Help for a begginer

[Doughboy3333]

Every since I was little a wanted to get into graphic designs and computer programing. I took a C++ course this year. It was sort of fun but not my ideal. Text based games are boring! I was wondering what the best language would be for a beginner and if someone could teach me. I want to make a game from scratch.

[Joeb454]

See the stickies in this forum :)

Python is pretty easy to learn from what I hear :)

[Majorix]

You can create a GUI with
- Glade for GTK.
- wxGlade for wxwidgets
- Netbeans for Java (with Swing)
- Monodevelop for C# (GTK#) even though Linux is not the ideal platform to develop in this language

[Lster]

Python sounds like it should fit your needs perfectly. It's easy to pick up but goes beyond the basics allowing some very nice and fancy techniques later. If you were to go down that route, I have heard that PyGame is very good.

There may also be some mentor/ protégé programs somewhere but I don't know of any. And of course, there are many tutorials scattered about if you search. :)

[rye_]

A picture speaks a thousand words? or at least five (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2251/1813542816_8be35a8dd0.jpg)

[pmasiar]

Python, without any doubts. Even text games in Python are much more fun than in C++.

Tutorials are unscattered - see my wiki (in sig), also linked from sticky FAQ.

Don't focus on GUI at the beginning. When ready Pygame is simplified wrapper around C libraries for games.

BTW advice: **don't** go to game industry, to make games for living. Lots of people do, so pay is low, hours terrible, and burnout rate would kill them - only huge supply of starry-eyed youth lets them squeezing.

Instead, learn some science you are interested, and do scientific programming. Bioinformatics is hot, and will be even more, with advances of genetics.

[LaRoza]

A picture speaks a thousand words? or at least five (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2251/1813542816_8be35a8dd0.jpg)

For programmers, real information is needed, not pretty pictures.

[rye_]

For programmers, real information is needed, not pretty pictures.

aaah. but in this instance I have no real (useful) information to give, instead I was going for a (apparently not) humourous alternative argument to the much touted python.

oh well.

[LaRoza]

aaah. but in this instance I have no real (useful) information to give, instead I was going for a (apparently not) humourous alternative argument to the much touted python.

oh well.

I see. It is a recurring discussion though.

I see the joke now (don't mind the social awkward geek)

[pmasiar]

A picture speaks a thousand words? or at least five (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2251/1813542816_8be35a8dd0.jpg)

That self-comment about Ruby is about as true and valid as 'fair and balanced' self-praise on Faux News.

(after reading more)
But possibly that image **is** worth the 5 words :-)

Not sure tho how good are Ruby's wrappers to graphics game libraries? As good or better than pygame?

[Lau_of_DK]

Every since I was little a wanted to get into graphic designs and computer programing. I took a C++ course this year. It was sort of fun but not my ideal. Text based games are boring! I was wondering what the best language would be for a beginner and if someone could teach me. I want to make a game from scratch.

Hey,

Could you be a little bit more specific about which type of games your looking to build? There might be some open-source projects you can join, in which case you'll have to adopt their language.

I think for the really advanced games, you really have to be skilled at playing the game of "optimizing". Take Crysis for instance - not very optimized :) It gives me about 10 FPS on a 8800GTS. On the other hand you got something like QW, when it first came out it came fantastic FPS considering the hardware it was on. And way before Quake I remember competing on the lowest number of clock-ticks in our putpixel routines. In this type of discussion Python is useless as its too high-up the ladder.

There are many levels of game-programming, and to best guide you, I would like to hear some more about which area you're looking to get into.

/Lau

[rye_]

That self-comment about Ruby is about as true and valid as 'fair and balanced' self-praise on Faux News.

(after reading more)
But possibly that image **is** worth the 5 words :-)

Not sure tho how good are Ruby's wrappers to graphics game libraries? As good or better than pygame?

I'd have to admit that in most things remotely graphical python does tend to have more, better (or at least more stable, more progressed) libraries. As a once matlab user, python would more than fulfil my needs whereas ruby is unable to (perhaps this is no longer true?).

It just I really enjoy the ruby syntax.