I am new to app coding, heck I'm even new to programming (just used some MATLAB in school) and I am paying and learning all these new software tools trying to code apps. I have a really specific idea in mind already, and it's an interactive gaming app, nothing major just an offline simple game to kill time. But I want to know from where I am , which software would be best for me to learn in order to develop an gaming app ? I don't mind hard work, what I mind if going off track or learning things that I don't really need to...
In my case , I chose Html5 with javascript and css and I made a lot of apps in Google play search my name banjerd in google play if you want to see search banjerd black white for my latest game
I used Unity3d a lot for game dev. It is really easy to pick up and is 3D too. You can build apps with them along with full game programs to run on systems and pcs. The code is in JavaScript and C# both at the same time and they have a great community to support issues. And the best its free! https://unity3d.com/
I have heard that unity3d is good for game development. But I also have seen a question from one new developer about the speed issue when he compiled and installed the game in the real phone it performed purely , low frame rate,lagging in response. The phone was a decent model,I cannot exactly remember the model but I know it is better than mine. Do you know ,why? I am now developing a game with crafty.js libary, It works fine ,fast response ,no lagging in my mediocre phone. The problem with crafty.js is that the community is still small ,help may be hard to find you have to have good knowledge about javascript by yourself to fix the problems.
Unity is really designed for 3d games for pc and systems. It just supports phone apps. If you dont take precautions and use smaller graphics, have fewer items running in the background too. So some would try a direct port from a pc to a phone and that wont do. Unity has a lot of heavy libs running which are not really needed on a phone. So you can disable them.
I am currently on team tree house learning android studio, after a while it just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere with what I really want to do. so is unity3d itself the software I can get started right away as a newbie? or do I need to learn some more java/C# prior to unity 3d?
Yes unity is its own software and game engine. You can learn JavaScript and C# while starting it. You can keep things pretty simple because you assign a gameobject say a lamp a script either written in JS or C# which controls the game object. So It is really nice for building one object and then reusing tha object over and over again.
It depends on what you are running in your game. If there are few objects with two are three scripts attached to them, then there wouldn't really be a problem. But if your running a pretty harsh AI with them or making a lot of physic calculation or using a lot of sprites for visual effects. Then like all computers the more that is running the more it will slow a phone down. That is where mobile development differs from pc dev. Look at angry birds for example, not much is really running in the game. Simple physics, a few game objects nothing over 30 or so objects each with just a few logic scripts that they adhere to. It is a very simple game. Once you start into the 3D world, this makes things a bit harder for dev on phones. 3D needs a lot of resources and will put a strain on you phones graphics which will slow things down. If I remember correctly Unity has a option to kind of flatten objects to more of a 2d rather than 3d object but give the look of 3d games. Not 100% on that I have never really touched on that part of unity before. A point and click adventure game from unity would work really well on a phone. It would be easy to build and port because once the scene is loaded then the interaction will be small calculations for the computer./phone.
