Hello, I'm new to the world of game design but I have been wondering around it for quite some time now. Is there any sort of particular path that I need to take into it? for example, is there a certain language that I would need to learn before the rest?
I would like to eventually be able to program various different languages and make creditable games.
Thank you to all who read this and any advice is much appreciated :)
There is no "one path" you can follow, and without knowing your background it's hard to be specific in telling you how to proceed. Do you have any prior non-game-related programming experience? Are you more interested in programming or game design itself? Are you an artist or musician?
Likewise there is no "best language." Though if you are already experienced in any language than that would be the best candidate.
This might help to get you started.
NO BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist...
In my view, there are two kind of people:
- The ones who believe you should focus on learning a really hard low level programming language, focusing on how it works first. Then when you know how all the internal details of how the code is run/organized you start learning coding logic and advance algorithms.
- The ones who believe you should focus on learning a really easy programming language and focus on the algorithm logic. After you can intuitively solve problems, you go and learn about how the code is run and organized.
If you take the first approach, learn how to code on C, learn how pointers work, the function call stack is organized, how the returns are stored and how all the data of your computer are just a sequence of 0's and 1's. Once you are done with that, go study dynamic programming, greedy algorithms and algorithm complexity.
If you take the second approach learn how to code on python, then study recursion, basic logic, dynamic programming, greedy algorithms and algorithm complexity. After that you start studying lower level programming.
Personally I took the first approach and I don't really regret it, but I learned to code long time ago and material was way more scarce.
That being said, there is not right or wrong answer. You will have to pick if you want the difficult part first (learn a hard programming language right at the start) and the other programming languages will be easier. Or you want to learn an easy programming language first and go for each new language a little harder than the former. Either way is fine, but in my experience, people who start with an easier language tend to stick to it (which may be 100% OK, depending on your goals).
Are you more interested in programming or game design itself?
Yeah, are you interested in every thing that it takes to make your own games, or just the designing part of it?
If you aren't sure then go google what a game designer is and what they do, then google what a programmer does and figure it out.
I myself am interested in game development as a whole: designing, programming, sound.. etc.
If you take the second approach learn how to code on python, then study recursion, basic logic, dynamic programming, greedy algorithms and algorithm complexity. After that you start studying lower level programming.
I started with python not too long ago and its a good language, I'd recommend it if you choose to do programming or game dev. in general.
If you want you can message me and I can help you out with it as well. It doesn't matter what language you choose though, its really just up to you.
There is no best language. My advice would be that if you have never programmed before just download the free version of Gamemaker or Unity and just get stuck in. You will be amazed at what you can achieve quickly using these.
