Right now I'm a senior in high school and during the ensuing school year I am going to a 4 year university to major in Computer Science to pursue a career in Game Programming. Like most schools, first I have two years to take General Education classes and the next two years I will be working on my Computer Science degree. How should I prepare myself within these two years and a half before I get started on my major? Any books, affordable or free programs, and general ideas I should look into? I know my way around computers because I have experience with several graphic design programs such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver, however, they do not pertain to programming. Any advice will appreciated. Thanks.

Well, if it were me in your shoes, id grab myself the free Visual C++ Express IDE
Then hunt for some Online Tutorials and/or a Good Book, finally a C++ Referance Site. Then id knuckle down and start learning. [smile]

Get involved....now!

Seriously! Get to know your professors, and make yourself known to them. Sit in at all the talks that you can, join all the groups that you can. Take all of the classes that you can. Get involved in a moddable game community.

And if you're truly planning on going into CPS and excelling at it; you will need to have some pretty sophisticated mathematic skills, although, you don't need to be a PhD. I personally hate math, but I'm good at it. Mathematics and Computer Science go hand-in-hand, mainly for the logical order of thought (cognitive processes involved in both are similar), but also, as you will find in your higher level classes, it's actually used. Vector and matrix calculations are pretty common on a code level, and you will find Calc 2 to be your friend when doing algorithm analysis, not to mention statistical probability theory.

Philosophy wouldn't be a bad field to take a few classes in as well. Definitely take a logic class, for sure.

Aside from academics, start doing things now. Start programming with any language. Start learning how to use Photoshop. Start learning how to use 3D Max. Order a few books. I personally recommend "Beginning C++ Game Programming". I picked it up, and while it's sorely rudimentary for me, the author does a fantastic job of getting someone with no C++ experience up and on their feet. A great book which I would recommend to anyone who would like a quick course in C++.

As I said before, get involved in a modifiable game community. There used to be a ton of mods for Q3, and one of the most successful is Urban Terror. Many of the original members on that team have long-since moved on to more permanent positions with some reputable companies. Neverwinter Nights is a great game that has the ability to build small little one-room quests to full worlds. I was involved in a number of projects in that game many years back. Great experience, working with live servers. Even third party software is a great way to get noticed. Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online) hired a number of people from the community to work on Asheron's Call, including Zyrca (a valuable resource to the third party plugin community), Nei (who was hired from the Beta community due to his, well, shall we say, skills), and I think there may have been one or two others from the community who eat their breakfasts with the rest of the crew every Wednesday morning.....


But the point is: Get Involved! Make a name for yourself. Showcase your interests as well as your talents and you will shine!

sweetbread

Nice, that advice is really helpful. Thanks guys.

Well right now I'm pretty much prepared for college as I have been going through two years of AP courses. Right now in high school I'm taking Calculus AB so I think I'm set for advancing in mathematics in college. How about developing a popular flash game? How much exposure would that give me in order to "get known"?

As stupid as it may sound, don't learn things separately. Once you get in a mode of not programming with OOP it's hard to get into that groove. So if you want to learn to do something figure out all the stuff that you're going to need and learn it all together, not separate...if you don't you'll regret it, I know i am.

What are the chances that the atmosphere within the courses are relevant to gaming if I were to befriend my professors and classmates? I am going to be majoring in Computer Science but it is a broad field that does not just pertain to video games.

Quote:Original post by SuBM1T
What are the chances that the atmosphere within the courses are relevant to gaming if I were to befriend my professors and classmates? I am going to be majoring in Computer Science but it is a broad field that does not just pertain to video games.

Expect a good number of your classmates to game as a hobby at the very least, and many of the younger professors as well. For example, in an AI class I took, we had to write a research paper on any AI related field we wanted. More than half of the papers were on game related AI applications, such as bots in FPS games.

However, I wouldn't expect any course to go out of their way to tie gaming to the course material. My courses have mentioned "this can be used for unit pathing in an RTS game" and other comments, but the content (probably)will not be tailored to gaming at all.

Most of what you learn will be useful to game programming though. Any classes on AI, Databases, Graphics, Data Structures, Algorithm design, Networks, Software Engineering, etc will be useful to any aspiring game programmer.

A computer science degree will give you the general tools and concepts, and it's up to you where you apply this general knowledge.(This is a good thing, you don't want to be pigeonholed into only 1 possible career)