Program Small; Think Big

So you think you are ready to program a game. You have the idea and the willpower to learn programming and become the next gaming tycoon. Well, unless you have an IQ over 3000 then your going to need to work up to it. Not everyone is going to pop out a game like Descent, StarCraft, or Phantasy Star in one shot. Even those people had to start somewhere.

Programming is learning a new language. If you speak English and ever thought to learn Japanese, you simply don't start out speaking it. You have to learn the vocabulary and the grammer, and more. If you want to speak C++ you must learn the vocabulary, the grammer, and a few tricks. Fortunately there are a lot of web sites on the Internet to help you along the learning process way.

But I'm not going to lead you to any of them. You can find them easy enough by going to yahoo and selecting computers, www, programming languages, etc... Instead I'm here to tell you to start out small. Some languages are easier than other and if you aren't familiar with any programming languages, begin with the basics.

BASIC, or the basic programming family which includes things such as GW-BASIC, QBASIC4.5, QBASIC1.0, BASIC, and I think ASIC and ABC, is the easiest of all the language to learn. I think it is the closest to speaking a human tongue that we can get. And most importantly there is a reason it is called Basic, because you can get the basics of all programming from learning this language.

After you've learned enough about BASIC to write small programs and read and write to files, and through random variables around like a pro heavyweight, move into something slightly harder. The two paths yo can take are wither Visual Basic or C. If you are in a hurry to start developing games, start learning Visual Basic. Visual Basic uses the same programming language as Basic with a few bells and whistles. You can develop visual aspects, use images, turn on and off windows and basically quickly develop simple games.

I don't think you are going to win any awards with Visual Basic Games (I could be wrong). The other direction to go if you have more time and are willing to study a little harder is C/C++. C++ is still the preferred language of computer games I think. It allows a maximum level of control over the computer and the game. You can build structures, defines objects, and conquer the world, just by pushing the Ram around. Don't worry about the Ram however, although you have to clean up after it, it won't eat your lawn.

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