Imagine you want to write a game -- you know quite a bit about programming and you have a few hours a week. Naturally, within minutes your imagination go ballistic, boundless ideas spring into being, wonderful concepts are conceived. However, reality dawns, and you conclude that you're ideas are not that original -- in fact they are best vague reflections on games you have already played. Of course, you could be a highly gifted individual, and come up with something that is new, at least in your experience. But a quick Google will burst your bubble, and you might conclude that even this idea is not that phat. Then you come across a cool new game, such as the The Blob, and you marvel at the innovation shown by a bunch of noobs (or so it appears), while also wondering why can I not think of something like that?
The conclusion I came to is that I need to bring down my expectations of myself. Way down. Not only do my ideas suck, but I am also simply not able to deliver even a radically boiled down version of these virtual concoctions. I then found an interesting article that not only made me feel better, but also provided a practical road-map to get to where I wanna be. It says : "Do Tetris first!", and that is exactly what I did, I started a Tetris project.
I chose a few tools, and some libraries that looked good during my window shopping expedition here on the net. There is Blender for 3-d artwork, GIMP for 2-d artwork, Ogre for 3-d graphics and OpenAL for sound. These tools might be an overkill for the task at hand, but I am doing this for fun, am I not?
There are other libraries that are specifically geared for gaming, but I have decided to ignore these for a while. I might have a better appreciation for these after I try to build my own glue between the tools that I have chosen. Time will tell, even though it has no lips.
Leave a comment, or at least take my poll.
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