Help!!! I want to learn how to programme

Can somebody please tell me how to START to learn how to progamme without going on a course as I'm aready a full-time student.
I've always wanted to make my own simple games since I was a kid and now that I'm old enough and intelligent enough (I hope) to learn how to programme I think it's time I did just that.
The problem is I don't have a clue where to start. every time I search on the internet for "level editing" or "mod design" I get stuff that already expects you to know the basics of programming of which I don't.
I will stress one more time. I am TOTALLY ignorant when it comes to programming and need someone to point me in the right direction. Maybe you could tell me how you first started to learn how to programme.
Thank you!

 

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Read and experiment. There really is no magic shortcut.

Find a tutorial on some programming language or the other, c or c++ would be a wise start, go through it and do all the exercises. It's going to be boring, repetitive, and seemingly useless. You'll read through it and say to yourself, "Ok, I know about arrays and pointers etc., NOW WHAT?! What good does this do, how can I use this do make anything resembling a program?"

Well, you probably can't think of anything robust and interesting, so now it's time to read through source code, find the source to small utilties and get a picture of how they work, calculators, clocks, ircbots, something simple. Use google to look up things you run across and don't understand. Keep practicing. Try to make something small. Read more source. Practice more. Read. Practice. Read. etc. etc.

If you're willing to work for it you'll get there eventually, start small and work your way up. You won't be able to just sit down and read a book about gamemaking and suddenly be able to make a space invader clone.

Read and practice, google is your best friend.

 

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Damn! I was hoping for a straightforward read this book...or go on this site...
Hmmm so there is no easy way of doing it? Are you sure? Do you programme yourself and if so what?
Thanks for your reply

 

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If you want to learn something simple to program in, Use an IDE programming environment like Visual Basic or Delphi.

Visual Basic is pretty simple and M$ also has a Development Library Available (MSDN)

However to learn with an IDE you'll need the program, Something like Visual Studio 6 (not .NET) will give you Visual Basic, and you should be able to find somewhere with the MSDN library Available.

However the program and Library will be over 1.5gb in size.

 

There are plenty of resources that explain the basics of programming. What kinds of applications do you want to program? Like games, web apps, and so on.

 

I'd like to make either simple games to start off on e.g. bomberman, pacman, space invaders etc or level designing and making MODS. It depends on which one is easier.

 

Ideally, you'd probably want to learn assembly first, simply becuase after learning assembly (especially x86) you'll give ANYTHING to use a real language like C or C++ or Java or ANYTHING. Unfortunately it also means that chances are you wont last the week of programming. Instead, simply learn a basic language. I recommend learning C since the syntax and programming habits you learn in C will transfer to a variety of languages and lots of other languages "feel" like C. Learning Visual Basic will definitely make you feel like you are programming, but unfortunately, its more scripting, but hey whatever works for you. I learned to program using QBasic, then Visual Basic then C. I wish so very much that I had learned C first, because learning C after learning Basics is pretty hard.

I have since leanred C++, Java, PHP, Javascript, Verilog, etc. All of them seem pretty easy after having learned to use C. Now I am working my way back to learning assembly. RISC assembly is all pretty much the same and pretty easy. Unfortunately X86 is quite hard, especially after learning higher level languages first. Best to work bottom up in my opinion.

-AntonK

 

Yeah, pretty much what Anton said. Some people suggest Python as an intro language, but I haven't gotten into it deeply enough to make a firm recommendation. C & C++ is the common path, and if you're going to be doing mods, I believe most are done in C++. Getting graphics into your C programs will probably be a small hurdle. I would stick with console based programs to begin with until you have a firm grasp of programming concepts and the language.
As far as level designing, unless something has changed drastically, you don't need much programming for that. Find out what program designers use to make levels for whichever game and grab it. For example, Half Life used WorldCraft. If you want to do interactive-type things in your level, you may have to do some scripting, but you don't necessarily need a programming background to pick that up.

 

I agree. I'm a novice programmer. Initially started with Comadore 128, then Played with Turbo C, Visual B & C. Now I'm learning to program PIC microcontrollers. For me learning the RISC language (32 instruction set only) was easy but I find it's a real bitch to debug. I'm glad I got into assembly programming because it made me realize how bad a programmer I actually was and kept me from quitting my day job. I keep wondering why I enjoy it so much. Of all the programs that I've completed, nothing beats the satisfaction of having assembly code working. When I succesfully completed my first PIC project, I woke up my wife and kids and dragged them in the room to see flashing LEDs -- (I know, stupid -- that's what they said too)

 

PICs are indeed fun. Have you dont any work with a BASIC Stamp or a Javelin (their Java version of the BASIC Stamp)? Those are also programmable hardware modules (similar to the PIC). Lots of fun there. I had to do a prototype at work using them as a control for a force feedback vest.

What im trying to get into now is FPGA programming. I'll probably start another thread soon for anyone thats ever done it. FPGA's are Field Programmable Gate Arrays. Basically they are huge numbers of logical units and storage areas, and depending on how you link them (or rather how you unlink the ones you DONT need linked) it does different stuff. You "program" them with Verilog or VHDL, but what you're doing in the code is actually describing hardware, like nand gates, or gates, adders, barrel shifters, etc. Then that hardware you described gets converted to a stream of bits that is fed into the FPGA and it takes on the properties of that hardware you programmed. Heres a cute little website someone did that I like for FPGA projects.

http://www.fpga4fun.com

-AntonK

 

Supermalek - do you want to be a programmer or do you want to make you own games with the smallest effort possible? If the former, AntonK's advice is good. If the later, go for Flash. There is very little programming (strictly speaking, there is none - there is just scripting...) but there is lot of fun...

 

heres some food for thought (tutorials aswell) supermalek..



http://www.inversereality.org/tutorials/c++/linkedlists.html


http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/C++/index.html



http://www.cprogramming.com/

http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialC .html

http://www.rit.edu/~jpw9607/tutorial.htm


Happy reading...