Way of Setup

Oasis - Easier Developing and Debugging

Reflections - Learning by Example, and AI Dependence

Way of Basics

Oasis - Enhancement

Reflections - How to Know What to Code

The Path Walked, Yet Unwritten...

It will take me some time to write out every step of the Path, but, unlike other tutorial series, the code is essentially already written. The final code of the Path will be improved compared to the initial release of my game engine, but you may continue the Path immediately by exploring the NSMGEngine source code, which you downloaded in the "Sanity Check" step. NSMGE is the engine I used to release my commercial games on Steam, and is what the Path is intended to teach. Below is a roadmap for the Path. It is a general outline of what I intend to create for the Path, but it is subject to change.

• Drawing pixels with OpenGL 2.1
• Vsync with OpenGL
• Hiding the mouse cursor
• Creating threads with pthread

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Way of the Engine
• Beginning a multi-threaded game framework
• Platform-independent API for windows and events
• A fixed-rate logic thread
• The rendering thread
• Platform-independent API for sound
• The sound thread

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Reflections - Planning Ahead
• Top-down limitations for retro-style games
• Bottom-up needs for the Flappy Bird clone

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Way of Rendering
• Integer scaling a 240p pixel buffer with OpenGL 2.1 shaders
• Drawing a color-indexed pixel buffer with OpenGL 2.1 shaders
• Loading and rendering 8-bit bitmap images
• Rendering text with a bitmap font
• Rendering rotated sprites

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Way of Sound
• Loading and playing back .wav sound files
• Generating retro sound waves
• Mixing and compressing multiple sound channels

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Way of Resources
• Loading resources at build-time instead of run-time

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Way of UI
• List-style menus
• Automatic saving and loading of game settings

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Way of the Flappy Bird Clone
• Pipes
• Bird
• Collisions

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Reflections - Looking Back, and Forward
• Procedural game architecture
• Building your own games from here