BUILDING A GAME IN A DAY
PhillipTrelford, F#unctional Londoners, 2013

DON’T GAMES PROGRAMMERS USE C++?
YES
 Engines
 Graphics
 Sound
 Physics
NO
 Scripts
 AI
 Interaction
 Tools

DOTHEY REGRET IT?
Veteran Games Programmer
John Carmack extolling the
virtues of functional
programming at QuakeCon

QUAKE 3 – F# SCRIPT
Will Smith @TIHanTime6h
@brandewinder @7sharp9 Finally got something going
in #FSharp #Quake3. Messing around with the weapon
position. :) pic.twitter.com/zAZ439Kdch

F# FOR PROFIT
Functional-first programming for:
 Time to Market
 Efficiency
 Correctness
 Complexity

F#TESTIMONIALS
order of magnitude increase in productivity, GameSys
performance is 10× better than the C++ that it replaces, Aviva
Units of measure reduced the chance of errors dramatically, Bing
F# is the night vision goggles I need when I go into the dark and attempt to solve
previously unsolved problems, Microsoft

PORTABLE IS DEAD, LONG LIVE MOBILE
 Android games now out-selling games for Sony and Nintendo handhelds
 IDC and App Annie's study suggests that iOS and Android combined now generate
four times the revenues of dedicated gaming handhelds
- Guardian

CROSS PLATFORM GAME ENGINES
Designer-orientated
 Unity (C#, JavaScript, Boo)
 PhoneGap (JavaScript)
Code-orientated
 XNA/MonoGame (C#, F#)
 PyGame (Python)
 Love (Lua)
 DirectX (C++)

RETRO GAME (XNA + F#) 2007

XBLA: PATH OF GO (XNA + F#)

XNA IS DEAD
Hacking XNA to run onVS 2012
 DownloadVS2010 (Express etc.)
 Install XNA
 Hack XML config file
 Install Xbox Live (Windows 8)

LONG LIVE MONOGAME
 Develop inVisual Studio (PC) or Xamarin Studio (Mac & PC)
 Cross Platform
 iOS
 Android
 Windows
 MacOSX
 Linux
 Playstation Mobile
 Ouya

GAMES PROGRAMMING 101
Game
Routines(Co)
React
Render

COROUTINE ZOMBIES
Pseudo Code
random_pause 10
while not dead
wait_until_in_range 50.0
home_in_on_target 10
F#
yield! random_pause 10
while true do
yield! wait_range 50
yield! home_in 10

FLINT EASTWOOD (F# + SILVERLIGHT)
Dublin GameCraft 2012
6 hours

THE PRISMER
Kenneth Heine Berle
Neil Danson
Quinton Coetzee
Anton Semenov
Malcom Knight
ThomasTrelford
PhillipTrelford

TOOLING
VS2012 + F# + XNA
Paint.Net
Gimp
MusicMaker Jam
Bxfr.Net (Sound effects)
DropBox

11 HOURS LATER
Making games – fun for all the
family 

QUESTIONS?
Twitter:
@ptrelford
Blog:
http://trelford.com/blog
F# Foundation:
http://fsharp.org