FAQ

How did you get started making games?

When I was around 10 years old (circa 2000), I discovered a program by Mark Overmars called Game Maker. It was a game development engine with a drag and drop interface that I could understand even as a kid. I had so much fun playing around with it that from that moment on my dream became to make video games.

When high school came around, I took all the programming classes I could. I continued tinkering around with small game ideas, except I used Java and C++ instead of Game Maker. Programming was fun, so I went on to major Computer Science in college. There I learned about how much fun game jams were, and I participated in every game jam I could. Through game jams and programming classes, I met the other members of Nuke Nine. 

What do you recommend aspiring game developers to learn?

Try not to get too caught up in deciding which tool to use. Most of the lessons you learn with any programming language can be applied to other languages. The same goes for game engines. If you're an absolute beginner, pick something and stick with it. Read those tutorials and guides you find, but make sure you don't spend too much time just researching. Open source projects are a valuable resource for figuring out how the parts of a game work together.

The biggest thing of course, is to actually make stuff. Game jams are a great way to motivate yourself. Stick to small, prototype games at first, and work your way up in complexity.

Where does the name Vagante come from?

There's no cool story here. We wanted a unique name that evoked the feeling of being an adventurer riding a caravan to an unknown destination. A lot of the names we could think of were already taken, or too similar to other existing games. We branched out to Spanish words (I'd taken Spanish as a second language in high school), and eventually we chose Vagante, which we liked the sound of.