On: Game Programming Patterns (2014)

[markus_zhang]

My advice is to follow gaming history and reuse engine code as much as possible. Use SDL2 as it is barebone and yet privides you sophisticated tools.

Here is a list of 12 games that I picked because I'm biased towards RPG but you can definitely choose your own wishlist.

Part one: Warm up and basic input, audio and video.

Pong, Snake, Tetris, Breakout, Galaxian, Frogger.

Part Two: Scrolling screen, levels and overall game architecture:

Super Mario, Gradius, Twinbee

Part Three: RPGs which are more or less "complete" games and need some tooling:

Ultima III, Wizardry I Japanese version, Dungeon Master

Part Four: Just keep practicing. You already graduated and can do whatever you want!

Also don't forgrt to read Masters of Doom which will give you tons of inspiration. You can actually walk Carmack's route as well. His first commercial game is an Ultima spin off called Wraith.

[markus_zhang → markus_zhang]

To correct: Carmack's first commercial game is NOT Wraith, but Shadowforge. But the engine is very similar to the one he used to develop Wraith.