C++

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RTSgamerFTW
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31 Mar 2007, 7:08 pm

Lau wrote:

Oh! And I've just realised - the one HUGE requirement - the language must be currently active, available, open source, free, cross platform - just like Python!

So windows XP or vista don't support it?

The reason i asked is because i want to make my own home-made video games.

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geek
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31 Mar 2007, 7:15 pm

You missed the "cross platform" part. Almost no languages started out in Windows, but there are very few left which haven't made it there in one form or another, and Python's definitely available.

TheMachine1
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31 Mar 2007, 7:18 pm

Unknown wrote:

Lau wrote:

Oh! And I've just realised - the one HUGE requirement - the language must be currently active, available, open source, free, cross platform - just like Python!

So windows XP or vista don't support it?

The reason i asked is because i want to make my own home-made video games.

Games programming is some of the most complex programming out there I think its largely done in C?

I've heard of this development package http://www.garagegames.com/ but I do not think it can do high performance world class games and I do not know anything about it.

geek
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31 Mar 2007, 8:09 pm

TheMachine1 wrote:

Unknown wrote:

Lau wrote:

Oh! And I've just realised - the one HUGE requirement - the language must be currently active, available, open source, free, cross platform - just like Python!

So windows XP or vista don't support it?

The reason i asked is because i want to make my own home-made video games.

Most commercial game programming is done in C++, because OOP is very handy when you're using hundreds of programmers, and there is a whole infrastructure built around it -- graphics engines and so on. But no lone programmer could write anything like that. You need graphic artists, programmers who love vector algebra, and so on, in large quantities. Not to mention a graphics engine which could cost quite a pile of money. I am assuming that this will be a relatively humble game... everybody has to start somewhere.

calandale
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31 Mar 2007, 9:35 pm

geek wrote:

Or Ada, or Modula. Those weren't bad languages, it's a pity that they've mostly fallen into disuse. Still great for learning, though.

For good reason actually. They just didn't offer enough to displace C. I actually thought that Ada would succeed, because of the govt. requirements, but it's just too big.

lau - most modern languages use whitespace now. Afraid you're just going to have to deal with it.
Python isn't typed though.

geek - one of my favorite games (and it's not a real graphics slouch) is a one man show. Wrote his own engine. The big advantage of C++ is not that it is OO (though until something better comes along that's required) but rather that it's efficient. Being able to choose between templates and inheritance is a huge advantage here - you can choose your trade offs as to what kind of polymorphism you want.

ahayes
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31 Mar 2007, 10:32 pm

If you want to make your own games here are two packages for just that:

http://www.gamemaker.nl/ This one is (mostly) free

http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/ This on is only a free trial

Here's something I've seen but never tried:

http://t3dgm.thegamecreators.com/

geek
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31 Mar 2007, 11:31 pm

ahayes wrote:

If you want to make your own games here are two packages for just that:

http://www.gamemaker.nl/ This one is (mostly) free

I've looked at that one a bit, and was impressed. It won't teach anybody much about programming, but if you want to crank out a game or two for fun, rather than make a career of it, it seemed hard to beat... you could do a pretty slick game faster than you could learn a programming language.

ahayes
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01 Apr 2007, 2:26 am

geek wrote:

ahayes wrote:

If you want to make your own games here are two packages for just that:

http://www.gamemaker.nl/ This one is (mostly) free

It also has its own scripting language for more complicated stuff. I could see making a zelda clone with this.

Gilb
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01 Apr 2007, 5:21 am

calandale wrote:

Gilb wrote:

i would suggest you learn C# it has a syntax smiler to C++ but the language is more forgiving and is much more suited for beginners

I actually find C#/Java much more difficult for beginners. For one thing, you don't get anywhere near as good an idea of certain fundamental concepts. These languages also tend to require all sorts of complex ideas even to handle very trivial programs. I strongly believe that a simple assembly language is probably the best introduction. But, the next simplest language that reveals any of the internals seems to be C.

i thought assembly was one of the hardest languages to learn.
C# was the second language i started learning after i quit learning BASIC due to it being a lame language and i found some features such as the compiler telling me of uncompilable mistakes in the code very useful.

calandale
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01 Apr 2007, 5:45 am

Quote:

i thought assembly was one of the hardest languages to learn.

It's one of the hardest to use. Easy to learn. Pretty much like BASIC.

Quote:

C# was the second language i started learning after i quit learning BASIC due to it being a lame language and i found some features such as the compiler telling me of uncompilable mistakes in the code very useful.

BASIC is compiled again? wow. How the circle is completed.

C# has some interesting issues. I'm presuming that you use VS for your coding. In which case, you can get pretty far without learning much coding at all. All the GUI stuff can be generated within the IDE. Sure, the same can be said of other languages, but they are usually less tied to a particular environment (VB being a clear exception). These things are REALLY helpful for RAD, but not so much as learning environments, IMHO.

NeantHumain
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01 Apr 2007, 8:04 pm

C++ has a few gotchas compared to other programming languages, but I didn't find it particularly hard to learn:

Pointers and references can be complicated; they are a notorious source of memory leaks in commercial applications.
Lack of standard libraries for graphics, windowing/GUI, networking, and threading (the OS usually provides APIs for these, and third-party libraries are also available)
Multiple inheritance can create ambiguity.
The exact size of various primitive types (like int) is implementation specific.

ahayes
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01 Apr 2007, 11:03 pm

I love pointers.

calandale
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01 Apr 2007, 11:11 pm

ahayes wrote:

I love pointers.

Yeah, they make everything a lot more 'real' to
me.

TheMachine1
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01 Apr 2007, 11:18 pm

calandale wrote:

ahayes wrote:

I love pointers.

Yeah, they make everything a lot more 'real' to
me.

Yeah when I first learned of them in college I was confused but later as I started programming microcontrollers and began thinking in terms of hardware it became very clear what pointers were all about.

chadders
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02 Apr 2007, 6:13 am

Gilb wrote:

i would suggest you learn C# it has a syntax smiler to C++ but the language is more forgiving and is much more suited for beginners.

I would advise against it as C# is a programming language developed by Microsoft and Microsoft has been known to create it's own standards . You would be better off jumping into the deep end and doing C++ rather than C#.

Maybe learning PHP in conjunction with HTML/MySQL would be better suited to a beginner. Either that or one of the BASIC languages. Such include VisualBasic and QuickBasic (I know this is getting simple lol).

P.S. I am aware VisualBasic and QuickBasic are created by Microsoft, but they're easy to learn and for the purposes of learning not a bad starting option.

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codarac
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04 Apr 2007, 5:17 pm

calandale wrote:

Neither BASIC nor Perl are particularly good choices, if you want to continue in programming. C is pretty decent - as it leads straight to C++. For something a little lighter, I would suggest Python.

I've heard a couple of strange things about Python, namely that it relies on indentation (instead of, say, brackets) and that it lacks a for loop.

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