Which language/toolkit to start with?

[2dnoob]

So, you want to start a small indie game company and develop 1-3 games per year. Puzzle games, shooters, arcade, etc. Starting from total scratch, what language/engine/toolkit would you suggest?

C
C++
PopCap
TGB
BlitzMax
Other?

[GameGlyph]

By starting from total scratch, do you mean that you have no programming experience at all?

[Sega]

TGB just got out of early adopter mode. The graphical editors are more robust and user-friendly than ever. You can drag and drop quite a bit of the game into the editor now. You'll most definitely need to learn scripting, but it's not that hard. It has a physics engine built in, particle engine, and networking code, though at the moment, the net code is NOT for real-time action games (it's planned, but I have no idea when it will come). It's good for turn based stuff and simple puzzle games though. I haven't had any experience with the other things. But TGB is pretty damn fast to get something together, and is capable of doing some very pretty games that can scale easily to many resolutions (since it's based on 3D). Because it uses 3D acceleration, it's quite speedy when dealing with a lot of objects. It's still got room to grow in documentation and net code though. They also recently raised the price when moving out of early adopter mode. You can still get it for $100, but that version no longer comes with the source code. For that, you'll have to up it to $250. Another thing, its easy as pie to port it to Mac and Linux. Since I have no experience with the others, I'm interested in what other people have to say about those.

[electronicStar]

It's really time someone makes a sticky thread with "what language do you use?" ....

[Mike D Smith]

It all depends on why you are making the game and what you are comfortable with.

I use tools or outsource for things I don't want to do myself and code the things that I like to code.

So for example if no one wants to code up their own engine, check out what's available and use that. If you have someone that is passionate about engine programming, I think they would be happier doing it than using something existing.

I'm an engine guy, and I like using SDL for its sound, input handling and cross platform goodness. I use OpenGL because it is an industry standard, cross platform, and I like it.

I have Monte "Trance" Emerson (www.tranceemerson.com/ (http://www.tranceemerson.com/) samples at www.myspace.com/tranceemerson (http://www.myspace.com/tranceemerson)) do my music because he rocks, loves doing it, and his music is perfect for my game! I have a few friends doing monster designs and some modeling because that's what they like to do. I do the rigging and animation on the models because that's what I like to do.

So I say leverage and use your talents doing what you enjoy and outsource the rest to tools or other people.

That way making games can be really fun and exciting! More fun than even playing them!

[princec]

Total noob? Then use Blitz in any of its incarnations, or plain Java. Oh, and Flash too.

Cas :)

[dmikesell]

Assembler.

[JoKa]

No one mentions Multimedia Fusion (http://www.clickteam.com)? Well, I do ;)
V2.0 is released end of june, may be interesting, especially for beginners.

[Fabio]

Assembler. The language is called "assembly", but anyway thumbs up! :)

[RohoMech]

hey 2dnoob, I just recommended this to someone else starting out but:
processing.org/

its a java-based IDE and programming lib, you can quickly draw stuff and do GUI events etc, and the tutorials are pretty sweet as well.

[GameGlyph]

I started off with Game Maker (http://www.gamemaker.nl). I found it to be very easy to use, in both learning basic game programming structure and code. It gave me a bit of a leg up when I went to school for programming, seeing as most courses teach very business-based programming. I still use it for rapid prototyping, or just to see how a game idea might work out.

[Ciperl]

Most of the popular 2D engines/langues have demos. I know Gamemaker lets you try most stuff (except maybe particles), TGB is a 30 day trial with no feature limits (only has a watermark). And the other engines have their own ways of doing demos. The best suggestion is to try all of them out. See what works best with your work flow. A tool that works well for one person may not work well for you and vice-versa. Everyone knows that I'm going to recommend TGB, but I've also played around with every other 2D focused engine out there. So, I'm just going to encourage you to try things out for yourself.

[illume]

English/Local.

[Fabio]

English/Local.Do you suggest a compiler or an interpreter for English? :D

[dmikesell]

The language is called "assembly", but anyway thumbs up! :)

But the toolkit is an assembler. ;-)

JK. I always get that backwards.

[Ricardo C]

Binary.

;)

[Fabio]

But the toolkit is an assembler. ;-) ;D

JK. I always get that backwards. Almost everybody does it since about 15+ years ago.. it would be interesting to track down where it all started. My theory is that when MACRO Assemblers became the standard, "assembler language" which was an acceptable term to describe those non-assembly instructions (thus directives, etc..) started to be used also for the assembly language, which is wrong anyway.
It's a bit like creating compilers and then adding a script language to control them, thus the "compiler language". Of course even if now there's a compiler language, one keeps on calling the language it compiles BASIC, C++, etc.. but probably being Assembler and Assembly terms so much similar each other, it "finally" got mixed up.