Ask HN: How to learn game development skills?

There are certainly associated technical skills that can be taught effectively, where there’s a definite right and wrong technique. There’s also analysis, where you take an existing work and figure out how it produces the effect it does. That’s also teachable and can provide a font of inspiration of things to try, but there’s a world of difference between knowing why something works and being able to pull off the same trick yourself.

Beyond that, most classes in creative disciplines seem to be primarily a bunch of prompts to get the students to make lots of different things, and exercise their creativity.

Here is an example path that builds skills on top of each other, mostly geared towards programming, based on the background info you provided:

1. Create Tic Tac Toe. This will get you familiar with the core game loop. Read input, update game state, draw, repeat. It is a bounded project so you can finish it. Finishing projects is a skill on its own. If you want to use C or C++ have a look at Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) or Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML). These libraries abstract OS functions like reading inputs and putting pixels on the screen so you can focus on the core game mechanics. If you want to use Python look at PyGame, for example. The industry mostly uses C++ with Visual Studio so keep that in mind if you want to join a company later on. Here you can find some tutorials on SDL: http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/index.php

2. Create Pong or Breakout or any such 2D game with familiar mechanics. Then asteroids. Then battle city. Then super mario land. Each of these on its own teaches you a skill that you didn't have before. If you find yourself repeating the same code, abstract it away. This is the beginning of a game engine - a small framework of reusable components from game to game.

3. Once you have done enough 2D projects that you feel like you have a good grip on most components individually and how they come together as a whole, move on to 3D. Read Game Engine Architecture. Read good open source game code like the doom3 http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php Create small graphics demos where you can learn how to use shaders - shaderToy is helpful here. Create 3D Tetris.

4. By this point you will know enough about games to be dangerous. You will know what is most interesting to you. Maybe it's AI, or graphics, or physics, etc. Create demos and games that showcase that field you are really interested in. Try and partner up with people with complementary skills to yours.

There are many ways to learn game development, the one I'd recommend the most is the one that seems most interesting to you and gets you actually creating and finishing games.

To that end I'd recommend some non-computery game design too. Research dice games and card games, design and history. Design a dice game. Then make a card game or two. Test them out with friends and relatives. Make iterations of that game. Sketch out a board game.

This may be more the scope of a game producer, and if one works on a large game others will be managing the mechanics, but most everyone that works on computer based games also loves gaming in general. And it's going to be a miserable time being the only one on a team (if someone one got the job) that doesn't play games in general.