It seems that every geeky programmer goes through a stage where they learn game programming. For one reason or another – most likely that I have never in my life had very much free time for playing games – I never went through that stage. Suddenly, many years post-adolescence, I have gotten the bug.
We’re in between projects right now, so I got the book Beginning Game Programming by Michael Morrison and am working my way through it. It’s a very user friendly book if you are already familiar with C++ development. It works through the basics of game programming using Win32 APIs as opposed to something like DirectX. This has been really helpful for me because it is giving me a really good grasp of the fundamentals. When I’m done with this, then I can move on to another book that uses DirectX (or something else).
Graphics programming is something else I’ve never taken an interest in, and I’m really having my eyes opened there. What was I so turned off by? It is really fun! The concepts are really simple, and you get immediate, interesting feedback with having things happen on the screen.
Next week I’m going to start looking into Flash game development for some comparison/contrast.
Ultimately, I’d really like to make games for OS X. Flash games will probably be it for now.
I’m going to buy Spore when it comes out to play on my Mac.
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