game dev game hardware engineer
So, the other day I decided to dive into something I’ve been curious about for a while: game development, but with a twist – focusing on the hardware side. I’m calling it “game dev game hardware engineer” for now, just because I like how it sounds.
First, I dusted off my old Raspberry Pi. I figured it was a good starting point since it’s small and I can mess around with it without worrying about ruining my main computer. I spent a good hour just finding all the cables and getting it hooked up to a monitor and keyboard.
Getting Started with the Basics
Next, I needed to pick a game engine. I went with something simple – I’d heard good things, and it seemed like a good fit for the Raspberry Pi’s capabilities. No need to get too fancy right away, right? I followed some online tutorials to get the basic setup going. It was mostly just clicking through menus and making sure everything was installed correctly.
- Found a Raspberry Pi and all its parts
- Picked a basic game engine
- Installed the engine and followed the setup tutorial
The Fun (and Frustrating) Part
Then came the actual “engineering” part. I wanted to see if I could get a simple game running, not just on the Pi, but also interact with some external hardware. I grabbed a breadboard, some LEDs, and a few buttons. The idea was to have the game control the LEDs and respond to button presses.
This is where things got tricky. I spent hours trying to figure out how to get the game engine to talk to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. I read through tons of forum posts and documentation. It felt like I was learning a whole new language! Eventually, after a lot of trial and error (and a few accidental short circuits – oops!), I managed to get a single LED to blink when I pressed a button in the game. Success!
After all that work I was really excited that the LED can blink! So I just tried to add more LEDs and buttons, I connected them to the breadboard and Pi, and after changing some code, finally I made them all work!
Next step
It was a small victory, but it felt huge. I mean, I made a physical object respond to something happening in a virtual world! It’s a long way from making a full-fledged game console, but it’s a start. Next, I think I’ll try to add a simple display to show some game data. That’s gonna be another adventure, I’m sure!
