (with a lot of help from here :).
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#14951 - dagamer34 - Thu Jan 15, 2004 5:01 am

I am pretty sure there are other topics that have the same information I was going to say. Search around for them.

Enough said.
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#14953 - Twindragon - Thu Jan 15, 2004 5:27 am

Yeah sorry, I am sorta lazy sometimes cuz I figure if I spend all my time searching for the right topics I won't have enough time learning. Maybe learning programming isn't my thing. I am also a video game artist and I would like to make a game for the gba but I tend to want to do everything on my own..mainly because I find that sometimes when you start working with a team on something you can work so hard and it fails because someone doesn't live up to there end..but if I have to learn programming as well as being the game artist etc..that may get tedious.

Ok, where are some good tutorials etc on how to make sprites and tile sets for the gba? I can make good sprite art I just don't know how to make it for a game.

#14955 - jma - Thu Jan 15, 2004 6:49 am

While I usually try not to post this here, you may benefit from Dragon BASIC. Not as powerful as C/C++, but much easier for you to learn and get your ideas up on the screen fast...

http://www.jm-basic.com

Jeff
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#14957 - yaustar - Thu Jan 15, 2004 7:29 am

There arent any tutorials on how to make tilesets as they always a multiple of 8.
8x8 pixels
16x16
etc

for game art:
http://www.spritedomain.net/
http://pixeltutorial.cjb.net/
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#14962 - Twindragon - Thu Jan 15, 2004 10:03 am

thanks those websites will help alot