Visual Studio's express editions certainly are allowed to be used in commercial projects.

Were they always? Because someone here claimed they weren't.

Yes, since their introduction. You own what you create and can use it however you want.

More info:

The DreamSpark and Academic licenses do have some restrictions. You still own everything you create, but their license forbids using those tools to build commercial software. Their intent is to get you comfortable with the tools used in the marketplace, not as an alternative purchase path for commercial users. Of course, the rules are not vigorously enforced and they can be easily overcome by downloading the other free tools from Microsoft and using them when the product is sufficiently advanced, transitioning from an educational experiment into a commercial product.

And so can the real deal:

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs

...unless you enlist some friends (>5) OR start to make money (>$1M)

I guess you could bypass it by organising yourself as some kind of a collective of individual developers, though that is probably more hassle then just paying for the VS license.

Hey Netheous,

Here my 2 cents. From your presentation I gather you are a young coder, so, excluding the usual "make your own engine" that is totally impossible unless you are willing to invest a few years full time without even producing a single game (and usually giving up later on!), you need three things:

• An entry point with a sweet learning curve
• A lot of easy accessible, ready-made, free/cheap game assets repository
• Something that has all the above and is also a solid professional standard used by AAA studios

The three elements are all met by one single game engine: Unity. There are plenty of free learning resources online and the free version allows you to get serious result. Unity comes with MonoDevelop but I'd advice to get Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition and the related Tools for Unity, it's a great set! Moreover, Visual Studio is mandatory to publish games on Windows Store so... kinda unavoidable

Now, a word of advice that goes beyond the tools (your question #2): coding games is all about knowing your maths, so... if you really want in, then get down to learning your math: vectors math, trigonometry and matricial math are the basics. Sure, using Unity libraries everything is made easier, but rest assured that as soon as you want to get something original and very performant you will need your own optimized code, so man up and face your enemy

Cheers,

Pino

Visual Studio's express editions certainly are allowed to be used in commercial projects.

And so can the real deal:

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs

Visual Studio Community 2013 from Microsoft is free and you can use it for commercial stuff. It is actually the Visual Studio 2013 Professional edition.

Yeah, I was just responding to the statement that Express couldn't be used. (Felt too lazy to quote at that time, sorry.)

And so can the real deal:

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs

...unless you enlist some friends (>5) OR start to make money (>$1M)

I guess you could bypass it by organising yourself as some kind of a collective of individual developers, though that is probably more hassle then just paying for the VS license.

That's pretty reasonable. If I made more than a million dollars, I wouldn't mind paying for a license. If I made even a quarter of a million I'd pay for it. The IDE and development tools are perfect, I'd even say the Express edition is worth money.

Chances are, if you're a beginner, you're not going to have 5 programmers on your team anyway.

That's pretty reasonable. If I made more than a million dollars, I wouldn't mind paying for a license. If I made even a quarter of a million I'd pay for it. The IDE and development tools are perfect, I'd even say the Express edition is worth money.

Chances are, if you're a beginner, you're not going to have 5 programmers on your team anyway.

Yeah, for sure, anyone starting out with windows programming (beginner or not), Community edition is definitely the way to go now.

Just wanted to point out that (unlike Express edition) it's not allowed to be used when you reach the point where you start building a company and earning some "real" money. (1M isn't that much if you are 5-10 guys, with benefits and taxes)

Though of course, then the licensing fee is not much of a problem anyhow.

I was misinformed about the Express Edition then, ah well, one never stops learning ^^

And since I use VS2013 Ultimate myself...

Back to topic:

As Pino said, creating your own engine is a metric shitton of work, especially as a beginner. I can tell since that's what I'm doing at the moment