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Comment by binarymax | Hacker News Reader

Wow this resource is awesome. I don't really write games per se, but I enjoy writing interactive visuals - and this will definitely help me get to the next level. Thanks!

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I was thinking the same... I was about to browse through some of the demo code, but the links are broken..

Besides this, are there any other resources you would recommend for getting into writing visuals?

Thats the thing - Its hard for me to give you an exact resource - since the first thing I ever coded was a visual, using logo, when I was a wee lad. Over time I just kinda picked stuff up here and there, mostly by reading code that others have done. For a long time I was obsessed with coding straight up pixels, and writing putpixel routines. Even lots of the html5/canvas stuff I do these days is just getting the context imagedata buffer and writing straight to that. It was a totally organic process with zero structure.

So if I were going to start again from scratch, I would probably do the following:

      - Choose one platform to target (HTML5/Canvas, WebGL, OpenGL, DirectX, etc)
      - Pick up a book and learn the basics of that platform, and do the exercises
      - Learn what you can about the APIs and start playing around.
      - Fractals and cellular automata are always fun - you can find Mandlebrot and game of life examples in pretty much any language.
      - Think of something in your head and try to make it happen!
      - Add interaction
      - Rinse and repeat

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