Computational Features of Video Games

If you are confident enough with your Python skills, you might feel ready to move on to the next stage and start creating your own arcade video game.

To do so you will have to research and investigate existing video games to identify some of the key computational features of these games and see how these can be implemented.

For arcade games we advise you to investigate the classic games including:

• Pacman,
• Pong,
• Space Invaders,
• Breakout,
• Artillery Games (Tanks, Worms, Angry Bird),
• Tetris,
• Platform Games (e.g. Donkey Kong),
• Racing Games (e.g. Outrun, Traffic Racer, Mario Kart),
• Side Scrolling Games (Super Mario, Flappy Bird),
• Quiz Based Games, (Buzz, Who Wants to be a Millionaire…)
• Logic Games & Board Games (Chess, Connect4, Battleships…),
• Logic Puzzle (Rushhour, minesweeper, Sudoku, Maze based games…),
• Card Games (Solitaire, Poker, Blackjack…),
• Educational video Games,
• 3D video Games (minecraft, flight simulators…)
• etc.

When investigating these video games try to identify their main features:

• What are the main sprites of the game,
• How does the player interact with the game / control the main sprite,
• How does the scoring system work,
• Is the game making use of a timer,
• Can the player play against the computer,
• Is the game using real physics,
• Is the game in first-person view,
• How does the computer control the movement of other sprites,
• How does the computer decide what move to play next,
• What information is stored in the game,
• What extra features are included in the games (e.g. leaderboard?),
• What settings can be changed in the game,
• Are there multiple levels of difficulty,
• What makes a level more difficult to complete,
• How is the stage generated,
• What are the main characteristics of the Graphical User Interface,
• etc.

You will then be able to research these characteristics further and identify the computational features that you could use to build your own game.

To help you getting started we have listed here a few blog posts from this blog describing a range of computation features further:

Controlling Movement of Sprites:

Stage Generation:

Collision Detection Algorithms:

Data Structures:

Artificial Intelligence? When the player plays against the computer!

Scoring Systems:

3D User Interface:

Data Visualisation

Additional Features of video games:

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