Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
There are thousands of Flash-based games that have been made and success-
fully marketed. Flash is an excellent program for the first time game maker in
that you can make an entire game with just one to three people. The production
time for these can be short, especially if you work through some of the tutorials
found on the websites listed in this section.
Projects made using Flash can be played on PCs, along with web, mobile, and
handheld systems. Flash creates 2D games. If 3D development holds your inter-
est as a first-time game maker or indie developer, Unity may be the package you
will want to explore.
unity
Unity is another terrific development tool to look at which is quite popular with
developers for the home computer market. Games made with Unity are also
playable on mobile devices, the web, and social gaming. Downloading the soft-
ware is free from their official site:
www.unity3d.com.
One of the nice features of this package is that you can publish the 3D content
made with this software to the web with the Adobe Flash Player. When you visit
the site, pay special attention the “gallery” location because you can view trail-
ers of products made with Unity and play several demos.
Playing the demos, again, is an important step in understanding the abilities of
the engine, the creativity involved, and how well the gameplay works. You can also
download demo projects that come with content that you can create games with.
At the site Activetuts+
(
http://www.unitymagic.com/shop/en/unity-tutorials/
find more examples of projects made with Unity and work through some good
tutorials on creating games with this software.
Consoles
Console systems are a huge aspect of the gaming industry. A great deal of
money has been spent designing and building them, and substantial dollars
have been invested in creating games specific to them.
Examples of console systems include the following:
the first successful
console to use car-
tridges that plugged
in new games was
the Atari 2600.
released in 1977, it
has a library of nine
games.
Microsoft Xbox
Sony PlayStation
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo GameCube
Sega Genesis
