segunda-feira, 31 de outubro de 2011

HOW to be a Game Programmer?

I'm gonna start with something pretty beginner-oriented and not too specific.
So you wanna be a game programmer? Do you already program? Have you ever programmed for games?
The main advice is to not be concerned about what you get and what you don't get, even if you're a total beginner, you just have to keep on trying things, messing around, see how they work.

You don't need to understand an entire language to mess with some code!

Well, get to it! First off, you need to choose a language! Personally, I recommend ActionScript, Flash, to beginners. There are a lot of sites to host the games, lots of frameworks and tutorials, anyone with an internet browser(and the plugin) can play it.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript.html

Right off Google, why not check this little guy out: http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2006/10/29/flash-game-creation-tutorial-part-1/ just to get a hang of how things work, of what programming and ActionScript is. Forget about programming concepts, just mess around, read code, modify it, create something, make things.

Putting your hands to do real work is better than fully learning languages, that's what I believe in. Of course, understanding the language will make you a better programmer.

You can also program games on top of programs and their engines, like GameMaker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Maker
Which is good for beginners and there is a lot of community involved around it, so it's good. You need to script a lot of things to make the game work as you want, so you'll learn, but the IDE(Integrated Development Environment) also makes things quite easy. But you should never be afraid to try something new, so it's not good to hang on to Game Maker and running away of getting to know programming languages and frameworks.

You could also program in Unity:
http://unity3d.com/
I don't think Unity's good for beginners at all, and I also think you should take your time with simpler things like 2D games in ActionScript or Gamemaker before falling in to this. But it's powerful if you want to make 3D games fast and you know what you're doing. If you MUST program 3D games, then go for this since the learning curve isn't steep.

To tell you the truth, though, I prefer to program in Java. I'm sure people will point out a lot of things that are wrong with Java and some of them are true, but I enjoy it. However, it's more complicated to program in Java, since it's an object oriented language, so to program well in it, it's best to know some core concepts, so it's definitely not for beginners. I have even programmed games using Swing(you don't know why yet, but it's a bad idea), Java's GUI system(graphical user interface)

The good thing about Java is that it's cross-platform too, anything that has the Java Virtual Machine can run it. After learning some Java you can then start programming for Android (Google's smart phone system), which uses Java too.

So that is pretty much that! Don't be lazy, why not start programming some ActionScript or creating something in GameMaker RIGHT NOW?

If the above text was too confusing, ignore everything and just go here:

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