Making computer games.

Dr.Weasel · Post by **Dr.Weasel** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:26 pm

You tell him squee, i hate that crappy language. Im not much of a programer (or an english major) but from what i have heard. Dark basic is easy to use but you cant get much out of it when it comes to a quality game. The advanced group of programmers at my school are programing a whole game in C++ though.
-Hayden

Post by **Skyone** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:47 pm

C++ is everything. Go with it if you want to have the most complete game.

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:58 am

if iys 2d side scrollers then the games factory is for you

Post by **marshallh** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 9:46 am

Yeah, yeah you all know what I'm gonna say... Get Visual Basic 6.0 (any version) and download the DirectX 8.1 SDK.
Then, go to http://directx4vb.vbgamer.com

What language you need to learn depends on what kind of game you want to make. You can make a Flash game, but there's no easy way to do 3d and who wants their game to run at 15fps? However, you can still manage to pull off some alright games.

With Java, good luck. I use it myself, though not for games. Let me put this bluntly: Java was made for web applets running in a nice little browser sandbox with little else going on. I've managed to make a few graphics demos with it, but keep in mind "Write once, debug everywhere." Java is based on an intermediate compiler, it's supposed to be able to run on any platform without problems. Good luck with that. It's buggy as hell.

For the other game makers; do you really want to be limited by the restrictions of these tools? Sure, they work alright for what they're designed for. But if you want to do something even slightly different and you might as well use a real programming language. However, they can be useful to see if game progromming is something you'd be interested in enough to learn anything else.

As for C++, that would be my second reccomendation after VB6. It is faster, more widely supported than VB, but is also lacks the debugger VB has, is difficult for a newbie, and unfortunately has version bloat (In Visual C++ at least.)

So, in conclusion, see if you understand C/C++. If this is your first time programming, you probably won't. Take a look at VB, and the website I mentioned above. These languages are advantageous becuase the executables (program files) are pre-compiled. So, you actually have a chance of writing a decent commercial quality game (or at least what would have been 5 years ago.)

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:12 pm

S q u e e ! wrote:None of that l33t sp33k is allowed anymore. Check the rules

Not even a joke once in a while? I've seen people like Fanboy and other people use l33t sp33k every once in a while for a joke and never get anything said to them by a mod. Heck, I think i've even seen mods use l33t sp33k as a joke once in a while.

MajorLag · Post by **MajorLag** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:17 pm

As was mentioned, Flash is probably the easiest environment, but I doubt you'd learn a whole lot. C/C++ and similar languages are harder to learn, and usually require either a large investment of time or a good amount of talent to work well with, however it is the most versitile way to go.

http://www.gamedev.net/ is a good reasource for beginers as well as the fairly advanced.

Metroid fan · Post by **Metroid fan** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:43 pm

iam7805 wrote:Yeah, Game Maker r0xz0r5 f0r the 2d g4m35!!

Uh only for certain things I personally like rpgmaker a lot more than game maker rpgmaker is even more rockin!(for rpgs that is)Right now i'm making a pokemon game and it rocks my socks!

Metroid fan · Post by **Metroid fan** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:43 pm

Sorry double post.