Hello everyone, I have recently begun college this summer for Computer Science. I am only taking general education courses during the summers to get then out of the way, but I figure I would start learning to program myself. my goals over the next three years are to be able to program GUI and menus for PC games, as well as make 2D/2.5D games.

I know it won't be easy, and that's why I said over the course of three years I want to learn this. I know that I will have to make many small games and such but I am okay with that. I don't expect to make a title that is worthy of showing anyone for years.

I was wondering which language would be good for PC gaming that is on the easier scale to learn. The language needs to be well documented and have 2D game engines that support it. If you do recommend a language please say which engine would be a good choice and why possibly.

If I get no answers I will probably try my hand at Python. Unfortunately I can't find any game engine that has tilemaps and shaders. I found pygame, but I don't believe it is a full on engine.

Anyways, If no one replies with other alternatives I guess I will try Python with these two pdfs

Those books are excellent. I used the second one to learn the Pygame library. Al is a great guy too. He responds to questions through email. You are correct in that Pygame is a library, not an engine. It will help you do common UI tasks like handling keyboard, mouse, and gamepad events, drawing basic shapes, blitting sprites and so on. I've heard it referred to as a 'from the ground up' game development tool. It won't be easy to make awesome looking games right off the bat but I've found it a great tool to getting started with game development programming and the fact that it uses Python was a plus for me. Good luck and remember the most important thing about beginning game development is finishing your games.

Those books are excellent. I used the second one to learn the Pygame library. Al is a great guy too. He responds to questions through email. You are correct in that Pygame is a library, not an engine. It will help you do common UI tasks like handling keyboard, mouse, and gamepad events, drawing basic shapes, blitting sprites and so on. I've heard it referred to as a 'from the ground up' game development tool. It won't be easy to make awesome looking games right off the bat but I've found it a great tool to getting started with game development programming and the fact that it uses Python was a plus for me. Good luck and remember the most important thing about beginning game development is finishing your games.

Thanks for the reply! Yes, It looks like a well thought out guide. I tried another guide but it didn't tell me WHY I was doing what I was doing, just to do it. I am currently using Code Academy to learn the basics of Python. I will then move onto these two books. It's good to hear that pygame is a decent library, even if it isn't an engine.

I just want to be able to make a sidescroller, or a top-down game within the next three years of me learning. My brother is learning 3d animation and pixel art (pixel art for me too) as I learn programming. Hopefully we are both doing well over the next three years so we can work on some projects.

Definitely doable. I think a basic mario-like sidescroller can be done within 6 months to a year depending on how many hours a week you can put in. I started learning Python from Codecademy around December / January too, and Al's Pygame book around February / March, and this is what I've done so far using only Pygame.

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

Here is a website that helped a lot with planning which games to work on.

LazyFoo

EDIT: Adding a couple of tidbits that I've learned so far as a beginner. Lists and dictionaries are your friends. When you're going through your Python course at Codecademy pay special attention to anything dealing with these data types. For me, personally, camera handling was a killer. So far this was the only thing I had to contact Al for help with. I spent hours upon hours just staring at the camera handling code, trying to understand it.

Thanks for the link for ideas in the future. Those looks great as well. I have around 5-6 hours left over before I go to bed everyday. I will most likely be able to dedicate 2 hours to learning per day. During the weekends I can go crazy with my time though.

You do need to start small because you are still learning. It took me 4 months to really understand game programming. Every implementation of my first 2D game was a failure and a struggle that took several revisions to have good coding style to be efficient. Before that, I did not know anything about game programming.

My advice: Start small and keep programming everyday and understand a little bit of it daily as you go. Good luck.