My First Game – Part 2: Game Design

pencil-and-paper

Assuming that you’re a total newbie, then chances are, you would like your first game to be simple and completable — to gauge how much time and effort it takes to make one. And then work your way up from there.

As such, let’s make our first game with the following in mind:

  • Learn the basic HaxeFlixel syntax and techniques
  • Make or use presentable placeholder art
  • Make a complete game which includes a main menu and the game screen
  • Only mouse or only keyboard input.

1242809270906368991Tic_tac_toe

The simplest game I could think of was Tic-Tac-Toe, but I am against that idea because:

  • It’s a game that you can play with pencil and paper in less than 30 seconds.
  • If it’s intended to be a decent game, then you’ll need to write AI (Artificial Intelligence) for it.
  • Regardless of whether it’s versus AI or a friend, the results of the game can get predictable.

2dbcc300-1359-11e4-9d16-0759e16cb1a6_pong-game-screenshot

In my personal experience, I learned that even Pong took a considerable amount of time and effort to complete — so we shall make our very first HaxeFlixel game a Pong clone.

Let’s take a look at what we need for a Pong clone:

  • Paddle
  • Ball
  • Ball bouncing mechanic
  • Player score
  • Player input (left and right side)
  • Restart round when either player wins

Note — HaxeFlixel is able to draw primitive shapes (in this case, rectangles), so there is no need for placeholder images. HaxeFlixel also comes with a decent default font, so there’s no need for custom fonts either.

Another note — For the sake of simplicity and beginner-friendliness of the tutorials, the code written may not be fully optimised. As we progress with more tutorials, we will learn more techniques and clean up code along the way.

In the next post, we will go through a quick project setup for the Pong clone.

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