I want to learn game development. Which language should I use? [closed]

Answer 1

It depends on your target.

For instance, if you ever want to develop games for the Xbox 360, you need C# and the XNA Game Studio.

XNA Game Studio is a set of C# projects and libraries made for use with Visual Studio (any edition, including Express) for creating both Xbox 360 and Windows/DirectX games.

Answer 2

I'm thinking that if you want 3D graphic games then C++ with DirectX is the best

Answer 3

I would say this depends on your programming experience, if your used to C like syntax and think that way, i.e curly brackets, semicolons, strong typing, go with the C++, its fast, and its the language you know.

However if you comfortable with programming languages as a whole, then python is not a bad alternative, and I would highly recommend the panda3d 3d engine (I consider this more of a 3D engine, rather then a game engine in the sense you still have to build game specific logic), it uses python and I think the newest python 2.6.xx version is your best bet. As far as performance, unless your running an older machine, interpreted languages such as python can run nearly as fast a compiled languages such as c/c++.

Answer 4

I am not sure what your prior programming experience is. If you wish to get up to speed quickly, I would recommend Python. Others have recommended PyGame, which is the defacto standard for Python. There are other alternatives (like a modified version of the Verge engine called Ika that is under slow development, http://ika.sourceforge.net/news.php) but PyGame is very solid.

Since you asked about a resource to get started, I would recommend Invent with Python (http://inventwithpython.com/chapters/). It uses Python 3 and PyGame, and starts real basic. In the next month or so you will be able to buy the book if you so desire (the author mentioned to me that a publisher took an earlier version of the book and made a very poor paper version -- so if you see that on Amazon, avoid it!).

Answer 5

Are you starting to program now? Why don't you want to learn C#?

If you are a beginner, I would suggest to not start with C/C++. I think you should learn how to use UNITY3D, a game engine that is very popular today. Many people, from indie developers to big companies are using Unity, to make all kinds of games (by the way, car racing games is one of the tutorials.

This engine is easy to learn, you can use it with UnityScript (a custom language with JavaScript-inspired syntax), C# or Boo (which has a Python-inspired syntax). I strongly recommend C#, it's more powerful and you learn the language that you can use with XNA later.

Answer 6

Depends on the type of game. For the "big" games, certainly C and C++ as that's what the big engines and middleware are written in (e.g., Gamebryo, Unreal, id tech, FMOD Sound System, the RAD Game tools stuff etc.).

Python is used in some games as a scripting language (for game logic, missions, sometimes AI), but there is also LUA and possibly many others, but python certainly is used here.

For "casual" games you might also consider Flash/ActionScript (Browser Games are also games, and it's a big market) or C#/XNA (although that did not really take off).

If you want to develop games for the iPhone, Objective-C is your best bet as the alternatives (Flash and MonoTouch) have yet to prove themselves.

What do you actually want to do in game development? Do you want to work on a Graphics engine? Or Sound? AI? Game Logic?