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[xaritscin]

not gonna lie, im the usual guy with the big ideas that doesnt know how to make them reality, but being a game developer is mi long term goal in life for now and im actually learning a career related to it (multimedia engineering), i actually have been developing some world building stuff and technical documents about making the game, also have a knowledge of Java language (basic college programming), i see many projects in ASCII mentioned here in Bay12 along with some amateur projects. so i want to know, how do you people do it? i may be able to make just a simple text based adventure for that matter, but my main project is actually closer to be a virtual universe. so i want to know what would be the best point of start for it in terms of programming......

i dont know nothing about computer graphics (yet), and have just started to learn modelling (in Maya, so i'll have to learn Blender for my indie project), Python is an option i have been analyzing but im not sure of its advantages. how feasible would be to make a prototype in ASCII? is it hard?, also how about 2D procedural code? is it much complicated? i want to know about this so i can at least make an start in the project, for now im okay with generating the universe while i add features over time (once i have a point of start for it)......

[Knight of Fools]

The first two are pretty outdated, but here's a few game making tutorials that you might find useful. If you've already got a solid backing of programming experience, even better.

As someone who can only learn programming when I'm doing something useful, these tutorials have been great.

The first one requires a pretty big caveat: The library he mentions doesn't exist on his site or anywhere I've looked, so you have to figure out exactly what his code does and find a substitute library to follow along. Definitely not recommended for a coding newbie, but it's a good guide to give you a good idea of the logic behind getting started on a rogue like once you're on steady ground. Just don't expect it to turn you into a game developer overnight, because it won't. None of these will.


If you aren't going to make your own library, there's a lot of good gaming libraries out there for C++. Java doesn't have quite as many libraries, but I think it's easier to program in. I might be biased though, since it's my first programming language, and I haven't tried game development with Java yet.


Plan ahead, be prepared to make a lot of mistakes, good luck, and have fun! Remember, making games isn't all fun all the time. There's lots of grind to get there, especially if you're learning.

[Seriyu]

While I have no knowledge of coding and as such I can't help on that front: don't spend all your time looking for people who can do the stuff you're bad at, start it, look for people then. You can and will get bogged down if you don't just jump straight into it.

If you have to do it yourself, you have to do it yourself, tough through it and you'll come out the end with another skill. Especially with art, it's really hard to make art that genuinely looks bad. A lot of the time even more simplistic art will come out looking more stylized then "bad" really. Art is very rarely so bad it ruins the game. It can be hard to tell the difference without looking through a lot of the more abstract games out there, like space funeral, which had very bizzare and kinda amateurish art, but it still managed to rake in a cult following, some areas of the more exploration related games out there like yume nikki and yume 2kki also get very amateurish in places, and yet they're known well enough for indie games.

Barring all this and you really just can't make the art or music or whatever work, there's free graphics libraries out there that look decent enough, dungeon crawl stone soup's tiles started with one of them, there's free music, you could probably pull something together just with those.

So yeah, don't hang around waiting for a team to pull together, because most people, understandably,  aren't going to jump on a promise.

[xaritscin]

i was looking for some insight in the graphics department mostly, im planning to do everything solo so not much of a problem with a team, the problem is that i dont know how to integrate graphics in the code, i could learn C++ but Python is more feasible as an indie platform (no problem with licenses).....

that's the idea, to use open sourced resources with commercial permits...

[Moghjubar]

Theres pretty much no problem with licenses with C++ either.
For example, SDL and SFML, for use with 2d, or as an entryway into OpenGL for 3d

[xaritscin]

Theres pretty much no problem with licenses with C++ either.
For example, SDL and SFML, for use with 2d, or as an entryway into OpenGL for 3d

good to know, then this opens the option for C++, now i have to find a compiller or something for implementing it, i dont think the scale of the project i have in mind will be enough for an engine...

i still have to know about implementing graphics anyway.....

[Moghjubar]

Code::Blocks is a decent IDE, plus its crossplatform. In fact, if you want to use SDL and Code::Blocks, go here:
http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/index.php
It gives simple step by step instructions to set it up  ( http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/01_hello_SDL/windows/index.php )

[xaritscin]

Code::Blocks is a decent IDE, plus its crossplatform. In fact, if you want to use SDL and Code::Blocks, go here:
http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/index.php
It gives simple step by step instructions to set it up  ( http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/01_hello_SDL/windows/index.php )

the problem i find with IDE programs is that i dont know how to make executable files and that stuff i mean, im used to do small apps in Netbeans for example, and it usually just execute it directly in netbeans, i dont know how to make the other stuff, i know how to make packages and even the GUI but not how to make .exe files....

also i dont know how do libraries work...

[Moghjubar]

A C++ IDE plus compiler typically has no issue making an executable.  You can start a new project, type in a few lines for a "hello world" tutorial, hit build, and out pops an exe in a subfolder for you to run. 

You may however need to start here instead of going straight to game programming: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/
If you want to use Code::Blocks, you can download it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/codeblocks/files/Binaries/13.12/Windows/codeblocks-13.12mingw-setup.exe/download

Once its installed, open it up, then go to file: new project: blank project (in whatever folder).
Then, new, empty file, add to project, main.cpp.
Follow the first hello world tutorial and it should spit out an executable just fine.

[Svampapa]

If you know Java it'd be madness not to imo.

Check these out if you haven't:
LibGDX
LWJGL
Java-gaming.org

Then again, learning a new language might be fun.

[xaritscin]

If you know Java it'd be madness not to imo.

Check these out if you haven't:
LibGDX
LWJGL
Java-gaming.org

Then again, learning a new language might be fun.

that's the point i know the basics of programming in Java, upt to arrays, classes and inheritance along with interface design, i use Netbeans for this, what i need to know is how to make the simulation, and how to generate graphics, that's the main issue......i havent seen computer graphics in college yet, but want to make the next step and start doing 3D graphics or at least 2D graphics with the IDE for the first prototypes of the game.....

[xaritscin]

well i'll se what can i do reading "Killer Game Programming in Java", also got a digital copy of "Texturing and Modelling: a Procedura Approach", it should be enough, at least at a basic lvl......

[xaritscin]

nevermind this is garbage, i dont understand these type of books, instead of explaining the functions they put everything in a source code, i downloaded the book to learn, not to make some premade garbage example.....ugh

[Anvilfolk]

Game programming is really hard. I'd definitely steer away from 3d at the beginning.

There's some resources for learning python while programming games, which seems cool.

I read some relevant chapters of Game Coding Complete, which really tell you how to put a game together, its architecture, etc. Most books focus on really basic, low level API stuff hacked together... Which is OK if you're only just learning to program, but GCC was the only book I found which really talked about how game code should be structured.

There's also some tidbits of this in the Game Programming Gems series.

[xaritscin]

Game programming is really hard. I'd definitely steer away from 3d at the beginning.

There's some resources for learning python while programming games, which seems cool.

I read some relevant chapters of Game Coding Complete, which really tell you how to put a game together, its architecture, etc. Most books focus on really basic, low level API stuff hacked together... Which is OK if you're only just learning to program, but GCC was the only book I found which really talked about how game code should be structured.

There's also some tidbits of this in the Game Programming Gems series.

that is the main issue i find when looking for tutorials and documentation, entry lvl documentations gives you a source code instead of teaching you how to do it, that book you suggested uses C++ so its out of the equation for me, i want to learn to make a 3D java program from scratch, but all the stuff i find is tutorials about hello world, and about librariers, but i dont find a single effing tutorial or book in how to implement those librariers and how to start the loop and that stuff......