Hello everyone,

So, I have 1 more semester of college left before I get my Associate's in Computer Science with a certificate in Game Design. I have taken C++, Adv. C++, Java, Adv. Java, VB, C#, 2D Game Design (using Allegro game engine). So needless to say, I have a very strong foundation in programming that continues to be built.

During the winter break coming up, I would like to do a little bit of self study in Game Programming. My programming instructor recommended Lua as a good thing to study for a prospective game programmer. I was curious if any of you had any suggestions for any books, tutorials, etc that I could work on during the break? I would rather have a book that I could follow along, so those are definitely preferred. Thanks for the info, and if anyone has any other suggestions OTHER than Lua, by all means, let me know!

Lua is certainly quite good thing to study. Some people highly recommend "Programming in Lua" that's older version is available online at http://www.lua.org/pil/. I have only skimmed parts of it myself, so I have no extra opinion about it. There are also plenty of Lua tutorials available on the internet just a search away.

If you know scripting languages in general anyway then probably most interesting would be trying to embed Lua to some simple C++ application - a small game or whatever might be of interest to you. It would give quite good experience with stack-based languages in general. Just for a warning, if you decide to try embedding it, be sure to look up lua_checkstack function and section 3.2 from http://www.lua.org/m...5.1/manual.html or you'll likely shoot yourself in the foot and get a heap of strange crashes. Other than that it's pretty straight-forward.

There are alternatives to Lua as well such as Squirrel. I think it is a little more difficult when considering its internal architecture, but might be worth having a look at as a comparison to Lua.

If I do Lua, I think I'll try to search out a current version of that book, so that I am up to date on everything.

What about UDK? I know that would be another great thing to learn, seeing as how its used a lot in the industry. The one thing about that, however, is that I'm a terrible artist. How would a strictly programming minded person break into Unreal Development? Any books, tutorials, etc?