Meet people!
Ireland
The Games Co-Op Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/The-Games-Co-Op/
Imirt - https://imirt.ie
Galway Game Jam - https://galwaygamejam.com
https://gamedevelopers.ie
NI GameDev Network - https://nigame.dev/
Conferences
Gamescom (Koln, Germany)
Develop: Brighton (Brighton, UK)
Learn stuff!
Business
Books:
- The game dev business handbook. https://gamedevbizbook.com
You might know about running other businesses already. This book is aimed at game developers / makers who don’t know about business but want to set up their own game development business/studio. The book has insights and advice from industry veterans, so definitely worth a read.
Programming
I generally learn a lot as I have to from searching the web for documentation, tutorials, online courses and youtube how-to videos. I prefer reading text and trying to code it myself. As such, here are two awesome websites to get your feet wet in gamedev programming.
Links
- https://www.redblobgames.com/ - Pretty much a goldmine of excellently crafted explainer articles, with examples in multiple languages.
- http://roguebasin.com/index.php/Articles - Especially check out “Map”, “AI” and “Useful algorithms and code” for anything that sounds interesting to you.
Also, Wikipedia is your friend for learning the meaning of computer science and software development terms, design patterns and practices.
Books
There are a couple of books I recommend to use as reference, or read and just think about for a while.:
- Design Patterns by the gang of four, and/or Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom.
- Pragmattic Programmer
- Programming Game AI by Example
Design
Books. There are many books on game design. Here’s a few to get you started.
- Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Romero and Ian Schrieber - https://romero.com/shop/p/challenges-for-game-designers-by-brenda-romero-ian-schreiber-ek7rx
- A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster - Take from it what you want, it’s very opinionated and I wouldn’t agree with everything, but the book does get you thinking about what fun actually is, and about what players want. Worth a read.
- Spelunky by Derek Yu - a biography on the making of hit indie rougelike Spelunky - https://bossfightbooks.com/products/spelunky-by-derek-yu
Simulation Games that teach you stuff while being fun to play with
Definitely check out all of her “Explorable Explainations” projects. Perhaps you could hire her as a contractor to make your game for you!
- https://ncase.me - play all of these, have fun, and take notes!