I would like to study game programming...Advice pls

#1

hello guys to all over the world…

i’m a 3d animator for my past 4 yrs…and now i would like to participate myself into game development…

in my country (malaysia), game development is not a hot industry or i said is totally zero…

so, after living in 3d animator production for 4 yrs…i’m found tat working as a 3d animator in my country won’t take me into a game developing industry… so i decided to learn computer programming for my dream…

i would like to ask, what kind of computer programming should i go for while my aim is on game development…?

in my country, the courses which offer is like…

  • computer science,
  • information technology/system
  • software engineering
    -& etc…

since i hv no any bkg on programming…here i would like to ask for all ur advice…thanks …

#2

Hi there,

While I can’t give any advice on game programming as I’m an artist myself, I can tell you that game dev in Malaysia isn’t completely zero… well maybe close to zero… hehe :stuck_out_tongue:

There’re a few established game companies in Malaysia like GameBrains (www.gamebrains.com) and Phoenix (www.phoenix-gamestudios.com) that you might wanna try out as an artist/animator before dumping the trade to become a programmer. There are a few other smaller/independant ones as well like BadNose (www.badnose.com), Sherman3D (www.sherman3d.com) plus a few others I couldn’t recall at the moment.

I’ll have to tell you though, that game development isn’t all fun & games… it requires a lot of work, dedication and most important of all, passion for games. But since game dev in Malaysia is pretty small and new, the pay isn’t very generous compared to our western counter parts. (I know since I work for one of the smaller independant company)

If you would like to find out more about game dev in Malaysia, drop by at the IGDA forums (http://www.igda.org/Forums/) and visit the Asia-Pacific/Malaysia channel. Some of the employer and employees of the above Malaysian companies hang out there often so they might be able to guide you the way into the game industry.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

#3

thanks CCF…

all those company that u mention, i hd oledi check them out…

but most of all…everytime when i contact or sent them my application…the same question will back to me…“Do you know programming?”

while i try to explain to them, isn’t u guy also need an artist to help you into development…they answer me " Yes, we did…but artist is plenty of ton outside the market now…what we need is an artist who can do programming…"

like u said…is new in malaysia…so they need someone who can do all the work like (ONE LEG KICK) style…at 1st is really desperate me…

i know it need a lot of passion to work on game industry…but will it be different since i am now working in animation industry…

bout the homepage u mention…i will spend time to hang ard with it…anyway, thank for ur information…

#4

Well, I happen to be a programmer. I came here on a quest for a description of the newest *.3ds file format, well see if anyone knows where i can find it. Anyways, for game development, your going to want to get a couple programming languages under your belt, as of now c++ is really the most popular, and for good reason, its the perfect balance of speed, readability, and it can be as high or low level as youd like. (betcha cant guess which language i use the most :slight_smile: ) computer science courses are great to get you started, but since there arent really “game development” courses out there, you will have to study on your own. there are plenty of tutorials out on the web for c++, and plenty of communities out there (the most popular is probably <a href = “http://www.gamedev.net”>Gamedev.net</a> a word of warning though, with c++ and most languages that are useful for game development, you wont be programming 3d apps right away, quite the contrary, this is what i have to show for now a year of programming <a href = “http://www.geocities.com/ademan420/LitTerrain.zip”>Its not very much</a> though ive finnaly embarked on creating a fully fledged game engine, (for that i need a model format, and i chose *.3ds) anyways,
long story short: c++, computer science, study on your own, (heres a compiler to help you out, thou technically its called an IDE <a href = “http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html”>Bloodshed Dev c++</a>) and brace yourself for hair pulling and boring programs for the time being, it really pays off in the end though, have fun, and hope that helped
-Dan

#5

if you’d like to just jump into programming and not have to worry about writing the engine first, there are a few languages that are made just for making games. my favorite being blitz3d (www.blitzbasic.com) and another being darkbasic pro (http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com). there are others - from what i understand, purebasic has a (primitive) 3d engine, and i think something called Ibasic does as well.

another nice thing about these “game” basics - they are relatively simple languages and are much easier to understand for beginners than C++. yes, i love C++ (though not as much recently), and i can make games in it - i just wouldn’t recommend it to someone who’s never programmed before!

#6

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