Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Game programming
When developing video games, the decision on which programming language to use
cannot only be dictated by the proficiency of your game programmer. As a developer,
you must also take into consideration the libraries and APIs which best support the
design characteristics of your game. For example, there are libraries entirely focused
on managing game AI tasks, such as path finding. If you plan to develop a game
whose gameplay strongly relies on AI, you'd better consider which programming lan-
guage offers libraries that perform such tasks, before starting development. This is
the reason why it is so important for a game programmer to be at ease with more than
just one programming or scripting language.
When graphics come into play, there are several APIs available designed to manage
2D and 3D graphics for games. OpenGL and Direct3D are the most popular 3D graph-
ic APIs, which offer native support for Microsoft Windows OS. If you want to know
more about OpenGL and Direct3D, we suggest the following links:
With regard to mobile game development, the decision about the programming lan-
guage to use also depends on the target platform of your game.
We already mentioned that Java should be your choice when developing games for
the Android platform, while Objective-C is the programming language for iOS game
development. There are other options as well, naturally. C++ can be used to pro-
gram games for the iOS, using the game engine of your choice (game engines will
Android Native Development Kit, available at
http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/
If you plan to use a game engine, and we recommend you to do so, get proficient with
JavaScript if you intend to use Unity3D, learn UnrealScript if you are oriented towards
the Unreal Engine, or LUA if you want to develop games with Corona SDK (among
others).
