Back at Xcode (And at Chat)

[Meerjel01]

I where wondering if anyone here works with Xcode and the Swift language. Are anyone of you a Mac programmer that can help? I WANT to make Xcode games but really, I can't even begin something because I don't get help on it. Can anyone influence me on this? It is critical.


I where working on a pixelated space shooter but I couldn't even put the ship into the view. (Maybe it's too small?)

Marathon is best on Mac so it can happen that many of the members here has Macintosh computers.


Can you guys at-least try to help me? I want to program.

[treellama]

I'm sure if you go to your library there are tons of books on this. Get a beginner level one, check it out, type in the examples, run them, start to modify them. That's how we all learned.

Don't start with games, just start with the basics.

[Meerjel01]

Okay


Maybe I should work on SFML/OpenGL 3D games? I am to make something and need to start somewhere either way.

[$lave]

You have to do with TL said and just learn to program (on your own). It doesn't matter what language you choose at this point, I like python for absolute beginners though.

Just gonna let you know: there are no shortcuts to indie game development. You are going to have to learn a lot, mostly/completely on your own and you're going to have to have a lot of self discipline. If you spend a couple hours a day learning to code and practicing then in a month or two you might be able to make a pong clone.

[Meerjel01]

A month? Is it that hard?

And about "what language doesn't matter now" I had been coding in unity so I understand some concepts of programing. But I do need to learn more so, I might play around with SFML (Which works now) and see if that gets me anywhere?

[$lave]

I wouldn't say it's hard, just that it requires a lot of learning. Given a couple hours a day I'd say a total beginner could learn the basics of an IDE, compilation, variables, control structure and basic language syntax in about a week + allotting a bit of time to mess around and modify code for all the concepts you come across. Then give it another week to make sure you at least a very basic understanding of OO concepts + their syntax in the language (classes, polymorphism, privacy). Then give it a week to get the hang of a framework (SDL, SFML, whatever you want really). And then by the end of the month you should be able to finish your Pong game if you've been working consistently.

Can you skip a lot of that and just look up a tutorial on how to make Pong? Yeah sure, but you aren't going to learn anything that way.

I'm just going to let you know from experience that every shortcut you take when trying to learn programming and/or game development will come back and bite you in the ass hard every time you move onto a larger project. If you just try to copy tutorials and then work off those without having the skills required to understand what you're doing, eventually you're going to run into problems so significant in your code that you won't be able to continue coding the project without completely re-writing it.

Edit: if this seems daunting and not like what you want to spend your time doing, then don't write your own engines. there are plenty of options for game developers who don't want to learn the ins and outs of programming that let you develop games writing little to no actual code.

[Meerjel01]

Oh.

So I only need references rather than tutorials? So maybe in 5 months I can do a raycaster with Swift? (Or at-least a space shooter)


Swift is said to be easy to learn so maybe I should start with it?

[$lave]

Right now you need tutorials and ideally books/textbooks. My general rule would be if you can't describe in pseudocode how you would write whatever it is you want to write, without looking anything up, then you need to learn more about the subject via books.

For example, if you can't easily conceptualize what the code would be like to write collision detection in a Pong game, then you still need to go through a book/tutorial on basic programming.

Also I don't know enough about Swift to say if it's a good choice. I mentioned Python because I know for a fact it has a lot of resources available geared towards beginners.

edit: For a raycaster you need to know a more than just basic programming. I've never looked into it myself but my guess is you'd probably also need to know some linear algebra and possibly discreet math, and your coding skills would have to be relatively robust.

[Wrkncacnter]

pseudocode

[$lave]

that's not pseudocode that is real code

u wouldn't understand

[treellama]

If I ever design a language it will have an if...then...and construct

[HelviusRufus]

Speaking of Pong, at the end o this article, there is a pong code.
http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2007/05/11 ... /#more-414

[Meerjel01]

Let's try again

[Meerjel01]

I'm back again (With no success) and now I'm trying out SFML for now. It won't possibly succeed but I can at-least try.

EDIT: Okay I've come to the conclusion that maybe I'm not capable of programing cause of my anti-focus. I can't even start and I can't the simplest "Hello World" scripting. So it's time to work my DeviantArt project "Ark" instead.

Gaming isn't for me. Marathon Green might come out eventually though but as a normal tc.