playdate-unlicensed-paddle-game-tutorial

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Unlicensed Paddle Game: A Playdate Tutorial by Mostly Bits

In this repo you'll find a tutorial for building your first Playdate game. In it we make a game that is completely legally distinct from Atari's Pong™ that we call Unlicensed Paddle Game (please don't sue us.)

1. tutorial/index.md is the tutorial
2. source/main.lua is the complete final code
3. build.sh is a small build script that will build the code in main.lua and launch the Playdate simulator. Note that it requires the Playdate SDK.

Here's a quick video of the final product (unmute for sound):

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/115918/169336208-9d37e316-9ad9-4305-8350-02ebcbc2d3c8.mp4

Note that this tutorial is aimed at folks with at least a bit of programming experience. Familiarity with object-oriented programming in a language like C#, Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc. is also helpful. If you are looking for something that involves a bit less programming, you might check out this tutorial for making Pong in the Playdate Pulp game editor.

Though we're not new to game development, we are new to Lua and to developing for the Playdate. If you spot something that doesn't make sense or that we've gotten wrong, feel free to submit an issue or start a discussion here. You can also message us on Twitter and we'll get right on it. Your feedback is welcome and appreciated!

About

Mostly Bits is Kyle Shipley and Tony Dewan. We made an iOS word game in 2021 called Tiler More that Kyle's mom loved and our friend Tyler hated. We're really excited to make games for Playdate and have started experimenting! This tutorial is based on what we've learned so far while making game prototypes.

If you want to follow along with our nonsense, you can subscribe to our short-and-sweet, once-a-week newsletter.

License

The content of this tutorial is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, and the source code of Unlicensed Paddle Game is licensed under the MIT license.