Opening the door to the world of developers...

    In today's world, video game development is one of the largest parts of the entertainment industry.

The scale of the gaming industry is comparable to the film industry, for example. Furthermore, in terms of growth rate over the past five years, the video game industry has significantly outpaced it.

However, in the world a very small number of universities or other educational facilities train specialists directly in this field (for the gaming industry) - there are different developers, but they are not focused specifically on the development of computer games. In Russia, for example, there is the only educational program, which prepares personnel for the gaming industry; it is called Management of Internet gaming projects.

As the game industry is very developing, our team also decided to try ourselves in this sphere. So, what do we need first? The idea! In the beginning as with any project, an idea was born. The concept is to create a 2d topdown western shooter with pixel art graphics.

What should we do to create our software? Firstly, of course, we need to establish good communication in our team. After this we can start our work without worries. By the way, this point is done and the atmosphere in our team is positive.

So, the next step is brainstorming discussions, where goals, tasks, priorities should be set, and the work on the project is divided equally among all. We've already made our first sprint, where we have the most burning tasks. For example, on the first step we should choose a game engine and come up with a design (at least with a draft version).

By the way, during the development of our software, we have the following big tasks:

• game engine programming;

• development of a graphics engine, integration of models, textures (game design);

• integration of music, sound effects;

• gameplay development (any interactive interactions);

• development of game scenarios - triggers and reactions of the game world to the player's actions;

• adaptation for input devices - working with a keyboard, mouse and gamepad;

• development of network communications (a game on a local network and the Internet) - feature which comes as a bonus and will be integrated if we have time/sources/etc.

After long hours of work, testing enters into force - it is an obligatory and important step. This phase is intended for looking for bugs, checking the quality and compliance of the project with the declared concept.

Even after testing, the work of the project does not end, although the developers have almost done their part. When the product is ready for release, there is licensing, marketing, distribution... Nevertheless, it is still too early for us to think about all these things, because we are on the first steps and the most interesting is only ahead.