It Starts Here Apparently I also need to shake off the gamedev.net blogging rust... I thought I was putting up a single blog post, but it was just a description for a blog series. 😏 So anyway, here's where it will all begin... My need to get creative has been reasonably satiated by video editing and Youtube projects for the past few years. But game development of some kind is always in the back of my mind. So a few days ago I hopped onto a search engine to find game development communities, tutorials, and anything related that would give me a little push in this direction. I came across an article here on this site with some very reasonable advice: https://ift.tt/317405U So I took note of the old version of Microsoft Visual Studio I'd installed years ago, and immediately upgraded to the 2019 version. Then I found a simple tutorial on noobtuts.com for the first game mentioned, Pong, and whipped through it. Feels good to see something come together, even if it's done in the simplest possible way (hello there, global variables). While I'm here, I figure I may as well document my progress in getting myself back on the game development bandwagon, even if it's just as a hobbiest. Who knows, maybe some of you will take note, get your own inspiration, pass along advice, or exchange thoughts and ideas that help us both. Some things I stumbled on briefly as I shook off the rust: Visual Studio's concept of Solutions and Projects is not what I'm most familiar with, as I primarily code in Eclipse at my workplace. A "Solution" is sort of just a container of related Projects. The folder structure it produces when you create a new empty project is a bit overwhelming at first (Pong/Pong/Pong -- really?). For anyone new, I recommend just creating a new "MyFirst" test project, and taking note of where it's putting everything. The "Pong" tutorial I followed had an include for "stdafx.h", which I confess threw me for a loop for a moment. This is a common filename for precompiled headers, but when I created my project, Visual Studio had precompiled headers turned off by default. For a really small project, it isn't really needed. The idea behind it is to vastly speed up build times. Use it if you're referencing large header files from existing APIs, such as Windows.h. Getting things hooked up with Github was rather easy. My account there had been dormant for some time, but no longer! What I did was create a mock project first, and just take note of the .gitattributes and .gitignore files Visual Studio created. Then I cloned the new Github repository I created where I wanted it on my file system, and created the new Pong project in a sub-folder there. I wanted all my "basic games" development in one repo. The version of Pong I built was just the result of following along with the aforementioned tutorial. There are a lot of things about the coding style that I'd like to change, and a few little enhancements I'd like to make. I think my next post will detail that -- though I do want to move forward to other more interesting game ideas soon... https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Apparently I also need to shake off the gamedev.net blogging rust... I thought I was putting up a single blog post, but it was just a description for a blog series. 😏 So anyway, here's where it will all begin... My need to get creative has been reasonably satiated by video editing and Youtube projects for the past few years. But game development of some kind is always in the back of my mind. So a few days ago I hopped onto a search engine to find game development communities, tutorials, and anything related that would give me a little push in this direction. I came across an article here on this site with some very reasonable advice: https://ift.tt/317405U So I took note of the old version of Microsoft Visual Studio I'd installed years ago, and immediately upgraded to the 2019 version. Then I found a simple tutorial on noobtuts.com for the first game mentioned, Pong, and whipped through it. Feels good to see something come together, even if it's done in the simplest possible way (hello there, global variables). While I'm here, I figure I may as well document my progress in getting myself back on the game development bandwagon, even if it's just as a hobbiest. Who knows, maybe some of you will take note, get your own inspiration, pass along advice, or exchange thoughts and ideas that help us both. Some things I stumbled on briefly as I shook off the rust: Visual Studio's concept of Solutions and Projects is not what I'm most familiar with, as I primarily code in Eclipse at my workplace. A "Solution" is sort of just a container of related Projects. The folder structure it produces when you create a new empty project is a bit overwhelming at first (Pong/Pong/Pong -- really?). For anyone new, I recommend just creating a new "MyFirst" test project, and taking note of where it's putting everything. The "Pong" tutorial I followed had an include for "stdafx.h", which I confess threw me for a loop for a moment. This is a common filename for precompiled headers, but when I created my project, Visual Studio had precompiled headers turned off by default. For a really small project, it isn't really needed. The idea behind it is to vastly speed up build times. Use it if you're referencing large header files from existing APIs, such as Windows.h. Getting things hooked up with Github was rather easy. My account there had been dormant for some time, but no longer! What I did was create a mock project first, and just take note of the .gitattributes and .gitignore files Visual Studio created. Then I cloned the new Github repository I created where I wanted it on my file system, and created the new Pong project in a sub-folder there. I wanted all my "basic games" development in one repo. The version of Pong I built was just the result of following along with the aforementioned tutorial. There are a lot of things about the coding style that I'd like to change, and a few little enhancements I'd like to make. I think my next post will detail that -- though I do want to move forward to other more interesting game ideas soon...

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