New Guy Here! Need Help/Tutorials
Tutorials are all over the place. My tip would be to start doing something :)
- Pick a language (and stick with it) :: common suggestions are C# and Python 'round these parts
- Read some good book(s) on the language
- While reading, try implementing what you read. Make a "guess the number" game, for example.
- Search these forums - your question gets asked at least once a day on average. Some members have written very lengthy, helpful "so you're just starting out" responses in threads like this over the years.
- Don't give up!
Also, keep in mind that "Computer Programming" and "Game Design" can be two distinct (and lifelong) pursuits. It will benefit you to figure out where your real passion lies: many folks involved with game design and asset creation don't even touch code.
I assume you are interested in game development considering where you are asking the question.
If thats the case read I want to be a game developer... now what?
It's a long read, but was written to help people in exactly your position. Frankly if you find this too long to read, you really aren't going to like programming in general... there's lots of reading ahead of you.
Firstly, you have to distinguish game programming from game design. Those two are very different fields, I fully agree with @BCullis. Read up about those on wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design
Game programming usually stands for implementing game rules on computer hardware by means of programming languages (and their compilators or interpreters), frameworks, SDKs and so on. You can program the way your game is represented on the screen (graphics programming, shader programming) or the way game logic, physics, audio and other game systems work. This process is highly tied with writing lots of code.
Game design is about creating those game rules, managing game balance and other game processes. As far as I understand, this is highly tied with writing lots of documentation, describing game processes. Note that there is a number of different types of designers existing as well. Some of them work on game levels, create game assets (painting textures, constructing models etc) and so on. I'm sure they do a lot of other stuff too, I don't have enough knowledge on this field.
I know, it's very overwhelming for beginner to understand differences between all those roles. In small game, all those roles can be successfuly managed by single person. You are responsible for creating game rules, implementing them via programming, choose the way you represent your game on the screen (if any), create game assets (like cool pictures of starships xD) and so on. Creating your own simple game is a very good point where you can actually think about differences of those fields and pick up what you like the most in the future.
If you don't know any programming language (and at this point it is necessary for you in order to create simple game by yourself), I would suggest to take a look at HTML5 and JavaScript for development. JS is a very simple and forgiving language for beginner, however you still can create awesome games for your browser, which will run on your mobile devices aswell as a nice bonus =)
You can find a lot of guides about creating HTML5 games by googling that, however I'd firstly start from HTML and JavaScript tutorials on this site: http://www.w3schools.com/ As a nice bonus, you will understand how the web works and will be capable of creating your own beautiful site. When you understand those concepts (it should't take too much time, I think), go directly to Canvas HTML5 element guide, get your jQuery library and create something fun!
After that you will have to choose to keep creating web games, or try some platform-dependant games.
You surely can start learning languages like C++ firstly, but your first games on those won't please you with some visually cool things, until you learn graphics library, which is a little overwhelming for novice, especially if he don't even know the language well. So I suggest to try it after web-games creation.
And ofcource you need some knowledge in math if you plan to became programer or game designer. If you plan to program 3D graphics you will have to know geometry and calculus on middle level too.
hello, i was like this last year and now it has been a year after i learnt things. When i came into game developing I started searching others project files ann saw the codes used. I recommend you using Unity engine which most of the people start off with. Even I started with it..
And when you go on pick a right programming language, i recommend C++ which is easy to learn with this book. I started learning c++ lat year November and I am able to code with OpenGL myself. Remember 1 thing you can't script in unity and other engine with c++ you need to know c# or java.
But learning those are easy when you know c++, i am able to code a game with c# by learning c++.
the next thing is modelling, rigging and animating, important part of a 3d video game,
before starting to develop 3d games just go to make som models and learn some softwares like
maya
3ds Max
mudbox
Zbrush
and other things xD
And make your first game such with normal game with using premade models like cube, cylinder, bla bla bla...So you can imporve your scripting from part to part.
Whether you want to make Guess-the-Number or Skyrim - you won't get far without learning a programming language first, so make that your top priority.
When are you ready to make your first game? When you feel confident enough that you can write a text-based game of some kind. Hard to think of such a thing in this day and age of graphically all singing and dancing games with motion controllers, but thats where it all started so many years ago: Simple text on a screen...and dots...and bleeps...not sure which came first, but sod it thats not the important thing here!
So, for the time being, you just need to knuckle down and learn your first language and put anything else aside. Give yourself about three months to learn the basics of programming(education), and then a further three months making that text game(experience). Once you've done that, come back here to GameDev and ask for further guidance.
Like others have mentioned here before, the first thing to do is learn your programming language of choice. I recommend learning C++ mostly due to the fact that it's somewhat of an industry standard, it's powerful, and there's a bunch of information about how to use it (documentation, tutorials, etc.).
If you do decide to learn C++ I would recommend starting with
">this video series, as well as websites such as http://www.cplusplus.com and http://www.learncpp.com.
Just don't be discouraged by the fact that you'll start by writing simple, minimalistic programs that don't have fancy visuals. Making games will come later, for now it's important to learn about the programming language itself.
c++11 video tutorials on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXjSIEICHR3OW7Ala0hkwNSrVE0uUpH6c&feature=view_all
