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How Games Work

November 4, 2023
August 31, 2015

How games mechanics works, game design and how to make games, apart from rendering

computer-graphics-software

The Way Games Work - YouTube by ClanOfTheGrayWolf
How Games Work - YouTube by TheHappieCat
Bitwise - YouTube DigiDigger

Gaming Topics - YouTube - YouTube
GamesWithGabe - YouTube
Nick Maltbie - YouTube
Alan Zucconi - YouTube Game Development, Artificial Intelligence, Shader Coding & Retrocomputing
GDC - YouTube
GDC Vault
Warbot - YouTube
gameranx - YouTube
Gamker 攻壳 - YouTube

Extra Credits - YouTube previously on Extra History channel
Extra Credits (ALL EPISODES) - YouTube
Extra Credits: Making Your First Game - YouTube
Because Games Matter - Tales of Games Improving People's Lives - YouTube
Extra Credits: Games and the LawExtra Credits: Games and the Law - YouTube
Extra Credits: Games in Education - YouTube
Extra Credits: Games You Might Not Have Tried - YouTube
Extra Credits: Game Community - YouTube
Extra Credits: Game Design - YouTube
Extra Credits: Game Careers - YouTube
Extra Credits: Game Industry - YouTube

Game Maker's Toolkit - YouTube
The 3 Types of Detective Game - YouTube
Tech Toolbox for Game Programmers - YouTube
Zenva Academy – Trusted by +1 million learners. Learn coding, game creation, AI and digital skills.

utilForever/game-developer-roadmap: Roadmap to becoming a game developer in 2022
The 2018 Game Developer Roadmap – codeburst

Game Development Tutorials
GameFromScratch.com – Game Development News, Tutorials and More
Gamefromscratch - YouTube
Game Dev Guide - YouTube mostly on Unity
DigiDigger - YouTube

BorisTheBrave.Com
Learn .NET Game Development | Free tutorials, courses, videos, and more

Game Developer
Game Dev News, Tutorials & Interviews - The GameAnalytics Blog
The road to video game hell • Eurogamer.net
Game development resources - The MagPi MagazineThe MagPi Magazine
GameFromScratch.com – Game Development News, Tutorials and More

KidsCanCode - YouTube PyGame, Godot, algorithms
Digital Foundry - YouTube analysis on game engine, rendering techniques and hardware
Gamefromscratch - YouTube
Game Programming Tutorials - YouTube freeCodeCamp.org
Table Flip Games - YouTube
Retro Game Mechanics Explained - YouTube

Nintendo Switch Cartridges Are Not Cartridges - YouTube cartridge in the original sense is the memory

Game Design

Gamasutra - Game Design Deep Dives

Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games - YouTube of Kirby and Super Smash Bros. fame
Marshall McGee - YouTube sound elements
RealityEscape - YouTube many on game genre
Ceave Perspective - YouTube
Curious Archive - YouTube

GDQuest - YouTube
Game design tutorial - YouTube

Good Game Design - Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy - YouTube
Why PS1 and N64 Games Were Different - YouTube
Cursed Problems in Game Design - YouTube conflict between promises
Gaming For A Non-Gamer - YouTube Razbuten and the lady he lives with
The Power of Invisible Choices - YouTube
Why Breath of the Wild’s Great Plateau Is Gaming’s Greatest Tutorial | Art of the Level - YouTube
How to Keep Players Engaged (Without Being Evil) - YouTube

Design Doc - YouTube
Good Design, Bad Design - YouTube

Tears of the Kingdom - An Incredible Game That Annoyed Me To No End. - YouTube good game, bad interface

10 Illusions Video Games Create to LIE TO YOU - YouTube
10 Things Video Games Use To TRICK YOUR BRAIN - YouTube
10 HACKS Game Makers Use To TRICK YOUR BRAIN - YouTube

How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games - Nautilus Magazine - Medium
Watch 30 People Play Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1 | Ars Technica Video | CNE

Squeezing more juice out of your game design! - GameAnalytics

Theory of Fun – Raph's Website
A Game Design Legend Revisits His Theory of Fun
Summary + PDF: A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster | Allen Cheng

Game Genre

What Makes Tower Defence Games Good? - YouTube
What Makes "Clicker Games" Good? - YouTube idle game, ascension -> rouge-like, mobile games

Stanley Parable

How To Make Your Game Just Completely Hilarious: The Stanley Parable - YouTube
別玩這款遊戲! 你可能會被「控制」好幾年!〖遊戲不止〗 - YouTube

Game Animation

New Frame Plus - YouTube
Video Game Animation Study - YouTube

The Animation of Guilty Gear Xrd & Dragon Ball FighterZ - YouTube 2.5D fighter
GuiltyGearXrd's Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D - YouTube

Animation Bootcamp: An Indie Approach to Procedural Animation - YouTube
Giving Personality to Procedural Animations using Math - YouTube

Rollback Netcode

Rollback Netcode Explained
What Is Rollback Netcode and Why Is It So Important For Fighting Games?
What is Rollback Netcode in fighting games? - GamesHub

Conversation System

Behind the Scenes of the Cinematic Dialogues in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - YouTube
GDC Vault - Behind the Scenes of Cinematic Dialogues in 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt'

What Happened with Mass Effect Andromeda’s Animation? - YouTube
How to Direct a Dialogue Scene - YouTube

Procedural Generation

algorithm#Perlin noise

how are massive game environments made? - YouTube

A new way to generate worlds - YouTube
wave function collapse for specifics, Perlin noise for the category

Procedural Terrain Generation - YouTube

THIS is how Minecraft Works 💎⛏️ - YouTube
Reinventing Minecraft world generation by Henrik Kniberg - YouTube

Consoles

Super NES Features - YouTube
Game Console Operating Systems | This Does Not Compute Podcast #37 - YouTube

"Game Development in Eight Bits" by Kevin Zurawel - YouTube

Physics

Gaffer on Games | Game Physics

Math for Game Programmers: Building a Better Jump - YouTube
Math for Game Programmers: Understanding Homogeneous Coordinates - YouTube
Valve's Physics for Game Programmers - YouTube

How Do Ragdoll Physics Work In Video Games? - YouTube
How Ragdoll Physics Works! - YouTube

Math for Game Developers - YouTube

Gamasutra: Tristan Jung's Blog - How Do Bullets Work in Video Games?

How Bullets Work in Video Games - ExtremeTech
How Do Bullets Work In Video Games? - YouTube

Bullet

Bullet Real-Time Physics Simulation | Home of Bullet and PyBullet: physics simulation for games, visual effects, robotics and reinforcement learning.
PyBullet Quickstart Guide - Google Docs
bulletphysics/bullet3: Bullet Physics SDK: real-time collision detection and multi-physics simulation for VR, games, visual effects, robotics, machine learning etc. the core C++ engine

Non-Euclidean

How do non-euclidean games work? | Bitwise - YouTube
How do Non Euclidean Games Work? | Prime Reacts - YouTube

My brain wasn't ready for Non-Euclidean gaming... - YouTube
Non-Euclidean Geometry Explained - Hyperbolica Devlog #1 - YouTube
"No! Euclid!" GPU Ray Tracer gets an upgrade! - YouTube

Portals to Non-Euclidean Geometries - YouTube
Non-Euclidean Worlds Engine - YouTube

Input

Game design tips - Better inputs
The Way Games Work - NES Zapper - YouTube

How WASD became the standard PC control scheme | PC Gamer

AI

AI and Games - YouTube

How Does VIDEO GAME AI Work? - YouTube
Most "AI" in games are actually "Dynamic Game Difficult Balancing"

How "Smart" AI (Basically) Works in Games (Goal Oriented Action Planning) - YouTube 2016
Goal-Oriented Action Planning: Ten Years of AI Programming - YouTube 2017
Combat AI for Action-Adventure Games Tutorial [Unity/C#] [GOAP] - YouTube

Balancing

Analysis: Why We Should Buff More Than Nerf - YouTube
Buffs and Nerfs are not for balancing the game, but to make it more fun to play and watch
Medium Maximization: The propensity to forget all about the end goal one wants to achieve, and to pursue instead, the means or mediums to that end goal.

Perfect Imbalance - Why Unbalanced Design Creates Balanced Play - Extra Credits - YouTube
A perfectly balanced game is not fun to play as the player have to level up themselves to execute the commands efficiently

Sample Projects

Creating a Mario style platformer in python with Pygame [and pirates] - YouTube

Creating a Zelda style game in Python [with some Dark Souls elements] - YouTube

Pokémon JavaScript Game Tutorial with HTML Canvas - YouTube

Middling of Games

为什么游戏越来越不好玩了 - YouTube

同質化, 換皮
手游, in-game payment

Free to Play

Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play - YouTube
The Tech Industry’s War on Kids - Richard Freed - Medium
5 Psychological Tricks in Free-To-Play Games (and How to Avoid Them)

Digital Right Management

Dungeon Master - Clever Floppy Disk Anti-Piracy | MVG - YouTube
Spyro Had One of the Coolest Anti-Piracy Measures Ever | Tech Rules - YouTube
10 Super Anti-Piracy Measures & Traps in Video Games! - YouTube

How Capcom's clever CPS2 Arcade Game Copy Protection stopped bootleg games | MVG - YouTube

Clever Anti Piracy on the Super Nintendo | MVG - YouTube
Super Nintendo Games with Anti-Piracy - Part 2 | MVG - YouTube

How the Sony Playstation Portable PSP Security was defeated | MVG - YouTube
How a Terrible Game Cracked the 3DS's Security - Early Days of 3DS Hacking - YouTube

How the Nintendo GameCube Security was defeated | MVG - YouTube

Sony's Clever but Flawed PlayStation Copy Protection--And How They Might Have Fixed It - YouTube
How the Sony Playstation 2 Security Was Defeated | MVG - YouTube
The Sony Playstation 3 - The "Unhackable" Console | MVG - YouTube

How the Xbox 360 Hypervisor Security was Defeated | MVG - YouTube