“Author of the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), Sam Lantinga,
and Lauren MacDonell kick off the first of a series of
articles in which they will document the process of designing
and building a game, Pirates Ho!, for Linux from scratch. In this
installment, the authors explain how they began the conceptual
process for the game.”
“It all started one Sunday afternoon driving home from Stockton
along Interstate 5. Just south of Santa Nella we began discussing
the possibility of writing our own computer game. The idea had been
inspired by a request for a series of articles on using SDL in game
development, of which this will be the first. Having had little
experience in actual game development, we figured the only way to
say anything intelligent and useful about the process would be to
go through it ourselves and document its various stages. What
follows is a summary of the preliminary steps that we have taken
and some suggestions based on what we’ve learned so far about game
development.”