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Ask HN: Switching from application development to games development?

Senior developer with 7 years experience developing software for web and mobile. I've read up plenty on how to begin a career in games programming from college/university to junior, mid etc. However I haven't found anything about developers wishing to cross from application to games or vice-versa. Since I was young I have modified games, from simple things like INI files in C&C to fullscale modding in military simulation games. My interests would be more on logic and scripting (FSMs, triggers, levelling etc) My weaknesses are definitely complex maths, memory management (Java guy) and networking. I had thought about getting into a games dev as an application developer and then working my way to internally work on a game engine. Tech (2 years C++, 6 years Java, 7 years Javascript, 2 years Kotlin) Interested to hear on suggestions. note: I am building a portfolio for the new year.

Townley 8y ago
Unity is an excellent place to start. I took this Udemy course on Unity to get started, and enjoyed it quite a bit. https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse2/learn/v4/overview https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse2/learn/v4/overview. The coding parts go by a bit too slowly if you can stare at a C# function and get the gist despite not knowing C#, but the graphical portions are exciting. Meanwhile, if videos or paid courseware aren't your thing, I've seen several great free tutorials online. I was also helped out by a casual background in Blender (from 3D printing and modeling) so messing around with Blender is a great to wrap your head around asset creation, rigging for animation, and scene design. If you end up liking Blender a lot, there's a python scripting engine you can use for designing the entire game with Blender (personally I prefer the whole-package experience within Unity more, despite being a Python developer by day). Once you're decent in Unity, it's a pretty employable skill and you could get a job working in game development or with something else (interactives for museums, flight training module design, and web interactives are all examples of fields where friends use Unity). That could be a good way to get paid to learn. Finally, consider the non-technical skills necessary to create a game (particularly in a small studio). Music, artwork, storyboarding, UI design, etc are all important parts of the process, particularly at a smaller studio that may not have teams of teams to handle every little task. Picking up a few of those can't hurt, and will be necessary if you'd like to make games for yourself.
leowoo91 8y ago
Regardless of you want to code your engine from scratch, I recommend you to watch at least 1 Unity training video, that will reveal the current state of the industry.

Townley 8y ago

Unity is an excellent place to start. I took this Udemy course on Unity to get started, and enjoyed it quite a bit. https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse2/learn/v4/overview https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse2/learn/v4/overview. The coding parts go by a bit too slowly if you can stare at a C# function and get the gist despite not knowing C#, but the graphical portions are exciting. Meanwhile, if videos or paid courseware aren't your thing, I've seen several great free tutorials online. I was also helped out by a casual background in Blender (from 3D printing and modeling) so messing around with Blender is a great to wrap your head around asset creation, rigging for animation, and scene design. If you end up liking Blender a lot, there's a python scripting engine you can use for designing the entire game with Blender (personally I prefer the whole-package experience within Unity more, despite being a Python developer by day). Once you're decent in Unity, it's a pretty employable skill and you could get a job working in game development or with something else (interactives for museums, flight training module design, and web interactives are all examples of fields where friends use Unity). That could be a good way to get paid to learn. Finally, consider the non-technical skills necessary to create a game (particularly in a small studio). Music, artwork, storyboarding, UI design, etc are all important parts of the process, particularly at a smaller studio that may not have teams of teams to handle every little task. Picking up a few of those can't hurt, and will be necessary if you'd like to make games for yourself.

leowoo91 8y ago

Regardless of you want to code your engine from scratch, I recommend you to watch at least 1 Unity training video, that will reveal the current state of the industry.