Getting Started
To participate in the competition you can either join a team, or if you have an idea for a game, suggest it on one of the forums and find some team mates.
One option is to post on GP32x Job Office to find team members, or offer to join someone who is requesting your abilities. Watch your local forum or post to get a discussion going.
Another option is to ask on IRC. Here are a few channels dedicated to the different platforms.
- #OpenPandora on freenode
- #Dingoonity on freenode
- #Wizdev on efnet
- #gp2x.de on efnet (German).
- #gp2xdev on EFnet
- #gdn on mibbit
Tools and Tutorials
Here is a small list of options if you would like to make a game for one of the consoles:
- LÖVE, also called Love2D, is a very nice free 2D game engine which you script using Lua. It is well suited for making games quickly. There is a port for Caanoo and Dingoo available.
- BennuGD is a free game development suite, available for all the platforms. It uses a high level language which is quick and easy to learn. See the BennuGD wiki for help getting started.
- GLBasic is available for Wiz and Pandora. It does not seem to support Caanoo yet. It is not free, but if you are used to BASIC, it might be a very good option. It also allows you to easily make 3D games (video).
- Penjin is a game-engine written in C++ and SDL by community member PokeParadox, compiles for Pandora, Wiz and Dingoo. Look at the Penjin documentation on how to get started.
- Python + PyGame is an option currently only available for Pandora, but is highly praised by many developers for its easy and flexible language. Watch this space for Caanoo progress.
- HTML 5 can be used on the Pandora
- Of course, you can stick to plain old C++ and SDL, which is available for all platforms. For hardware accelerated rendering, OpenGL ES is available for Caanoo, Pandora and Wiz. And GPH own engine DGE is available in their official SDK for Caanoo and Wiz.
There are not many options for going 3D except GLBasic and low-level OpenGL ES. If you know any other ways to develop 3D games, please let us know. And as always, if you get stuck, ask! ask! ask! That is what forums are for.
Motivation
It is a good idea to discuss with your team what your individual expectations and level of commitment are. Get it out in the open, so that you know what you can expect from your team members.
Another very important practice is: Build early, build often!
I cannot stress that enough. Ask any game producer. Not only to find bugs, but it will show progress, and motivate the members of the team to work on the game. A programmer will get a motivation boost every time his crappy placeholder graphics gets replaced with something which (to him) looks awesome.
The same goes for artists. It is very motivating for an artist to see his work come alive. Building often will give the team an incentive to continue, and keep moral high.
And finally, everyone loves feedback. Share screenshots, tech-demos or videos of your project as it is coming along and get the community involved. It both motivates the team as well as gives more focus to the competition, maybe even motivating more people to join.
Good luck.
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