From an empty project to a playable prototype, one system at a time
This course is about building games inside a real-time engine: organising scenes, scripting object behaviour, handling physics and collision, reading player input, and keeping the result fast enough to stay playable. It works through 2D and 3D prototypes — a card game, a side-scrolling platformer, a third-person character — and finishes with interface, audio, network data and the build settings that put a project on a target platform. Nano College takes the ground a standard university textbook covers and splits it into short, self-contained articles, so you can work through one system at a time instead of reading a semester's worth of chapters in order. By the end you can take an idea to a running, playable prototype you built yourself.
Coming soon
From installing the editor to a first-person walk-around that behaves the same on every machine.
From installing the editor to a first-person walk-around that behaves the same on every machine.
Turning an empty level into a place with things that shoot, react, wander and look like something.
Turning an empty level into a place with things that shoot, react, wander and look like something.
Two small projects — a card-matching game and a side-scrolling platformer — that share every 2D skill.
Two small projects — a card-matching game and a side-scrolling platformer — that share every 2D skill.
Everything the player reads and clicks: a canvas that scales, widgets that work, events that arrive.
Everything the player reads and clicks: a canvas that scales, widgets that work, events that arrive.
A third-person character: movement relative to the camera, a jump that feels right, animation that follows.
A third-person character: movement relative to the camera, a jump that feels right, animation that follows.
Collision as a signal, items as data, and an interface that shows and changes what the player owns.
Collision as a signal, items as data, and an interface that shows and changes what the player owns.
The game stops being an island: it fetches, displays and posts data, and it makes sound.
The game stops being an island: it fetches, displays and posts data, and it makes sound.
How the pieces become one game, how progress survives a restart, and how it reaches a platform.
How the pieces become one game, how progress survives a restart, and how it reaches a platform.
“A working programmer's route into real-time engines, one playable prototype at a time”
Most material on real-time engines either stops at the editor or drowns in engine internals. This collection keeps the middle ground: it builds small working things, one system at a time, and explains the trade-offs behind each choice. Programmers who learn by building will move quickly.
Nano College takes the standard university textbook for a course and turns it into short, self-contained pieces you can actually finish. We keep the ground the textbook covers and the rigour it insists on; what we leave out is the padding that only exists to fill a semester.