Beginer developer


PeeZapp

Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
158
Age
37
Location
Perth, Western Australia
ok ive never learnt or tried to develop a game what would be a good software for a beginer. also is there a good instruction manual online that i could read before i try develop a even a crappy little game
 
I would suggest coming up with an idea for a game first, or at least what style of game you'd be interested in making. For a complete beginner any multi-purpose games making system would be overwhelming. However there are engines and systems that have been designed for particular genres, such as platformer, RTS, RPG, etc.


Also are you aiming to develop games purely for the Pandora, for Pandora and PC?
 
If you've got the basics of programming down, then you're on a good start. I would advice doing something very simple, like tic-tac-toe, and then progressing to something more complex, like checkers, before moving on to doing the kind of game that you might actually want to do. Very simple board games with fixed rules: they're usually easy to do so you aren't wasting a lot of time on them, but they still help you understand the flow of how a game is done, and figure out some tricks along the way that will help you later.


If you pick a complicated project, you will likely find yourself programming yourself into a corner from inexperience, and having to start over several times. Something simple like tic-tac-toe you won't feel so bad having to start over, but if you're two or three weeks into your major project and discover what you thought you could do is actually a bad way of doing it, you'll likely get disheartened about the whole thing. I've seen it happen before.


Starting small may not be as much fun, but it doesn't feel as bad screwing up a small project that you worked a few hours on as it does screwing up a project you've put several days or weeks into, trust me. And it should only take a month to grasp the basics, at which point you can start working on something more complex to your liking.
 
Do you have any programming experience? If so, what kind?

No sorry no programming experience but am willing to read up on it and learn by doing i think the reason i got interested is that my nephew does game design at school as a subject and he has made a reasonably good game (a little glitchy but he is 14) in about 3 weeks and i thought if he can i can


ps really good work on wars i love that game
 
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If you've got the basics of programming down, then you're on a good start. I would advice doing something very simple, like tic-tac-toe, and then progressing to something more complex, like checkers, before moving on to doing the kind of game that you might actually want to do. Very simple board games with fixed rules: they're usually easy to do so you aren't wasting a lot of time on them, but they still help you understand the flow of how a game is done, and figure out some tricks along the way that will help you later.


If you pick a complicated project, you will likely find yourself programming yourself into a corner from inexperience, and having to start over several times. Something simple like tic-tac-toe you won't feel so bad having to start over, but if you're two or three weeks into your major project and discover what you thought you could do is actually a bad way of doing it, you'll likely get disheartened about the whole thing. I've seen it happen before.


Starting small may not be as much fun, but it doesn't feel as bad screwing up a small project that you worked a few hours on as it does screwing up a project you've put several days or weeks into, trust me. And it should only take a month to grasp the basics, at which point you can start working on something more complex to your liking.

Thanks i think i will i've got a good idea i think for a turn based strategy game but i will definately start small also i have a mac book pro if that helps in any way with software recommendation
 
I would suggest coming up with an idea for a game first, or at least what style of game you'd be interested in making. For a complete beginner any multi-purpose games making system would be overwhelming. However there are engines and systems that have been designed for particular genres, such as platformer, RTS, RPG, etc.


Also are you aiming to develop games purely for the Pandora, for Pandora and PC?

was thinking purely for pandora but is it easier for testing wise and stuff if i make for both oh and was thinking of a turn based strategy game or a simple platformer
 
There are quite a few routes you can take, and everyone here has an opinion on what's best.


If you want to get something visible quickly, I suggest pygame. With it you can mostly concentrate on getting the game programming basics (game loop, input, rendering, game state) down without the programming language getting too much in your way. Unfortunately pygame games can be a bit slow on the pandora, especially if they are not optimized properly. Simple asynchronous (stuff doesn't happen until the player gives input, like tic-tac-toe) games should be fine though. Synchronous (stuff happens all the time) games such as platformers and shoot'em'ups may (depending on the complexity) take some doing to get running properly.


If you want to learn a language you can continue to use even in more resource intensive games, learn C++ (or C, both have their supporters) and SDL. Lazyfoo's tutorials are a common place to start with SDL. C/C++ can be somewhat harder to learn than python, but it pays off in the performance.


Anything you learn about general game programming principles (structure of a game, collision detection, enemy behavior) carries easily between languages and libraries, so one way would be to start with python/pygame to get stuff on the screen and learn game programming basics, then move on to C++/SDL when you need more oomph.
 
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At the risk of sounding like a broken motivational therapy record, I suggest that you have a look at the code for Wakebreaker, which is a very rudimentary game that has all the components of a real game already working.


http://w1xer.at/pandora/


Its probably a big stretch for a totally new programmer, but maybe you are the type of coder who can learn a lot from working code, and .. well .. it compiles and runs just great on the Pandora, is a fully-working GL ES 1.0 engine (and you can learn from it, about how GL ES 1.0 works), and so on. You can make changes to the code once you gain a better understanding, build your changes, learn as you go, and so on. Your case is exactly why I went to the effort to see if I could get a good demo base for a 3D game working on the Pandora, using the onboard Pandora tools.


You never know, you might stare at that C++ code for a few days, learn *quite* a lot from it, make some changes here and there, and produce your first game! A lot of the hard work, by the way, is in coming up with the content - the majority of the code for a game isn't really of any use until you've worked out a content-creation pipeline .. The very first thing you should learn to do with Wakebreaker is, add new models from creative 3D sources .. This will involve the creation of a header file, and if you can understand that process at least objectively, as a new programmer, you're on your way through the rest of the 3D engine ..
 
I will just agree to what the others said and add this:


Start small, don't even think about starting with an epic Jump and Run - it will not work out, I can tell you.


That probably is the biggest lesson to learn, anything else is just work ;)


Check out the different programming language related sub-forums here, in each of them you will find a pinned topic with many useful and interesting links to get you started.


I personally started with C++ and an SDL-based engine, but if you have no experience I would not advise that. Better start with plain-C and build your own SDL stuff along the lazyfoo tutorials.


Pygame probably is easier to grasp at first, but it does not run that well on the Pandora so you might be screwed when you move onto bigger things (and you can get something simple working in C pretty quickly, too).


Also personally I would never start with anything 3D, it is just a lot more complex than 2D, you might learn more from it, but it most likely is also a lot more work - start with TicTacToe, Pacman or Tetris as WizardStan suggested, then maybe move up to a Platformer with gravity.


Additionally while one usually learns the most from trying stuff themselves, looking at and trying to understand some working code as topor suggested is also a very good thing to do as you get less frustrated (it works already) and you just can poke around (what happens if I change this piece of code or this value).


Basically you should do what you want to do, because that way you will have the most fun and learn more easily, but try to keep your ideas simple in the beginning.
 
Thanks guys massive help and will get started on some basic reading and learning the basic language this weekend. Hopefully one day I'll have something of value to give back to the community :D
 
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