I want to create

[Paradise]

o.. my.. gawd!
thanks for that big informative post btw..
I always thought that game programming was hardest of everything (and I was right), because it includes everything: sight, sounds, movement..etc.
Databases & SQLs are breeze compared to it..

[zylyx]

Yeah lol, and this isnt even all of the stuff we have done so far in FIRST year. I forgot to mention extensive knowledge of compuer hardware, boolean logic & logic gates is also included. Definately aint a breesze to learn. But dont let any of this disencourage you from persuing your dreams of becoming a game programmer one day. I havent let it disencourage me, yet .

[Baker]

Dude, you aint gonna make money from a 13 year old game engine, especaily if you dont know how to even program. You cant "pick up" the language along the way. Also, if you are doing qauke modding, and you have no programming experiance, starting with QaukeC isnt really a good idea, due to the fact that the language was designed as a interpreted scripting language for people who already knew how to program in C. Therefore, it has a lot of things cut out, and has a few bad habbits.

Second, I'm in my 1st year of a 4 year Bsc Hons computer games technology course, and I'm busy finishing my pong game for the gameboy advance. Making even simple 2D games is not so simple, so keep that in mind. And I havent even touched real 3D graphics programming.

Also, learn and revise your maths, as you should be familiar with these concepts before even starting 2D game programming, let alone 3D

There really isn't "one way" to approach anything.

Motivation and determination defines what someone chooses to learn. Not the other way around.

[Spirit]

I'd suggest you just start by playing around with Darkplaces (excellent engine for mods or games) and some Quake source (do use some cleaned and bugfixed version, maybe http://tremor.quakedev.com/Clean_v106qc.zip ?). It's really NOT rocket science but you will need some basic knowledge about computers in general.

Just play around, do stupid things, break everything, curse, rebuilt and use the just learned things. Backups of important things are crucial though.

And there is no shame if you end up with something like this (or that)... ;D

[Gh05t]

O'Reilly

[SpannA]

Dont get discouraged by these other guy's.. I have released 2 mods since i have been here and getting ready to release to more, I am fully self taught and didnt finish collage.The best advice i can give u is start simple try the tutorials in inside3d and do basic things to get started.eg

/*
================
W_FireShotgun
================
*/
void() W_FireShotgun =
{

local vector dir;

sound (self, CHAN_WEAPON, "weapons/guncock.wav", 1, ATTN_NORM);

self.punchangle_x = -2;

self.currentammo = self.ammo_shells = self.ammo_shells - 1;
dir = aim (self, 100000);
FireBullets (6, dir, '0.04 0.04 0');
};
FireBullets (6, dir, '0.04 0.04 0'); 6 is the number of bullets fire change that to a 1
and the 0.04 0.04 is the spread value ,change that to a 0.01 0.01.

now in

/*
================
FireBullets

Used by shotgun, super shotgun, and enemy soldier firing
Go to the trouble of combining multiple pellets into a single damage call.
================
*/

find TraceAttack (4, direction); and change the 4 to 100 that's the damage of each bullet.now when compiles your shotgun will be a basic snipers rifle. .

[MH]

Yes - start small and build up from there. Pick something that takes your fancy - not too ambitious, but ambitious enough to keep you motivated and interested. Don't try to learn everything at once, focus on specific things. If you hit a wall with something there are times you shouldn't give up, and times you most definitely should.

So rather than saying "I want to write a game" you should pick one element and play around with that. Try making a simple box room map, or a replacement sprite, or even mess with the QC or engine code a little bit, but make sure it's one thing at a time. Your original example of "cartoon sprites" (forgive me if the quote is wrong) is actually a fairly substantial undertaking - you'll need to do the art, the game logic to animate them and define their interaction, and the rendering code to be able to handle loading and drawing them. That's not the way to get off the ground.

Think of it like the history of powered flight. It starts with madmen strapping wings to their arms, goes through DaVinci, the Montgolfiers, the Wright brothers, and so on, until it gets to where we are at today; and even then there is a long way to go with it. You're at the "madmen strapping wings" stage (no offense intended) and you need to get to DaVinci (getting a good clear idea in your head of how it could work in principle, even if you don't currently have the ability to do it for real) before you can go any further. Don't even think about building an F16 yet.

My suggestion - you say you're an artist and you're interested in sprites. Now, Quake dates back to 1996, none of yer fancy Windows stuff here, so first thing you should do is get reasonably comfortable with the command-line. Know how to change directories and issue commands using it. Then look up the spritegen program, which is used for creating Quake sprites. Get familiar with how to use it. Then make a replacement explosion sprite. Use the same number of frames as the original for now, just work on getting that much done. From there you should have a look at the QC that controls the sprite, and see how it interacts with the sprite you've just created. Now try changing things.

[Paradise]

Programming is sort of like "drawing.." ..only you do it in codes. Deff. go for it if you love doing it. Thas all that counts - let nothing stop you!

[SpannA]

Well said