Development background:
For a complete understanding of the whole picture of what happened, I will tell you a little background. For the last 2.5 years, I worked as a web interface developer in a small web studio, mainly engaged in layout. From childhood, I dreamed of making games. There are no game development studios in my city, and they didn’t take them for remote work without a portfolio. For the last 5 years, I have been interested in Unity, studying in my free time. The first game was released on September 19. 2019. I got feedback, my mistakes, the main thing is optimization problems. I decided that it would be nice to make a game on the phone to study optimization at the most basic level. I started to hatch ideas and study the market since I didn’t play much on the phone. In the last half of the year, problems began at work, delayed wages, lack of orders, etc. Just on the cusp of the “crown”, I quit. 30t rubles were postponed, I gave myself a period of 3 months, I wanted to bring the game to full release. Will you be able to make money? Great, I can continue to do solo development. No? There will be a portfolio game. One in the incentive, one on the phone, you can no longer knock empty-handed in the studio and click here.
The first month I spent a top-down shooter on the camera. “A. I began to understand that I did not have enough experience and time to make it in such a period, I wanted to add too many ideas. I still have to understand how to work with the Google Play Console, connecting ads, different SDKs, etc.
What You Need to Know Before Developing Games:
- Basic knowledge of one of the object-oriented programming languages: C ++, C #, Java, Python (or proficiency in blueprint scripting);
- Mini knowledge of Unreal Editor;
- Minimum knowledge of unreal engine game development by industry experts.
How to get into gamedev: Pong
How to Get Into Gamedev
This is a game to start with. Classic tennis for two players. You don’t have too many graphics, you don’t need special effects, the sound is just the sound of a bouncing ball, the music can just be looped. In fact, it doesn’t even have a menu or options. Pong is for two players and does not require any “artificial intelligence” programming.
Interesting additional tasks:
- Special effects when hitting the ball.
- Improved physics for the ball, taking into account angular velocity and friction, thanks to which the ball can change its trajectory in the air.
- Mouse control to give players better ball rotation control.
- AI with varying complexity.
If you can manage to create the games above and complete some of these additional tasks, you will already be most of the way to making your own games. With their development, you will gain a set of skills to implement your own super-cool ideas that would never have been realized otherwise. New mechanics, combinations of mechanics – you have a lot of ideas in your head, and now you have the skills and understanding of the effort required to implement them.
I hope this article helps someone get started in the game development field. Email me if you create any of these games so I can play another Pong clone
Gamedev is developing very actively today, it is a promising niche. It is suitable for those who love an active pace of work, experimentation, and, of course, consider themselves to be gamers. The number of job openings on the market is huge, with Unity developers being considered the most valuable specialists. Therefore, feel free to start building a career in this direction. Good luck!
