Hello.

In my last post I said that, for your fist game, I recommend you to develop a simple one like throwing darts at balloons. To help you achieve that, I list below some video tutorial that shows how to create these simple games. These videos are based on Corona platform, the one that I chose to use. They are also a great opportunity for you to get familiar with all the resources that Corona provides.

Tutorial: Make a game in 8 minutes - Part 2 

Ballon Burst Game - Part 2 by Dr. Rafael Hernandez 

Ballon Burst Game - Part 3 by Dr. Rafael Hernandez 

I hope you enjoy the videos. You can find a lot more on youtube. See you.

Hi all.

First I would like to apologize for disappearing these past weeks. I was finishing a project that was taking all my time.

Today I would like to talk about a subject that I friend asked me: Ideas Generation for games. Obviously this is a super important and complex issue and therefore one post will not be sufficient to talk about all. I'll start with the basics and in the future I will update this post..

To begin, I would like to share a photo I found on the internet (http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2011/05/how-to-get-ideas.html ) about this subject:

Well, the last phrase for me is the best. In fact, some weeks ago I saw a movie and I thought: "Wow, that movie could be a great game".

So, my first advice is: Do not put yourself too focused on finding a big idea. Instead, try to list the characteristics that a great game must have.

Example: Try to understand why Angry birds is a huge success. If you need help, look for it on the internet (here is one link that talks about it).

My second advice is: If you are going to develop your first game, do a simple one.

If you do not have experience in mobile programming, choose a simple game like throwing darts at balloons or something like that. First, you will learn the basics that will need to know in order to develop your big game. Second, you will not have to create zillions of phases in order to launch it in the market.

In my case, I am today developing a Puzzle game. This simple game made me learn about events, image handlers, ...

Well, that is it for today. As I said in the beginning, I will come back to this post in the future to update it, specially due to the knowledge that I gain in this adventure.

See you.

In my last technical post, I talked about the programming languages required for each mobile system. I said that if you want to develop a game (or app) for iOS system, you would need to program using Objetive-C and if you target Andoid, you would need to use Java. If you are ok with that, you just need to download the respective IDE (Integrated development environment) and start programming. Find below some IDEs that you can use:

• For iOS development: you need to use the X-Code IDE
  
• For Android development: There are several available. One of them is called Eclipse.
  

If you want to know more about the IDEs avaliable, just google "IDE for Android" for example.

For those who do not want to write two codes for the same game/app, there is an alternative called Development Platform (or also called Cross-Development Platforms). These platforms allow you to write a single code and the platform makes the necessary work to build you game/app in the desired final system (iOS, Android, Windows Phone,...). There are a lot of these platforms and if you want a list of them, just google it. Find below some of platforms that I investigated when I was choosing the one that I would use.

Unity
Pros: Great platform for 3d development; One time license fee
Cons: Required extra effort to configure for 2d development

Corona
Pros: Very easy to use and t program; Focus on 2d games
Cons: License fee is annual

Ethanon
Pros: Very robust platform for heavy image games; Free
Cons: Not easy to program (require similar C++ programming language knowledge)

I chose Corona to develop my games. A recent survey published by Game Developer magazine with mobile game developers found that 53.1% use Unity, 39.8% use a custom engine, 17.7% use Cocos2D, 5.3% use Marmalade and 5.3% use Corona (the number don't sum up 100% because one developer can use more than one platform). You can find the article about the survey here.

Any question or if you want to add some info, feel free to post a comment.