PoisonJ

Ok I do not get how programming works on how to make a game. I heard that C++ made Guildwars and EQ2 and games like that. Can you tell me how games are actually coded. Im only 13.

Eriond

Okay, I'll try to break it down as simple as I can, without going into anything technical. Sorry if it's a little vague, I'd have to go into a lot of detail to get specific.

Basically, after a bunch of random commands to Windows, you can create a nice window, made up of a large amount of very small squares, called pixels. Everything that you see on the screen right now when reading this website is a bunch of colored pixels. (a pixel is the smallest unit of color you can see on your screen. For example, this smily is made up of 225 pixels, a square of 15 pixels by 15 pixels)

From this black window, you begin to make your game. Basically, usually around 60 times a second, the computer clears the window and makes it black, then runs through a list of instructions and draws what you tell it to the screen.

Everything that you draw to the window is usually a geometric primitive (I.E. a triangle, a square, a line, a point). The characters that you see in Guild Wars and Everquest are all made of triangles that are colored according to a bunch of factors. While usually something called a graphics API takes care of the basic stuff like deciding when you draw a line, exactly which pixels are affected, you, the programmer, still have to decide where you want to draw the triangles and the lines, how you want to color triangles.

So that's all a game is (without sound/multiplayer), really, just a bunch of colored triangles moving around on your screen according to a pattern dictated by a programmer.

Sorry if that's a little complicated, I can't really make it very clear.

Hope it helped!

If you want to learn to C++, I can help you out, but I'll warn you right now, it's going to be a long time before you can create a game (at earliest a couple of months for something like tetris, and that if you're a quick learner), but if you want to learn, just ask

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sikosid48

I was 10 when I started and I regret it. Go back to school kid cos you will never make anything good at the age of 13. Sorry to go on harsh but you need to learn the basics first

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naruto1327

I'm afraid I must disagree. I made a 2D game of pong that included a particle system that followed a bit of tangential acceleration at the age of 12. I didn't even know what tangential acceleration was! I learn new things while making games; what a bargain!