Hi!

I am currently studying IT - Engineering in a local college and I am a third year BSc student.

I would like to become a game developer (maybe an indie developer of some sort, though working at a triple A studio would be cool as well).

My question is what should I focus on?

I have done some SDL tutorials, and I've nearly read through the 2D part of an XNA book. XNA seems a bit more simpler and faster to develop with. Should I continue improving my XNA skills, or should I forget it because it is not supported by Microsoft anymore.

Should I focus on DirectX and OpenGL, though in my understanding those are more important for graphics and engine programmers, or are they as important for game programmers (scripters, AI programmers) as well?

There are a lot of options, and I can't choose the right path because I have no experience in this field.

A little help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi!

I am currently studying IT - Engineering in a local college and I am a third year BSc student.

I would like to become a game developer (maybe an indie developer of some sort, though working at a triple A studio would be cool as well).

My question is what should I focus on?

I have done some SDL tutorials, and I've nearly read through the 2D part of an XNA book. XNA seems a bit more simpler and faster to develop with. Should I continue improving my XNA skills, or should I forget it because it is not supported by Microsoft anymore.

Should I focus on DirectX and OpenGL, though in my understanding those are more important for graphics and engine programmers, or are they as important for game programmers (scripters, AI programmers) as well?

There are a lot of options, and I can't choose the right path because I have no experience in this field.

A little help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Here is what I suggest:

1) Decide your game genre - be specific - for 2D game dev.

2) Determine who your target market will be.

3) Research game engines and decide on one that fits best your game genre and end-user market.

List of Game Engines - Almost all of the major ones...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

4) Choose the language which you will use with this game engine. The language native to the engine or another relatively beginner friendly one supported by the engine is ideal. Stay the *#%=@!!! far from C++ until you are at least intermediate level in another language.

5) Make some simple applications such as console applications in the language, starting with "Hello World" and maybe others like letter display, sorter, indexer, and so forth.

6) Next using the game engine make some 2D single player games then multiplayer ones.

7) Last stage is making single player 3D and then multiplayer 3D games.

By the way, you could stay with SDL for quite a while. Some people have actually made some good money using SDL after marketing their games well.

If you like XNA but don't want to start learning an "unsupported" product, there's an open source port of XNA called MonoGame. It still has an active community.

If you're serious about getting a job in the game dev industry, start making games NOW. If all you do is ace your classes, that's not going to set you apart from other people. Nothing tells a perspective employer "Hey I want to make games" more than having a few finished games already under your belt. Having a cool demo disk with what you've done so far is a big deal.

Take a look at Tom Sloper's website. He has some great advice for breaking into the game industry. Not all of it is something you'll want to hear, but it seems like SOLID advice to me.

http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson41.htm

- Eck

Thank you for your suggestion, they are great!

I started learning XNA because there are a lot of nice books and tutorials as well. When I started with SDL I could only find some half - decent tutorials which are good if you know some game theory already. I might finish this book about XNA it can't hurt, then ready through some more theoritical stuff and then dig into SDL documentation.

If I would like to program some 3D stuff later on, should I go to the lowest level and start learning raw OpenGL / DirectX, or should I start with a fully - featured engine first?