MrJoshL

I am of the opinion, ESPECIALLY IN RPG's, that if the player has exhausted what the game has to offer, then it is time for user-generated content to become relevant and for players to exhaust other player's content, which is pretty much infinite if the game is as big as the Elder Scrolls series or the Half-Life series, among others. Another of my opinions is that if the story is constructed as non-linear fragments, the possibilities become endless for expansions, even micro-expansions, and are not limited by a linear continuous story.

 

EDIT: Another exciting opportunity made possible only recently with newer processors is real-time procedural generation of quality content. I have seen procedurally generated graphics that are stunning. There is a blog by programmer Miguel Cepero called Procedural World that involves his server farm generating amazing structures and terrains on-the-fly. There is already a game called Anteworld made with a custom engine called Outerra that simulates the entire Earth using procedural fractal algorithms that are based on Earth's continents.

There should be an article about the various languages, why to use each one, and how to get started with it.

There really shouldn't. The series is about games, not programming. Yes, it might include programming topics here and there, but it wouldn't teach you C or Java or something. I can see an engine's scripting language being presented, but not programming languages.

OpenGL ES 2.0 only works with C/C++ natively. You will have to learn the JNI wrappers provided by Android which are quite different indeed.

The OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide. If you don't want to buy the physical version, Amazon sells a PC/Kindle version.

When there is no relatable content within the genre of media you're examining its best to look elsewhere (other forms of media) as well as within your own experiences.

This is a good pointer. You should also try and limit the amount of things you share similar with games, and maybe increase similarity with other, more matured, mediums such as writing and board games. For example, the majority of RPG's and action games pit the player character into some sort of archetypal role (i.e. hero, general, killer, soldier, badass, adventurer, etc.) or a combination of these, and most games' storylines and mechanics (at least in today's AAA market) are nothing more than primitive. Sure you have notable exceptions, like BioShock, Portal, and Dishonored, who themselves have flaws, but they are drowned out by the primitive story lines like Call of Duty, Fable, Crysis, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Assassins Creed, World of Warcraft, Tomb Raider, and the list goes on. Yes, these are great games, but their stories and mechanics are all similar, and all primitive. How many bestselling novels are about a soldier embarking on a Michael Bay bro-tastic explosion festival in Iraq? An adolescent hero that goes to a "hero academy" and has to defeat a big bad guy? An assassin that goes back in time and kills people? If my point isn't clear, what I'm saying is that for a game to truly be unique and engaging, it has to draw on more advanced elements rather than just shooting, swordfighting, killing, etc. This doesn't just go for story, it also goes for gameplay and even music, to an extent. Try to see if there is something similar you can do to a board game, something that isn't overused like violence to achieve everything, or a type of story outline you can base your story on from a good novel (or real event, for that matter).

Why don't you stop doing "the right thing" to get into college, and do what you are genuinely interested in. If you are doing extracurricular activities for the sole purpose of looking good on a college application, that is stupid. There was a student applying to MIT who actually built a fully functional miniature nuclear core on his property while in high school, and for other reasons he was turned down by MIT, one of the most prestigious engineering schools in the world. Likewise, it is not smart to spend your childhood (where you don't have to go to work eight hours a day every weekday the whole year, muster up rent every month, pay bills for everything you use, pay for every meal you eat, pay for everything you do, and still try to find something enjoyable to do) on a checklist of things needed to look good on a college application. In converse, you do not want to waste your time, either. In my opinion, sports are a waste of time if you feel you don't have enough of it. Also, don't fully concentrate on making a game, but keep more important things on your horizon. For example, you could make a game while you are still a sophomore, but do something constructive next year, like use your programming knowledge to study papers and books and maybe do something like make a computer science entry in the Siemen's Science Competition or the like. Not to sound corny, but there is so much one can do in this day and age, yet people tend to squander it chasing for menial and traditional lifestyles (i.e. "I'm just going to take it slow, be married, have a few kids, someone else can do the thinking, I was never good at that, I'm just a simple man/woman").

The most cost effective thing to do would be to start on a new project immediately after the previous, because you have to pay for employees, business expenses, and other things every day. Also, if you are only working on one project, than after the concept artists and designers and composers and artists have done their work, and the programmers are fixing the last bugs before the game is sent to the publisher for disk pressing, they are essentially getting paid for nothing. You can't just make them go home and not pay them, and you can't have them sitting there. Some studios have their team start on DLC before the game actually is released, and some just start a whole new project entirely, and then there are some like 38 studios that get liquidated by Rhode Island after they finish a project.

If your business must be categorized, as it is in most places, you would most likely register it as a software business or entertainment business (lol Bollywood).

Thank you so much for the help. I am using MinGW on 64-bit Windows. I believe I downloaded the 64-bit MinGW version. I still do have a problem, however. I found that I had the VC++ .dll of an older SDL version in System32 from a different application that I had awhile ago, and the new gcc dll was not in my programs directory. I fixed all that, and am now back to productivity. Thanks 

So tell me, why are you spending time on GDnet? Shouldn't you be working? It would seem you have a lot to do, but your work ethic is your own business...

I will give you this, you aren't so much like the other kids on the interwebs who just DEMAND information they don't even understand and expect things to happen. Well, I would say that you should pick up a programming language or two and just dive in. If creating everything from C or something like that sounds a bit daunting, you can always either
A) use the code of someone else's engine for your own project (make sure you have permission and/or the project is LPGL'd, MIT'd, etc.)
B) use something like Unity, UDK, or any premade engine software with a lighter language like JavaScript to make a game

One thing I always tell the kids on this site and others who ask about this type of thing is that regardless of if you are starting from scratch or not (although more so if you are), you need a SOLID grounding in mathematics knowledge. There is no special threshold you have to cross, really, but the more math you can apply to everyday situations in programming (just like all engineering), the more efficient your code will be, and the less time it will take to write it. If your knowledge is limited to, say, Algebra and Geometry, you will find yourself looking up many things online and studying for non-school-related mathematics, and you will arrive with a clunky mess that took you several years to write. I think you get my point on that.

Try to get your software (whether it is yours from scratch, borrowed, or purchased/licensed) up and running before starting on your content. Something I have sometimes wondered with all of you kids asking on this site is that how you would go about selling a game, with no ability to legally own property, have titles, and/or enter a contract. I'm not discouraging you, but I just don't see how that would work. I guess you could put someone else's name on it, but I don't see how that would work either. One last thing is to be the most polite you can on forums and NEVER tell people your age (you can get away with a few certain things here, but on more professional sites like Stack Overflow people don't like too much bad language, immaturity, or being rude. At all.) When you tell people your age, there are also trolls out there (believe it or not) that hate little kids.

Good Luck (I've never told that to a kid before)

considering he tagged winapi one can infer that he's on windows and is probably using c or c++

Yes, I am using C, and was thinking about using the Windows API.

I am programming a MIDI sequencer and SIMPLE digital song-writer for my game, which will have a soft techno-esque soundtrack. I want the internal data structures to be based off of musical notes, and the output to be either to the speakers or to an audio file. I just don't know how to interface my internal data structures for notes/timing and the computer's audio output. I was thinking about MIDI, but I am not sure if learning the entire MIDI spec through-and-through is really necessary for just outputting a few notes. How do you output digital musical notes in Windows? I was thinking about eventually adding MIDI file support later, do you think making the entire thing MIDI-based will do me good? How do you output MIDI notes in Windows?

Well, the best advice I can give you in a short anecdote is that if you want to get started, just hop right in, the figurative wagon is waiting. That is, find yourself a good C resource (I recommend The C Programming Language), read it, DO THE EXAMPLES, start writing C programs, start writing C programs, start writing C programs, start writing C programs, start writing C programs, start writing C programs, and finally, understand my point.

I quited

You quit, you didn't "quited."

P.S: Anywhere C is used above in reference to the language and not in parenthesis, you can replace that with whatever other language you will be using.

Need some programming work? Go find 100k for a good one, 200k for a few of them, or 60k for a compSci graduate fresh out of college basking in this sea of unemployment. Want to learn it yourself, do you lad/lass? Find a cave with internet access and consistent electricity outlets. Bring your computer. Study. All sarcasm aside, there are many members of this site in the same situation as you and your friend. People just don't know programming, I guess, which kind of defeats the purpose as a game won't even be created at all without at least one programmer. Try reading some older yet concrete books on the fundamentals of programming, the likes of K&R, the Dragon Book, and others you can find on the internet (to buy that is, piracy is stupid, especially for books).