Game Programming

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Original post by Kiryn And I was wondering should I learn C or C++ or just stick to C#?

Yes.


...Oh, right, clarifaction.

I recommend persisting with C# until you at least have enough knowledge to have built some games using C# already. Persistence is key.

Any competent programmer will eventually learn to use many languages throughout their carrer. Building up enough knowledge to get use out of any of them takes precidence, though. By the time you accomplish this, you should be able to answer for youself wheither to learn C or C++, by weighing the advantages you can identify for doing so against the disadvantages.

Note that many languages can interoperate (C++ <=> C# included), meaning one can help give you a springboard into using another.

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And if C++ will I require MFC knowledge.

No.

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Or would I just do it like C syntax.

Dear god no.

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I have a little C and medium C++ knowledge and a pretty good knowledge of C#.

"Jack of all trades, master of jack shit."
"It's simple: Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death."

Two sides of the same coin.

(Alternatively, one could view focusing on learning various languages as "overspecialization" on the premise that you're neglecting focusing on general programming skills (within a single language)).

Eventually, learning how to do object-oriented-style things in plain ol' C will be necessary (e.g., use structs instead of classes, unions instead of polymorphism, and allocate and deallocate explicitly as there are no constructors or destructors in structs). Such knowledge of implementations / understanding of concepts will _likely_ pay off. Learning SDL is one way to see this demonstrated in a very simple way.

BUT, learning 3D math, vector math, etc. is more crucial; you WILL need such knowledge in programming or, likely, even designing 3D games. There is a big push (I have been told) toward using C# in game programming, so language schtuff wouldn't be toooo big a concern to me.

The difficulties of Game programming
are algorythms for collision detection, Artifficial Intelligence
and DirectX or OpenGL rendering knowledge.
C# is a well documented language into Game programming.
As an advice: Start with C# to game programming because you
know the language well, so you can focus to the other
difficulties of Game programming. Then, after you gain some
experience try to "upgrade" to C++.

I've started Game Programming with C++ and later I learned C#.
But with hindsight I think C++ Game Programming is too difficult to begin with it, start with C#, its still hard enough to learn ;) If U really know the basics and if you can write advanced games with C#, U can think about learning Game Programming with C++!

I would stick to whatever language you are comfortable with. Once you have mastered that language then migrating to a new one isn't that hard. I would say that commercial games are all written in C++ but that isn't true. Most of the console games are written in either C or C++ but a lot of other non-console games are written in various languages ranging from Blitz Basic (Naked War) to Actionscript (Flash etc...).

But as mentioned above - the key is persistance. Make your first game and move on from there learning as you go.

I'd say stick with c# to start off with. Programming knowledge always transfers to different languages. The worst thing to have happen is to get stuck with a difficult concept in c++ when you could understand it easier in c#.

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Original post by MaulingMonkey Any competent programmer will eventually learn to use many languages throughout their carrer.

I'm in my third year of college for software development and as we speak my instructor is like 5-10 feet in front of me teaching us assembly. ASSEMBLY

If I were you, I would learn enough C# to know the syntax fairly well, and then switch over to C/C++ before you start a game project using C# since it is mainly used still for software. You could learn C++ or C in less than a month if you understand C# pretty well.

You could also switch to Python, and use Pygames;
which would require much less low level procedures that SDL, Opengl, DirectX Win32 and other Libraries and Graphic API's would require.

http://www.pygame.org/download.shtml

~Mad_Coder