How to actually learn game development?

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36 comments, last by JimmyVegas 9 years, 2 months ago


when you want to develop games you cant be lazy because as developer you need to know so much.

It depends on what you mean by "develop games". You can develop a game without ever learning art, music and sound, programming, networking, etc. as you can be the lead designer who dictates to the team what you envision. Each profession has a minimal they should absolutely know, but the ones that go the furthest are the ones that learn them and push themselves to learn even more.


13 years to be competent? And I thought that I was being pessimistic about learning a language in one year.

I've been doing it for twenty years and wouldn't consider myself competent in any language that I've used over the years.


I have experienced the same thing, but be intelligent about it.
I was also told i am dumb as rock, i could not remember a dam thing when they told me, they tell me something i forget it 5 seconds later. They where not wrong, they where just assholes when they told me.
I figured out that i had an issue, i fixed it, i trained, and i still train.
I now remember allot better then when i was young, and i can focus very well, but they are still assholes. So i got 1 point from those people, i was hurt, and i still am, but i respect what they did even if they are not aware of it, because i am. They helped me, and for that i am grateful.

I fear my problems are deeper seated than that, but not appropriate for the topic.

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sometimes time efficiently wasted can save a bunch of time later on.

neither a follower nor a leader behttp://www.xoxos.net

Helloo biggrin.png , well, mmm I didn't read all because there are a lot messages but when I am sad what I do is to play some fun game biggrin.png that always help to get motivated and get new ideas, and you say, "Wow, how awesome is this game and fun! I am not sad now (after playing). I should do one good too that makes me happy haha" and then you get motivated thinking positive like this way. So my advices is play a good funny fun game, they are quite absorbing and help to forget the problems. Don't play all the day, all in exesive is bad too. ;). Well for learn advance programming I recommend you to learn using a book or even better a school or university, almost nobody can program with 15 years old, I tried myself but I couldn't too. If you want to learn advance programming check the most usefull algorithms used in computer science and artifitial intelligence.

After you learn the basics stuffs every language is quite similar (if, else, for, so on) and they can be different kind of approaching oriented: object oriented (java), structured (C ) ...

You are lucky, here you have good people to advice you if you get stucked or to find a way to learn biggrin.png. I continue still learning as you.

Greetings

I think that enthusiasm and determination are the most important attributes to have. So, find something that really excites you and concentrate on that as a long term objective. Otherwise, like people who join a gymn in January, you will just give up after a month or so.

I have been working on my particular obsession (how the human brain works) since 1986 and for the last 5 years have spent 3 hours every morning 365 days per annum (including Christmas day) writing code. That works for me but everybody is different and you may want to work on Saturday from 9am to midnight (as I used to do years ago when I was single). Or two hours every evening or whatever. But stick to it - keep a log

You need self-discipline if you are working by yourself - without that there is no point in even starting

As for languages I have no expertise on what is the best game language as I have no experience writing games (I am here because my app overlaps with gaming in some areas) BUT I can tell you that Visual C++ is a very difficult langauge to use

My program structure is:

Input/output and GUI (Graphical User Interface) are written in vb.net (a simple language which makes it easy to use forms)

Speed critical routines: written in Visual C++ native code in a DLL

Bit manipulation: written with in-line Assembler within VC++ as I find it easier to do it that way than use C or C++ (in assembler you can literally do anything ... years ago you could even physically destroy your disk drive by driving the read/write heads down into the rotating surface)

I am not suggesting you use this structure but it works for me (so far)

I have been programming for decades but am still embarrassed at the extent of my ignorance but when I set out to do something I find that by relentless application I can usually do it ... so far ... with lots of help from forums like this one. Thank you everybody.

After I wrote the above I found this quote;

"C++ has widespread penetration in the game dev market, but it's also a piece-of-shit nightmare. You can write a game in almost any non-toy language under the sun. Use the language you're most comfortable with, and get things done; fussing about with a dozen languages and never finishing a game is a great way to learn lots of things and never apply them to anything."

That sums it up in my opinion

MOPEKS - a freeware program that generates programs that use each other to solve problems. A possible route to an intelligent machine?


Learning to program is a much larger topic, more akin to learning carpentry rather than learning a specific tool. Just as a carpenter can adapt to other people's tools since they know the end goal, so too can a skilled programmer adapt to new languages very easily.

This analogy is apt. I do believe I am going to steal it, claim it as my own, and never ever give credit. Ever.


Learning to program is a much larger topic, more akin to learning carpentry rather than learning a specific tool. Just as a carpenter can adapt to other people's tools since they know the end goal, so too can a skilled programmer adapt to new languages very easily.

This analogy is apt. I do believe I am going to steal it, claim it as my own, and never ever give credit. Ever.

Your website helped me lots in deciding what to do when starting so I wanted to say thanks or I'd still be deciding what language to use. I have since decided that in terms of getting a career I have more chance of getting into non game development role and thus am focusing now on ASP.Net, HTML5, JS and CSS but I would like to still pursue it if I have the time.

Learning to program is a much larger topic, more akin to learning carpentry rather than learning a specific tool. Just as a carpenter can adapt to other people's tools since they know the end goal, so too can a skilled programmer adapt to new languages very easily.


This analogy is apt. I do believe I am going to steal it, claim it as my own, and never ever give credit. Ever.

Your website helped me lots in deciding what to do when starting so I wanted to say thanks or I'd still be deciding what language to use. I have since decided that in terms of getting a career I have more chance of getting into non game development role and thus am focusing now on ASP.Net, HTML5, JS and CSS but I would like to still pursue it if I have the time.

Awesome! Glad to hear I helped. In all honesty, I say get a job in programming and work on games as a passion is probably the best idea right now, so keep at it!

For me, I've wanted to develop games from a young age. I never truly knew how, but as I got into my teenage years, I discovered a DOS based game maker, which I used for a few years to actually make a few games.

Later on, I discovered RPG Maker, and by this time I was in college learning software development. I made a few games on RPG Maker XP, and had a lot of fun.

By now, I'd learned a few languages (once you learn one, the same principal applies to them all), and I'd discovered Unity. Here I am now in my 30's, and Unity is a delight.

I very much doubt i'll get anywhere in life with game development, but it's a great hobby.

Want to learn how to make your own games for free in Unity 3D?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRMXHQ2rJ9_0CHS7mhL7erg/videos

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