Games I played this week and IDEs I used
Someone called Blitzplotter on the Blitzmax.com forums often asks what games we played over the last week and this time he also asked what IDEs we’d been using. I thought I’d post my answer here as it’s been a fun week with lots of variation and cool times gaming with my boys.
OK then, “top 5” games this week:
1) Half Life 2 Episode 2
2) Lego Indy 2
3) Trine (completed)
4) Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (completed)
5) Either World of Goo or Lego Batman.
And that in fact is all I played this week, apart from Facebook games: Treasure Madness and The Warlords, and maybe Bejewelled Blitz. I recommend you check them all out if you like Facebook games (and even if you don’t!)
Oh wait, just realised I played a ton of XBox Live Arcade and Indie games (all demos) and some were neat such as:
Arkedo Series 01: JUMP!
Arkedo Series 03: PIXEL!
Miner Dig Deep
Magic the Gathering
Gyromancer
Unfortunately Alien Breed Evolution didn’t do it for me, too dark and annoying. Shame as I loved the original games on the Amiga. There were quite a few other lacklustre titles too – I can understand that for Indie titles (people maybe just starting out), but not for Live Arcade titles.
Top 5 IDEs used this week:
1) Visual Studio 2008 Express with XNA
2) Flex with AS3.
3) MS Frontpage and Notepad++ (for my new Aikido website). Yes I know I’m stretching the limit of what an IDE is.
And that’s it. Sadly I didn’t use Blitz this week. Well I fired up the IDE to answer a question for someone.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Curious if VS2008/XNA and Flex/AS3 are what you’re using for BFG or are you just listing personal IDE’s? What’s your opinion on the best way to go for an experienced programmer to move into game dev?
February 15th, 2010 at 1:33 am
Hi Steve, XNA at home for fun, AS3 at BFG to help someone else out with their project.
So if an experienced programmed wanted to get into game dev I’d recommend practising making games! Either use a language you are already good at, or research languages + libraries suitable for making games and start to make very simple basic games to study the principals involved. Also play lots of games and think about how they are made, see what works and what doesn’t – analyse. Eventually you’ll have to decide what area of game dev you want to get into, for example: casual or AAA, and then start studying more games in your chosen field. Also it’s good to get other people to try out your games so that you can get an objective view on them and improve them. You may want to consider reading some game dev blogs or forums (like Indiegamer) for tips and for networking. Oh, and you’ve got to be passionate about making games and want to succeed!
March 20th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Our boy is mad regarding lego in addition to star wars lego – cheers for the info!