Game Development involves a lot of planning. If you are thinking of creating a new type of game, you have to decide what type of game it should be, how it should be played, how many players it can have, the goals and objectives, and of course the challenges and approaches to resolving them.
Here is a mundane topic related to game development: How is the keyboard to be used? Can the player type in commands, which obviously adds lots of flexibility but shows down reactions, or are the keys intended to function as buttons on a console, so that pressing different keys envoke different actions? If the latter, than you can't ise regular INPUT or INKEY statements, because these really just trap normal typing responses. You probably have to resort to looking at the scan codes that are returned from key presses.
In fact, you have to consider other aspects as well, such as the graphics capabilities of the targeted machine where the game is to be played, whether the game can be enhansed with the use of some type of game controller or not, and so on.
If you are a committed game player yourself, then likely you are already familiar with the idea, or even the art of creating or modifying game play. This is both good and bad, because you have an idea of what is possible in game development, but at the same time, it means that you are probably setting the bar too high for yourself as you start out game programming on your own.
The best suggestion I can make is to accept that game development is a long term objective, and that you will have to master the art in stages. Many people prefer to begin with learning how to manage the graphics first, because that is the most evident and obvious area to tackle. But eventually, in order to succeed, you will have to study many different aspects of game development, from game theory to storyboarding to audio sequencing.
Dispite this gloomy prospect, we see many young people, guys in particular, that get involved in game development. Young people have lots of energy and can go without sleep and often have lots of free time, particularly in the summer months, and they yet lack the ability to earn much money, so the idea of committing many hours to somethign like game play or game development iseems like a small price to pay for having fun or doing something interesting.
And if they are any good at it, and stick with it, they may create something that can be marketed, so the chance to possibly end up creating the next killer game and making a lot of money is another attraction.
Naturally the rules of creating games do not apply to these young developers, and yet they may succeed where many others would fail. But being avid game players themselves, they have learned much from the activity that they have engaged in for so long - but the question is, can they translate this into game form themselves? Many can't, but some do.
If you look at the different OS camps around the PC, you would immediately recognize that the Windows camp is the largest. Not only that, but this camp is the one that has the greatest concentration of paying customers, and the customers most likely to buy things to enhance their PC experience. You would also recognize that the greatest share of computer games are written for this group, and that you have the advantage of DirectX as an attribute of Windows that can aid you in game development.
So the obvious choice is to select Windows as the preferred OS when you set out to write your game. But the problem is, most other developers are writing to the same group for the same reasons, and that means that Windows is saturated with many game titles that are all competing for the discretionary dollars that are targeted for games. As a result, some game titles enjoy great popularity, and others vie for the few dollars that remain.
I was once advised by my brother to move from Atlanta to New York because the job market there was much larger in my chosen field. I declined, because while I might be competing with hundreds for a single job in Atlanta, the number of applicants for a similar job in New York was several times as many, and thus my chances of getting a job would not increase. In fact, in a larger candidate pool, it was more likely that each position would go to a person that was deemed to be a better match, or better qualified.
The argument to consider here, is that if the market for computer games would be smaller with an OS like Linux, then at the same time, the competition for that market would likely be less intense. A new game there might have a better chance at catching on. However, the real down side to Linux is that it is perceived to be an Open Source community, and as such, would resist the idea of paying for something if it is possible to get it for free, or do without.
So if you are seriously thinking about a future in game development, you might think twice about which market to tackle. Now as part of your research, you might need to consider what the competition is in each market. Here is a list of sites that promote games for Linux. You can judge for yourself the quality and quantity of such games, and then weigh that information against what you know about the game field for Windows:
http://www.happypenguin.org/http://techgage.com/article/top_10_free_linux_games/http://absolutist.com/linux/http://games.linux.sk/http://www.linux-games.com/http://www.tuxgames.com/http://lhl.linuxgames.com/http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/Games/http://lgames.sourceforge.net/http://www.phelios.com/linuxgames/http://adonthell.linuxgames.com/http://www.tuxgames.com/http://www.lokigames.com/I also found a link to a book on the topic of programming Linux Games:
http://nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=plgMore Links:
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/topics/linux/gamesWednesday, April 16
6:00 pm: Dinner
6:45 pm: Class on Study (Scriptures) - Clair Weddle
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/linuxprogramming5/http://www.happypenguin.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=7http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-Prima-Techs-Development/dp/0761532552http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Linux-Games-Loki-Software/dp/1886411492http://www.thefreecountry.com/sourcecode/games.shtmlhttp://h.webring.com/hub?ring=linuxgp
