programming noob, hi forums! Advice please!

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L10N37
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Re: programming noob, hi forums! Advice please!

Post by L10N37 » Thu Jun 23, 2016 9:50 am

This might be a stupid question.. but I don't know much. I take your advice that the megadrive may be a bit much at the moment and I was looking at the gameduino but I was wondering..

I already have a GCW Zero...

Would this be easy to develop for? Just seen as how I already own one.
Theres a lot of emulators/ ports for that like Duke3D.

Also ...it sucks that the source code is now missing for the penguin game, not that it would make any sense to me at this stage anyway.

cero
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Re: programming noob, hi forums! Advice please!

Post by cero » Thu Jun 23, 2016 4:08 pm

It's about the same difficulty to develop for. You'd still need to learn C, or another proper language.

Burbruee
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Re: programming noob, hi forums! Advice please!

Post by Burbruee » Mon Jul 11, 2016 2:55 am

L10N37 wrote:I already have a GCW Zero...

Would this be easy to develop for? Just seen as how I already own one.
I have a GCW-Zero as well. There are some alternatives for you here. You could look into Bennu as the interpreter is built into the system. It's very easy to learn, like basic. This is how I first started out in 2006 actually before I branched out to C++. (though it was called Fenix at that time instead of bennu)
Speaking of C++ using a library such as SDL is not a bad idea for learning some game development. Which the gcw-zero also supports (both old SDL1.2 and the newer SDL2)

I could recommend a book on SDL for you, "Focus on SDL". It's very basic and easy to understand if you grasp the very basics of C++ (variables, if/else/switch, for/while loops etc. ) You will learn how to draw graphics to the screen, for example fill the screen with rectangles at a random position and random size filled with a random color (iirc) and they keep appearing over each other until you close the window. It's easy to get stuff drawn to the screen with SDL. Quick and easy results. Also lazyfoo's tutorial series is a good read. After that, experiment on your own. Draw a character. Make it move. Introduce an enemy and collisions, maybe a projectile etc.

Start with that. Put Mega Drive on hold until you learn some basics. Then maybe you can return to mega drive.

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