On 18 June 2013 04:54, Spehro wrote: > Consider the Unity platform. There are many other possible choices: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines I was going to say this. Game developers do not spend energy writing the game engine. That's done billion of times before, and there are readily available ones. Few of them are really good and freely available for learning -- Unity 3D and UDK (Unreal Development Kit) good examples, Cocos 2D if you are up to 2D indie games on iPhones. With these you draw the 3D objects with Blender (free) or Maya (if you have the money for that). You can even design the animation within these software. Then import the objects with the animations into Unity 3D and write some scripts in JavaScript or C# to put together (when to start animation, what to do when collision happens etc). The whole thing is easier than writing a 2D game engine by yourself. You can go to Youtube and search for Unuty 3D tutorial, you will get 1k+ hit. Some of them are very easy to follow. Having said that if your son wants to learn how to write game engine, then that's a whole different story. That need to have real determination, learn programming properly, mathematics etc. I would not recommend that one at the beginning, it is more enjoyable to create something that has a representative results than an engine that "you know that it works" but does not display anything by itself. A game engine btw is developed by a specialised team spending months and months of work if not years, then tested by hundreds of thousands of game developers -- that is hard to reproduce by yourself, although not impossible, but not something that happens in a weekend. For game theory, how to set emotional reactions to games, writing AI for the computer opponent etc, for these I would recommend to buy a book. O'Reilly has digital ones and I usually buy them when there is a 50% sale (every other week basically). Tamas > > > You might be interested in what a leading community college teaches > budding video game developers: > > http://www.sheridancollege.ca/programs-and-courses/full-time-programs/pro= grams-a-z-index/game-development-advanced-programming.aspx#prog-info-course= s > > Best regards, > --sp > > On Jun 18, 2013, at 5:29 AM, Justin Richards > wrote: > > > It is a tall order but my son (12) has asked me several times to teach > him > > how to write games. This seems like it would be so much easier on a > > commodore 64 (I enjoyed moving sprites around the screen with a joystic= k) > > but as that is long gone I thought i would ask the list what would be a > > good way to start. > > > > I am (was) familiar with C, assembler and perl. I enjoy PIC assembly > but I > > dont think that would be appropriate for a intro into programming games= .. > > > > Years ago I attempted Windows programming in C and assembler was just t= oo > > much for me. A case of not able to see the tree for the forest. > > > > Perhaps starting with perl and moving alpha-numerics around the screen = to > > start with. > > > > Any thoughts. > > > > Justin > > > > -- > > http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > > View/change your membership options at > > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- > http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > --=20 int main() { char *a,*s,*q; printf(s=3D"int main() { char *a,*s,*q; printf(s=3D%s%s%s, q=3D%s%s%s%s,s,q,q,a=3D%s%s%s%s,q,q,q,a,a,q); }", q=3D"\"",s,q,q,a=3D"\\",q,q,q,a,a,q); } --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .