Wednesday, May 13, 2009

What I use to make games

Hello there. I couldn't post anything yesterday because a storm came and I shut down my computer for safety. But today Swarmer stoped the strom and it is only raining. A great weather to write a long post. So following some suggestions from my blog readers I decided to put up more interesting stuff. I will also try to make posts on a daily basis and to write more about the current development.

So now to this post. The title says everything. I will now describe what I use to make games. I will also try to put as many pictures or else it will be booring.

I hope you can see the picture. It is a nice program to make graph that Cactus made. You will find it on his site.

IDE

Well this isn't hard to guess. I use the best one there is. Visual Studio. I only have Visual C++, because I don't need it for anything else that this. The IDE is realy great and it helps a lot. When you have a lot of functions and all you don't have to remember them all. It is realy great. 

(This is not my picture, but it is the IDE)

I also use Dev C++. I used it the whole time for Slot Robber but because projects got bigger I switched. But I still use it to make the .exe for the relesed game. That is because the VS has some stupid s**t that you have to put in with the game and the user who gets the game also has to install some redistrubutibles ( or whatever ). So I just put all the source code into Dev C++ and compile it soo it works on almost all computers ( with Windows ).

Graphics

Well I use MS Paint. Yep, that old thing that is on every windows and everyone thinks it stinks. But for me it is a great program to make gfx realy fast. It is also very simple to pixel in it. Simple but great.

I also use Paint.NET because it has some advanced functions like color effects and all so I pep up the gfx.

I also use the .PNG format for gfx because the size of the format is realy small so the games are not big.

( Making the sprite for the game )

Sound

For sound I use a programm called SFXR. You can find it here. The program is realy great for quickly make sfx. Because you simple generate a sound that you wish and then change it to fit in the game. Then you export it and done. 

I search the music for my games on diffrent sites. Till now I used ...... <>. Well i forgot the name. You will find a link in my games and on my site if you look the posts where I described every game.

( SFXR in action. Simple and great.. :D )

Timelog

I have to track time for my development. So I know how long something took. For that I use an extremly simple but great app from Kloonigames ( from Petri ). It is a simple console app but does the job. You can find it here. ( On Kloonigames ). It has some flaws because the function to put eveyrthing together doesn't work but I found my own way to do that.

( Timelog from Petri Purho )

Music # 2

Well not realy. But when I work I like to listen to music. So I turn on Windows Media Player ( the latest version )  and play myself some music. Nothing else to say here. Oh yeah, I listen to every kind of music as long as it is nice ( rock, clasic, rap, hip-hop stuff, new stuff, electro, trance.... blab blabl )

Now to the language and all

I am going to write something about the language I use and all and how I started with it. I hope I won't be too long, but maybe someone will be interested.

Since I got my first computer I was realy interested on how everything worked. So I got realy into computer "stuff" and became for my friend "the one that knows everything with computers". Well something like this. I realy know a lot to work with computers. You could also describe me as a "hacker". If you now thing the bad thing then you are wrong. Quote from wikipedia:  .... ok I didn't serach for it but I read once that a hacker is a person that realy knows a lot about computers. But if you thought about the bad hackers ( the one you don't like ), well I was also a little of that.

( I realy like this picture )

But then I got realy interested in programming. I readed about what language to start with. Everyone on the forums said that C++ is not good to start with because it is hard. Well screw that. I got a book called "Beginning C++ game programming" and that is how it all started. At the start everything was like spanish to me but with practise and all I can now read it as plain english. 

Before somwhere 1 year ago. I found a nice site called Lazy Foo. There were realy great tuts about starting with SDL. I never did anything more that console programming but I realy wanted to start doing gfx programming. So I puted a lot of time and effort to read the tuts and make a app for every tut myself. That way I realy learned it. And after every few lessons I made a game. And you probably know how it went further. I now probably know most of SDL and C++. I need to say that SDL is realy great. It has anything from I/O to gfx, sfx, events, threads and all. But you also have the full power of c++ to use. The only thing is the useage of CPU for gfx. So I will try to learn OpenGL as soon as posible. 

Well that is my story. I hope you found something interesting in here. Also please comment to this post. For the mistakes. Well english is not my mother language....

Keep you updated for "Me and my shadow". Bye

5 comments:

  1. i have that book now 'beginning c++ game prog.' So i should keep reading that?? or jump to something else?

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  2. You should go through it first. Well I didn't read it till the end. I came to the part where it stops telling about pointers. After that I stopped with the book and started with this site: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/
    It is realy great. But I went from the start of the tuts to harden my knowlage. So I suggest to go with the book as long as you can hold with it and then go from the start on that page. Because the book can start complicationg a little to much and you also don't have to know all the stuff to start making game ( polymorish and inheriance and friendship and so on ). But you will have to learn that later. I suggest from that site.

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  3. Also. If you think that you know enough then I suggest to check out Lazy Foo's site ( i mentioned in the post ) and if you understand it then you can try to make something. Lazy Foo also tels you what you will need to know for the tut you will be reading.

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  4. cool thanks for that. I guess i'll get back to reading tonight..

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  5. lol cool, a Storm reference!
    I like that chart at the beginning, I'll have to try out that style.

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