So make pong, shmup, zelda and you are ready for 2D/3D games. That kind of generalization really concerns me when I see it because it isn't that easy.

kseh, I can agree that doing Blackjack before pong and then recommending the rest of the list would be a good experience and skill building list.

So ill just go ahead and tell Nintendo that the guys who made Zelda, arent ready for 2D Game Development. Clearly Zelda is a weak example of a 2D game here.. Ill also get on the phone just about every company that got their grass roots in Shmups and also inform them too that those Shmups? Totally not games. Oh but Asteroids, now THAT is how you become a 2D Game Developer.

So make pong, shmup, zelda and you are ready for 2D/3D games.

Yeah. I think if you can pull of Zelda, you can be ready; because Zelda encompasses pretty much everything a standard action based 2D game needs, with the exception of sidescrollers gravity, which can be learned at any time.

The weird thing here, is that were preaching the exact same thing, the only difference is my list is like 1/4th of yours, and still covers 99% of the same topics.

I don't necessarily believe that you have to make specific examples of a tonn of very specific games (except for Pong) in order to progress and only by the end of it all can you call yourself a confident 2D Game Developer who 'might attempt at 3D'. You can naturally progress to another relevant style and still feel comfortable learning new things, and I presented my case above for each 'project'. I purposely kept each project vague, as it really doesnt matter what it looks like or resembles, the project by its core components is going to be the same anyways.

The only thing missing in my little list was a sidescroller, but thats not 'Required' to be a 2D developer anymore than a Zelda clone is. Hell replace my 'Zelda / Pokemon' example with Mario, it makes almost NO difference, your still learning about tiles, movement, sprite animation, entities, events and triggers, map building, and in a sidescrollers case: gravity

Your concern over this concerns me man, because no ones "generalizing" between you or I here. I wrote the after all that specifically:

From there, youll have enough experience to envision and do whatever you please on a 2D landscape, as youve grasped the basic foundation of just about every component of a game.

From there? 3D, why not? maybe more 2D? Sure, why not. Sky is the limit!

I didn't say "when done zelda make 3d games now rofl" nor did I say by the end of my list your a master game developer. I just said Sky's the limit, and by that point, yeah 3D game development isn't unattainable. 3D should not be looked upon as this "scary" thing or something that's put on a pedestal. Its an additional axis for sure and the tools change for content creation and integration, and you may have to learn some 3D math in the long run, but to get up and running doesnt require much more than 2D development. Im generalizing here, but You still needed to load those sprite maps, parse those sprite maps, manage frames and states from that sprite map, and then place that sprite someone in 2D space. In 3D land (and im still generalizing here), you need to load the model file, parse the model file to generalise it, use those instructions to go through in reconstructing the model vert by vert, face by face, load in textures, load in animation states, place model somewhere in 3D space. Its entirely different in execution, but its fundamentally extremely similar in approach (and in some cases, complexity).

But yeah, sorry, but it can be "that easy", not before, but definitely now. Considering to make a basic 3D game engine these days, you can literally just shoestring together a bunch of free libs and tools that do all the hard stuff for you. I put together a custom game engine for a project im working on, it uses nothing but 3rd party libraries haha Ogre for Rendering, OpenAL for audio, AngelScript for scripting, etc etc. I spent the majority of my time here tinkering with compiler settings :p Once that was good to go, I call a single function to load entire models complete with materials and textures, skeletons and animations. After a couple minutes, BaddabingBaddaboom im walking around. And especially with tools like Unity? 3D game development has NEVER been more approachable by complete noobs who can churn out some pretty decent products.

But No ones going to argue against the more experience the better, if someone wants to approach that list with a fine tooth comb, then all the power to them, thats cool too, and totally respectable. But its hard for me to argue that the approach I laid out doesn't also work because I know a great deal of people who are living examples of it.

What im getting at is, bro, I love you, I don't want us to break up after all we've been through together. It no longer is like the old days where we all had to cut our teeth progressively. Today's 10yo can mod Minecraft and cram unofficial functioning content in there via hacking. Hell a great deal of Devs seem to get their start in 3D and maybe eventually fight their way to 2D these days

There's no wrong way, to eat a Reese is ultimately what im roundaboutly trying to get at here. as long as the concepts are learned, really, what does it matter how that knowledge came to be?

I think what BHXSpecter is trying to say it that for some people, Pong --> shmup --> Zelda might be a too steep learning curve. Being able to create a Pong clone does not automatically mean you are able to create a shmup-style game on your next attempt -- which might leave you demotivated or what have you.

For those people, who might be struggling more with fully understanding and learning new concepts, a more gradual progression (e.g. the one mentioned by BHXSpecter, or something else) might be more fitting.

I actually came back to apologize for my message, I wasn't in a great place of mind last night so Im extremely sorry if I was a little harsh and or irrational. I, oddly, took it as a personal attack for some reason.

CoreLactose, I totally understand that's what he was trying to get at for sure, and I do agree. I come from a school of hard knox (so to speak) where I've only had Self-Taught and On-The-Job experience, and for me and my colleagues we were taught this way. It is pretty Boom Boom Boom, but in retrospective it didn't hurt at all.

I remember one of the first XNA tutorials I read, outside of getting the blue background, was how to make a Shmup. One of the courses at my college taught Flash Engineering and they were firstly taught how to make a Shmup before anything else. Some went on right to 3D afterwords and did fantastic (converting their Shmup to 3D for example) some went on to Zelda clones and sidescrollers, others decided that programming just aint for them and moved on (happily) to other disciplines lol

Tutorial Doctor, actually thats an interesting thing that your post made me remember, that even though my schools didn't necessarily teach Game Design due to budget cuts, one thing that was brought up to aspiring game designers that wanted to make the next world of warcraft (it was around that time.. jeez that game is old...) they were told to stop thinking about designing computer games, and instead come up with a board game that was primarily fun. Those who "got it", got it, and were able to move on, those who snuffed off the concept and still continued to believe game design is just a collection of words and wishes, well lets just say they didn't last long haha

Short answer:

any arcade game.