I want to make games, I know no programming languages other than a tiny bit of lua and html. I want to learn to make games using engines that do not run off lua.

My questions:

• What is the best engine for beginners?
• What languages should I learn?
• How do I learn these languages?

RyRyGamer said:
What is the best engine for beginners?

Any and none. You don't need an engine to learn a language or to make games. I personally don't recommend using an engine for start - because you most likely will never understand underlying mechanics under the hood of the engine. And at the moment you hit some problem that requires that understanding, you will get stuck. That is my subjective view though.

RyRyGamer said:
What languages should I learn?

That's entirely up to you - you can use (plese don't start language flamewar here) - C, C++, C#, PHP, Rust, Swift, Kotlin, Javascript (or any of its zillion wrappers like Typescript), Java, Python, Haskell (granted you're a masochist), etc. Different languages are more useful to some things, less useful for others.

I'm personally always pushing an ideology - Use whatever language is the best for given task.

It is entirely up to you - I'm not a teacher, but I personally started with C.

Note: There is no rule that you have to do everything in single language throughout your life. You can even use multiple for single project. You can have server-side api running in PHP, with server side application written in C, and on client side (game) you could have an application mixed from C# for game and C++ for engine.

RyRyGamer said:
How do I learn these languages?

Pick a language and start writing software in it. Follow articles, tutorials, lectures, etc. Do exercises in it, do challenges in it. It's not really that different from doing a craft.

Eventually you'll be able to spot parallel between different languages (often being quite similar) and going from one to another is not that hard.

RyRyGamer said:
What languages should I learn?

c, and find yourself a course where they teach you about hardware/low-level architectures and/or TV/radio engineering.

I started in C, and moved on to C#, java, lua, python, and probably several more.

Like was stated above, languages are like tools in a tool box, some are a better fit for different situations.

Thinking on my game dev career, I can see where knowing the low level stuff, like C teaches, that does come in handy in the way of knowing what is happening behind the scenes in these various game engines.

However… I would suggest, just to get you started, I would use an easier type language such as lua (which you say you already know) and find a good easy to use engine.

Game making, and programming (at least for me) are two different things. Just because you can code, doesnt mean you can make games, and just because you know how to make games, doesnt mean you know how to code.

So I would suggest, take what you know of coding, find an engine that uses that language (you know lua, so maybe something like Roblox) and just start making a game. Even if you don't have it all figured out yet, just get you a good idea, and start on it. It most likely will never make it to completion, because you will learn so much by just DOING, that you will come up with so many other great ideas along the way.

But I can't stress this enough, START DOING, just pick a language and engine or no engine, and begin. Reading books or taking classes is great, but I've known so many people that did that, and planned games, but never actually started. Don't fall into that trap.

Thats just my opinion, not saying my way is the best way, but its how I feel about it.