Gamecrash: writing games using “C without pointers”!
The concept for the Gamecrash course was clear from the first moment: really focused course to get people to actually learn to develop games in one week. Focus on fundamentals, such that people learn the core skills. But be sure to create an actual game – this is not a theory-only course, we need results! Of course you can’t write the latest advanced 3D consoles first-person-shooter with amazing AI in a week. But the core game-development skills and the skills to write 2D action/puzzle games can definitely be taught in one week, and they can be the best foundation on which to build future knowledge for more complex types of games (3D, etc…).
It’s clear that if you want to create a one-week course that really gets students to the “next level” you are going to have to be very precise on what things you want to cover and which ones you want to leave out. You have to make sure the whole contents are a solid structure that holds itself together well, that can be used without any extra content to actually develop games, and which can later become a great base upon which to build a full professional career if students want to pursue that road.
A key question here was the base language and technology to use. There were several options: most professional games are done using C/C++, but more and more frameworks and libraries allow you to write games in Javascript or C#. Also, languages such as Python are easier to pick up than C/C++, maybe we should go that way?