How did you become a gamedev?

I started on a ZX81, then got a big boys job programming in Cobol for ICL. kept up to date with technology, used many different programming languages on various projects.

Get a free or cheap programming package and just practice.

Holy cow! You’re in luck.because there are WebGL and three.js to work with — it’s all JavaScript (not the same thing as Java).

i started ’game’ dev in BASIC, and then C, and then C++.

What courses would you recommend? It's quite difficult to learn on your own and I think it takes quite a long time.

If you wish to start from scratch, then you should learn OpenGL, Direct3D, or Vulkan. If not, then you should learn Unity or Unreal Engine. What’s it going to be? You’ll be using C++ or C#. Forget about Java; it’s a dead language.

Hey, a switch from the old one to new opportunities is always a great path full of new stuff. Congrats!
Do you have any ideas about what kind of games you want to create?

Regarding my experience with programming, I've started earlier with C++. Then I've tried a little bit of C#. It's the basic required item for UE.
Also, a friend of mine helped me with JavaScript and when coming to WebGL I was accustomed to it already.

On this, I'd strongly recommend picking which part of game development you're interested in as it can be absolutely massive. Once you have that, then you can decide what are the best steps to take to achieve what you want.

For me personally, I started by making small games on machines back in the 1990s, by trying to replicate games that I loved playing myself. Things are way bigger than they were back then, so it's not as easy as to make a game single handedly (at least not of any scope).

Being me, I decided to develop the tooling for the game first as that's what interested me. It's meant that I can scale up my game development if my games are ever successful, but it wasn't necessary the best idea if I was looking to be the most commercially minded. Once I had that (and it's really a lovely level designer :-) ), I then started work on the actual games…

For my recently released commercial games, as I'm a programmer by training / profession, I started off with placeholder graphics (I'm not an artist of any ability) and then after the game was largely code complete, I then went to freelancer websites to get someone to draw graphics for me (the difference between projects which were fun to play but looked awful and ones which looked nice and fun to play was a few hundred dollars - obviously depending on the requirements for your games)

If I were starting again, look at things like unity as you can get things working very quickly and that's enormously satisfying! Not to mention, they're in-demand skills and you can use anything that you create as a portfolio to get involved in bigger projects.

If you're looking for ideas to start with, replicate the classics, look at itch.io for asset packs etc. and then see what motivates you!

I absolutely agree with Steven, cause you may decide what kind of game development you are interested in.
There are plenty of niches to start from and all are full of experiments to do and practice a lot. If we are talking about programming languages you need to know, then you may learn Java, Javascript, C++ (kinda basic set). A game developer can't be the one without OpenGL, so I advise paying attention mostly to it and trying to create graphics and objects that will be eye-catching. You should like your own games ?

I don't know what works for you but for me finding my passion was the first step.

My opinion is based only on my experience so I may be wrong, but I find it best to concentrate on one of the major skill: Artwork or Programming (game design, level design, management, and so on are secondary and can be split between the two main protagonists). After you have your main skill in order it's time to seek the counterpart of artist or programmer according to what your main skill is, this works for an indie game developer. If you are seeking a corporate job you will need a solid portfolio and recommendations and those can be achieved during this day and age mostly by starting as an indie but be warned, many skilled developers also leave AAA environments to become indie so it is a matter of what you prefer most.

Hope this helps

Agent Smith pretty much Stuck his hand through my chest.

What's important here is you make a game, not that you land a job at a company making a game. I don't know if you've ever made a game before but its hard work, it took me over a year of part time programming to remake Solitaire, but its the best damn Solitaire game out there.

Take your time and don't look for what gets you results the fastest, that's how a manager thinks and its not how a game developer who wants to learn how to make games should think. I once spent a month just writing code without running the UI portion of the game, it was just log outputs to make sure the building blocks of what I was working on was solid. A good game developer should be able to love the code they are working with, or hate it enough to show it whose boss.

If you want one example of what you could do to get your feet wet, take any open source game on GitHub that is out there, and try to build and run it. Quake is a good example, go through it and see if you can compile it using Visual Studio. Learn to roll before you can crawl, and see what you will be getting yourself into, it's a beautiful thing. There once was a time where people would learn how to make games by writing mods for their favourite game, this could be a good chance for you to learn how some of your childhood fav's were made.

If you just want to make a game and you're looking for the fastest path to screen, I agree that web development is most likely the fastest, but then again……its web development.

Iratsin said:

Courses, Videos, Blogs

Blogs made you a game developer? How so?

I don't consider myself a game developer, although I have created multiple 2d and 3d (raytracing and rasterization) engines.

It's all about learning a programming language at a deep level like c++, some books that can help you understand the math, and having a great architecture for a codebase that is going to become vast. This will give you a great start.