Game development for C++ programmer

[Skopa]

Hey guys, I registered on here after nearly 2 years of lurking, and I wanna start developing games for NG.

However, I don't have any experience in game development, so I need your help with choosing the right tool.
I'm mainly a C++ programmer (went to the national competition in my country so I guess I'm good on the theoretical side), and I know C# and Java a little bit.
As for the type of games I want to make - I don't have any preferences, but I don't like Flash games much. So the broader the better.

What should I begin with? Should I continue learning Java, or is there some other path which would be more fitting for me?

Thanks in advance!

[Diki]

If you already know C# then you could learn how to use Unity, which is a solid game engine and would allow you to release the games on Newgrounds (you couldn't do that if you made them in C++ without using some kind of converter or something to compile the C++ code into a format that NG would accept).

I wouldn't recommend Java, though. The JVM is poorly designed so it will give you undesirable performance for any kind of game with graphics comparable to games from circa 2004—which aren't exactly, by today's standards, stellar graphics—even if you were to optimise your code.

Alternatively, you could look into HTML5. JavaScript is a pretty easy language to learn—you can learn it here—and ImpactJS is a good game engine. It's worth noting that JavaScript is barely comparable to Java, so I wouldn't go into it expecting a similar experience; it was just a bad name to give the language.

[milchreis]

There's also As3 as an option, but I would not recommend learning it. It's pretty much dying.

Javascript developed into some sort of assembly language for the web.
There are a couple of languages that convert or compile into javascript, such as TypeScript or CoffeeScript. They are offering additional language features that JS doesn't have.

There are also languages that spit out JS as one of many options like Haxe (well, their respective compiler does), also providing libraries for games

There's a lot to choose from. Chances are, people develop languages on top of JS because they did not like writing vanilla JS. Maybe this is true for you, too.

At 6/20/15 08:16 AM, Skopa wrote: went to the national competition in my country

As a visitor? Just kidding, there's no doubt that the participants of the Vatican City State national C++ competition are the very best of the many developers in their country. =)

[Skopa]

At 6/20/15 10:17 AM, milchreis wrote:

At 6/20/15 08:16 AM, Skopa wrote: went to the national competition in my country

As a visitor? Just kidding, there's no doubt that the participants of the Vatican City State national C++ competition are the very best of the many developers in their country. =)

Lol, I see your point. Population of Bosnia is less than half of the London's...
And education here, especially on computer science, is... mildly said, lacking. That's why I want to start developing on my own :)

[MSGhero]

For newgrounds, unity, js, and haxe are your only real options. I super recommend haxe, but it might be entirely new to you if you've never done flash coding before.