A good base plan will probably save me a lot of headaches in the future. So this post is all about what to do, and perhaps more importantly, what NOT to do.
First off, the basic approach is to learn as much about how things work under the hood as possible. So the biggest limitation I’m setting myself is: no pre-existing game engines! So no Game Maker Studio, Unity, Godot, etc… just a programming language and a multimedia library, that’s it.
The language: C++
Well, it’s an industry-leading language used in game programming everywhere. And since I have some prior experience in other c-family programming languages, it’s just a good personal choice as well and will ensure I won’t have to learn a totally alien syntax. So C++ it is!
The library: SDL2
Also a deliberate choice. Mainly because SDL runs on a lot of different platforms, which will make porting of games to different devices easier. But SDL also handles a lot of the stuff that is either extremely hard, or extremely tedious to code myself. Things like handling of video, audio, input devices, etc… SDL does it all.
First blood
So that’s about where I’m at. I’m currently following some C++ and SDL2 tutorials online to get to grips with the basics. Today I managed to get a static image of the Caged Wave logo to display in a game window, which is not very spectacular, but always a good start.
Next steps are to get some sprites moving on a static background image and I’ll see where that takes me. For now, I’m signing off, ciao!