Where should I start? I'm 13 and have used Ruby but I really want to learn all I can about making games, including coding. Where should I begin?
13 Y/O That Is Interested In Learning How To Make Video Games
Have you read through all of this?
Do that, have lots of patience, and don't get frustrated if things don't move as quickly as you hoped. Keep an open mind. I started posting and reading here at just about the same age and at 20 years old I was working professionally. There are others here with similar stories. This can go as far as you want, if you're willing to commitment the time and effort.
its a never ending journey. i've been building games for fun since 1981, and building them to sell since 1989. whether you do it for fun or profit, its one of the coolest things on the planet. enjoy!
Pick a language.
Output something to the screen.
Figure out how to store stuff in variables.
Get some kind of user input.
Echo user input to the screen.
Learn how conditionals work so you can output or do different things depending on a variable's value.
Learn how loops work.
Learn how to get a random number.
Learn how to create and use functions.
There's more advanced stuff like objects and polymorphism beyond that but you should be able to do quite a bit with just that much. If I were to look at learning some new language I'd pretty much be going through those initial exercises.
Start by choosing a simple game to create.
You can mimic an existing game like pong or tetris or you can just pluck a simple idea out of your head if you have one.
Note I said "simple". "avoid the moving ball" is a simple concept whilst "shoot all the enemies in a 3D environment" isn't.
Also it's harder to create something new than mimic, so you'll find it a hard and interesting challenge to create your "avoid the moving ball" game or whatever you come up with.
Start out by understanding game development concepts in ruby if ruby can at least draw graphics. Concepts are transferable between languages and once you know them you know them.
This is where I started also age 13, deciding to make a simple lunar lander game in BASIC. I'm now 35 and still learning new things.
never stop learning!
Good luck!
You can mimic an existing game like pong or tetris or you can just pluck a simple idea out of your head if you have one.
Note I said "simple". "avoid the moving ball" is a simple concept whilst "shoot all the enemies in a 3D environment" isn't.
Also it's harder to create something new than mimic, so you'll find it a hard and interesting challenge to create your "avoid the moving ball" game or whatever you come up with.
Start out by understanding game development concepts in ruby if ruby can at least draw graphics. Concepts are transferable between languages and once you know them you know them.
This is where I started also age 13, deciding to make a simple lunar lander game in BASIC. I'm now 35 and still learning new things.
never stop learning!
Good luck!
I might go far here but start with the smallest steps possible in mind, something like kseh described above. After you know the basics of the chosen language learn how to test it. The most eye-opening experience for me was to stumble upon the assert function but to make it simpler here's your first lesson on TDD.
Let's assume you're writing your code in python3 language in mygame.py file. This is how you would test it in a separate tests.py file:
import mygame
# this is our "assert" for dummies ;) we will call it "verify"
def verify(condition, error_message):
if not condition:
print(error_message)
verify(mygame.player.position() == (0,0), 'Player did not start in 0,0')
mygame.player.move(0,2)
verify(mygame.player.position() == (0,2), 'Player did not move two steps right')
print('FINISHED')
The beauty of this lies in the fact you can write your test code before you actually write this part of the game. What's more, whenever you break something in your game, you can just run python3 tests.py in your command shell and it will tell you exactly which assumption got broken so you'll be able to quickly fix your code. What the above test tells you is that you need mygame that has a player who starts in a position 0,0 and has an ability to move. Now go code it with some ASCII graphics.
Also, when you write tests, make sure the test actually fails on incorrect results! Fail first, then fix. That is the TDD way, and for damn good reasons.
Start with c#. Since you're kinda new what you need to do is get your hands really dirty. You will need a compiler and then you will need an already prewritten program. Study the code of this program and challenge yourself to alter it. Do not for the love of god start from scratch unless you're testing something really small. Good luck.
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