Video Game Programming

[Lady Danny]

Hello,

 

I am writing out of curiosity on behalf of a very talented friend of mine.

He is looking to become a video game programmer. I am wondering,

where one might start out, what type of educational background is

required, specific courses and specific schools, or the contacts of

those who would be able to answer my questions would be

greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you,

 

Danny

 

Email: dannyart_8@hotmail.com

WebPage: www.angelfire.com/art2/dannyart

[Christopher Tumber]

It sounds like you're talking about modern videogames (PS2, Xbox, PC, etc) if so, go here:

 

http://www.igdn.org/

 

If not you might want to hop over to the 2600 Programming For Newbies

forum.

[+Random Terrain]

Be sure to send your friend here too for a little guidance from famous game designers:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/gamedesign/index.html

[MrAtari2600_Old]

i would li to know sites were i can learn to program atari game by myself.

[CodeMonkey666]

The two top-of-the-line videogaming schools in this country are Full Sail and Digipen. Of those two, Digipen is THE best. It is an ELITE school. They only take like 500 people out of like 23,000 applicants per year, and of that 500, usually like 23 graduate. The school puts you HARDCORE into computer programming, mathematics, physics, and computer graphics (which is all highly math-based). The school DOES NOT focus on teaching you to be a videogames-programmer; what it does is teaches one to be a programmer-engineer, a top-of-the-line programmer who knows all the high-level math and physics and all that. Videogames just happen to be the perfect form of teaching that, as videogames are live interactive simulations. Hence you do like a videogame per year for each of the 4 years at the school, so when you are done, since videogames are the most complex of all programming, you have 4 game projects under your belt and are fully prepped to go into the videogames programming industry, but you can go into pretty much any other programming industry as well. The school has no liberal arts though (well some, but very few). And forget about having any time for a girlfriend while you're there. The school also has an animation major as well.

 

If you want, you can also go to another school for a year or two I believe (make sure it is accredited) and then transfer. This is what I am trying to do. Study like computer science, math, physics, etc.....if I cannot transfer to Digipen, I will hopefully go there for a masters in comp. graphics.

 

Digipen also offers summer workshops on game programming.

 

Go to http://www.digipen.edu

[CodeMonkey666]

Lemme re-phrase that, Digipen DOEs teach one to be a videogames programmer, but that is because videogames rely on artificial intelligence programming, audio programming, 3D graphics programming, physics programming, port programming, etc.....so in teaching people to program videogames, you pretty much get taught to program everything else out there, since videogame code is so engineering-like for today's games.