Five Deadly Sins of Coding

(1)    Do not use images, code or music that you didn’t create!

 

Stuff you find on the internet is not stuff you can use in games – you need to be creative and make your own images, code or music (or get written permission). Being an artist, coder or musician is cool, using someone else’s art, code or music without permission is not.

 

(2)    Who is going to own it?

 

If you are coding for someone – will they own your code, or will you just permit them to use it (a licence)? If you are getting help from someone, make sure they agree (in writing) that you will own the code they write, otherwise you may have to share the ownership of the game or app.

 

(3)    Abide by the Apple / Android Developer Terms

 

(i)                  Do not reverse engineer their code

(ii)                Keep pre-release developer software a Secret

(iii)               In App or in-game purchases must be through apple’s authorised system

(iv)              You can’t have a game or app download code remotely after it has been installed

 

(4)    OpenSource is like a virus!

 

Opensource code can be great code, many of the biggest companies use opensource code, it is FREE code that you can build into your code HOWEVER opensource code may mean that your code also becomes opensource! You have to be careful how you build opensource code into as you may not want other people to be able use your code!

 

(5)    Keep your Secret

 

You cannot protect an idea, only the “expression” of an idea.  That means you can’t protect your idea for a scoring mechanism but you can protect the code that makes it work, or the images you use with the code.  So be careful who you tell your idea to, and keep it a secret if you can.