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What I'd like to know is: what are the best languages to study?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure this is going to be a fruitful discussion. It's not too clear to me what kind of game development interests you most. The truth is that games have been written in many languages and developers often scoff at any guideline to restrict them from writing a game in -- say Java -- when there are more efficient languages. Assuming you want to get into console games and/or PC games, I would suggest starting out with simple authoring tools and just tinker with them. Download GameKit and get it building on your development machine. Then set weekly goals for yourself to modify the Space Invaders game by changing graphics, sound, maybe even mechanics. Once you've done that and are bored, move on to another kit/sdk.

You see, I doubt the importance is that you know how C++ or Lua works ... they are both great languages for different tasks. It's more important that if you want to be a graphics engine guy you understand how major APIs are laid out to implement tiles and shaders and renderers ... Go here to start thinking aobut what aspect of the game interests you most.

What are the minimum diploma or degree requirements that most games companies will accept?

This is a topic I could drone on for hours about. Enjoy life, man. They'll take you with a 2 year tech degree or less if you're built for coding. But don't do that. Enjoy the college expereince, go to a four year liberal arts college. Explore math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, music, etc. I took enough music theory to major in music but I didn't. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Finally, is C++ the way to go? ASP? LUA?

You should really concentrate on one of three types of games: web, console, PC. While the last two are related, the idea of catering to hardware probably has an effect on games. Is a PC developer going to care about Sony's Emotion engine while a console guy might live and breathe it. Honestly, fool around with Allegro, SDL and OpenGL if you're looking to do serious game coding.

You've got a long difficult road ahead if you're going down this path. You're going to have your heart broken by Blizzard and end up over worked and underpaid at EA. Game programming seems to find you, you can only prepare yourself for it. Read John Carmack's story in Masters of Doom or just wait for the upcoming movie about it.

I've also heard -- and I can't verify this -- that it helps to have a notebook full of sketches, stories, game mechanics, ideas you've had in relation to games. You keep this and bring it to an interview. You pass the technical aspects and then you let them know that you really want this and that you are also creative and not just technical.

Don't forget to have fun and good luck!

What I'd like to know is: what are the best languages to study?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure this is going to be a fruitful discussion. It's not too clear to me what kind of game development interests you most. The truth is that games have been written in many languages and developers often scoff at any guideline to restrict them from writing a game in -- say Java -- when there are more efficient languages. Assuming you want to get into console games and/or PC games, I would suggest starting out with simple authoring tools and just tinker with them. Download GameKit and get it building on your development machine. Then set weekly goals for yourself to modify the Space Invaders game by changing graphics, sound, maybe even mechanics. Once you've done that and are bored, move on to another kit/sdk.

You see, I doubt the importance is that you know how C++ or Lua works ... they are both great languages for different tasks. It's more important that if you want to be a graphics engine guy you understand how major APIs are laid out to implement tiles and shaders and renderers ... Go here to start thinking aobut what aspect of the game interests you most.

What are the minimum diploma or degree requirements that most games companies will accept?

This is a topic I could drone on for hours about. Enjoy life, man. They'll take you with a 2 year tech degree or less if you're built for coding. But don't do that. Enjoy the college expereince, go to a four year liberal arts college. Explore math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, music, etc. I took enough music theory to major in music but I didn't. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Finally, is C++ the way to go? ASP? LUA?

You should really concentrate on one of three types of games: web, console, PC. While the last two are related, the idea of catering to hardware probably has an effect on games. Is a PC developer going to care about Sony's Emotion engine while a console guy might live and breathe it. Honestly, fool around with Allegro, SDL and OpenGL if you're looking to do serious game coding.

You've got a long difficult road ahead if you're going down this path. You're going to have your heart broken by Blizzard and end up over worked and underpaid at EA. Game programming seems to find you, you can only prepare yourself for it. Read John Carmack's story in Masters of Doom or just wait for the upcoming movie about it.

I've also heard -- and I can't verify this -- that it helps to have a notebook full of sketches, stories, game mechanics, ideas you've had in relation to games. You keep this and bring it to an interview. You pass the technical aspects and then you let them know that you really want this and that you are also creative and not just technical.

Don't forget to have fun and good luck!

What I'd like to know is: what are the best languages to study?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure this is going to be a fruitful discussion. It's not too clear to me what kind of game development interests you most. The truth is that games have been written in many languages and developers often scoff at any guideline to restrict them from writing a game in -- say Java -- when there are more efficient languages. Assuming you want to get into console games and/or PC games, I would suggest starting out with simple authoring tools and just tinker with them. Download GameKit and get it building on your development machine. Then set weekly goals for yourself to modify the Space Invaders game by changing graphics, sound, maybe even mechanics. Once you've done that and are bored, move on to another kit/sdk.

You see, I doubt the importance is that you know how C++ or Lua works ... they are both great languages for different tasks. It's more important that if you want to be a graphics engine guy you understand how major APIs are laid out to implement tiles and shaders and renderers ... Go here to start thinking aobut what aspect of the game interests you most.

What are the minimum diploma or degree requirements that most games companies will accept?

This is a topic I could drone on for hours about. Enjoy life, man. They'll take you with a 2 year tech degree or less if you're built for coding. But don't do that. Enjoy the college expereince, go to a four year liberal arts college. Explore math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, music, etc. I took enough music theory to major in music but I didn't. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Finally, is C++ the way to go? ASP? LUA?

You should really concentrate on one of three types of games: web, console, PC. While the last two are related, the idea of catering to hardware probably has an effect on games. Is a PC developer going to care about Sony's Emotion engine while a console guy might live and breathe it. Honestly, fool around with Allegro, SDL and OpenGL if you're looking to do serious game coding.

You've got a long difficult road ahead if you're going down this path. You're going to have your heart broken by Blizzard and end up over worked and underpaid at EA. Game programming seems to find you, you can only prepare yourself for it. Read John Carmack's story in Masters of Doom or just wait for the upcoming movie about it.

I've also heard -- and I can't verify this -- that it helps to have a notebook full of sketches, stories, game mechanics, ideas you've had in relation to games. You keep this and bring it to an interview. You pass the technical aspects and then you let them know that you really want this and that you are also creative and not just technical.

Don't forget to have fun and good luck!

What I'd like to know is: what are the best languages to study?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure this is going to be a fruitful discussion. It's not too clear to me what kind of game development interests you most. The truth is that games have been written in many languages and developers often scoff at any guideline to restrict them from writing a game in -- say Java -- when there are more efficient languages. Assuming you want to get into console games and/or PC games, I would suggest starting out with simple authoring tools and just tinker with them. Download GameKit and get it building on your development machine. Then set weekly goals for yourself to modify the Space Invaders game by changing graphics, sound, maybe even mechanics. Once you've done that and are bored, move on to another kit/sdk.

You see, I doubt the importance is that you know how C++ or Lua works ... they are both great languages for different tasks. It's more important that if you want to be a graphics engine guy you understand how major APIs are laid out to implement tiles and shaders and renderers ... Go here to start thinking aobut what aspect of the game interests you most.

What are the minimum diploma or degree requirements that most games companies will accept?

This is a topic I could drone on for hours about. Enjoy life, man. They'll take you with a 2 year tech degree or less if you're built for coding. But don't do that. Enjoy the college expereince, go to a four year liberal arts college. Explore math, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, music, etc. I took enough music theory to major in music but I didn't. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Finally, is C++ the way to go? ASP? LUA?

You should really concentrate on one of three types of games: web, console, PC. While the last two are related, the idea of catering to hardware probably has an effect on games. Is a PC developer going to care about Sony's Emotion engine while a console guy might live and breathe it. Honestly, fool around with Allegro, SDL and OpenGL if you're looking to do serious game coding.

You've got a long difficult road ahead if you're going down this path. You're going to have your heart broken by Blizzard and end up over worked and underpaid at EA. Game programming seems to find you, you can only prepare yourself for it. Read John Carmack's story in Masters of Doom or just wait for the upcoming movie about it.

I've also heard -- and I can't verify this -- that it helps to have a notebook full of sketches, stories, game mechanics, ideas you've had in relation to games. You keep this and bring it to an interview. You pass the technical aspects and then you let them know that you really want this and that you are also creative and not just technical.

Don't forget to have fun and good luck!

hello anonymous coward. Why don't you download the explosion generator that I used for my early games that I made freely available to anyone with no license whatsoever:

http://www.geocities.com/starlinesinc/

or perhaps you want the entire source code to my first game, freely available for anyone to learn from:

http://gpwiki.org/index.php/Files:AsteroidMinerSourceCode.zip

Maybe you should do some basic research before you launch into a diatribe against someone for their views on copyright?

Actually, you have that backwards. Torque runs on top of the XNA Framework.

XNA on the other hand is a games-oriented subset of the .NET framework (much like the Compact .NET Framework for mobile devices). This allows for code to be made that can run on both the x86 architecture and the XBox360's architecture (which unlike the original XBox is not x86).

There are plenty of other engines available that target .NET + Windows including some that are free (For a nice list, click here.) Targeting the XBox360 has a much smaller list, but this should bring some fresh talent to the table. Most future developers start with an interest in game development (which is ironic, since most games are far more complex than business apps).

You are - of course - totally wrong. ;-)

Developers who leverage the GNU GPL or the GNU LGPL to combine powerful ideas with a friendly user interface - at a console or in a GUI - abound in the free software ecology. Savannah, Sourceforge and Freshmeat and similar sites are the obvious places to start looking for these possibilities. I'll mention just three that I've found exciting:

• For developers - Wikicompiler - develop software using a wiki. This is exciting because both developers and documenters only need a browser any where in the world to collaborate.
• For the office - Zimbra - groupware using AJAX web interface. This is exciting to end users in the office because it is nicely integrated and you only need your browser, meaning you can have a "one icon desktop" where the software is up to date as you open it anywhere on the LAN (or WAN over SSL).
• For gamers - Tremulous - combining FPS and strategy using a Quake-like engine. This is an exciting network game, because - being on either a human or alien team - your team need to protect your area, build defense, and kill the other team. Personally, I like the alien team, which lets you crawl the walls, and jump down and bite the enemy's necks.

I agree that just doing it is best.

I started looking at the SDL Wiki example page, and after looking over the code and browsing the game programming wiki I just started coding.

My first game, and first use of SDL is mousetrap - the graphics suck, but at least one person liked it.

SDL really was a pleasure to work with, and suprisingly easy to get started with.

Now I'm working on a more graphical platform game.

Well, this isn't a book, but just as good. The Game Programming Wiki is a great resource for game programming in several major languages. There's also a very active message board that is extremely helpful.

What kind of game is it? I have to reboot if I want to run Windows, so I need a little incentive :)

And yes, it's cool that gpwiki.org has a FreeBASIC section... though it does need more content. Your website looks like a helpful resource; feel free to add it to an "External Links" section at the bottom of the wiki's FreeBASIC page!

4. A. Use log functions.
B. bits=0;
for (i=0; i if (bits != 1) printf("Not power of two\n"); else printf("yup.\n");

Happened to see a better solution to this one earlier today:
if (x<1) return false;
return (x&(x-1))==0;

stolen from here

Writing Code for Spacecraft

My first thought was "Spacecraft? is that a new Starcraft clone I hadn't heard about?". It was then I realized I've been hanging out on the Game Programming Wiki too much lately.