7 replies to this topic

[Zellpheo]

Hello,

Over the last few years I have been interested in the field of programming/game development and hope to someday pursue the path through collage and so on. I am 17 and going into my junior year at high school and lately I have started to work on programming/game development. After browsing through these forums and the internet I came up with the general idea that learning Python as my first language would be best and using it with pygame. So over the last few days I have been doing this and working hard and progressing slowly, but my main questions are these.

1. Should I continue down this path and stay steady?

2. Will these be applicable in the future, such as will I ever use these again?

3. Should I just choose a new system/path to follow that will benifit me more?

4. Any advice on things to do after this/or the new system I have choosen?

All comments/pointers are welcomed, My over all plan is to one day become a game programmer if that helps at all, Thanks in advance!

[WingedPanther]

You will probably have to learn other languages as well, but for the time being, I'd stick with what you're doing. Most professional games are written in C++, though flash games are pretty common, too. The skill you learn with pygame will probably translate well to other languages.

[relapse]

Learn one language well. Make it your language and only study that language. Study the **** out of that language and learn everything you can. We have enough candy ass developers that know one of everything but not enough expert developers so I say stay on your path and learn Python. Learn the **** out of it.

[ZekeDragon]

I want to go into game development as well, and for the most part I started similarly to you, with Python. It's good for most things, and PyGame is a great way to get smaller games made. I'd also look into Panda3D, the way they decouple meshes and animations in separate .egg files is a little weird feeling at first, but it perfectly mirrors the same rules in programming of decoupling interface from implementation, so it's a good thing.

The first, and most important thing (I know this is hard), is to try and ignore the idea of making a game any time soon. You're going to develop dozens of trivial programs, if not hundreds, before then. This is a slow working up path, but you become much more comfortable with the concepts of programming and language structure when you do this. Before you learn to make games with Python, you must learn Python!

[WingedPanther]

What is the difference between WYSIWYG and RAD, in your opinion.

[relapse]

They are the same ******* thing.