By Mart Weghorst
A quick overview of my most recent project in developing my own simple videogame engine using SDL2 while programming in C++. In this blog I talk about the goal and scope of this project while showing a little sneak peek into the progress I have made already.
GolbEngine is a hobby project of mine where I create a game engine for my own videogame. It is not supposed to be like the all purpose giants you know. But instead an engine limited in scope. custom made for one purpose. well... custom made for a small family of very specific games. It will be a simple engine that pathes the way for my game project to be announced later. Although you might be able to puzzle together from this blog what the game is going to be like!
Limit your scope they always say! try and make the smallest thing you can make. While anxiously looking at the mountain of unfinished passion projects. And I will take this advice to heart, partly. Creating a game engine is a big task to begin with. Anybody that likes small scope projects will shiver at the idea of creating something that big. But within this giant project I am drawing my boundries. how small can I make this which is normally massive undertaking. For this we will use the MoSCoW method. Consisting of must have, should have, could have and won't have. Meaning that the project is technically complete when all the must haves are done:
MUST HAVE
- Basic physics
- Square colliders
- Rendering sprites
- Animations
- Input handling
- Sound/music system
- A movable camera system
- Scene system for switching game states
- Code architecture that ties the systems together
SHOULD HAVE
- Controller support
- local multiplayer of up to 4 players
- A basic level editor
COULD HAVE
- Primitive lighting system
- Primitive particle system
- Support for replaying interesting or funny plays
WON'T HAVE
- Online multiplayer
A little while ago I realised that I want to expand my knowledge base in a more effective way. Therefore I will try and include a literature section to most of my blogs when I have read something new that I used for my project. Todays recomendation is listed below!
"Game Programming Paterns" by Robert Nystrom
This book is informative and packed to the brim with jokes and witty writing. A fun read while at the same time teaching you many fundamental game programming paterns that are used across the industry. While I would not reccomend this book to any game developing veterans. Someone like me with only basic game programming knowledge gathered some great ideas from this work by an ex Electronic Arts employee. Oh and his entire book is also readable online! **Link:
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