Hello GameDev,

I've been on and off of this site since I was 16 years old and I have to say it's gone through many improvements! So thank you gamedev staff for making such a great resource site exist for the ten years that i've known it. I have been struggling with learning computer programming due to lack of motivation and time. I didn't find the subject "hard" or anything I just was far to young to get serious enough to finish it. I am 26 now and I think it's about time that I started to get serious about my future and career and I will bust my ass to finally make all of my dreams come true. I have studied several languages over the course of my life. I pretty much know all of html5 and can design websites quite well, but the languages that I have studed are pascal,C++,C#,Delphi,Python,Java,Javascript,PHP all ended with little success (Besides html that stuff is easy). I think i've finally decided on my starting language though, I've had the most amount of luck with c# over all the other languages so I decided on that. I also wanted to eventually start a mmorpg project. Before anyone "discourages" me and says that it would be hard and almost impossible for a "newbie" to start making an mmorpg I realize the difficulty and I'm determined with all of my heart to finally finish this. I've been wanting to get into game development since I was 16 but was never "serious" enough to go along with it. It was either a mmorpg or starting with a set of rpgs. Rpgs would probably be a lot easier with less headaches for me.

So anyway, I wanted help with a booklist of books I should buy. I've come up with some of them and was curious if they'd be any good or if better ones were available for around the same price.


Beginner C# book: Sams teach yourself c# in 21 days

Advanced C# Book: Advanced C# Programming

WIndows API Book: Programming Windows, 6th edition

Open GL Book: Open GL Programing

Advanced OpenGL Book: More Open GL Programming

Direct X Book: Programming Roleplaying games with direct-x

Drawing And Graphics Book: Game Engine Gems 2

Networking Book: wizards and warriors massively multiplayer online game creationAI Design Book: AI Game Programming Wisdom 3

I like SAMS' "in 21 Days" books, as long as you don't take the timeline too seriously. For now, I would recommend that you buy only the first book on your list. You won't use any of the other things while you're still picking up the language, which you will be doing for a while. I'd also recommned Code Complete, which is a great book for good programming practices.

I would not recommend the DirectX Roleplaying book at all, unless you happen across it at a used bookstore (which is how I got my copy). It's outdated, the code as written often doesn't work, and the more general game-structure stuff you can get elsewhere.

And, while I don't want to discourage you, I will mention that starting with an MMO or even a single player RPG in mind is awfully ambitious. I'm not saying that you can't make an RPG in the foreseeable future or an MMO someday, but no amount of determination will make them suitable projects for a beginner. Working on a huge project, which both of those would be, makes it hard to see your progress and stay motivated to work. Realistic early projects are fairly small, and ones that you aren't too attached to.

A small-ish, simple, text-based RPG on the other hand makes a great early project if you really want to make an RPG.

Check out the C# Yellow Book by Rob Miles. It's free and it's a pretty good intro to C#. It was enough to get me started. I learned enough C# from it to start working with XNA and Unity3D.

Here's the link again:
http://www.robmiles.com/c-yellow-book/

Just scroll down and look for "C# Yellow Book 2012 Edition".

Roy