Handmade Hero - Learn how to make a complete, professional-quality game from scratch. #1
Handmade Hero is an ambitious, long-term project by veteran game programmer Casey Muratori (@cmuratori), founder and owner of Molly Rocket, Inc. He previously worked for RAD Game Tools and created the Granny Animation SDK, an animation pipeline system that is used in thousands of games, including some recent big ones like Bungie's Destiny. He also helped develop Bink 2 (the latest version of the most popular video codec for games), which is used in even more games than Granny. Most recently, he helped out with The Witness, Jonathan Blow's upcoming open-world puzzle-exploration game. Thousands of experienced programmers have put their stamp of approval on his code, so you know he's the real deal. He also writes fiction books and does a weekly podcast. To learn more about Casey and his other projects, go to
http://mollyrocket.com/casey/about.html.
So, what is Handmade Hero?
Handmade Hero is a project to create a complete, professional-quality game from scratch. Casey will write all of the code and explain all of the code. There will be no use of existing game engines or third-party libraries. Almost the entire game will be written in 'C' and he'll even write code in assembly language (exciting stuff!). The best part is that this won't be a simple game (like Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, etc.) that is tailored to teach fundamental programming principles. Instead, it will be a fairly complex game that is designed to teach people how to program well and eventually develop a relatively sizable, cross-platform codebase. And all of it will be streamed live on Twitch and archived on YouTube.
Who is this for?
The goal of Handmade Hero is to help the next generation of game programmers learn how to program well. Most programming resources on the Internet are lacking, in terms of both quality and comprehensiveness (especially when it comes to games). And some can be downright dangerous, as they encourage questionable programming methodologies that can lead to habits that are difficult to outgrow. Handmade Hero is for people who want a thorough understanding of how games work at the lowest level. How do you make a window appear on the screen? How are graphics rendered? How does audio work? What about animation? What in the world is a game loop? All of these questions, and more, will be answered during this journey.
"Okay, I'm in. Let's do this! Wait...where do I start?"
First thing's first. Here's the Handmade Hero website and Twitter. Development on the game proper won't begin until November 17th, and even then most of the early work will consist of dealing with the minimum required stuff you have to do to get a game running on Windows. After that, most, if not all, of the code will be portable across any platform that can compile C. Later, Casey will cover other platform-specific things as needed.
"Do I need any programming experience to follow along?"
It depends. This is a question you have to answer yourself. Casey has already started an "Intro to C on Windows" series to test his streaming setup. Here's the first video and Q&A session. Decide for yourself if he's going at a speed that you can keep up with.
This is directly from Casey: https://twitter.com/handmade_hero/st...52546585169920. With enough self-study and practice, you should be able to follow along. C is a relatively easy language to learn and games don't require insanely complicated algorithms most of the time. You usually only come across that stuff when dealing with 3D graphics and physics. Either way, just watch some of the early videos to get a sense of whether or not it's something you can handle. And if you can't right now, no problem, since you can always come back to it later!
I think what Casey is doing is amazing. Most game developers are too busy working on their own games to take out the time needed for a project as ambitious as Handmade Hero. And you can't really fault them for wanting to focus on their own careers. Which is why it's doubly amazing that he's doing something like this. If you're still not convinced that this is the best thing ever, then I will leave you with what is easily the best announcement trailer of 2014.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=932680 credit goes to Abdul Hafeez of Neogaf.
Handmade Hero is an ambitious, long-term project by veteran game programmer Casey Muratori (@cmuratori), founder and owner of Molly Rocket, Inc. He previously worked for RAD Game Tools and created the Granny Animation SDK, an animation pipeline system that is used in thousands of games, including some recent big ones like Bungie's Destiny. He also helped develop Bink 2 (the latest version of the most popular video codec for games), which is used in even more games than Granny. Most recently, he helped out with The Witness, Jonathan Blow's upcoming open-world puzzle-exploration game. Thousands of experienced programmers have put their stamp of approval on his code, so you know he's the real deal. He also writes fiction books and does a weekly podcast. To learn more about Casey and his other projects, go to
http://mollyrocket.com/casey/about.html.
So, what is Handmade Hero?
Handmade Hero is a project to create a complete, professional-quality game from scratch. Casey will write all of the code and explain all of the code. There will be no use of existing game engines or third-party libraries. Almost the entire game will be written in 'C' and he'll even write code in assembly language (exciting stuff!). The best part is that this won't be a simple game (like Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, etc.) that is tailored to teach fundamental programming principles. Instead, it will be a fairly complex game that is designed to teach people how to program well and eventually develop a relatively sizable, cross-platform codebase. And all of it will be streamed live on Twitch and archived on YouTube.
Who is this for?
The goal of Handmade Hero is to help the next generation of game programmers learn how to program well. Most programming resources on the Internet are lacking, in terms of both quality and comprehensiveness (especially when it comes to games). And some can be downright dangerous, as they encourage questionable programming methodologies that can lead to habits that are difficult to outgrow. Handmade Hero is for people who want a thorough understanding of how games work at the lowest level. How do you make a window appear on the screen? How are graphics rendered? How does audio work? What about animation? What in the world is a game loop? All of these questions, and more, will be answered during this journey.
"Okay, I'm in. Let's do this! Wait...where do I start?"
First thing's first. Here's the Handmade Hero website and Twitter. Development on the game proper won't begin until November 17th, and even then most of the early work will consist of dealing with the minimum required stuff you have to do to get a game running on Windows. After that, most, if not all, of the code will be portable across any platform that can compile C. Later, Casey will cover other platform-specific things as needed.
"Do I need any programming experience to follow along?"
It depends. This is a question you have to answer yourself. Casey has already started an "Intro to C on Windows" series to test his streaming setup. Here's the first video and Q&A session. Decide for yourself if he's going at a speed that you can keep up with.
This is directly from Casey: https://twitter.com/handmade_hero/st...52546585169920. With enough self-study and practice, you should be able to follow along. C is a relatively easy language to learn and games don't require insanely complicated algorithms most of the time. You usually only come across that stuff when dealing with 3D graphics and physics. Either way, just watch some of the early videos to get a sense of whether or not it's something you can handle. And if you can't right now, no problem, since you can always come back to it later!
I think what Casey is doing is amazing. Most game developers are too busy working on their own games to take out the time needed for a project as ambitious as Handmade Hero. And you can't really fault them for wanting to focus on their own careers. Which is why it's doubly amazing that he's doing something like this. If you're still not convinced that this is the best thing ever, then I will leave you with what is easily the best announcement trailer of 2014.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=932680 credit goes to Abdul Hafeez of Neogaf.
