3 replies to this topic

[BudBrain]

I've had the urge to get in to game development again but could really use some advice first so that I don't waste time.

 

I'm a C# .NET developer by trade, and have some experience using Valve's Hammer editor - that's about it!

 

Can anyone advise where I should go from here? Do I need to learn another language? Do I need to learn an engine - if so, which one?

 

Help! 

 

Thanks 

[Lightness1024]

Maybe learn Unity, it would teach you sane designs like Entity Components; and you're in luck, it is C#.

also I believe there is a guide to the beginner in this website somewhere

[NightCreature83]

If you want to continue with Hammer you are going to have to learn C++ as that's the language the Source Engine uses. Other then that there are other engines/frameworks out there that allow you to develop games with and they all use different languages. As suggest unity is useful it supports C#, Python and C++ and a few others I think.

 

The other path you can walk is write you game from scratch in C#, there is frameworks out there that can help you out with this as well, XNA, SlimDX, SharpDX are only a few that come to mind quickly.

[PoliticalChaos]

Like others have said, Unity is a great engine to use.. it really takes care of a lot of the rudimentary and quite frankly boring parts of game development. It supports C#, JavaScript and I believe Objective-C which is what iOS uses. I myself am a C++/C# developer and C++ is defiantly the better of the two when it comes to developing games from scratch.

 

If you do want to use C# from scratch and not use a pre-built engine like Unity or UDK try downloading the XNA framework or Windows Phone 7.1/8.0 SDK. The reason I say the windows phone SDK is because Microsoft has decided to discontinue XNA and push it's indie game development resources into Windows Phone - which is transferable to Xbox 360 Live Arcade, Windows Phone, and Windows PC. Give that a try, it's a lot of fun.