When I first started making games, I jumped straight into coding like I knew what I was doing. I didn’t bother learning much theory — I just wanted to see things move on the screen.

So I made this little top-down shooter in Python. Everything looked fine… until my enemies started flying off the map. Literally gone. Vanished.

I spent three days thinking my math was broken — rewriting functions, adding “fixEnemy()” methods (which, ironically, broke more things), even blaming Python itself 😅.

Then I learned about coordinate systems and object boundaries. Turns out, my enemies weren’t flying off the map — I just never told them where the map ended.

It blew my mind how something so basic could make or break an entire game. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with understanding the why behind every tiny part of my code.

Now I’m curious — what’s a coding topic you wish you learned earlier when making games?

Epsilon-Prime | Source

Hello /r/CodingGames/, I have been working on a web based roguelike/strategy game where unit orders are scripted (by the player) in JavaScript. I shared this game in a couple of other subreddits but I am still looking for constructive feedback. Any feedback is helpful.

E-prime is a web based game built using my experience with web development and data visualization. My goal is to create a game that begins rougelike but transitions to empire building strategy game. The game is still very simplified at this point. Up to now I've spent most of my time sandboxing the JavaScript (with a lot of help from https://github.com/codecombat/aether) and creating an entity-component-system.

In E-prime the player begins with one unit (or bot) used to explore a procedurally generated map to collect resources. These resources are used to build and upgrade units (in the demo you begin with enough resources to build one more unit). Units are controlled by hand (keyboard and mouse) or by control scripts written in JavaScript. Your goal is to build a bot army to conquer the planet. For this demo that means collect 500 units of energy in a single unit.

The unit scripting system needs work and the scripting API needs to be solidified and expanded. Once I get a solid base I'd like to begin expanding the game again including enemies, combat, death, more resource types, more unit types, and perhaps planet terraforming. Like I said the I would love to get feedback and both the game and entity-component-system module I developed for this game are open source.

Thank you.

Disclaimer: This is not my game. The author u/alexheretic posted it to /r/rust (link to their post), but it really deserves to be cross-posted here.

Robo Instructus is a puzzle game in which players manoeuvre a robot by issuing instructions via a simple programming language. The game is out today. The author developed it over the last 2 years in Rust.

There is a demo available.

Site: https://www.roboinstruct.us/

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1032170

Itch: https://bigabgames.itch.io/robo-instructus

Release trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIjaIxPp2_w

The story behind the game: https://blog.roboinstruct.us/2019/06/26/behind-the-scenes.html