Gaming is growing at quite a high pace nowadays, with lockdowns around the world. Mobile gaming usage have been increasing at quite high pace. Moreover with the introduction of cheap smartphones like OPPO, Vivo in countries like India and on the top of that data becoming cheaper day by day, have given a big push to the Gaming Industry. Even Forbes have published a lot about this trend becoming prominent in coming years and newer opportunities which exist in this area. 3 Areas Of The Booming Gaming Industry Ripe For Entrepreneurial Opportunities
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Choosing a Platform to design for
Specifically in the mobile domain there does exist only two operating systems – Android, iOS. Out of these two android occupies almost 75 percent.
So for a Game Developer who is just beginning to learn/develop the games, it would be better to develop for android only and may be learn developing games for iOS later on.
Planning Game Development Project
Even before installing the tools required for Android Game Development, the first thing you need to do is to visualise either in your mind or draw on a piece of paper the design of Game. Here is my specific checklist which I use for Planning a new Game Project –
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Feature List | Make a list of features which you want the game to have. These can be like having multiple gun options or clothes for the player. |
| Breaking down tasks | As the Game Development process involved a number of steps like animation, sound, level design, coding etc. Break down these tasks separately like make checklist for each of this. |
This is a kind of brief plan for Game Development Project, you can start with.
Tools for Android Game Development
Unity
In order to development amazing games for Android Smartphones Unity Game Engine can be used, which provides many features like Creating and destroying Gameobjects, Access the components in a game, Events for different objects in game etc. Curious enough to know more about Unity see Introduction to Unity.
Setting Up Unity On PC
Setting up unity on PC is not that difficult just follow this video –
Making first Android Game in Unity
Android Studio
Android Studio is the “official” tool for Android development, which of course includes Android game development. This tool comes directly from Google and supports Java and Kotlin as the primary programming languages.
Setting up Android Studio on PC
Setting up Android Studio on PC is not that difficult just follow this video –
Making first Android Game in Android Studio
Conclusion
Starting as a total beginner in Game Development is not that difficult task, but after learning all the tools involved it’s very time consuming to make production level games. I’m telling this from my very experience, I’ve developed bunch of games already. Anyway if you want to start in Game Development for Mobile Devices then read this book Mobile Game Development with Unity: Build Once, Deploy Anywhere by Jonathan Manning, Paris Buttfield-Addison.
