Hi, I'm braziliam and wanna learn to develop games! How can I start? What are the best programming languages for this? What are the most used? What is a good material for studying? What hints and tips can you say me about this?

"How can I start?"

Learn to code. Learn to code well. Learn to finnish a project.


"What are the best programming languages for this?"

Depends... I started coding in Visual Basic. It was a great choise, since I could quickly get some reward by atually seing things on the screen. Later, the limitations of the language became evident to me, and I swithced to C++. C++ generally requires more work before you can se pretty picures, but is far more powerful.


"What are the most used?"

C++. Really.


"What is a good material for studying?"

Read a few beginners books on the language you have choosen. Follow the exercises. Join a programming forum (Like this one...) and read others questions/answers even if they might not seem very useful at the time.

www.gamemaker.nl

lets you start up immediately and make games using drag and drop, and then lets you go deeper and deeper into code to do more advanced stuff. Is more powerful than it first looks, and is not all just about the drag and drop part.

Eventually you'll want to learn C++ though, but whatever you do, don't start out with that.

I started with Pascal, and quickly moved to C and assembler.

Can't say I ever regretted it (except for Pascal :-)

I recommend modding an existing game first. You can just change little things like the damage a weapon does and then work your way up.

Before your first game
- You must use decently a programming language and use a library. Allegro is easy and straigth-forward to use...
- Read code from other game programmers,

How to make your first game
- Find a *SIMPLE* and fun idea : a kind of Tetris or Reversi game, not a big RPG or RTS.
- Find two free weeks
- Stop eating, drinking, until you have coded your game as you think it.

How to make your second game
- Take your first game, but code it with a *clean* design
- Advanced features as a PAK file for ressources, eyes candy everywhere, etc...

Some good tutorials at gametutorials (Google for precise link)