Hi Guys, Since I didn't have a fancy pants presentation slides like you guys I guess I have to make the notes now.
How I started Perl: -Got into to it at work -Coworker suggested CPAN -Tried to make a decent game with SDL Perl 2005 version ( http://search.cpan.org/~dgoehrig/SDL_Perl-2.1.3/<http://search.cpan.org/%7Edgoehrig/SDL_Perl-2.1.3/>) - Ratings were PASS (1) FAIL (72) UNKNOWN (119) (I think the 1 pass was luck) - Got ticked off and started fixing it in GitHub - Got David (old maintainer) to give me access (David also helped me a lot) - Doing that for the last month and here I am What SDL is (this is for Richard mostly): - simple answer www.libsdl.org Why I think SDL + Perl will be a good gaming platform: - Perl's philosophy (Simple things easy. Complex things possible). - SDL is very stable and fast now - Perl has already proven it can make good games ( http://www.frozen-bubble.org/ ) What I am going to be doing: - Making SDL Perl not leak like a diaper of a two tonne baby who just at mexican for a week. (http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=49084) - Updating SDL Perl's docs with good tutorials - The falling block game (Tetris) I had in the presentation is being cleaned and turned into a tutorial (http://github.com/kthakore/TetrisPL) - Update to new SDL API Future Plans: - Follow in Perl's philosophy and make (Simple Games Easy. Complex Games Possible) - I have registered three name-spaces that will help accomplish this - SDL::Game - Regular SDL Specific widgets (high scores, grids, ...) , extensions and so on (Breuno++ aka garu for this ) - Game::Tool - C/Perl implementations of Game Design Patterns, Algorithms (A*, Swarm) - Game::Base - Genre Specific but not SDL Specific base to make a game in that genre. Game::Action, Game::Shooter (this is very simple but it shows the idea) - Adhering to our philosophy of Simple Games Easy: -The version for the modules in these namespaces will -Make a simple game: Tetris - Get core logic: 2d collision detection, linear game event manager - Move it into appropriate name space as modules that work independently: Game::Tool::Collision, Game::EventManager - release v0.01 with new tutorial of Tetris in less then 100 lines of code. - Repeat with Pong, Breakout, SideScroller (Mario) ... so on - This way modules released are necessity designed not fantasy designed Micheal as for your question to start as a game developer its simple. Think of a game. ( Or help with the tutorials in SDL Perl :P ) Think of good data structures for it. Hack Hack Hack. Then go back and find out why your data structure was wrong. Repeat to step 2 Kartik Thakore
