Let's show the noobs.

[bobbyjones]

Many new programmers who try to make games struggle. They start to lose hope. And ultimately many quit. So to help motivate the new people. It would be cool if you posted the very first game you made, and the best game you made. Also tell a little bit about how you learned and how far you have come. Like a brief bio.
Also sorry I don't have a game to show, but I have been working on various things with love for like 3 years. It was my first programming experience and now I'm in college hopefully for Computer Engineering. So yeah that's me. Your turn.

[josefnpat]

2002 - Card Wars

The oldest published game I could find was "Card Wars 1.0" for the TI83+ when I was in middle school.

Basically take drug wars and make the drugs into collectible card games.

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fi ... 25215.html



2011 - Aeternum Blammo

My first love game was Aeternum Blammo

I "borrowed" some code from some thread on this forum, I "borrowed" lots of sprites from random games, and I "borrowed" some music. It's a simple top down shooter where you try to survived.

http://missingsentinelsoftware.com/game/aeternum-blammo



2015 - Salvage Solitude 8140

My current "achievement" is a Unity3D project I did for last month's 1GAM called "Salvage Solitude 8140"

This game is a first person rogue like like for the most part. You wake up on a station that's pretty wrecked, and you need to fix it. If you are a lover (e.g. you have a few posts on the forums), PM me for a free copy.

http://josefnpat.itch.io/salvagesolitude8140

[Tesselode]

This is a game I made when I was 12 or 13, not exactly sure which. It was a platform game made in Game Maker. I use "made" loosely, because I just took the code from the platformer tutorial (which, by the way, wasn't even very good, as you'll see if you play it). It was....a game. It's not the oldest thing I've made, but it's the oldest game I've made that I could find and still works.

I'm 19 now, and I just finished up this game called The Tops Don't Sting You. Now I did take a break from programming for a couple years, and I'm a lot older now, so I would chalk up a lot of the improvement in quality to improvement in my taste in games, but I've also learned a lot about game development just from doing it.

[undef]

I started coding two and a half years ago, when I was 23 - not to old to start coding, so don't be disencouraged by meeting lots of people who started when they were kids.
I desperately wanted to make a game, so I started learning to code even though at that time I believed it to be very very difficult.
So I picked up a book on C# and started working my way through it.

It turned out it wasn't as hard as I expected and I quickly became addicted.

I played around with C# and MonoGame for a bit, until someone showed me Lua and LÖVE - I never wrote a line of C# ever since.

I switched to LÖVE even though I've already been working on my first game quadrant (the only game that I knew I could finish on my own, because I can't draw) in MonoGame for a month or so, and at that time I thought that rewriting it would take a lot of time.
But since coding happens mostly in the head and Lua was really easy to pick up I managed to rewrite what I had in LÖVE in less than a week - and it was significantly less code.

I also got more in touch with computers in general, so I read a lot of papers, used Linux (because it was way more efficient on my laptop), learned some Haskell and a little bit of C (enough to use the LuaJIT FFI).
Basically I found this huge interesting world that fascinated me, and I was once again in the uncomfortable situation not to know what of all those interesting things I have to neglect.
Gladly my will to make games persisted.

So I kept working on quadrant as much as I could, rewrote it a couple of times because everyone makes that mistake, but two years later I actually released it.
And that's pretty damn crazy.
It still sometimes overwhelms me when I realize that I've actually did this, considering I've never created anything else in my life before that - I was never able to sustain motivation for other (non-programming) projects before, so in some regard I feel liberated.

But what's even greater is that I've learned so much while making this game.
I can now fluently express myself through code and game design.

To be honest making small games is the best thing you can do.
It's a quick thrill, you learn a lot, and it's very satisfying.
I actually thought making quadrant would maybe take half a year or something, but what can you do.

It was a really great experience to make yummy, tasty humans.
Just 5 hours of work and a lot of people enjoyed the 30 seconds of gameplay.

So if you ever feel like giving up, just make something small, always remember that you can do better (because you can!), and just keep doing that at least 3 days (or nights) a week. Eventually you will have made a game.

One last advice: Make something that you think nobody else will if you wouldn't.
That way you will have to finish it if it's important enough to you, because nobody else will.

Anyway, lots of stories left to tell, but I could go on forever and I want to go back to coding, so thanks for reading!

[Connorses]

undef makes a good point, aspire to make a game you want to see made. But also understand that games are complicated programs and it takes time to get there!

Sadly the first games I ever made are long gone, but they were basically graphical choose-your-own-adventures made in the card-based "Mac Game Maker" (not YoYo Games GameMaker). I must have been, like, 7 or 8 years old? So those weren't much. I also have a lot of failed experiments from various engines, but I'm just gonna post the oldest "Playable" game. It works in a browser, thanks to help from some friends on the GMG forum, who helped me port it to Google Dart. It was made for CandyJam and is about a guy who works at a deli and likes sandwiches and is NOT excited to be stuck in a candy world. Yuck. xD

http://www.gamemakersgarage.com/Sandwic ... esaga.html

...I might have to try Google Dart again some time, it uses Java syntax and it's pretty convenient.

Also, Sandwitch Joe uses a collision code that I wrote first in Silver Creator (don't even ask) and I originally planned to use that code for a completely different project that has since been on "permanent hiatus" (I can't find the files and I'm too lazy to reverse engineer Sandwitch Joe right now). The moral is, be more persistent than I was, and try to actually finish a game even if it's kinda lame. It's sooo satisfying. I still have unfinished stuff lying around...

[Madrayken]

I started in 1985. I programmed Rockman on a B&W TV, because my family were too poor to afford a colour one. I was 14, and my first game was for the ZX Spectrum. It was programmed in compiled integer basic - a kind of fore-runner to lua, I guess. My art was made in pixel packages using keys to move the cursor (no mouse or trackpad support - they hadn't been invented). My game was saved onto (very volatile) cassette tapes. My code was in one long file, filled with GOTO statements and other spaghetti code. There was no object orientation. It was a mess. It was ugly to look at, ugly to listen to, and ugly to see in the editor.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah7izlSMZg[/youtube]

Ultimately, it bought me better computers, Druid on the C64, and ultimately to Dungeon Keeper, Fable and... Spellrazor.

It all started with a small, crap project that I started and (most importantly) FINISHED. Finishing something is hard. It's worth learning that early on, because then you learn to scope your projects better.

And now we're here. We have debuggers, and source control, and the internet, and... it's an amazing time to be a game developer, regardless of Indiepocalypse. Amazing. And Love is a part of that.

[permadeth]

I have been learning to program for about a year and a half (Since I was 26). I feel like an old noob compared to most people

I find the process of coding, so frustrating! And I love it when I get something to work! One of the best feelings imo... such satisfaction.

Anyway, I start projects a lot and I give up a lot, but I have learned some through the process, and I have completed one game so far! A poorly coded, but I finished it, and here it is; Mini Ludum Dare 53 entry RED WAVE:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n2l64m5mi41n ... foLba?dl=0

For me, it's been quite solitary work, and that is tough, but I plan on finishing more games, and I hope you do too. I recommend doing a game jam. http://www.indiegamejams.com/ for example, has links to some. Having a deadline helps focus, and you might code up a frenzy and surprise yourself by having something to show for it after!