i want to learn

i just got out of the military a few months ago and i have grown up working with my hands. this has not made me happy and now i amm going to college for something medical(dunno what yet) here the thing, i have taken an interest in designing games and i was wondering if anyone might toss me a few educational websites. im not too knowledgeable when it comes to computers so any help would be appreciated. i am a mac user by the way.

The first thing that you’ll have to do before you spend money on going to school for game design is if you’d like it there and if you’d have the aptitude for working on games.

  1. Are you patient?
  2. Are you good at math?
  3. Are you prepared to work hard?

I’m sure there are many other questions that you need to ask yourself, but I’m not as familiar with the game design world as many people here might be. I would suggest that you take a career test to see where you would best fit. Yeah, they aren’t the most accurate things, but they’ll give you a good idea.

Also, with any college-level job you’re going to have to learn good communication skills, which would most likely mean at least an introductory English course and possibly an oral skills class.

to be honest i dont really want to pursue it as a career be cause of lack of job security. i just want to learn the basics so i can dabble. kinda like a backyard mechanic. what kind of stuff would i start with to build a good base.

Start learning programming, then move on to something easy like PHP game programming.
Do something browser based to get the basic core mathematics of an easy game down, then start working in C++
Then you wait for Rinn to tell you since he’s learning.

thanks for the help. do you have any books or websites you could recommend

Play games. Loads of games. Anything you can get your hands on, really. Make note of what you like and dislike, what works and doesn’t work, and analyze why it does/does not work, and what the designers were hoping to accomplish. Think of ways to improve the games you’ve played.

Read sites like <a href=“http://www.gamasutra.com”>gamasutra.com</a>, <a href=“http://www.gamedev.net”>gamedev.net</a> and blogs of game designers, such as <a href=“http://www.sirlin.net”>sirlin.net</a>. There’s loads of recommended reading lists on these sites, as well. Don’t take anything at face value, but analyze the reasoning in what is said.

When it comes to actually making stuff, you’re going to have to code. Gamedev.net has various good introductury programming books, but you might want to take some classes, see what works for you. Don’t expect to make crazy 3d stuff right off the bat. Coding is long, hard and tedious to both learn and do, and you will fail horribly with everything you try to do. Perseverance is the key here.

And if you’re interested in following an education related to it (which you’re not, but eh), <a href=“http://www.fullsail.com”>Fullsail</a> and <a href=“http://www.digipen.edu”>Digipen</a> both have very good game design programs.

This also is probably not the right website to look, considering that most people here just play games, not make them.

thanks

Learning to code isn’t really that hard, just go out and find a book on whatever you want to learn (SAMS tech yourself, etc etc), pick up a compiler and start hacking away. Its more fun to learn at your own pace as well.

I dunno what specifically you’d need to learn for game design outside of languages, and how to use certain engines, but a bunch of people on these forums are in school for game design.

There are alot of “books” on programming available online too. You can get them illegally through torrents, but there are quite a few put out in the public domain. A quick google of “C++ online book” yields a bunch of free books you can try out.

dud thats it…thatts what i was looking for if you were in savannah id buy you a drink. ill prolly hit barnes and n oble later this week, but there are a million websites to look at.

If you’re going to learn C, I recommend you try a more forgiving object oriented programming language like Java first. It’ll give you an understanding of objects, and things like memory allocation are taken care of for you. In C, you have to code the allocation yourself. Even Turing may have syntax that’s easier to understand.

Visual C++, its complex and it’s easy to make mistakes if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I would suggest you learn some basics such as HTML, Flash or even simpler Director, anyways there are lots of good tutorial sites but the best method of learning is simply through trial and error. Also sometimes you may think you made a mistake however sometimes the programs have bugs and errors.

Also I highly recommend learning 3D Modelling of some kind.

HTML isn’t even a programming language, how on earth does that help with making games? And yeah, sure, start off with 3d modelling, when he hasn’t made anything 2d yet. That will go WELL.

Also, Binary code? What? Last time I checked C++ wasn’t restricted to nothing but on and off flags. What on earth are you talking about?

I have two questions

1: Are you insured?
2: By Survival?