Hello, my gamedev.net name is CryoGenesis but you can call me Gen. Im new to the forum and i wanted to ask you something?

Does this stand for anything?
Im 13 years old.
I first started to get into computers during the start of last summer break, when my xbox 360 died and I was stranded trying to find a way to entertain myself. Because the Xbox was broken i decided to take a look into it and find out what all the bits were and what they all did. By then i had learnt how a computer works, how to make logic gates from Transistors and design my own ALU from scratch. by then i had found programming and all its complicated goodness. I wanted to learn Java but I was told that it would be too complicated for me to use as I had NO experience with programming whatsoever.


At the start of summer I was dragged to a dodgy countryside holiday involving hikes etc. To do something productive I spent that week learning Ruby using "The little book of ruby". By the end of that week i knew the language and what programming was and meant in general.

When i came back from the trip i decided to take a look at C++ in which I found to be a complicated syntax and was pulled away rudely interupted by Visual Basic. I learnt that for a while and decided that i should make a game which failed miserably. Straight after the failure i decided to learn Java. This involved 6 books in a period of 2 months. By the end of the two months I had made 3 games. 2 of which I was proud of at the time. One of the games involved messing with things called elements in which combining or heating/cooling the elements would change its natural state. The other was more of a webtoy than a game which was made to aid me with the design of electronic logic. It featured logic gates and so many spaces that you could design an entire cpu inside the game. The electronic logic game featured 20 different components with 100*100 spaces per layer with 19 layers equalling 19000 available spaces for components.

Since then I have bought the book "Killer game programming in java" and am on my way to making my first game that has an actual story to it. It is a 2D Rpg being made Completely by me without any help.
I have read through the A level computing book with ease and plan to take my Computer Studies GCSE a year early along with my Computing A level. Im trying to build a portfolio in which I hope will either help me get into university or get a job.
What I want to know is will all this previous experience mean anything when trying to get into the industry or get noticed?

other info:
The 2D RPG I am making has a deadline of May next year in which I hope will be fun and interesting for people to play.
I have already worked with a team of people and have certain organisation and leadership skills.

Thanks for reading.

Gen.

It's not a bad start, but you'll need some pretty highly polished and completed - and most importantly fun - projects to show off.

But it sounds like you have plenty of time before you need to worry about job placement, so I'd say just carry on :-)

It's not a bad start, but you'll need some pretty highly polished and completed - and most importantly fun - projects to show off.

But it sounds like you have plenty of time before you need to worry about job placement, so I'd say just carry on :-)

Thanks, thats the main reason for making the RPG. Just so I can make something fun and unique to play.

You are on the right track.

Heres some advice with the prog. languages:
Ruby: Good.
Java: Good, but skip this for now until you have learnt C++. Finish your RPG first, then go back to C++.
Visual Basic: Ignore.

Thanks for the advice. I'll take a look at C++ when ive finished the RPG. It seems that most big game companies use C++...

You are on the right track.

Heres some advice with the prog. languages:
Ruby: Good.
Java: Good, but skip this for now until you have learnt C++. Finish your RPG first, then go back to C++.
Visual Basic: Ignore.

I'd disagree with this, If he is allready successfully making games using Java then he can keep on using it, There is little reason to learn C++ before Java, (It might have been a good idea 10 years ago when you had to write your own native graphics library to get decent performance in a Java game but these days there are plenty of libraries that does this allready that one can choose from.

That said, It is still a good idea to learn C++ at some point since it is widely used in some parts of the industry. (Allthough with the growth of the mobile market Java(Android) and C#(WP7) might very well become more important to know for most game developers than C++ and given the OPs young age it is very hard to say what language will be most important by the time he is ready to enter the industry, either way he will probably learn tons of languages before then.