   Help on learning how to make a rpg (fantasy or sci-fi based)
  Well I'm finally back after a long break.  I lost my book and cd's that help em out, so i have no idea how to start.  I want top eventually work for a company, but first i have prove to myself i can make a small game.  I have no idea how to use anything, I don't know any Programming lanuguages!  S any help would be great.Thanks!  P.S. The reason why I haven't been on is because my new computer caught a virus and stopped then it turned on and off, then we thught we fixd it and ne=ot even a 1=week later it broe again.   
Quote:P.S. The reason why I haven't been on is because my new computer caught a virus and stopped then it turned on and off, then we thught we fixd it and ne=ot even a 1=week later it broe again.Lesson 1: in programming, typos are BadTMHumour aside, to become a professional game developer, you must first become a developer: developing video games is a delicate combination of development skill (manipulating a programming language, solving algorithmic problems, and dealing with the programming tools) and video game know-how (a general understanding of game structure, experience of what works and what doesn't, having basic solutions to most problems that arise in a game).Not being familiar with the former will severely impair your learning of the latter (which happens to be necessary to create anything beyond a one-day project). On the reverse, you can acquire development skill without developing video games. Make yourself familiar with algorithmic thinking and common algorithms (there are excellent books for this) while learning in parallel a simple language (such as python) to apply whatever you learn. Once you are familiar with the tools — that is, you don't have to refer to the book after every two lines of code you write — you can start dabbling in video games and actually understand what you are doing and why you are doing it this way. This second part is the most essential and fundamental thing to learning (be it how to develop video games, or math, or french, or cooking, or whatever) : knowing how things work is simply not enough. You must know why they were built this way before you are able to work on your own.In conclusion, whatever you do, when you read something: don't stop once you understand how the thing works. Make sure you understand why it was written this way, what the other alternatives were and why they were dismissed. Development is the step between knowing what your goal is, and creating something that accomplished that goal. This imples 1) knowing what your alternatives are for accomplishing that goal and 2) being able to evaluate which is better suited for your purpose.   ;  Learn to walk before you try to run or you'll stumble and knock out a few teeth in the process...That's a really good goal that you have, it's a nice thing to shoot for.  A small game is not something you'll be able to make until you learn the basics of the tools you plan on making it with.  To try and do otherwise would be like attempting to write a short story without knowing how to read.  To try and get into the games industry without any programming knowledge would be like trying to become a professional writer without any concept of what the alphabet is.  Be sure it's something you like before you decide you want a profession in the industry.So, that being said, a good place to start would be learning what a compiler is, understanding the relation between higher level languages and lower level languages and learning what binary is.  You might want to understand how to break problems into steps in a way which you can carefully document (this is useful in programming.)  It doesn't sound like you have done a lot of research on the subject, I'd reccomend you take time and look into these things.After you have those basic concepts, a good place to start from there would be understanding which language you want to use. (however, you need to do a bit of research to find out the differences between the languages.  This depends partially on step 1.)Here are a few, but by no means is this a comprehensive list.-C++ is currently the game development standard language.-C is at the foundation of C++, though they share completely different design philosophys.-Java is a nice language for learning Object Oriented programming (the methodology C++ is based on)-Basic is a good set of languages for learning the basic concepts of logical flow and design.-Python is generally considered a good language to start with as it's more rigid than Basic, but more easy to learn than C++.Get on google and start searching, feel free to ask any other questions you have after you spend a few days looking up on this stuff.  There's a huge investment in learning how to do this and it doesn't happen overnight, but it is a worthy cause and is a lot of fun too, so don't let that throw you off.  It's a neat journey, let me know if you need anything more specific.[Edited by - M2tM on December 8, 2005 4:12:32 PM]