Programming newbie looking for help

[BioMetal-Nights]

I was wondering if all Newground projects have to be done in flash if so/not can you tell me please.
If so i have been out of programming for a long time (2 years) and all my books are out of date.
Could you give me a good source to self teach myself flash books, websites or video i don't mind so long as it is easy to follow. (my local library has a rubbish selection of out of date books)
Also im also looking for a good program environment to use i don't mind paying for it but i don't have a lot of money to spend.
I would also need a good program(s) for making my game assets music, art etc.
As for what im trying to achieve is to start making 2D games, movies and if that works out to further develop my skills to 3D.
Thanks in advance for any help provided.

[Diki]

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: I was wondering if all Newground projects have to be done in flash if so/not can you tell me please.

Currently the automated submission process only accepts SWF applications, but if you PM Tom a link to a game that you've made in HTML5, and it is of quality work, he'll manually add it to the portal for you. To my knowledge there aren't any other technologies that Newgrounds will accept though.

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: If so i have been out of programming for a long time (2 years) and all my books are out of date.
Could you give me a good source to self teach myself flash books, websites or video i don't mind so long as it is easy to follow. (my local library has a rubbish selection of out of date books)

There hasn't been any significant changes in Flash or AS3 in the last 2 years (especially with AS3), so if you have any books on either you'll be fine.

What other languages are you looking into developing for? HTML5/JS? C++? C#? Java? I know of a bunch of resources but I don't really know what it is that you're looking to learn.

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: Also im also looking for a good program environment to use i don't mind paying for it but i don't have a lot of money to spend.

If you want to develop games then FlashDevelop is one of the best, if not the best, Flash IDEs for development.

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: I would also need a good program(s) for making my game assets music, art etc.

I'm not a musician by any stretch of an imagination so the only application I know of for creating music is FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity Loops). It's a pretty solid program, but, unless you really know what you're doing, anything you make in it will end up sounding like it was made in FL Studio (that being good or bad is up to you).

For art assets, assuming you want to use raster graphics, I can't think of anything better than Photoshop which is unfortunately very expensive. A decent free alternative is GIMP.

[BioMetal-Nights]

At 7/8/13 07:10 PM, Diki wrote:

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: I was wondering if all Newground projects have to be done in flash if so/not can you tell me please.

Currently the automated submission process only accepts SWF applications, but if you PM Tom a link to a game that you've made in HTML5, and it is of quality work, he'll manually add it to the portal for you. To my knowledge there aren't any other technologies that Newgrounds will accept though.

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: If so i have been out of programming for a long time (2 years) and all my books are out of date.
Could you give me a good source to self teach myself flash books, websites or video i don't mind so long as it is easy to follow. (my local library has a rubbish selection of out of date books)

There hasn't been any significant changes in Flash or AS3 in the last 2 years (especially with AS3), so if you have any books on either you'll be fine.

What other languages are you looking into developing for? HTML5/JS? C++? C#? Java? I know of a bunch of resources but I don't really know what it is that you're looking to learn.

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: Also im also looking for a good program environment to use i don't mind paying for it but i don't have a lot of money to spend.

If you want to develop games then FlashDevelop is one of the best, if not the best, Flash IDEs for development.

At 7/8/13 05:56 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: I would also need a good program(s) for making my game assets music, art etc.

I'm not a musician by any stretch of an imagination so the only application I know of for creating music is FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity Loops). It's a pretty solid program, but, unless you really know what you're doing, anything you make in it will end up sounding like it was made in FL Studio (that being good or bad is up to you).

For art assets, assuming you want to use raster graphics, I can't think of anything better than Photoshop which is unfortunately very expensive. A decent free alternative is GIMP.

Well thanks for the info, im only really starting to take my programming seriously so i have yet to get any real experience in any programming type.
From what you said though i think ill go with flash/java at first to avoid hitting problems with the Newsground auto submission process.
In your experience which would be best for games? Flash or java, or in other words which provides the most flexibility for game making.
I would still like to know of any good Books or videos on the subject though as mine are all c++(and really hard to understand with my level of knowledge).
Due to having certain problems i need my learning material to be clear and easy to understand, step by step would help.
Thanks for the quick reply to my query.

[Diki]

At 7/8/13 07:38 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: In your experience which would be best for games? Flash or java, or in other words which provides the most flexibility for game making.

Do you mean JavaScript, and not Java? HTML5 uses JavaScript as the programming/scripting language (which was apparently named by lazy people with no imagination).
I'll answer your question under the assumption that you meant HTML5/JavaScript:

I'm firmly of the opinion that FlashPlayer, the application that executes/renders the SWF files, is a steaming pile of shit. It's slow, buggy and insecure, and as such the only advice I like to give on it is to, whenever possible, not use it. In other words I highly recommend HTML5/JS over Flash.

Adobe also dropped support for FlashPlayer on mobile, so if you want to develop platform independent games for mobile you will need to use HTML5. Otherwise you'll need to write your game in Java for Android and Objective-C for iOS.

I haven't looked too thoroughly into the available game engines for HTML5 but I did look at, and purchase, ImpactJS and I love it. It's incredibly easy to use and the game/level editor that it comes with is very intuitive and powerful.

At 7/8/13 07:38 PM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: I would still like to know of any good Books or videos on the subject though as mine are all c++(and really hard to understand with my level of knowledge).

Off-hand the only JavaScript book I can think of is JavaScript: The Good Parts. Douglas Crockford, the author of the book, also gave a talk on the subject with the same title that you can watch here. You can also check out Douglas Crockford's other stuff for more learnin'.
Last year I was also linked to this excellent video on JavaScript by liljim and it helped me out a lot, so I recommend checking it out as well. Depending on your skill level with JavaScript, and programming in general, you might want to check out Crockford's stuff first.

If you're looking for something that's more of a reference, in case you forget a function name or whatever, you can check out HTML Dog. It also has an excellent guide that will help get you started with writing JavaScript, and even HTML and CSS if you're into that.

If you ever find yourself wanting to learn Python, Ruby, C, SQL, or Regular Expressions then I can never ever recommend Learn Code the Hard Way enough. I have read all of the books (some multiple times), and even bought the Python one, and they've helped me out more than I can express.

[BioMetal-Nights]

Thanks for the heads up i will start looking in to these first.

[milchreis]

At 7/9/13 05:23 AM, BioMetal-Nights wrote: Thanks for the heads up i will start looking in to these first.

There's also http://haxe.org/
if you do not want to decide on one platform yet