I am doing many things, my keyboard sucks (I am on my laptop) and I dont spell check anything.
I wouldnt say I HATE microsoft, I dont like them, but I do use their products when they are at a good price.

Quote:Original post by wmpang
Surely it will not be a nice tool for making large scale game like MMOG ..

But then again, c++ isn't necessarily fit either, but that's beside the point. The best thing a beginner really can do, is try to experiment as much as possible, and have fun while doing it. Be it in flash, python, delphi, c++ or something else

Oh, and hate to break it to you cplus, but..

Quote:Original post by mxrss
hey if you really want to learn use GCC, emacs and BASH. That would be real fun

LMAO

What's so funny? A lot of people (including me, and a lot of my fellow university students) do. The only thing I really miss from MSVC is their debugger..

do I need sp2 for this?

@cplus
I don't think so.

@Nuclearsheep
Come to think of it, you'd want to read this and this before you do anything else if you haven't done so already.

Why is everyone saying that Flash isn't good for game development? I've seen Flash games.

That said, it would probably be a good idea to learn a language like C++.

Read books. Lots of them. This site has plenty of game development books reviewed so you can avoid the bad ones and stick to the ones that everyone likes.

Program. If you really want to learn how to program, then program. Reading about it won't do you any good if you don't apply what you learn. Some books are written like text books in that the end of the chapter might have questions. Answer them. Attempt to program the things it asks you to do. You'll learn a lot that way.

Find a mentor. You don't necessarily need a guru to watch you everyday, but I found that I learned a lot when I had the ability to talk to someone about it. Programming classes help keep you strictly on path, for instance, as opposed to working solo during your free time. IRC chat rooms, mailing lists, and the gamedev.net forums have lots of smart people. With thousands of people around the world, you'll find that you can sometimes have amazing discussions (although you will also find the occasional flamefest).

Learn how to use Google for a lot of things. Google is your friend and the wealth of all human knowledge (also check out wikipedia for a free encyclopedia). Before you ask someone, try to see if you can find out the answer on your own. Not sure why you would ever want to make a class memeber private in C++? Look it up! If you find out on your own, you'll feel much better, and when you do have to ask someone, you can at least ask good questions that show you are informed.

VC++ 6.0 SE can be picked up in the UK for under £40. That's not too bad... You have access to all of the MSDN resources. Mine even came with a tutorial book and the MSDN disks.

Dev-C++ is free.

gcc is free.

Both are closer to the C++ standard than VC++6.0, but I've heard that the latest version is closer to the standard.

EDIT: to clarify, the latest version of VC++ is closer to the standard than the older version.

I might get it when I plan on selling games, but for now free is good, not may 14-year-olds have much money. if I am going to spend money on anything it would be a book, not a compiler that I can get for free.