# Interactive Entertainment ... Programers, can I understand what you do?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interactive-entertainment-programers-can-i-understand-what-you-do/146326>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 3, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interactive-entertainment-programers-can-i-understand-what-you-do/146326 "2003-01-03T01:05:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Birefringence](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Birefringence](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Birefringence)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interactive-entertainment-programers-can-i-understand-what-you-do/146326/1 "2003-01-03T01:05:06Z")

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Whilst reading a thread about the arts, I noticed several people who work in the interactive entertainment field. I always wondered how games are formulated. How does one design an engine to run a character? And say weapons a character uses, supposed paths a character can take in a role playing game, how the heck do they do that? Cite would be nice…

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**Author:** ![Taran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Taran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taran)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interactive-entertainment-programers-can-i-understand-what-you-do/146326/2 "2003-01-03T01:12:39Z")

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I’ve been interested in that sort of thing for all my life; try reading through the comp.games.\* hierarchy on groups.google . The signal to noise ratio is okay (at least on .algorithms and .misc, which was where I spent my time, back in the day) and some of it’s downright mindblowing.

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**Author:** ![magog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@magog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magog)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interactive-entertainment-programers-can-i-understand-what-you-do/146326/3 "2003-01-03T01:15:23Z")

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IMHO, programming for a game isn’t that much different than programming for an application - in a sense it’s a mix of programming, role-playing, and fiction writing.

[http://www.gamasutra.com](http://www.gamasutra.com) is a good start - especially read the Postmortem articles.

There’s a whole series of articles about Interactive Fiction at [http://www.xyzzynews.com/](http://www.xyzzynews.com/). Another nice beginners guide is at [http://www.firthworks.com/roger/](http://www.firthworks.com/roger/). Both these links are concentrating on text-based adventures. There are several programs available for download (TADS and Inform are two popular ones - I like TADS, but it’s a personal preference only). TADS can be downloaded at [http://www.tads.org/](http://www.tads.org/) and there’s a really good tutorial. Some knowledge of C++ is good, but not absolutely necessary.

If you don’t have graphics experience (either 3D like Lightwave or 3D Studio Max, or 2D like Photoshop, plus the programming chops to manipulate the graphics), you may want to start with text-based adventures.