G''day, Im new to programming, and i wanna be a game programmer. Im only 15, but I know my maths and i Proggrammed in Qbasic some programs of the parabola and Velocity coinciding with car physics, so i know a few fundamentals to programming. 1) C looks hard, REALLY hard! How long do u think it will take me to learn? 2) What compilers do u guys use? Isnt Visual C++ like $100? 3) Im not really interested in 3d games, as im not the best with workinf Sin/Cos/Tan angles. I wanna make a RTS game, so do u know how long it will take be4 i can start making a game like warcraft (not 3,lol)? 4) I know a lot about computer hardware, but dont u have to specify particuar features of the hardware? For example in QB if u wanted 320X200X256 u would just type SCREEN 13, in C, dont u have to type like Buffer(1024)_bla bla bla, really complicated stuff to get simple features? Answers would be nice, Thanks in advance. If God made us, who Made God? If you cant make it, let it make you. "I play violent Computer games, I could snap at any moment!"

Sorry i posted twice by accident

If God made us, who Made God?
If you cant make it, let it make you.
"I play violent Computer games, I could snap at any moment!"

1) C, and C++, for that matter (no, they're not the same), can be tricky. I'd say that even if you have some prior programming experience you can look forward to a fair number of months learning the language(s), and years to master them.

2) I use Visual C++ 6.0. With academic licencing, it's not so bad, though it'll still cost you ... Of course, there are free alternatives, like Dev-C++. (This is not a compiler, but an IDE - integrated development environment - which is what you really want, especially as a beginner.)

3) I don't know. Might well be over a year. Might well be much more. It depends on just how much you know, how fast you learn, and how much time you have to dedicate to it (and how good your C/C++ books are).

4) Neither C nor C++ comes bundled with graphical features (though some compilers might: My first game was written with Borland's BGI graphics), which seems to throw some people off, coming from languages where 'putpixel' routines are part of the language. With C and C++, you will have to use third-party API's or libraries to get graphics. Once you have learned either language (and only then) you might want to look into a number of these: DirectX, Allegro, SDL ...

[edited by - Miserable on January 20, 2003 9:55:49 AM]