Hello. My name is William Martin and I go by Chaze007 on the internet. I'm currently nineteen, work a full time job at home as a mobility technical support agent for Convergys Corporation. Before that I'm the average teenager, and ever since I was little I've been fascinated with game design. I loved playing video games, but what I loved even more were the sandbox options given to me. I loved figuring out how games worked when I was little, and learning to take advantage of the AI and UI of games I played. Around 7 I decided I would make video games. I got into RPG Maker XP and around this time my family was having some personal issues so I did not attend school. All day and night I wrote stories and used event systems and tried getting my games working.

As I got older I drifted from that, and in higschool I took a business and computer vocational class just because it had the word computer in it. Around that time I migrated away from making games, and did more social activities and played online with friends. My hobbies then still consisted of threads of my game design dreams. I would make art. Mostly 2D, some very bad 3D. I would sprite, and make wallpapers, midis, and write stories. I would attempt to start a game project, but always quit. So here I am today. I consider myself adept enough in every aspect of what it takes to make a game except one, programming, which has always been my biggest crutch. I was never good at math, or even understanding it, but I've been around game design and friends who code long enough to understand a few words of what I see.

So that brings me to this website. I want to learn to write code, I want to become good enough at it to understand the syntax and actually know what I'm looking at. I want to learn it from the ground up to make a video game, that is my biggest goal. I know I can't learn coding with the only factor in my mind driving me is to make video games, and I'm willing to learn everything I need to along the way to achieve my goal. The big question is, where do I start? This is where you come in. I know NOTHING. Not a snip of code. I wrote a little bit of javascript for the past few days on a website. I can barely remember it. I want to start somewhere I know will take me closer to my goal, so in my mind I had javascript and unity. Though I want your personal opinions on a good language to begin learning to understand basic syntax, up into actual video game development. The unity engine seemed like a great thing to learn with alongside a language like c# and I heard it has it's own form of javascript. Now I also know Unity is mainly for 3D but I read it can also do 2D and that's where I would like to start.

So what do you guys think? What's a good language, with great books, lessons, or tutorials for complete beginners?

What are your personal experiences starting out with coding? Is being good at math a requirement?

For the game design aspect, should I learn to use an engine alongside learning the language, like unity?

Please. I would love to hear your opinions, advice, and stories. I just really want this, and don't know where to begin. Thanks for reading.

Hey and welcome! I would advice you to take a high level language like c# or java. Those 2 are the most popular. If you want to develop for Android then java would be a better choice. If you want to write for Windows bars OS them pick c#. On the inside they are very similar.

I started out with c#/xna and some minor experience. I did a couple of xna tutorials that learned me the basics like drawing and moving a sprite on screen. From there i did a pong tutorial and developed a arkanoid clone myself with the help of sites like this.

The key is not to take to big bytes. Keep your projects small while still learning from it. There will be hard and miserable spots you get sucked in while programming. For months i am trying to make my pathfinding system more efficient without any good results.

If you ever can make your own rpg remains a question. I had my fair share of tries but when things get to complicated i lose focus. So i did not start big projects for a while now.

Good luck, start small and enjoy what you are doing.

I honestly think I'm going to go with C#, is it easier than C++ to start with? Is it a good beginner language? Should I learn it independent or using an engine like unity?

I personally think it is important to set your goal straight. What is it exactly what you want, because there are multiple ways to Rome. Small steps, but have an aim for the future of what you want to achieve. Knowledge you get by programming in one language will help you understand the fundamentals of another in one way or another, to give an example:

Say your future goal is to be developing/working on an engine of a AAA game studio. You can be sure that C++ will be your language of choice in the end, this doesn't mean that if you start with Unity3D and C#, that experience is a waste, you gained a bit of understanding on syntax and logics of coding. Obviously you will not learn the characteristics of one language when using the other, but it's never a time lost.

You say your aim is to make a video game. Ask yourself the question on what level? Do you want to make games for a hobby? Just pick whatever language/engine you are most comfortable with. Yes this will take some of your time and you will need to dive into multiple things to see what feels right for you. Because in the end, it matters that you have a game and why limit yourself because person X said you should use this or that?

Do you want to make games for a living? If it is as an indie developer, it's the same story as above, but you will need to take more things into account in terms of publishing. Research!

Want to get a job at a company? Research into what that specific company is using and start learning that! Indie developers are pretty diverse in what engines/languages they use. AAA game companies tend to use C++ (and perhaps a scripting language for certain things). This doesn't mean that every AAA company uses C++ though.

I honestly think I'm going to go with C#, is it easier than C++ to start with? Is it a good beginner language? Should I learn it independent or using an engine like unity?

If you are still fresh and need to learn everything about a language, it's easier to pick one and focus on that. Pick one based on what your aim is. C++ is fine, C# is fine, Java is fine, everything is fine. Google some (dis)advantages of a language. Learning how to google stuff is a vital skill anyway.

As a personal story:

I started with learning C++ as I knew my aim would be to be in the games industry, preferably AAA (at that time) and so I started with that and also take that at college. The more I got to know about programming in general, the more I also started to realize that I did not want to reinvent the wheel when I wanted to make a game. So I started using Unity3D with C# to prototype ideas and make small games, because that's what Unity3D is good for. Making games without me having to make any of the rendering stuff under the hood or physics and such.

I still use C++ as it's simply my language of choice to make the tech I want to, I simply pick whatever is best suited for the job to be done.

so TL;DR

Just pick whatever works for you and if you have a future aim, steer it in that direction.

Thanks for the insight! I'm really leaning towards C# with these replies. No I don't plan to work on anything AAA, in fact I don't like them, I love the indies. I don't plan to make a living out of any of it, yeah it's more of a hobby I'd like to pick up to work on in my spare time. I love to tell stories, but the stories I write always sound like they'd be better in a game. I'd like to go into 3D, but I don't think starting in it would be good for me. Actually I'd like to make games of all types, just whatever comes to mind. Would you say that C# is a good language to start out and work in? It just sounds like it wouldn't be incredibly complicated but is also incredibly useful to pick up. Again thanks C:

I've decided I'm going to start with C# alongside Unity. Does anyone here with vast C# knowledge have any tips, recommendations or goods books/tutorials I can use? I want to start from the bottom up.

I've decided I'm going to start with C# alongside Unity. Does anyone here with vast C# knowledge have any tips, recommendations or goods books/tutorials I can use? I want to start from the bottom up.

You are getting way too far ahead of yourself here. Unity is an engine. You don't even know how to program - so picking an engine is many steps down the road. You need to learn how to program first.

This is what you need to do:

-Go to a bookstore

-Go to the programming section

-Pick a book that teaches a language and buy it.

-Read through that book, doing ALL of the exercises and projects in the book. Don't keep reading past an exercise until you've completed that exercise.

For the most part, it doesn't matter which language you learn. Personally, I think C++ would be best, but C#, Java, Python....it doesn't really matter, because once you've taught yourself one language and learned it well, it's incredibly easy to pick up any other language you want.

So go to your bookstore and look through the books and pick your language based on what BOOK you like best. Which book is available that will fit your learning and reading style the best? Go with that one.

You're going to be learning programming for several weeks, probably several months.

Can you recommend any ebooks? I don't think we even have a local bookstore with a programming section. Small town.

This is ok for beginning C# http://www.csharpcourse.com/

EDIT: I can't remember if it has any exercises in it though.

Here are some free ebooks on C#: http://readwrite.com/2011/05/28/free-e-books-on-c#awesm=~ojU4SUJMY8c4IC