One of the oldest and most popular articles on my site is I want to be a game developer… now what? It offers a collection of advice for new game developers. I keep intending to update it but frankly, not enough changed. The following was recently posted on GameDev.net:
https://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2011/08/04/I-want-to-be-a-game-developer.aspx
This article was written 2 years ago, and is very informative about each game development language, but 2 years sounds like too much for how events quickly change now, XNA is partially dead, more books released, etc..Is there a newer article of that kind of information? and is C++ still a bad choice (with the introduction of SFML 2.1 and SDL 2)?
Which got me to thinking about what all has changed since I wrote that guide. The following was my answer. Of course, I have no idea how many thousands of things I forgot to mention. All told, the world hasn’t changed all that much, languages don’t really move all that fast.
Truth is, I keep meaning to update it, then look at the state of the game development world and there hasn’t really been enough changes. I will be doing a v2 eventually, but in summary, here is what’s changed since the article was written:
C++
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SFML 2/2.1 released. Frankly it’s not all that different.
SDL 2 was released. Again, not massive changes.
Gameplay3D engine released Site Link My Look
Hands down the biggest change to C++ ( and over the last two years ) was the release of C++11. This completely changes the C++ book recommendations. C++ changes a lot about the language, especially how it should be taught. Some books did a horrid job updating to the new standard ( just bolting on the new features ), while others did a better (less lazy) job. I will probably do a post specifically about C++11 books at some point in the future.
C#
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XNA was put out to pasture by Microsoft. Fortunately, Monogame also got a lot better. XNA is still an option, just not as good of one as it used to be.
PlayStation Mobile was released and C# based. SDK Link (My Tutorials)
Unity 3D is now free.
Mono for iOS and Android 100$ cheaper
C# 5 released. Outside of parallel programming functionality (async), not much changed. Nowhere near the change of C++ for example.
Java
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Slick2D is dead or abandoned.
Java took a few hits in terms of deployment due to security concerns ( Apple yanked it for example ).
LibGDX is probably the strongest option in Java now.
Don’t believe there were any major language updates ( 1.7 then and now ), just service releases.
Python
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Um…. anything?
Otherwise there would be a few things I would mention that weren’t as relevant 2 years ago.
Misc
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Rise of the Lua game engines. Add Dreemchest to that list as well.
In the mobile space, Lua just simply put got big. Lua is also the scripting engine of choice for CryEngine, Gameplay and Project Anarchy. Lua is a very very very good starting point for people looking to just start out. Corona is now available free and at the same time, is more expensive…
HTML5 got a little bit more viable ( but still limited ) Flash suffered some major blows ( but still viable ). There are now a number of solutions that make appifying HTML5 applications possible, such as CocoonJS. Tons of libraries exist for HTML5 game development..
Previously niche/limited game maker software ( GameMaker, Construct2 ), as well as cross platform tools like Haxe (tutorial series) or LoomScript ( my look ) have made cross platform game development a hell of a lot easier.
The 3D engine space saw a bit more activity. As mentioned earlier, RIM released GamePlay3D. On top of that Torque was released for free, CryEngine leaked it’s developer information in a hack attempt… ( thanks for that btw…
) and Project Anarchy (my look) was announced and released. Project Anarchy is a bundle of Havok’s game developer technology released completely free for mobile development. On the 3D game engine space the story is Unity Unity and Unity. Frankly Unity had a good year, made partnerships with pretty much every single platform available and is available in a free version for pretty much every platform now.
Grand total, not all that much happened, not really enough to full write a v2 version, hands down the biggest changes in the last two years:
C++ 11
XNA killed
Unity took over the world.
I miss anything?
) and
Anything else I missed in the last two years of game development?