I'm sure a lot of you out there have played video games, but have you wondered what it takes to make them?
There's animation, sprites, scenes, and lots of state management happening underneath the hood of your favorite video games. Many of the most beloved games out there had entire teams of artists and programmers working to bring their creation to the masses.
But what if you're just one person? Can you still make a compelling game? What if you don't know Unity, C#, or C++? What if you only know JavaScript?
Fortunately, JavaScript makes for a perfectly fine tool for the job.
So join us this week in learning about JavaScript game development this week with Alex Hrybyk, aka SharpFives. Alex was one of the winners of Github's 2019 Game Jam with his game The Gems.
Go ahead and play it! It's JavaScript, so you can play in your browser. We'll wait.
...
Pretty awesome right? Alex wrote the story, music, code, and created all the art for The Gems as well as his other games. Better yet, he has no professional experience in game design or programming, which is pretty encouraging in our opinion. Listen to this week's episode to hear how Alex works his magic!
About this week's guest:
Alex Hrybyk is a software engineer of 12 years with a background in signal processing/electrical engineering. While his primary languages/focuses are C++/Matlab/Python, he recently got into game development using the Phaser framework with Javascript and Typescript. This led him to take a great interest in web technologies in general as well as Docker and Kubernetes. He also has a ton of other hobbies aside from game development - including brewing beer, woodworking, and writing music.
Show Notes
- 0:00 - Hello
- 1:14 - Alex intro
- 4:12 - Guitar tuner
- 5:11 - Mat Lab
- 6:02 - How did you get into game development
- 7:01 - Did you fine game dev easy to pick up and why JS
- 9:23 - Did you have experience in game development
- 12:08 - Will Phaser let you use a controller
- 12:42 - How do you organize a Phaser project
- 15:02 - State management
- 16:38 - Mix ins
- 17:12 - Using Typescript
- 18:26 - Phaser 3
- 20:13 - Webpack
- 21:10 - Learning Game Development
- 22:57 - Did you try making a game with just HTML and JS
- 23:55 - Using Phaser vs writing gaming api from scratch
- 25:59 - How many games has sharpFives made
- 27:24 - Game and Pixel art
- 31:07 - Getting started with Pixel art
- 32:12 - Making game maps
- 34:34 - Creating the map
- 35:17 - Animating sprites
- 37:23 - Music in the games
- 43:27 - Advice for people wanting to get into game dev
- 48:20 - Should you start with making your own assets
- 49:38 - What was the first style of game you started with
- 50:37 - Phaser 4
- 51:37 - What game is sharpFives working on now
- 52:42 - Where can people find his games
- 54:08 - Can Phaser do 3D
- 55:00 - What is a shader
- 55:02 - Where do you start when building a new game
- 57:48 - Nerd Minute
- 58:06 - Brewing Beer
- 59:56 - Lee Brewing Beer
- 1:07:00 - Downwell
- 1:10:00 - Animal crossing
- 1:11:42 - Stone story rpg
- 1:12:56 - Outro