What am I Looking for in a computer

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41 comments, last by Juliean 2 months ago

I want to start making Games. However I have No computer and No experience. I've tried looking online but it's hard to find a guideline for buying a computer. So I'd like to ask for some advice in this field.

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That depends on your interests. But first a question which will help us helping you: You say you have no experience. Do you mean

a) programming

b) using computers

c) playing (including game consoles)?

@undefined Thanks for the reply. It's both a and b.

OK, then I hope you have already played on a game console. If not, it would be a difficult start.

Especially important is: What kind of game do you want to write? And what graphics? 3D? 2D? (Good 3D hardware is more expensive)

Here some introduction to the topic (doesn't answer all your questions)

https://www.pcgamesn.com/best-gaming-pc

Pebblerubble said:
best-gaming-pc

@seamus_arian , “gaming” almost always refers to the playing of games, as opposed to the making of them. The website cited is for gamers (people who play computer games), not for programmers.

Also, what device did you use to visit this forum and post here? Is it unsuitable?

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com

You are right that there's a theoretical difference between gaming PC and game development PC. But if a different hardware is used how does a single programmer develop games if he can't playtest them?

Pebblerubble said:
You are right that there's a theoretical difference between gaming PC and game development PC.

There isn't.

There is a difference though between a console and a related console devkit. And because we can't just buy a devkit, we can not develop console games.

Seamus_Arian said:
I've tried looking online but it's hard to find a guideline for buying a computer.

If you want to make a game for the PC platform, any PC or laptop will do.

If it's a game for Android phones, you need the PC and a Android phone / tablet.

If it's for Apple phones, you need a Mac computer / laptop and the iOS phone / tablet.

You can also learn some programming purely online using just a web browser.
For example, there are sites which allow to develop a small project in JavaScript for free, and the site stores your project files for you on their servers, associated to your account.
So you could see if you can learn to program before investing money into hardware.

JoeJ said:
There isn't.

Well, if we are being pedantic (which I occasionally feel like 😉 ), there is a difference in what level of hardware is useful to you.

A high-end gaming PC mostly requires the beefiest GPU you can find (depending on your choice of game), alongside a sufficient amount of RAM (16GB was still plenty enough some time ago, more then 32GB should never be necessary), and a CPU that doesn't make you CPU-bound. An SSD also helps with load-times and streaming of assets.

For development, depending on what you do, you can use a way higher CPU, more RAM, and an even faster disk. Compiling a large C++-project can take a long time, so even a workstation threadripper-beast of a CPU would still be an upgrade (which would be slower for gaming than a regular mid/high-end consumer CPU). You can easily use 64GB of RAM, when an engine + visual studio + a graphic-program is open. And an NVME can further reduce the, sometimes riddiculous, load time of the commercial engines.

Now I'm not talking about minimal requirements, but about hardware that will boost your producitivity. Anectdotaly, I have a relatIvely new PC at work, but a few years and price-classes below my home-PC. The difference in “time having to wait for the engine or compiler” is noticably different. Whether it will matter for your project is a different topic, and I'd be willing to admit that for someone who has to ask this question, like OP, it probably won't. But compared to a gaming machine, whose aim it is to match the monitors frame-rate w/o any noticable frame-drops, that limit for a development machine is much higher.

I assume 2d though I'd like to have the possibility to branch into 3d.

I'm posting on an Android phone.

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