Hey guys, I'm new to Game Development, so I am going to ask anyone who knows the answer; a question. For those who have done well so far developing games, which program is best for productivity?

What do you mean by "development"? Do you mean programing or designing? If programing MSVC++ .Net is a good program. If you meant designing then WordPad should be all you need (and maybe MSPaint for quick "sketches"). If you meant all programing, designing, art, etc. then theres not many programs to choose from. GameMaker is one of these programs. Try to be more specific so we can give you more help.

hooking on to this thread....more specifically, for game design and idea management, is there any good softwares for that out there - or do we still use notebooks / word processors mainly?

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Original post by JensB hooking on to this thread....more specifically, for game design and idea management, is there any good softwares for that out there - or do we still use notebooks / word processors mainly?

I still mostly use notebooks, a small whiteboard I have, and word processors for documenting my ideas, along with pencil&paper/scanner and/or MSPaint for diagrams and some pretty shoddy quality concept art. [wink]

I sometimes find it helpful to organise my information using a wiki installed on my local system; published to the internet this would also be a great way to work with a team.

Pencel + Paper for writing flow charts (yes i do that), logic, and planning (whats needed, what would be nice to have, API's i can use, functions i can use, data structures, etc...

For normal documentation i just use a word processor.

what is a wiki? :P

I like VIM, though any editor will do in a pinch.

HINT: As you have probably figured out, forum posts do not convey what you were thinking by default (=

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Original post by JensB what is a wiki? :P

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from Wikipedia A Wiki or wiki is a web application that allows users to add content, as on an internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. "Wiki" also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website.

The site I got that definition from, Wikipedia is an excellent example of a wiki containing a lot of content, contributed and edited by a massive user base.

I quite like the MediaWiki software, which happens to be the package that Wikipedia operates with, but there are a lot of other good wiki packages available, most of which are free and usually open-sourced. You also need a webserver to run the package - I use Apache.

If you use C# you will be more productive than if you use C++. At least that's my conclusion after being both a dedicated C++ user and now a dedicated C# user.

If you decide to use C#, then the free opensource C# IDE (Integrated Development Environment) SharpDevelop, aka #Develop (List of features) is the definite choice.

And if you want to make games, I recomend writing games using Managed DirectX (just Google for it to find more information).

If you'd like to get the hang of C# using #Develop, I recomend you to download some software from my site. They were all made using #Develop and #Develop-project-files are included with the downloads.

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Original post by Enselic If you use C# you will be more productive than if you use C++. At least that's my conclusion after being both a dedicated C++ user and now a dedicated C# user.

I disagree. Which language is more productive is largely a personal preference thing, although there are some things that will always be faster in specific languages. [wink]