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How games are developed?
Purple Pudding Sep 21, 2016
I know, it seems a stupid question but I really don't know anything about this.

Yesterday I discovered itch.io and seeing all those indie games I thought if I will be able to create games myself...

I know how write little programs but following GOL a bit I see that is not that simple... There are things like "engines" that allow the developer to build the games...

So, I'm asking you:
1)how a game is created, in details

2)your experience (if you have one)

3)what instruments (is engine the correct word? There are other instruments too, right?) are used?

My idea is to do this in the free time (I don't have a lot of it), I don't want to make this a work or earn money (for now at least) so...I'm asking for instruments that work well on all three platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows), that are opensource, simple, documented, good and that can create games for all three platforms easily.
If the games created could be run on ARM system like Raspberry (and the engine could run on it too) that would be even better but I don't require this.

4) what instruments do you use?
What instruments are used by the big indie developers/companies and by the AAA companies?

5) suggestion on anything?

6) Is it more fun developing a game or playing a game?

7) how do you plan a game?

Many thanks to all of you for the future answers...

PP

P.S.: thanks to Liam too for correcting yesterday bug so quickly :-)
MaCroX95 Sep 21, 2016
A game engine is a software framework designed for the creation and development of video games. Developers use them to create games for consoles, mobile devices and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may include video support for cinematics. The process of game development is often economized, in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine to create different games,[1] or to make it easier to "port" games to multiple platforms. (source: Wikipedia)

Game engines are supposed to make game development easier by providing all these tools and features that developers can just "use" out of the box and don't need to create themselves for every new game. There is though some learning curve to get familiar with functions and scripting in different engines. I also think that these "universal" engines also have multiple programming-language support for developers from different programming languages to be able to program the same game and avoid the learning curve of each programming language.

I just played with these engines a bit, created few 2d games myself following tutorials but I don't really have time to start thinking about serious game programming since I'm involved in completely different area in college.

I personally was trying out unity engine but there are also other engines like source 2 from Valve and Unreal engine.

Whether it's more fun to develop a game or to play a game depends on every person. I personally enjoy in both but I never did game development professionally so I cannot tell about that or how to even begin planning on your own game projects.

Best regard and good luck! :)
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