Top Tuts+ Game Development Tutorials from 2013

As the new year begins, I'd like to highlight some of the most popular tutorials, tips, and articles our Tuts+ gamedev instructors have written during 2013. We've got tutorials for beginners that have never done any game development before, hardcore physics coding tutorials for the elite, business articles for those wanting to turn gamedev into something more than a hobby, and thoughtful essays on being a game developer.

How to Learn... Everything!

Readers often ask "how can I learn [insert game development engine here]?" We want to answer that question for as many engines as possible, but it seems silly to reinvent the wheel by writing new guides to each engine when there are so many excellent resources both online and offline already.

So, instead of writing brand new guides for each engine, we find game developers that are already well experienced in making games with the engine, and ask them to compile the best books, tutorials, screencasts, and tips into a single, comprehensive post.

Here is a selection of those roundups from this year:

Multi-Platform Geometry Wars Tutorials

A common problem with gamedev tutorials is that they can become outdated very quickly. Techniques change, engines get updated, best practices get superseded... it makes it tricky to write tutorials that can last. That's why we take a "platform-agnostic" approach for most of our posts: even though a tutorial may use C++ or JavaScript or AS3 for its examples, the focus is usually on the concepts, which you can apply to almost any language or platform. 

However, sometimes we relax this a little, in order to better teach some platform-specific techniques. Earlier this year, Michael Hoffman wrote a huge series explaining how to make a Geometry Wars game, from start to finish, in XNA. More recently, Daniel Gallenberger took that series and "ported" it to jMonkeyEngine: same final game, same basic tutorial structure, different platform.

In 2014, we have plans to expand this to many different platforms: people are already working on ports for iOS, Mac, PS Vita, and Phaser!

Being a Game Developer

Business

Coding

We strive to cover all aspects of game development (as you can see from this roundup), but gamedev coding is our bread and butter.

Craft and Tools

For Complete Beginners

If you've never actually made a game before (perhaps it's your New Year's Resolution?) this is where to start. These tutorials require no coding at all - it's all point-and-click - and we provide all the art assets and instruction that you need to make an entire game from scratch.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll keep an eye on Tuts+ in 2014!