Building a Mobile Game
In the next couple weeks, I'm going to write a series of posts describing how I am teaching myself Unity3D by building my first mobile game. I'm going to cover technical, aesthetic, and game design concepts.
Who am I?
I'm a coder who loves to play with making "stuff." Sometimes programming is #1 in my life, sometimes it's not. Here's my experience:
- Sofware development - It's what I've done for a living since 2003.
- Art - I've always liked to draw, and I taught myself Photoshop maybe around 2002. I'm not a master of either traditional or digital, but you can do a lot just by noodling around.
- Music - I began playing guitar for fun in college, about 1999.
- Photography - Snapshots since 2003 or so, more seriously since 2010. (What I mean by "seriously" is apparently that's when I started spending a lot more money.)
- Game design - I spent 2 years studying how to design interactions and entertainment in grad school, and learned a few key techniques, which I'll get to later.
I'm writing down my experience building this game for a number of reasons, one of which is because I've thought for some time now that I'll be heading back to academia to teach at some point in the future. It's been pointed out to me that giving and receiving information is my "love language," which about sums it up. So I'm getting started now on learning to articulate ideas and instruction in a clear manner. This first go at it is bound to be flawed—sorry about that!
Please feel free to let me know if you're confused, or if I'm rambling, or whatever.
Who is this blog for?
- Anyone who wants to learn how to build a mobile game, or any of the various subjects that touches (naturally, don't consider me to be an expert—this is my first!)
- Future employers who need to see my coding, writing, and design style
- Myself, as a way to practice those
- Family & friends who are curious about what I do
I'm going to have to make some assumptions as I write: I'm not going to be explaining programming as if to a total neophyte, or make step-by-step tutorials for how to do most things. I'm afraid that would be just too time-consuming and I need to get on with it. At the point I'm writing this, I have a very, very incomplete game on my hands and need to continue to work towards finishing it.
So what are we building?
I'm making a simple rolling ball game where you tip the device to guide the ball to a target. I'll explain why I decided to do this in a future post.