Need Suggestions for game development on android

By Ansuman Purohit on October 1, 2014 7 Comments / 2473 views

Hi Rodinhooders

My name is Ansuman I have been on this forum from last two, three months and this is my first post. Coming straight to the point, i have suddenly developed a passion in game development, basically mobile games, So need advice from fellow rodinhooders how can i start from scratch and become a game developer. Few of the Specific doubts i have

I am learning JavaScript from code academy, is it a good language to learn for mobile games?

Do one need good art skills in game development? if one man army

Any reference to good mobile game development tutorials

Whats a game development engine? for example Unity

Thanks

Ansuman Purohit

Comments

Ansuman Purohit

7 Comments

Gaurav Saini October 3, 2014, 11:22 am
1. JS is awesome . Looks quite simple from the top and get more exciting as you dig in
2. You should know UI/UX + Programming (else you can outsource)
3. Google (from here onwards)
4. Game Dev Engines let you write same code which works in both IOS and Android ..Otherwise for IOS you might have to learn different lang(Obj C) and for Android something different(JAVA).They also have simpler APIs that you can use to easily create games .Ex rotation effect , slide effect etc. etc.
Ian Pinto October 3, 2014, 1:07 pm

Ansuman, as fellow game developer, first of I want to ask you to seriously commit yourself to gruelling tasks ahead of you if you wannabe a pro game developer.

I have been doing game development on J2ME for java mobile for a long time in the past and for the last 2-3 years for Android and iOS and let me tell you that there is lots that you would have to learn to get up to speed.

Having said that game development itself is one of the hottest and most coveted jobs in terms of professional fulfilment.

As you a fresher I would advise you to make yourself familiar with the various aspects of some popular game genres like racing, endless runner, card and board games, etc. Also if you are planning on working solo and are a programmer without access to art buddies, I’d suggest you start working on 2D games first instead of being overwhelmed by creating 3D art. You may also want to use Creative Commons art resources available online.

Unity is a gr8 engine but to a newbie it may be a bit overwhelming with the sheer amount of things that you could do with it to create awesome games. I would suggest you atleast start of with very simple Android 2D games as that would help you familiarize yourself withe native development for Android mobiles and the learning can be used even for Unity game development.

Codecademy at present has content only for web development, so skip that. I’d suggest trying lynda.com or even searching for youtube tutorials.

Once you are comfortable with simple Android 2D games try your hand at porting that same to iOS. Unity is quite a beast when it comes to the amount of learning you would require to do something worthwhile and though you could start with a simple Unity 2D game too I would suggest trying native dev first.

In Unity learn to code scripts using C# instead of Unity Java Script as the later is a bit restrictive in terms of what can be implemented.

I have couple developed couple of iOS and Android games for my company portfolio: https://ianpinto.com/ipnova/portfolio

Feel free to ask me queries related to implementation of these game or some specific query you may have, and I will try my best to address them.

All the best for your game development endeavours.
Tejas Jasani October 3, 2014, 3:58 pm

Hi Ansuman,

I would also recommend learning Unity 2D first, and once you are good with 2D you can go for Unity 3D.

To learn Unity – you can check out the official tutorials here

https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules

The biggest advantage of Unity is, game can be ported to lots of platforms. And Unity 2D is comparatively easy in my personal experience. I own a company where we used to make games in AndEngine and Cocos2D, but after using Unity for gaming, we have gained lot of speed in development, and its definitely worth it.

You might like to take a look at what kind of games we have made in Unity

https://www.theappguruz.com/portfolio/ (check the game tab)

Thank you.

Regards,

Tejas
Ansuman Purohit October 3, 2014, 7:30 pm

Thanks Gaurav for these specific answers
Manish Malik October 4, 2014, 1:38 pm

Here’s what I would recommend:

1. Remember that game launch is a LOT more than just knowing how to code. Yes, art is important, but you may not need the art “skills” yourself. These can be outsourced (elance / other sites / or a friend).

2. Learn 2D graphics concepts first. Not games, but graphics concepts first. I’m assuming you’re not building a text-based RPG. You’ll need a good grasp over basic graphics concepts + algorithms + concepts like collision detection if you want to go long.

3. Set a target for yourself. You can even set a target of making a clone of some existing simple game. Pick one platform – Android, for example, and try building it using the simplest frameworks you can lay your hands on. After this, pick another framework or SDK. Then pick another. Build the same game in all of them. By the time you’re done with this (few weeks), you would have mastered the art of knowing which frameworks and SDKs work the best for you.

Keep things simple.

Hope this helps.
Ansuman Purohit October 4, 2014, 8:14 pm

Thanks for the detailed reply Ian, will gladly follow your advice
Ansuman Purohit October 4, 2014, 8:20 pm

Thanks Tejas for the reply