While the age of the dinosaur is over, that doesn’t mean that you can’t build a new one. Dinosaurs are fun. So is building cool interactive 3D games to wow your friends and family.
The graphics and animations available today through WebGL platforms such as d3djs give you almost anything you might want – wings flapping, realistic terrain, or fur realistically bouncing – but what’s under the hood? How do we make 3D games?
What is Game Programming?
It’s a fact that game designers, on occasion, may be asked to do a little game programming.
This comes down to entry-level game designers often switching their positions in teams, and the nature of design teams being very fluid.
It is not unusual for designers to step in and code part of a game, freeing up the game programmers to work on something more complicated. Just as it’s not unusual for game programmers to be consulted during the design process.
Video game programming is the development of software that will become a video game. This means writing each line of code that will eventually create the environment, characters, and actions the user will see on the front end.
C Sharp(C#)
It is another familiar programming language That developers used for creating games.
It is also a multi-paradigm general-purpose programming language and it is also used in several areas.
It is a kind of object-oriented programming language and its developer is Microsoft itself. The file extension of c sharp is .csx.
With the help of this language, various things can be done such as creating web applications, Windows applications, games, etc.
The main advantage of using this programming language within games is the c sharp programming language provides a kind of framework and with the help of this Framework, you can create games very easily.
And it also works in combination with the Unity game engine.
C++
It is a very popular programming language and many developers choose this programming language for making software, web-based applications, and creating games.
It is a kind of general-purpose programming language.https://f4463dd99a6201d762a4ba48aed4161f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
And developers can use these programming languages within several areas.
That it is can be used to develop games for browsers for making operating systems, besides that this language is also used to create graphics, banking applications, databases, compilers, etc.
Most of the game developers choose this C++ programming language for creating games because it is fast and its compilers are very good which will help developers to compile the code very fast.
UnrealScript
One of the revolutionary game programming languages of the past decade, UnrealScript is a native scripting language for the infamous Unreal engine. It supports all major gaming platforms like Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, SteamOS, Android, and PlayStation VR.
The language combines complex features like OOP and multiple inheritances and fueled games like Arkham City, Fortnite, Bioshock, and Devil May Cry. Learning this language is a must if you want to develop your games on the popular Unreal Engine.
Squirrel
A high level, imperative language with object-oriented programming abilities, Squirrel was another the latest game design programming language to learn in 2018. The language itself is influenced by C++ and Lua and aims at solving complex real-time problems that require high levels of bandwidth.
It tackles complicated problems like tail recursion and exception handling in a pragmatic way. The language has been used extensively in popular games like Left 4 Dead, Portal 2, and Counter-Strike.
AMPL
Short for A Mathematical Programming Language, AMPL saw its inception as an algebraic modeling language in the Bell Laboratories during the early 90s. It aims at solving large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems and gives developers the ability to program in numerous paradigms, including linear, quadratic, nonlinear, and second-order cone programming.
AMPL is a cross-platform programming language that was influenced by C and AWK. Games like Wolfenstein and The Evil Within utilize this language for solving numerous boundary problems.
Clipper
A powerful general-purpose programming language, Clipper was initially developed for solving database problems under the MS-DOS platform. It quickly gained traction for solving complex computational problems that include game programming. Clipper was used in building the first game engine to feature the MegaTexture technology and fueled games like Rage and Wolfenstein.
JAVASCRIPT PROGRAMMING
Javascript is a very popular programming language that many game app developers use for making high-quality Android games. Javascript is also used by many popular game engines such as Impact.js, Babylon.js, Cocos2d, Phaser, Unity (the most popular game engine used for making mobile games), and more. In Unity, Javascript is used as a scripting tool and developers write the code to define the behavior of game objects. For example, when there is a 3D player model in the game view, developers write the script in Javascript to make the player move or jump based on triggers such as player interaction, interaction with another object, etc. The scripts are used to define the game logic, state machine, etc. When using Javascript in Unity, developers need to know Unity-specific API in Javascript and familiarity with JavaScript syntax and constructs. Once developers visually layout the game world, they attach all the scripts written in Javascript to game objects, and they have their game ready. Some popular Android games made using Javascript are HexGL, Angry Birds, Bejeweled, and 2048.
KOTLIN PROGRAMMING
Kotlin is a relatively new language and a good alternative to Java. Kotin is a smooth and concise language that allows developers to modify the code more efficiently with less time-to-market. Developers can do problem-solving in fewer lines of code compared to Java which not just saves time but also mitigates the risk of error. Support maintenance needs also go down. Developers are using Kotlin with the LibGdx library to create not just Android games but for cross platforms as well. Apart from Java, Kotlin is the most supported JVM language in the Android ecosystem. Jetbrains, the creator of Kotlin, also created Android Studio for game development to address the pain points of developers. Android Studio is now the standard IDE for Android development. Kotin Android game development has risen to popularity for 100% interoperability with Java and great IDE and tooling support.
Java
Java is one of the most common, in-demand computer programming languages used today.
Owned by Oracle Corporation, this general-purpose programming language with its object-oriented structure has become a standard for applications that can be used regardless of platform (e.g., Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, etc.) because of its Write Once, Run Anywhere (WORA) capabilities. As a result, Java is recognized for its portability across platforms, from mainframe data centers to smartphones. Today there are more than 3 billion devices running applications built with Java.
Java is widely used in web and application development as well as big data. Java is also used on the backend of several popular websites, including Google, Amazon, Twitter, and YouTube. It is also extensively used in hundreds of applications. New Java frameworks like Spring, Struts, and Hibernate are also very popular. With millions of Java developers worldwide, there are hundreds of ways to learn Java. Also, Java programmers have an extensive online community and support each other to solve problems.
Java is a more complex language to learn, but experienced developers with Java coding skills are in high demand. The average Java developer earns around $79,000 each year.
| Level: | Intermediate |
| Skills Needed: | Problem-solving, knowledge of the object-oriented structure |
| Platform: | Web, Mobile, Desktop |
| Popularity Among Programmers: | One of the world’s most popular; high demand |
| Benefits: | Regarded as a good start for learning to think like a programmer and gain coding skills you’ll be able to access/manipulate the most important computer functions, like the file system, graphics, and sound for any fairly sophisticated and modern program that can run on any operating system. |
| Downsides: | Lots of new vocabulary to learn; a higher-level language |
| Degree of Use: | Widely used; highly applicable |
| Annual Salary Projection: | $79,000 |
Java runs on everything, from printers and microwaves to complex video game systems. It is a very dynamic language with lots of applications, making it seem like a good choice to learn.
Java is closely related to C++, so learning the two alongside each other would not be difficult.
Games made with Java
- Tom Clancy’s Politika
- Runescape
- Powder Game
- Star Wars Galaxies
- Roboforge
There are some very good free development tools for Java, such as Eclipse and JBuilder7. I have put information about setting up Eclipse here.
At the moment Java does not have any built-in support for displaying 3D. In order to use a 3D library such as OpenGL, we need a java ‘wrapper’ which has some native code to call OpenGL. There are a number of possibilities:
- Java3D – This is an ‘extension’ to Java, which mean that it is not distributed with java and requires a separate download. Java3D is both a OpenGL or Direct3D wrapper and a scenegraph model. Sun have stopped developing this and its future is in doubt, there is a possibility it may become open source?
- JOGL – This is just an OpenGL wrapper, so it is a much smaller download than Java3D. There is a possibility that in future that it may be distributed with Java.
At the moment there are some downsides to the use of Java for 3D.
- Performance – The JVM is an interpreter, and this slows down performance, Just In Time (JIT) compilation instead of interpreting may help if each part of the code is run many times. For large 3D models, there may also be issues with the memory size required, this has to be setup at runtime. Also the vector and matrix library may not make use of the SIMD instructions built into most computers machine code.
- Distribution – Use of Java3d requires a Java2 virtual machine, most PCs don’t have this, current browsers still use an older JVM. Therefore to download from the web and then run a java application on most PCs would require: download the program, and download Java 2 and download Java3d. The average user would not be prepared to do this.
Therefore Java is relatively easy for the developer, but not very practical for the end-user.
Conclusion
java is a general-purpose programming language, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, and specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. it is intended to let application developers “write once, run anywhere” (WORA), meaning that code that runs on one platform does not need to be recompiled to run on another.