Thread: 12 year old in need of game programming advice

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    12 year old in need of game programming advice

    Hi all you game programmers. I am interested in learning how to create fps like quake and UT. I realise this is not easy and will take some time, but could anyone tell me where I could start? Will I need to create the graphics first? Or should i create a game engine first? Thanks in advance for your help!

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    Do you know how many people it takes to program a game like Quake?????

    Not only that but it also takes a hell of a lot longer than ur average tic tac toe game. And thats for teams of experienced programmers.

    If you are really interested in making games, then I suggest u do what everyone else does and start small. Program text based games first, one of the easiest text based games is perhaps a number guessing game.
    PuterPaul.co.uk - Portfolio site

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    actually it didn't take too many people to make quake. ID software is a group of independent developers started by John Carmak or something of that sort.

    And to thehack, I'm a beginner to. A few words of advice though:

    Sorry man, but you can't just start out with the cool 3D stuff. You gotta start out witht he boring console program, learn the functions, then go onto Win32. After getting the feel for Win32 (which I haven't come close too yet :/ ), you can get into DirectX and OpenGL and all that stuff. Trust me, I have a feeling that this will take me half a year or so.

    As long as you're determined to do it though, you will. It will be hard, but worth it. Um... and my first game I will ever make will be some old skool 2D RPG (which isn't neccesarily a bad thing).

    Just don't expect to make the next Quake anytime soon... that would take years and like the other dude said it takes more than one person to do different elements of the game (graphics, sound, enging, etc.), although you don't exactly need 5 minute credits at the end of your game either : ). Just get the feel for it and take it one step at a time. Hope this helped. Oh, yeah, and here's some sites and stuff that i use:

    www.cprogramming.com (that's this site right now in case you didn't know.. use the tutorials they're pretty helpful)

    www.cplusplus.com

    And you're local library. As much as I never cared for the library, it's got some good c++ books to get. I ordered them online and am waiting for them currently.

    um... there's more so if you need any more help or anything pm me but as u can see I can't do all that much right now.

    Lol, oh yeah. Get a good compiler like Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (ask for it for Christmas or birthday : )
    Hey, you gotta start somewhere

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    Registered User Dual-Catfish's Avatar
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    You'll also want to have this planned out when you get to high school.. advanced Math courses and Calculus will help you out immensly with 3D game programming..

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    ID software is a group of independent developers started by John Carmak or something of that sort.

    Erm, it's not really a bunch of independant game developers. And you say the name John Carmack like it's exactly that.. just a name.

    The man is a legend. With someone like him on the team you don't need as many people as you would with just a bog-standard developer. Trust me, quake takes a lot of effort!

    U.
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
    Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

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    Confused Magos's Avatar
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    Speaking of game designers, do you know if Shigeru Miyamoto is a programmer or if he's just a story writer/producer/whatever...?
    MagosX.com

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    its true one person can do it alone if he can!
    it may take im a while but it is possible

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    I don't much believe that a single person wrote any of these games. Look, think rationally, you cannot input more than 10 pages in a day, so even if you work all saturdays and sundays, it takes you a whole year only to input 200,000 lines. So I think also that these are often legends what help to advertise. There are so many programmers available and especially if you can afford some benefits to some of them, what sense it makes to do it alone.

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    Magos, I believe that Shiggy is just a designer. Not POSITIVE, but that's what I've always thought. Since in all the interviews I've read with him (not many, interviews are boring ) he just talks about the games being "innovative".
    Language: C++
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    Currently Working On: Simple OpenGL aspects

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    but it is possible, right?

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    Of course it's possible. Quite possible!
    Language: C++
    Compiler: Visual C++ 6.0
    Currently Working On: Simple OpenGL aspects

  12. #12
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    yeah, it's possible.

    but to just make a rogue-like game like ADOM (http://adom.de) it takes at least a year with only one person working on it...

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    Look, think rationally, you cannot input more than 10 pages in a day, so even if you work all saturdays and sundays, it takes you a whole year only to input 200,000 lines.
    lol is that what's taking the doom series so long?
    Last edited by danielthomas3; 04-15-2002 at 09:21 PM.
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    hey, im 13(turned 13 on april 12th), and ive been coding for over a year now. here are some words of advice from my own experiences:

    1. do not shoot for the stars (not just yet )
    2. read, code, read, code, read, code; thats the only way to learn
    3. start working on a project that you can apply the skills that you learn and complete it as you learn, or work on it, and when you run into problems, read about it
    4. dont talk when people are talking about something that you have no clue what , instead, go read about it if youre really interested or you wanna fit in
    5. learn to look up things(there are tons of references out there) before you ask questions
    6. learn to write solid code in C/C++ before you try to learn any APIs
    7. dont try to learn opengl as your first API, its just not that easy (a lot of people will disagree, but im talking from my own experiences)
    8. dont give out your age too fast. a lot of people will either ignore you or flame you for being so young.

    also, check out www.youngprogrammers.net. a lot of the people are as young as we are (well, younger than most of the people here ).

  15. #15
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    lol, thanks but i don't think i can take any advise from a 13 year old

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