Middle school 8th grade student

#1 Why don't you get the Torque game engine demo and play aroud with it? you have nothing to lose

#2 I'm going into 11th grade and am working with a team on a game, but if you're really interested you can start at any age. I first tought myself to program in the 3rd grade lol

#3 It matters if you have an adult to help. I would not recommend this engine for someone who has no idea how to program. I also wouldn't recommend this engine for someone who doesn't have a great deal of time to dedicate to it.

Also, you have to take into consideration what type of game you want to make. If you just want to add weapons and art to an example game, then yes, most likely an 8th grader w/ parental/teacher help could do it. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend this engine.

#4 This is a very stupid question but how did you know how to do that is there somewhere that it says to do that? and what other keys can you press to do something ( as stupid as that sounds)

#5 Thanks guys yeah I have alot of time and I have the book but I was kinda wondering ,also, how long it would take for just ME to make a good game (like... 2 years?)

#6 If you dont know how to program, then you might be able to start with the T2D stuff... but even then, I would recomend you learn some programming methodologies first... it'll be too weird otherwise.

#7 Wow! 3 months for a hunting game! You must really know what your doing because it's taken me and a whole team of guys longer than that to make a much simpler game(and we're not even done, yet).

#8 Well weapons are easy and vehicles are moderately easy. If you can model than art should be pretty easy. As James Bond said it might be best to mess around with the demo if you aren't very good at proggraming it wouldn't help to much to have the SDK. But aim for a weapons/ vehicle based online FPS those are easiest.

#9

Quote:Wow! 3 months for a hunting game!

My reaction completely. I've worked on some commercial hunting games (nothing I'm too proud of having done, hehe =), and while they were done extremely fast it was still at least 6 months and of course with a full team of pros...

#10 I started trying to make a game in 7th grade. Back then I even had a small team of devoted followers. Now I'm in my second year of college and still no game! Arrrg! But I'm getting closer. I've learned to program, write music, game design, draw 3D and 2D art and write plots. I guess my point of saying all that was it could take a very long time. Don't start off with your rendition of the "The Greatest RPG of All Time" because you won't finish it. I went through two of those before I learned. RPGs take a lot of people. Try your hand at Torque 2D as well. You might find learning easier if you only have to deal with two axises (or is that axie). Anyway, good luck!

-Peter

Side note: I just remebered! I did finish one game in 9th grade but only my mom and some guy in Japan bought a copy=( Oh well, back to programming.

#11 I began programming with target of game development back when I was 10(very early 90's), and this was during a time way before the Internet and when VGA(320x200) graphics was cutting edge, and the OS platform of the day was MS-DOS 5.0. Game development references was scarce so much of what I had was done by looking source codes of the Demo Scene from local BBS's (ya, not too many remember these either!) and improvising my own way of doing things. I was able to put together a simple RPG graphic adventure game, very weak by today's standards but quite a delight back in those days. So yeah anything is possible as long as you persistently keep up with it.

Nowadays, you got resources up the yin-yang for nearly anything. You got tons of 3D modellers, game engines, progammings languages, and all sorts of code and examples to learn from.

#12 @Rachid: Yup, I see no reason to not start early. I started programming at age 6 or 7... ms-dos 1 on an IBM XT. =)
Nowadays I don't consider myself a "programmer" though even though I know how to do it (and do it too if forced).

#13 @Magnus - Wow...was anyone here even alive back then?

#14 Cough, yep I was.. and yes I was programming back then too.

#15 @Rachid: If you were 10 in the early 90s I take it you're more or less the same age as me (born '81).

Now when I think about it though it may have been ms-dos 2.0, I'm not entirely sure.

#16 Magnus, in my opinion, is very talented, so he's earned the respect someone 50 or 60 would get.

#17 Yah, I'm around that age :-). By the time I got a computer, DOS 5.0 was the OS platform of the time.......so I thought you may have been older.

#18 When I was 13 back in the BBS days, I took the terminal script for telemate and turned it into a full featured BBS system very similar to teleguard without the great displays of what was happening though. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it and at your age learning is alot easier than when you get older.

So go for it.

#19 I'm just completing ninth and I can barely program and I am trying to learn C++ (I'm mediocre in Java) but are there any good C++ primers out there that could help?