Just finished tutorials... now?(just read)

[Godken]

I like attention... but beyond the irrelevant... I just finished the tutorials. I know basic c++. Do I just start playing with this shit for a few months to learn it?

Lets just say... I don't know anything about games(i'll start wondering around the library but...) what would I read?

There's things about game engines etc... I don't know any of these things literally... I've heard of them... I can't give a definition though.

Is there some special document that I should read before continuing that would make my journey easier... Or do i just dive in... and come back in a few months after a nice daunting swim in the deep blue ocean of game design???

[devlin]

Don't worry about engines - for someone as fresh-in-the-water as yourself they're nothing more than a collection of battle-tested code that can be reused. You'll end up with this yourself along the way.

You don't *need* an engine to make games. In fact, you're probably better to just dive in and try make a few *simple* games (tic tac toe, tetris etc) first to get your feet wet.

Don't worry about performance of your games yet either, it doesn't matter if it runs at 4fps as long as you finish it into something playable. Once you've done that, start to think / debug why it's not fast and learn how you can do things differently.

What you need is motivation to keep learning - and there's no better motivation than seeing something you've created on screen and (somewhat) playable. I would definately start with 2d as it's a lot less to wrap your head around.

[Groogy]

Agreeing with Devlin, you should just dive into the fire and get burned. The best way to learn is by failing.

See the forum here as a resource when you've banged your head bloody against the wall. Though keep in mind, if it is complicated to implement, your probably doing it wrong. Most things can be implemented in a simple way. Though programmers tend to take the rout to create systems that is supposed to handle ANY case that is thrown at it. This is generally a bad thing in game development. Only middle-ware needs to do that.

As some kind of guidelines I would say you should create games in an increasing difficulty:

* Non-scrolling, one screen game (Tetris, Pong, Space Invaders)
* Multiple screen game with Trigger-Event system (Point and click adventures like Myst, Monkey island, I've made one and it's much more fun than it sounds like)
* Scrolling game with dynamic interactivity with the world (RPG game like Zelda, Diablo, or 2D version of Morrowind)
[/list]

And of course you'll have to do everything with wonderful coderart

RPG's are the most fun if you ask me. There's no end to what you can add to the game. You want a fantasy RPG with awesome particle effects for magics? No problem. You suddenly want to copy the game-play in Minecraft, add it into the ye' old RPG game and it will fit right in. And so on and so on. That's a genre you can always just keep on working on.

[MahanGM]

Agreeing with two experienced persons above me. As a self experience in making games, because there is no editor like environment for game making in c++, you should get into the trouble with many things. creating engines is such a beginning but not since inception. You should learn a lot about engines first. Anyway, if you want to create games just try and correct your mistakes (Nobody didn't came up with lots of experiences).