Video Game Design: Programming: An Open Learning Guide

Programming is the way you put your concept in practice, how you build your game. There are a wide variety of programming languages. These languages will be covered in more detail later on.

Game programmer or game developers, take the implement the game design, most parts of a video game programming are boring and non-creative unless the game design requires some innovation or updates. But take care the worst situation for any developer especially one implementing a video game is in having a poor video game design to start with, the inability to make decisions or be non committal to choices will result in the developers having to implement bad concepts until the game designer accepts the results (or is forced to give the go ahead because of time/costs constrains), resulting in a substandard product.

Not all developing is attractive and in games most of it is not, for instance the front of a game is mostly common amongst most games designs doing one more is just going through hops. Now let's take for example the task of supporting hardware changes in video cards or even the low level optimization tasks, that would be the top of the cream for a creative programmer.

Because it is arguably the most difficult part of game design, we are going to spend a fair bit of time on it. If you have some idea of what language you want to learn and have read up on the various languages, you should actually start learning. If you can take classes that is great, if not there are many alternatives. Buy some programming books, look up some tutorials on the Internet or on Wikibooks and look through the source code of Open Source programs. Don't think it will be easy, it is not; but try and have fun with it. If you do not have fun that sort of defeats the whole purpose does it not?

Before you start programming, it is important to choose a programming language that suits your needs.

Remember that no language is perfect for everyone or every situation. There is such an incredible selection of languages that it can be nearly impossible to choose one. Before you make up your mind to learn Java or Assembly, make sure you know what you are planning to make. How complex is the game?

Certainly it would be counter-productive to spend a lot of time and energy learning a language that does not have the power to make what you are planning, just as it would be counter-productive to learn a language that is overly complex for your needs.

When you start reading about the various languages, you will inevitably read about "low-level" and "high-level" languages. At this stage this does not concern you so much, but later on it will be very important. Essentially, low level languages (ex: C++, C, Asm) are more powerful and faster allowing you to control the inner workings of the computer. However, they are generally harder to learn. Higher level languages (ex: BASIC) are easier to learn and use, but lack the power and flexibility that lower level languages have.

Sound plays an integral part in any game as it affects the mood of the player at a conscious and subconscious level! Could you imagine playing UT or Quake without sound? It would be unbearable! Sound in games ( depending on the game of course ) generally consists of background music, event sound effects ( honking a car horn, gunfire etc ) and environmental sound effects (footsteps, wind blowing, birds, beach waves, bugs, echoes etc).

Background music depending on the game can play all the time, but also like in film stop completely and change to fit certain moods, such as if you enter a battle the music might change to a track with a faster beat or become more erratic.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Video Game Design/Programming by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.