Game Programming

Hey /prog/ I've been offered a job to teach game programming. What games should I have my students make? I was thinking start off with a text-based RPG, then Tetris, Space Invaders, Pacman, Super Mario. Anything I should add or replace on the list? It's a 12 month course so, I don't want to overload them.

I spent about 3-4 months creating a game in C++ with OpenGL. It was a game that centered around the main character who had to save the King's land from the evil forces of a Time Mage. It was hell coding it, because prior to doing this I had little to no experience in Win32/OpenGL. In the end, I didn't get all I wanted complete and I was mighty disappointed. It was hackish the entire way through to achieve what I wanted, and could have been much better.

Set your students up with a good foundation first, this is the most important thing. Think about the most basic computer games made, and separate them into teachable skills to aid the students. I.e. bounds checking, AI, states, a lot of what #23 talked about. In the end, the majority of them probably won't want to keep making games, but it's better for them to learn from the ground up than blindly running into it like me.