What you need to know for Making Video Game

I've been spending lot of time thinking about it. Yah ! when you seriously want to work on some original idea, you have to work hard on it. Well.. that's what original idea wants. Hard Work and Dedication and Faith.
          Apart for these basics essentials. You need more qualities so that you can enhance the work you doing. Lets talk about some practical qualities. But before that try to figure out the subject we are discussing upon,
       Game,  its a digital simulation of some conditions which drive a users to perform a particular role. Now as you see we can have a variety of perspective to view this.
     Some Conditions, looks like a small window, but if focused single handedly you can find unlimited number of patterns to make those 'some conditions' which can drive users to play into it. For ex: super meat boy(threat driven), Fez(exploration), Tomb Raider, etc. And if you ask my personal opinion you can have any type of condition to drive a human nature, provided its righteous(it has some virtue) and with a good consent.
   It can be a condition where a street kid is running away from a police man as he has drawn some graffiti over the trains(subway surfers) or can be a guy who is stuck in a dark terrorful room ( amnesia)
You see if you want to find examples of such situation it isn't that tough, tricky part could be how to gamify those elements. And place them in such a way that its fun to interact with them. There are some books which can teach you to create game loops, surprise elements, reward systems which engage a player into various situations leading him to play a heroic role.
   Perform a Role, this could be interesting part to understand. A character is under direct influence of the user. It will be backed up with some powers to help user over the obstacles. The roles are directly related within the environment the user is playing. Like a thief, spy, warrior, etc.
     Some games doesnt require a single character to be controlled by the user. Use can control various objects like in (RTS) games. Here the objects have inter dependency with each other, which force the user to perform skillfull action to counter the computer(AI).

    Lastly, its a digital simulation i.e : It can be on a mobile device, a computer, a tablet etc. And notice this based on the device the user experience also changes. An arcade game cannot have same influence if played on a mobile device. So first point to notice is to decided the platform (device) you want to make on  

Cocos2Dx. First Hand

After getting good grip on Unity. I was feeling good to make 3D game prototypes, whether its point n click, or a 3d adventure game, or a endless runner. Unity's Mecanim is quite good to use and it handles multiple animations quite well. So I was discussing something with my project's game designer and he had a classic design of a game, which can be made just in 2D. By that time Unity hasn't made there 2D feature implemented. I was wondering to which technology platform I should go for. After searching quite a bit I found  Cocos2d till now is the best 2d engine one can get. Its free , it has lot of support. Well these two things only I needed to put my hands on Cocos2d.

      I haven't used much c++. Still I don't have fear from it  :D ! I downloaded cocos2dx. It was already supplied with the demo projects to experiment with the game framework. I'm a visual studio user.
                CCScene CCLayer, CCObjects. These are the main objects to be noticed in cocos2d framework. Other than this it uses Box2d or chipmunk for physics. And for rendering it has preloaded basic shaders to render sprites. For particle effects, it already has some very decent procedurally generated particle effects, which you can tweak.
       CCScene holds the control of a particular scene likemain menu, options menu, loading screen, etc. It holds the information for CCDirector also. And this object drives the main camera to different scenes. CCLayer holds the information for all the actions happens, like touch action, event, accelerometer, push notification. CCObject is the object which holds the control like position, render, it can have the physics component as well.
     Just keep fiddling with the template projects and you will get to know about most of the common important things. 

Nasscom GDC 2013

       Well its my second time there. I've been there last year too. ( 2012)  There were more people this time. More people related to game industry, More people showcasing there game, and the spectators.

        I was showcasing "Song of Swords". We got a booth to put up the game banners, devices. It was a really great experience. Having a first hand experience of showing your game to your customer is wonderful. You can see your code turning magic into the eyes of gamers. And that moment is priceless.
     Apart from meeting your beloved gaming fans you also meet game industry people. You get a mixed bag of reviews from all. And how it feels like ? Well let me give you an example: "You made a flowerpot with a flower and put on show. Some people liked the flower not the pot, some liked the pot as they can use it to keep water, or whatever. You see people have a diverse imagination with your product. And it can be of both ways good and bad. "

           So how should an artist see the effect of its creativity over its viewers. Well in my opinion he should see in the perspective where he can see he was the originator of that product. All the reviews of that product are the different faces of its product. As you see in nature Sun. We can see it as the life giving heat, or we can see it just like a star. Its the nature where you manifest your product. And this beautiful balanced set of environment ( nature ) will automatically show you various faces of that product.
                So we should neither be happy on good reviews nor feel sad over bad reviews. But we should work on evolving our own creativity. As in that way only one can be better on what he does.
      Although reviews for our game were pretty good. People liked the gameplay. And the RPG features of the game.

   Song of Swords is a 2D RPG platformer. It got listed in the indie games released in 2013 which were over 50. And then people were asked to vote for them. Being a quite new gameplay in (indian game industry) the game stood out uniquely and got under top 5 games voted for Nasscom Game Awards.

              So we got the People's Choice Indie Game of the Year Award. It was a nice feel. And the nicer was the party after that award ceremony. The culture among the game developers is very chill and casual, which I liked a lot. After cherishing all the good moments in the GDC. I took all the instance I can to learn and to innovate the true inside of me to make the games I like, i'm passionate for!