Hey. I'm Ethan and I'm new here.

The following was a suggestion from my brother one night. I haven't really been doing anything with my life recently and wanted to persue something I found interesting to maybe make me feel more productive. And who knows, maybe a job in the future.

I guess I'd like to learn programming (or some field of game developing - it all interests me really!) but really don't have a clue to start. I have talked to people about it before and I understand what coding is / what it does, but don't know specifics. I know that most people read lessons and do tutorials online, but I have found that doing that never works for me. Just as an example, I have made 50+ images in photoshop from little online tutorials and guides and don't feel as if I'm any better with photoshop other than knowing where certain buttons are... So what I was wondering is; could someone teach me? Take me under their wing per-say. I find that people explaining things to me helps a LOT, and me being able to ask questions and all. I don't really have any idea how it would work. Nothing serious to start, just casual IMing or something, if you don't feel like doing it / think I'm the most annoying person ever then that's fine. you don't have to! But don't worry, I'm a quick learner.

I feel like this could be a life changing skill for me to have early on because I can spend the rest of my life expanding upon it. From what I have observed, there is a lot of code to learn for different platforms and things. Making games in general intrigues me. I don't necessarily have to stick to just coding. Design / Modeling / Artwork / etc. are all things I've wanted to try. I have a friend who is going into college for game design, and already thought it would be perfect to work on a game with him if I do the coding and him the design. But like I said, I don't know much about programming / coding so I don't know if I'll even enjoy it yet. Although I have a feeling I will enjoy it because I've persued it this far.

I know meeting someone online in such a way might seem strange, but I don't see why not. I've met some of the coolest people I've ever known watching livestreams or playing MMOs, so I think it's worth a shot. I know there are more awesome people out there! And because I really don't enjoy talking about myself, I'm not going to right here. If you'd like to just talk things over or something I'm sure we can find some way of doing it. Just respond here if your interested and I think we can have a cool experience. And I suppose I should mention I'm 16. While I don't care about age, I know some people might. If it helps, most of my friends are adults / 20+.

Also, I know that most people pay tutors to teach them valuable skills like this, but like I said, I'm fine with a very casual 'tips and pointers' because I don't know what to do at all, and so I normally just feel overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. If you'd like to get paid, I'm sorry! I'm relatively young... So maybe in a few years when I make an awesome game that sells a bunch of copies!

So once again, if you're interested just message me here or reply to this post or something! I don't know honestly what to expect but I hope it's a fun and challenging experience. And who knows, could change my life.

Thanks to anyone who even considered this, from what I've read you seem like and awesome community!

-Ethan

Hello Ethan!
I'm pretty much in the same situation as you are, tho i'm 20 years old. I'll be taking couple of OOP, C#/C++ programming courses till next autumn when i'll try getting into a game development school. I cannot teach you but we can perhaps develop our programming skills together? Easier to start doing something with somone else than on your own.

I think the best thing is to learn by doing.
Before you can think of programming games you have to program, period.
Use a step by step tutorial such as learncpp.com and if you feel it's too overwhelming to use a compiler or IDE start with codepad.org to try the code snippets from tutorials. Make little modifications to understand your code's behaviour.

Google Game Institute. You gotta pay them just 99$ for the whole stuff. Some discount going on I guess. They're not frauds. Piratebaybay told me so, it also told me their content is just awesome ;) But you pay them 99$ and you'll get full support for your course. Its perfect for beginners. As its right from the ground up and will take you flying.

--Sid

Getting a tutor, as I've found, is an asset in low supply.

What I would do first is try a little bit of each field of game development you'd like to go in, and then take your next steps from there!

Try Coding- Personally, I downloaded the Visual Studio Express Edition from Microsoft Developer Network's site and just started getting tutorials from this website. Start in either Visual Basic or C# (or C++ if you don't mind headaches). If you get really into it, try XNA in C#, it's pretty easy and you can make a ton from scratch all by yourself! It's a wonderful way to teach yourself how vital things in game code such as the Game Loop, Update, Draw, Initialization, and just Object Oriented Programming in general!

Try 3D Design- Download the student or trial version of Autodesk's Maya or 3DS Max. Again, using this website you can find countless valuable tutorials and links to books that will help you making high resolution models and animations in no time! Fooling around with the tools and getting some of the lingo down is the best way to jump head first into game design, especially with modelling and animation.

After that, ask questions!- No matter how much I teach myself coding, I ALWAYS have questions to ask. This website has helped me too many times for me to count. You may not find a "mentor", but using all of our combined friendly minds, I'm sure we can help you achieve whatever you'd like to do!

Anyway, about the effectiveness of tutoring; I have some experience in this area, and from that experience I can tell you that it won't help if you're not able to:
1. Use google effectively.
2. Read documentation in depth.
3. Ask concise questions.

I haven't posted a question on a forum for in a very long time because of #1 there. Most of your questions when starting out will be pretty basic "How to do X" or "Why doesn't Y work" and these have been answered at least a hundred or so times on this site alone. Also, when we say "Use Google Effectively" we mean searching extensively and not just browsing. Sometimes I spend a good 2 days hunting on the web for what I need, and I've always found it.. always.

However, it is nice to have some friends who are interested in the same things as you, and I find that having a study buddy is always a good idea. Just make sure you find someone who is as dedicated (or more so) than you so you can always keep challenging each other as you go through the journey of learning the trade of computer science.

Using google effectively is often a matter of using the exact terminology but I agree that for a beginner it can be hard if they don't even know that what they are looking for has an exact name. If you never heard of a game loop you won't google it. If you know about game loops but not gamestates then you'll start paraphrasing things such as game loop with transitions or multiple game loop or such without always being directed towards your goal. Indeed I often need a few days of relaxed,laid back browsing to find what I need.