I'm highly interested in learning to create my own programs and games. I've come to discover through various articles and interviews that the majority of "Game Design" courses would be effectively useless and expensive. I would like some advice from anyone who has done any kind of programming.

I have no skill at all. Outside of learning a little of the "Computer Craft" mod in Minecraft and some NPC writing back in my Ragnarok Online days, I've no knowledge of programming at all. I've heard that starting out with DarkBasic would be a good idea to develop my skills and work from there.

Since I've recently acquired myself a job, I'll have enough money to purchase that program and any other programs to keep going. Does anyone have any advice? Any eBooks, programs, etc that I should look into?

I know that this is a highly unusual question to be asking but hey, maybe when I'm good enough I can apply my skills towards doing some modding for us all?

Anyway, thanks for any help or advice. I'll be checking back regularly!

~Mal

I'm using my years of experience with programming with XSP's scripting language, because it is based off of C, and I know Java and C++. I copied xpadmins code for functions, statements, and so forth on the (currently in development) page on the wiki that I am making if you want to take a look at that. Once you understand the parts of IF statements, WHILE loops, and functions (and I do mean the individual PARTS of these things, and not just the statement as a whole), you will be able to read the custom scripting language with relative ease.

YouTube is filled with tutorials on programming, so that should be an easy and free way to start. If you want to get into c++ and Java, download Microsoft Visual Studio c++ Express Editions, and Eclipse respectively.

I've been programming professionally for 3 decades. But don't take my word for that - I'm just some anonymous XSP perve here. But FWIW:

DarkBasic is a dead end. Anything you have to pay for is a dead end. Open source is the whole programming world these days. If you love DarkBasic, ignore me, go for it, pay for it, enjoy it. But for my money there are much better places to start.

Now I've had to learn to be proficient in a couple dozen languages over the years. But for my money there are really only two languages a professional programmer needs to learn these days.

Javascript and Haskell.

The former is lingua franca for the web and a vast array of other odds and sods. Unity3D, for example, is scripted in a slightly dodgy version of Javascript. You can script UE4 in javascript. And really most pools you might want to dip your toe into have a way to get ther via JS now.

Haskell, on the other hand, isn't a language that many people work in professionally. Mainly quants, scientists and computer scientists. Nevertheless it's the one language that will really develop a programming professional. Any sloppy hack can code in JS, Basic or whatever. To program in Haskell, however, you need to learn how to program.

The funny thing is, if you don't have decades of C++, Java and other imperative languages to unlearn, learning Haskell is probably the first thing you'd want to do. Start with, http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters . It's free but don't just read it - actually try everything it teaches. Get the skills into your hindbrain so they become second nature.

If setting up a haskell environment on your own computer seems a bit daunting, just go use https://www.fpcomplete.com/school - it's a complete, free Haskell IDE that runs in a browser. Thing o' beauty.

Now I bet most people here won't agree with these choices and that's just fine. Everyone's got a different experience. But for someone who's worked professionally in Ruby, Python, Perl5, C++, Java, C#, Prolog, C, Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, Visual Basic, various assembly languages and horrible odds and sods, if I was starting out today this is the advice I'd give myself.

YMMV.

I would say it depends a lot on what your interests are, if you like embedded systems as an example, you would not give a rats ass for Javascript but go for C all the way. But if you on the other hand like to do web stuff, then of course Javascript is the way to go.

You cant really say one language is better to learn than another, that would be very ignorant.
For the purpose of scripting for XSP, anything thats C based would probably do the trick.

My interests are mostly into getting into the gaming industry. Working with like-minded people or even by myself on a game sounds like a wonderful thing to me. Time consuming, yes, but such is all programming to my understanding. So primarily I'd like to make games, while dabbling into software. Sorry, I should've clarified that in the beginning.

I'm seeing a lot of replies and I thank you all for that. Now with my clarified question, what would be the best language(s) to learn for programming video games? I'm not really sure about the difference of different engines. Again, I'm new to a lot of this. Trying to start somewhere.

Well... XSP uses C++, Minecraft uses Java, and anything with the game engine Unity (which is quite a lot) is C#.

If you want to get into modding XSP, it's scripting language is based off of C, so you could start there.

If you want to get into the gaming industry, i think C++ would be a good thing to learn since a lot of the engines use that under the hood (unity as well), but there are also a difference in language used to make the engine, and the language used to make games in the engine.

I would recommend you to just download Unity and start playing around, its pretty easy to get started with and will give you a good foundation. If you choose Unity i think C# is the way to go since thats what most ppl use and most of the examples and scripts you can find are in C#. Just dive in! : p

Edit: Don't focus to much on what language you are going to learn, experience is a way bigger factor, and if you learn to code in any C based language you will have a pretty easy time changing language if required later : ) Thats why i recommend you to just try out game dev and then take it from there.

XSP's scripting language isn't C++. It's a little DSL XPAdmin put together for his/her own pleasure. Under the covers it's C++, but I don't think that's going to be exposed.

Minecraft is written in java but is easier to mod in javascript (http://scriptcraftjs.org),

Unity3D works with Javascript as well as C# (http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/newbie ... ong.34015/)

So does Unreal Engine 4 (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/firefox-gam ... 18507.html)

Haskell can compile to Javascript using the Haste compiler (http://haste-lang.org). Since Haskell is a much better language for a budding programmer to learn than javascript, this seems like the place to start.

C++, C# and Java are dying languages. Really, all the imperative languages are on the way out. You can learn them ... but if you're after quick wins and a long career path, javascript and Haskell are the royal road imho.

You mind backing up this claim?

Android is Java-based, the new consoles are C# to the best of my knowledge, and as I said, XSP is programmed with (not it's scripting language, but the actual code the game runs on) C++. Considering the OP wants to learn how to program video games, and I have yet to know of a single game that uses Haskell outside of random little basically unknown projects that programmers use from time to time, why should he specifically learn Haskell, and if it is because all the other big languages are dying, how are the dying?

@friendly

I think c++ will still be used a lot for programming the game engine itself (for most pc/console games this is still the case).

For programming games using the game engine, higher level programming languages like Java and c# are more appropriate.

Especially developers that want their game engine to be used for a large variety of different games (from FPS to board games),
will offer script/programming languages that have a lot of direct access to the game engine itself (like programming custom shaders etc).

We have chosen for a (erotic) story programming language because it suited our needs better.
Most game languages do not have functions like "SetPenisMode", "SetMouthMucus" or "SetPussyParticles".
This way we can focus on the creating the story (and letting the engine do the difficult things).

So knowledge of "our" scripting language will most likely not be something you will put on your c.v.