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Hey all. Here's a question that's probably been asked many-a-time: where exactly should I start in game development?
I want to make up a few concepts I've had in my head the past few years, and I know that I need to learn code etc. but I have no idea where to actually begin. I have Unity on my Mac right now, so that would be a convenient jumping off point.
Just looking for recommendations on reading or practical projects for beginners. I've only ever written a few FPSC scripts and 'Hello world' in Xcode, so any advice on where to start would be great.
Cheers.

Depends what you want to do and how. If you want to make FPS games learn UDK, or Unity for example. If you want to program games, consider picking up a language like C++ (not really recommended for beginners), Java or maybe even DarkBasic to get the grasp of things. Start with hello world and expand from there. You might also want to learn concepts of game design and stuff like that.

Good luck and I hope this helped

Thanks for that. Forgot to mention what I wanted to do; I'd kinda like to make some sort of short 2D adventure, since that seems like a good start, or there's this simple mobile game I was looking into, so I might try out AppGameKit or something. Cheers.

If you are looking at making a 2d mobile game, AppGameKit may be the way to go. It's a bit buggy still but it's easy to learn and you can get into programming quite quickly. That was what I thought when I started using dark basic which is quite similar.

Something I didn't realise when I started out is that game design and programming are two very different skills. If you want to make games then start right away with whatever you are comfortable with, even if it's dice and paper. It will be a while before you are able to realise you ideas in code, and even then they will probably still need a lot of refining before they culminate in a good game; getting some practice at design will help your design skills improve along with your coding skills. Something you can do is take an existing game (or a deck of playing cards is always good) and make up some new rules for a game.

When you start coding, your "games" (they wont even start to resemble games for a while) will be much simpler than anything you could make on pen and paper, so you'll have to appreciate them for what they are. If you feel like Dr. Frankenstein when you run a program then you wont have trouble keeping up an interest in learning to code. Just experiment with every new thing you learn and keep thinking "What would make this even cooler?" and then check if there are commands you could learn to help you achieve this enhanced coolness.

There are lots of free versions of BASIC, Dark Basic Pro of course being one of them. That's a good place to start, but I'd recommend at least skimming through some introductions and code examples from other languages like C, Java, Python, etc. because you'll get a more rounded idea of how programming languages work, and you might find one that appeals to you so much you want to dive straight into it. At the very least you'll pick up some tips that apply to all coding languages.

There are plenty of tutorials for DBP on these forums, so that's a good place to start, and I can't overemphasise the importance of reading other people's code. It's a great way to find out about unfamiliar commands that you might want to look up next, and you'll also pick up good coding practices and tricks that wont appear in tutorials. Most of my coding traits are heavily influenced by people on this forum. Keep changing up your style and finding new influences until you find something that suits you. Learn to ditch old projects when you've learned new and better ways to approach them, don't waste time clinging onto bad code.

That's about all you need to know, come back in a year.

Thanks all. I think I'll tinker with AppGameKit for a bit next week. Unity still tempts me for some reason but it's probably best not to jump in at the deep end like I usually do!

A 2d adventure I would write first as text. A story like writing a book really. Then I would create the first few rooms. Then I would code those rooms in a way that allows me to add more rooms with the same code.

Like Obese says, you should decide if you want to be a designer or a programmer. What I mean by that is... can you draw!

If you can make decent artwork, then using a program like Unity, or even Game Creator is a good idea - learn how games are designed, and if things take off then maybe try and find a programmer to team up with.

If you actually want to be programming, then get AppGameKit, it's a great solution for multiple platforms. Mainly though, it's easy to learn and has a good workflow to it - results are pretty quick so it's a fun language to use.

Really though, when your starting out you can't go wrong - just get to work doing something. It'll help you plan your bigger projects if you just get a little experience under your belt.