I found it hard at first but it’s quite easy.

One of Newton’s law : In the absence of a net external force, a body either is at rest or moves with constant velocity.

We are evolving in space so the last phrase part is our algorithm.

But you might have encountered some problems if you are very new to games programming, like how do I make all these things move ?

It’s simple,

• When you change the direction of your ship, you need to keep a reference of the angle your ship is pointing at.
• With this angle, using trigonometry you will get a vector which is what you need.

And math magics will do the rest !

There are a couple of other issues you need to handle like,

• Limiting velocity of your ship or soon it will go very fast,
• Wrap your angle,
• Screen dimensions,
• etc …

You will soon find out that the core of games is quite short, but the polishing is very long.

Here is the source for controlling the ship : Asteroid

In the next article, I will show you how to implement weapons, monsters and rocks … that in turn involves a couple of other things …

Years have passed since and now I am quite comfortable with C# so, I decided to test XNA.

XNA if you don’t know already, is the equivalent of .Net Framework, but for creating games.

As games have a different implementation logic than business applications, the kit addresses issues you might encounter when creating games, such as drawing sprites, using a gamepad, overlaying etc … well, all of what makes a game development different from a typical desktop application.

I’ve always been a fan of tons of games (I am not going onto a list for now), though my preference goes to action games, from fighting games to FPS.

Obviously there are some things I cannot afford (yet) alone, there would be too much work and the result wouldn’t be that great.

So a 2D or 3D game ?

There is in the XNA a 2D platformer starter kit but surprisingly, 3D is not that hard.

Well I have decided to create a 3D game as the first game.

The main problem in this is, as for every new domain you get interested into, you need to take a peek at all the other (mandatory) things around. For games it’s going to be graphics, sounds and of course some programming. This is where 3D is handy as there are many tools to help you shape your graphic ideas.

For the sound I think I can handle it. (I am doing music for a couple of years now)

Well for the rest, -> Internet (as usual)

Now for a first project, I don’t expect it to rock much, but with time, I found it’s a good idea to dare big things, to not suffer of under-specifications after, even though it sounds like being a massive work.

I am coming to it to now,

Have always been a fan of Wipeout, so, ahem … I wanted to create a game like it. Yeah …

The first landscape depicts a small planetoid where the life process didn’t bloom as on Earth but surprisingly there is water. That planetoid is part of a solar system that has 2 suns.

For the landscape I just found out the astonishing Terragen which rendering engine mimics nothing more than the real implementation (in the real world).

You can create landscapes life-like at the cost of heavy CPU usage, multi-threading is supported but my great Core 2 Duo T9300 isn’t of much help, even though (it used to be) a high-end CPU for laptops.

Also, using Starry Night, I have found that the sky consists of DDS textures, which is interesting.

The next (but probably uglier) option would be to create an engine that is fed by a star catalog …

I have gathered some 3D models of crafts,

Now I need to code all this to try form something …