Where To Start? (Learning Java for Game Design)

[tombezlar]

Hello, I am currently in my final year of middle school and I will be entering high school next year either public or private. Afr that I am of to college, where I would get more experience with game design. I would like to be a programmer when I graduate but, to get there I need to learn and I would like to start learning now, I have some experience with C++ but not much. I make small basic games in Unity3D, I build PCs, and I make animations in AAE (After Effects). This is fun and such but I would like to start learning Java and I would love if I could get some advice from some more professional programmers. Please share some knowledge of any good online courses or anything you have to share.

 

[phinds]

Where To Start?

Just start.

You don't learn to ride a bike by reading a book about riding a bike. Most any on-line tutorial will likely serve you well. The big thing is, just start.

 

[Lexxxis]

Hello, I am currently in my final year of middle school and I will be entering high school next year either public or private. Afr that I am of to college, where I would get more experience with game design. I would like to be a programmer when I graduate but, to get there I need to learn and I would like to start learning now, I have some experience with C++ but not much. I make small basic games in Unity3D, I build PCs, and I make animations in AAE (After Effects). This is fun and such but I would like to start learning Java and I would love if I could get some advice from some more professional programmers. Please share some knowledge of any good online courses or anything you have to share.

Hey, I'm a student too and share your passion for coding (also deal with programming-related issues).
Great to meet you.
Well, regarding your question, I can suggest you look deeply into basics (if you feel comfortable with the syntax and can solve simple code tasks then you may start smth more difficult).
Have a look at the https://codegym.cc/. A couple of years ago it was my go-to for shaping the skills.
Also, https://www.codecademy.com/ is great.
Good luck!

 

[jedishrfu]

A persons first language is often chosen based on what you want to do and how to get there. In your case, you mentioned OO, C++, games and then Java.

Checkout Processing.org, its java based, great for doing interactive animations. Its has great online support with many libraries and examples. I use it for prototyping ideas because of its ease of use and freedom from traditional gui programming.

there's an insights article here on PF that gives a brief overview of its features.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/the-joy-of-processing/

 

[yungman]

Hi
I am old, BUT I am learning game programming also right at this point. If you know some C++, why not continue to learn more C++? I don't know much about computer science, but I kept hearing a lot of games are based on C++. I know a lot of scientific programming are on C type language. People kept telling me if this is my first language, choose something easier as C++ is hard. But I learn it, not everything as there are too much to learn, but I did studied the book By Gaddis from cover to cover in 7 months...with the help here.

If a 68 years old guy can do it, you can do it. I am using the book Beginning Game C++ Programming by John Horton. I just started. I am not recommending this book, just what I am using. The book is based on SFML

I actually go on youtube to learn learn and seems to be even better. I am using this young guy's lectures:


It is a whole series walking you from the beginning, telling you how to load the SFML, how to set up Visual Studio and all that. He is using C++. This is my second day using this series, I finished the first 6 video already. It's super easy.

I find youtube is a very good source of learning C++. I don't particular like to search on line in sites like cplusplus and all that. I find they very hard to understand as they use terms and name I have problem understanding...at least the first 3 months until I get deeper into C++.

If Game programming is what you want, C++ is good and you should just dive in. If I can do it, so can you.

 

[Zap]

I bought a book called Cracking the Coding Interview, 189 Programming Questions & Solutions. I haven't read it yet, but I've heard good things about it. You can just jump in and start coding with very little knowledge of software engineering fundamentals, but I would start out reading about the fundamentals. I created dozens of programs without having hardly any idea what I was doing. Then, when I actually got an interview to be a software engineer, or something similar, I couldn't answer a single question they threw at me. I had no idea what I was actually doing. I would just code and used trial and error until something worked. That might be okay for some things, but it's not going to get you a job as a software engineer.

After you have a good idea about optimizing code, time and space complexity, data structures, and things like that, you should begin creating on online portfolio for yourself. You can make a GitHub Pages Website with HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript, and you should put some projects on there, too. These projects can be academic, like studying some algorithms, like different sorting algorithms and comparing their time complexities. One of the first pages I made was comparing some popular path finding algorithms and visualizing them. This was entirely academic, but was pretty interesting, and I learned a ton about searching algorithms and tree structures.

Your next step should actually be to learn all of these algorithms, like sorting algorithms and searching algorithms, because you will need to know them to solve problems optimally, and you can put all of your progress onto your portfolio.