Hello Everyone!
To be honest, after 1 year of using game maker, I feel like, finaly i can make a game on my own, with codes and i'm so proud of myself. But i feel like it was a lot of time, and interested if was it so much time to everyone? So i made this: http://goo.gl/forms/RXBDZPJnxU I would be happy if some of you were answer the questions :)
the very first thing i learned was how to program a guess the numbers game on a programmable desktop adding machine (olivetti underwood 101)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programma_101
next i learned how to program in basic. that was enough to write a lunar lander clone for the ibm 360 mainframe. i took a class in high school, basic and fortran over one school year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Lander_(1979_video_game)
and i also wrote a flying saucer shooter arcade game for the IBM PC XT.
then i learned pascal for speed as part of my non-game progamming , and some trig and such in school.
this was enough to write the world's first star trek flight sim.
the game was uploaded to the biggest BBS at OSU (this was before the internet). someone re-uploaded it to AOL, and it became a top 10 download on AOL, 10,000+ copies downloaded the first week. first i showed it to my friends, and they said "looks cool! needs better explosions!". so i added better explosions. then i emailed the sysop of the biggest BBS at OSU and asked him how to prepare a download file. he said: "used the wolf3d method: a little for free, and pay for the rest." (wolf 3d had just come out). so that's what i did.
yes i still make games. since then i've learned how to do true 3D stuff. and you really never stop learning. just keeping up with the hardware and customer expectations more or less guarantees that.
surprisingly little of my formal education applied to making games, despite being a software engineer, and having enough hours for 4 engineering degrees (i was a professional student for a while). some math, programming obviously, some CS stuff (discrete math etc), and physics, that's about it. almost everything game specific was learned through individual study. i have a saying: "everything i ever needed to know about building games, i learned on compuserv's gamedev forum.". sad thing is, its by and large true.
What was the language you used for for first?
BASIC then moved straight to C++. Since have dabbled in other languages.
How much time did it take to learn the language? (When were you able to do on your own, a game)
I've been programming since I was 13 (2 years BASIC due to school), but started in on C++ when I was 15. I'm now 35 and still learning it as the standard updates add new things for me to play with. After a year you should be more than comfortable to start making games like the ones listed in this article.
Have you uploaded the game to somewhere (like gamejolt)
Nope.
Do you think it was a good game? Was it succesfull when you showed it to your family/friends
Outside of a basic Pong Clone I wrote using C++ and Allegro I have not publicly released anything I've done since 2006. I do what I do for myself so I don't have the need to publish any of it.
Are you still making games? And if you, can you feel that, you make progress in game making?
Yes. You only make progress by pushing yourself, once you stop experimenting with ideas and settle into doing the "safe projects" is when you stop progressing. Think of Call of Duty, every sequel has felt like the previous game with just one or two features added.
What was the language you used for for first?
That was the Beginners All Symbolic Instruction Code on the C64 (never bothered much with 6502 assembly), then GfA-Basic on the Atari ST, then Turbo Basic on the PC. Later Turbo Pascal, C and C++.
How much time did it take to learn the language? (When were you able to do on your own, a game)
The C64 forced you to learn BASIC immediately to some extent. Otherwise you would have only been able to SHIFT+RUN/STOP and PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. Fortunately the manual gave a nice introduction. The first simple (dare I say BASIC) game I made took me a few weeks in terms of learning the language. The actual coding then took maybe a day or two.
Have you uploaded the game to somewhere (like gamejolt)
No, by the time the World Wide Web was invented I already had lost the game.
Do you think it was a good game? Was it succesfull when you showed it to your family/friends
It was an okayish game. Nothing great by today's standards, but I was quite proud of it.
Are you still making games? And if you, can you feel that, you make progress in game making?
Yes, that's how I make a living. And if I stopped getting better at it, I'd be jobless pretty soon.
What was the language you used for for first?
C64 Basic 2.0 ( as it was noted above, C64 sort of forced you to learn basics of Basic ), then asm 6502.
How much time did it take to learn the language? (When were you able to do on your own, a game)
Hard to say, if I count simple text games in Basic as games then it's just few days. But as my first I count a sprite based samurai fighting game I wrote, I think, few months later. I was 9 or 10 back then, so I don't remember exactly.
Have you uploaded the game to somewhere (like gamejolt)
I don't think gamejolt existed back then. The Internet didn't either. Those early games didn't survive to be uploaded anywhere nowadays.
Do you think it was a good game? Was it succesfull when you showed it to your family/friends
It was a game I was proud of, so my judgement could be slightly clouded :) I never really shared it with anyone. At least I don't remember that.
Are you still making games? And if you, can you feel that, you make progress in game making?
Sort of. Haven't been working in the industry directly for like 2 years. I switched to tech side rather than gameplay too, so there are less games coming out of my coding. Now I'm indirectly connected with the games industry.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to put comment on your poll as it shows how young you are ( it's nothing bad! ) and how things changed over years. First question asks about the language but NONE of options is an actual language. These are engines which, comparing to the age of the whole industry, are relatively young. C, C++, assembler ( of any architecture ), python and back in the past - Basic 2.0, Amos, Blitz Basic, Pascal - these are languages.
Third question also is too "modern" :) As you probably noticed, many people who responded to your poll are veterans of the industry. We started when there was no such thing like the Internet. There were BBS services and few other Internet-like solutions back then, but they costed lot and they weren't so common in use ( especially for non-US people ). I think it would sound better if you change the question to "Have you published your game", because then, even if you made a 100 copies of your game on floppy disks and convinced a local store owner to expose them ( which happened in my case, but with different, better game ;) ) - well, today it's called self-publishing :D
There were BBS services and few other Internet-like solutions back then, but they costed lot and they weren't so common in use ( especially for non-US people ).
Eh? BBSes were very popular in Europe.
They were popular in much of the US as well in the peak time frame, from 1990-1995, hitting a sudden drop-off with the invention and popularization of the World Wide Web.
For many of us (including me) the BBS was my preferred way to access Usenet groups, since paid access to a BBS that processed subjects I was interested in was far cheaper than access to the school's SLIP services as a non-student.
They were popular in much of the US as well in the peak time frame, from 1990-1995, hitting a sudden drop-off with the invention and popularization of the World Wide Web.
For many of us (including me) the BBS was my preferred way to access Usenet groups, since paid access to a BBS that processed subjects I was interested in was far cheaper than access to the school's SLIP services as a non-student.
Haven't heard anyone mention SLIP in a long time, we used to use slurp over our terminals to access the internet and browse the web with graphics using Mosaic! It sure beat Lynx text browser, although the text browser was great for looking up fantasy football stats :)
I suppose I should answer the questions here too:
I 1st programmed BASIC on an Apple IIe, 5th grade, probably 1986, and I made text adventure games. I never truly "learned the language" I only learned the parts of the language needed to make text games, but, considering it was simple input and if/then mechanisms, it didn't take too long.
No, I didn't upload any of those early games anywhere, and games I'm made more recently have mostly been just for me, or I've shared wqith a few friends as a hobby.
Occasionally, I'll get the urge to dabble with game making, but it's not as often any more, and if I do, again, it's just for fun as a hobby.
