So you want to make a game

Making games takes a lot of time and effort - but with the tools available in 2015, it’s never been easier. DANIEL HINDES tells you everything you need to know to start thinking about games not as a player, but as a creator.

Interested in making a PC game? That’s cool. So am I! In fact, I started doing so a little over a year ago, with absolutely no experience whatsoever. If you’re in the same position and have no idea where to start, this is the guide for you. But don’t raise your expectations just yet: reading this won’t give you the power to make an entire game right away. It is a long, arduous and often tedious process. But you can do it. I believe in you.

What can you expect to do after reading this, then? You’ll have a starting point. You’ll be set up and ready to go with all the tools you need to begin. You’ll understand on a conceptual level all the elements that make up a basic game, and how they interact with one another. And you’ll get to this point without even having to write a single line of code.

Listening to games

George Lucas is said to have said that ‘Sound is 50 percent of the moviegoing experience’. Which is actually a very silly statement. You can’t divide an experience between two of its contributing factors. Absent sound or absent vision, you’re probably getting just five per cent of the combined experience.

Nonetheless, it captures some essence of not only movie-going, but game playing. Shooting the enemy is enormously more satisfying when there’s a visceral thunk from the sound of your 5.56mm rifle than a mere sketch of what’s happening from some plastic computer speakers. Your game score can even be higher if you can accurately and instantly detect the direction of hostiles from their sound.

Optimize your network

As our lives become more and more reliant on the internet and access to data – so does our expectations to have that data immediately. Streaming media from providers such as iTunes and Netflix has only increased our demand for fast connections. Recent years has seen internet speeds increasing rapidly and we’ve almost hit (some countries have) the point at which your internet connection is just as fast as your home network. This is all good news for the multiplayer gamer as well as the experiences have become larger, more intense and more immersive. Just about every home now has its own network (in one form or another) and most people are looking into how to make it better.

PC cooling guide

Once upon a time cooling was one of the most essential parts of any PC build. Even at stock, enthusiast and gaming hardware tended to push a lot of heat, and if you overclocked your CPU, then you were really asking for it.

I have fond memories of a friend’s high-end gaming system with its side panel off, a desk fan perpetually blowing air into the oven-like interior.

What to look for in a mouse

It’s actually kind of odd that possibly the cheapest piece of kit in your build is the one you rely upon the most, but that’s the nature of the machine interface that has evolved around the PC. CPUs and video cards are still the big drivers of what your PC can do, but they’re out of the way. Your mouse, though, is front and centre, and if you’ve ever used a friend’s PC, or sat down to a strange system at a convention, the time it takes to get used to a new mouse can be catastrophic – using one that is actively bad, or at the least not designed for how you game, can be even worse.

But what makes a good mouse, when it’s such a deeply personal computing peripheral? Well, to help you make the right choice, there are some basic things to look for.

Performance tweaking your PC for games

One of the joys – and frustrations – of being a PC gamer is the ability to tweak and configure our systems. It’s why many of us are so passionate about the PC, and the joy of getting a system zinging is akin to tuning a performance vehicle. The only problem is that there are myriad different ways to tweak your PC, so we’re going to cover some of the basics. Note that this article won’t cover overclocking; you can find that guide elsewhere in this issue. Let’s start with the simple stuff – maintaining the health of your PC.

Gaming CPUs and the rise of DX12

We often refer to the holy trinity of gaming performance here at PC PowerPlay, which pertains to the three major components within your system that will impact on frame rates. Your graphics card is obviously of paramount importance, as it’s tasked with the final steps of the rendering process, and the better your GPU the higher the resolution, anti-aliasing and other graphical effects you can run. System memory is also key, as if the game runs out of memory it’ll have to fetch data from the sluggish hard drive, causing stuttering and slow downs. The final piece of the performance pie is one that is often overlooked – the Central Processing Unit, or CPU. The following article will explain how certain CPU specifications impact game performance, and how the introduction of DX12 is going to unleash its power.