How to make a videogame
Videogames are really fun, but have you ever wondered how are they made?
Like websites and mobile apps, videogames are computer programs. They consist in a list of instructions that humans give to a computer, for example: show a character in the middle of the screen, or: when the player hits this button, change the position of that object in the game.
To give instructions, well.. to ask a favor to another person, we use a human language, like english, or italian. Unfortunately, we can’t talk to a computer in the same way, because computers are pretty inflexible. They can only understand simple instructions and they are quite fussy about the grammar. If we want to talk to a computer, we need a programming language.. and a fair amount of patience.
As with human languages, programming languages can be very different from each other. Most of them are text-based, so the programmers need to write the words corresponding to the instructions. Others, like Scratch, are visual programming languages, where instructions are represented by blocks that can be dragged, dropped and snapped together to create complex programs.
Suppose you want to create a simple videogame, where the user controls the movement of a cat on the screen using the keyboard. You need to tell the computer how the cat should move every time the user presses each of the arrow keys. For example, changing its vertical position by 10 pixels every time the users presses the up key.
Now, can you imagine what it takes to create something like Minecraft or Angry Birds?
A professional videogame can consist of millions of instructions and can require the work hundreds of people. However, you don’t need a lot of instruction to have a lot of fun.
Learning how to program is getting increasingly easy and you can use simple programming languages like Scratch to create your games and to experience the joy of being an inventor rather than just a user.