Complete noob...whats involved?

EnterNow wrote: »

As I said..total newb, therefore; What the heck is a "while" loop?

Sorry, a "while" loop is a piece of code that continues to repeat itself while its condition is true.

so

while (count < 9 )

is like saying "While the variable "count" is less than 9, keep doing this"
and then within your loop you'll have something changing the variable count presumably so it can break out of that loop eventually and do something else.

A common example of this would be

While (player is Alive)

as your main game loop and then when something causes him to die, he ends this loop and moves on to the game over screen etc.

EnterNow wrote: »

But yeah, I get what your saying in that the basics apply to most languages, its the syntax that changes between them though.

Jeez, this could die a death already

Don't let it get to you, everyone is like this when they start I'll throw up a generic set of fundamentals later tonight and hopefully something like GameMaker above can help you keep interested without the code part

Ok, I'm by no means a guru and some of this may seem obvious or be too over the top but this will hopefully get you to the stage where you can see the logical "bricks" used in all games and will help you plan your code before you actually start writing it.

I'm going to try and break it down as much as possible so don't be offended if I get to a point which is obvious, I'm just making sure you have rock solid foundations.

Ok first off, before you start learning this stuff, its important to define what it is. What I'm showing you is the most common logical processes used in practically all major programming languages. Things like outputting text to the screen and handling files changes from language to language, that's the actual functionality of each language. What we will be looking at is the concepts that remain consistent throughout all of them.

Variables

Variables are chunks of memory that either you or your code will assign a value to. This could be a:

• Boolean - True or False values
• Integer - a numeric value eg. 4, -19, 23,234
• String - a list of characters e.g. "Hello World!"
• Custom - a jpeg, an mp3 track, anything you can think of, you can build.

So where you might see this in a game to make it more familiar might be
numberOfLives = 3
playerName = "EnterNow"
when you start the game. Variables are ridiculously important. You'll use them to track things like score, player location, number of enemies, graphics, visuals, everything. Some languages are very flexible with variables and all you need to do is declare them when you need them. These are usually scripting languages. Others require a bit more care. In C/C++ if you don't give your variable a value after setting it up, it will take a random value, which can do some strange things to your code. As standard, its good practice to make sure all your variables have a value you know.

Loops

Loops are repetitive pieces of code, contained by a condition. Loops tend to come in two varieties, While loops and For loops. The difference between the two would be best thought of as while loops are used when you will have varying lengths for the loop to run and For loops are when you know exactly how many times you want. In gaming terms think of the timer in sonic or mario.

While (player == alive && levelComplete ==false)
{
     time= time-1
}

Ok so whats happening here is that when the computer runs this piece of code, it will check first is the player alive (== being "is equal to"). Then it will check if the level is complete. The "&&" signifies AND in C/C++. What this means for our loop is that the code will only loop if the player is alive AND the level is not completed. If these are both true, the variale time will be assigned the value of itself minus 1. Or simply decrease its own value by one. The main game loop for most games is a while loop.

A For loop on the other hand is for specific cases. Lets look at this piece of code for example:

for (count == 0; count >10; count=count +1){
createEnemy
}

In this example, the for loop has 3 parts to it. the first part is the controlling variable. When this loop is read by the computer first, it assigns the variable count a value of 0. The second part is the end condition. In this case, the loop will end if the variable count goes over the value of 10. The last part is what changes when the loop hits the bottom of its code. In this example, the value of count will have 1 added to it. So if the count variable is set at 0, it goes up 1 after each loop and will ends when it goes over 10, how many times will the code create an enemy?
IF - ELSE

If-else blocks are basically the forks in the road, where the decisions are made in the code. These will be used to help determine how the game should proceed. An If piece of code does not necessarily have to be followed by an else, but they are often found together. an example of an isolated IF statement would be

if (buttonA == true)
{
make player jump
}

This is pretty simple, if the A button is pressed (this will register as true normally) then the player will jump. When we change it to an if-else block, we can get something a bit more versatile

//sonic has hit spikes
if (playerHasRings == true)
Play ouchAnimation
numberOfRings = 0
else
player dies

Arrays

Arrays are ways of storing multiple sources of data linked together. An array might be best thought of to start with as a list of variables. Remember a variable looks like this:

String PlayerName = "EnterNow"

but an array would look more like this:

String PlayerNames [] = {"EnterNow", "RedXIV", "Sonic", "Mario"}

the [] after playerNames indicates that you are about to create an array. As with everything in programming they start with 0 so even though we have 4 names, they are:
0=EnterNow
1=RedXIV
2=Sonic
3=Mario
and you would reference Sonic by calling

set currentPlayerName = playNames[2]

You can probably work around these for the first while but its good to know they exist.

Functions

These go by many names, functions, methods, subroutines, but they all mean the same thing. A piece of code that does a specific thing that you call on a regular basis. This is the sort of thing you use if you spend a lot of time working on something that you would use on a regular basis. For example, loading an image, resizing it to fit your expectation and assigning it to your player is something you might do on a regular basis in a multiplayer game, where the only thing that might change is the player it should go to and the location of the image. so instead of writing the same 50,100 or 1000 lines regularly, you save that set of lines as a function. and call it as similar:

//new player joined, name is "EnterNow" image in "EnterNow_location"
setPlayerPicture("EnterNow", "EnterNow_location)
.
.
.
//where your function is saved:
setPlayerPicture (String playerName, String locationOfImage)
//do function stuff

So that's some of the foundation blocks to programming, there are ton's of places to help you get to grips with these and probably explain them better too.

Again, this will help you understand the logic that games take and most of the programs like GameMaker and Scratch use this logic just in a more friendly GUI than code

If you have any questions or want more info, just let me know and I'll throw up more. That should be plenty to sink your teeth into though

Awesome Thread! Looking to get into game dev myself!

If your just doing it from a hobbyist perspective I'd definitely use a game maker like tool unless coding and programming specifically appeals to you.

You limited in terms of export options mostly. GameMaker has it's own scripting language called GML and the normal edition only exports to windows. Construct lets you write plugins in javascript and has a bunch of export options but they're all html5 wrappers. If platformers are you main interest I wouldn't worry about limitations too much

Merger wrote: »

Quick Question regarding GameMaker, Should I go for the Free edition to begin with or should I fork out for the $50 Edition?

What's the general consensus ?

Go for the free edition until you run up against a constraint you can't work around. Any games you start in the free version can be continued in the paid for version.

I recommend downloading the free version of Construct 2 and following the beginner's tutorial here. You'll have the beginnings of a game built in under an hour and you'll have a much better idea of what's possible. Using Construct 2 also teaches you some programming ideas like variables, for/while loops and functions. (Try Gamemaker as well, personally I prefer C2).

Then I'd say have a look at Codecademy and try out the Javascript or Python tracks. That'll give you a good idea of what coding is like and whether or not you'll enjoy it.


I'm doing a Python course on Coursera at the moment. It teaches Python by building a series of games from a text-based rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock in week 1 up to an asteroids game in week 8. It's aimed at people new to programming and teaches all the basics with video lectures, interactive quizzes and weekly mini projects. We're in week 2 now but you can still join in.

Construct2 is a more organic newb friendly program.
Gamemaker looked to be more flexible.Cant remember in what way, might have been to do with coding or export plugins.
I did a comparison of 3-4 programs, for deciding which to start for 2d side scrollers, when I make one in the future and Gamemaker came up tops overall for me.Plugins and cost for exporting was one of the main factors in my decision IIRC.
But anyway, 20 mins on google searches, will tell you which you prefer and maybe save you alot of time stopping one and switching.
I got both and tried them aswell though

EnterNow wrote: »

I'm serious about it in the sense that I'd like to make a basic game & enjoy the journey. I'm not looking to be the next Gabe Newell or anything {though I do like hamburgers}.

The problem for me is, I see a finished game in one hand {say Sonic 1}, & I see coding/programming in the other hand. I have absolutely no idea how they combine to make one package. For example, when playing Sonic, I see the backgrounds, I hear the music, I control the character, I get a sense of the games physics...how all that is achieved through lines of text & numbers, I have absolutely no idea. So where the heck do I begin!

This is why the likes of gameMaker and Construct2 are so useful to start with. Rather than, for example, worrying about importing textures to use as the background, worrying about it being behind the player (further on the Z axis), ensuring it doesn't overflow etc which are all things to look at with code. In GameMaker, it might be a simple "Open file to set background" and it will look after all this stuff. OK its not hardcore coding but its a step in the right direction. If you make a game in one of these tools, you will be in a better position to then make a game with code, the logical steps that you used just need more detail is all.

So I'd suggest letting one of these tools hold your hand for the first attempt anyway, get something up and running, even if its a square responding to key presses, that's an achievement.

Plus it may depend on what platform you might like to port the game over to.
C# and python are both used with the Unity engine and editor for example.
Which can be used to make top down and side scrolling games as well as 3D games.
Unity or UDK might be a sort of medium, between straight coding and game makers.In that you have access to the scripts and the enviornment building.

I really wouldn't get hung up on what language to start with. If you haven't done any programming, then you're going to be starting off learning the same stuff regardless of language - variables, operators, loops, classes, etc. The only thing I'd advise is not starting with a typeless language (javascript, python etc) as I think the lack of typing makes things a bit too vague for a beginner.

I started with Java because that's what I was taught in college, although I had done a bit of BASIC and C myself before. The thing I liked about Java was the ease of getting something visual going - drawing lines, images and 2D polygons was simple, which made experimenting with different things easy and made it fun to keep learning. Once I started doing 3D I taught myself C++ & OpenGL because the Java 3D API was a mess at the time. It still might be for all I know. The garbage collection also made it hard to get good performance for the sort of stuff I was trying to do, but that was probably more to do with something I was doing wrong. I never liked how Java hid the memory management - I never really understood memory allocation and I hated not knowing what was really going on behind the scenes. Once I moved to C++ I never looked back.

If I was going to start again, I'd go for C++ (I really like the tutorial at LearnCPP.com, it's well explained and easy to follow), using a library like LibSDL for windowing & input so I could start doing interesting stuff sooner than having to learn the Win32 API at the same time as the language itself. But that's just me, and other ways might work better for other people. It depends on how you learn, and what motivates you.

The only important thing really is to keep going. Whether you start with Java or C# and then continue on to C/C++, go straight to C++ or never even touch it, the more you program the better you'll get. And once you get reasonably good at one language, it's so much easier to pick up another one.

So don't worry too much which you pick. As long as you're having fun, you're doing it right.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'd steer well clear of unity for a beginner. Once you go 3D your work load increases exponentially.

Agreed. Unity can be utilised for 2D games quite easily too, but it is still within a 3D environment. Unity's a good pick for someone that understands the basics of programming, maybe around 2 years of college programming (of the equivalent self taught) under their belt. Without coding, you'd be severely limited in what you could do game-wise. You'd also be fighting a battle on two fronts, both learning how to code, and the nuances of the Unity engine.