Would like to be pointed in a general direction!

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>I'm an ideas man

>>59177097
Don't worry friend. I want to explore some things in my own time.

Rare HP Lovecraft

>>59177400
Yeah, his mouth is barely open!

>>59177429
What age was he there?

game theory is pretty far removed from the art of making games / computer games

>>59177464
The photograph is dated to 1933, so about 43.

>>59177484
If it helps clarify any, I admire classic board games like Go or Chess, but I'm also interested by card games with playing cards, or even TCGs like Magic. If not game theory, what's the name for resources that analyze what makes a balanced or challenging game?

>>59177521
game theory is more about balancing individual benefits with the total benefits to predict how people will act

i didnt read the op but i'll do the logo

>>59177608
Sounds like it would be important to understand when designing a good game. But I do think there must be a more specific realm of thought that addresses what I'm looking to learn.

>>59177643
Think people call it game design

But it's a massive meme anyway. The greatest games were made by programmer nerds inspired by loosely associated ideas, way before "game design" as theory/discipline was even conceived

>>59177078
start by researching and picking a game engine to use, unless you're gonna go full retard and reinvent the wheel and make your own engine from scratch

>>59177712
You think there's any place to start if I'm interested in this? Despite the ideas guy thing, I don't have any current pressing ideas, but I'm attracted to the idea of making something that is competitive, that is complex and engaging, but not necessarily painfully complicated straight out the box.

My thread is asking about a starting point for a longterm goal. Something like this takes a lot of knowledge. Any ideas where I could start would be appreciated.

>>59177754
Wouldn't it be better to come up with a game idea and then learn a game engine that fits that game? Hell, it may be something I pursue in paper/tabletop.

>>59177814
>>59177814
I thought you already had an idea in mind. I still say look into engines though. knowing the types of things possible and how easy/difficult they are to implement might help you get ideas

>>59177078
I'd say Cordova but the problem is that you're write such shitty code that your game that should use 100mb of RAM will use 900mb instead of like Duelyst and shit.

The problem is you simply can't make a game that runs well on mobile if you're a shitty programmer unless it's horribly basic, which it doesn't sound like is your idea.

So just make a PC game in Unity that runs like dogshit and barely gets over 30fps on an i7-6950X with 2 1080Tis like everyone else who is a shitty programmer that makes a game.
Or save up a bunch of money and pay someone who knows what they're doing to make it. $30k-$100k can do it if you pay some pajeets.

>>59177078
So you want to learn programming?

Pick a starting language. For beginners, there are generally two recommended "programming families" that you can choose to start learning:
-Dynamically typed/interpreted programming languages, such as: Python, Perl, Ruby
-Statically typed/compiled programming languages, such as: C, C++, C#

These are amongst the most popular languages in use worldwide, including 4 from the top 5. Both approaches are perfectly fine, and well-documented.
-Dynamically typed programming may be a bit more flexible, convenient, and forgiving. It is more popular in academia.
-Statically typed programming is a bit more suited for making general applications. It is more popular in industries.

Cannot decide? Flip a coin.

If you choose statically typed/compiled programming, you may want to start with C, then pick up C++. C is very well documented, and teaches many universal programming concepts. C++ is based on C, and adds new concepts. Sources:
For C:
The C Programming Language (K&R)
C Primer Plus (Prata)
http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c-tutorial.html
http://www.learn-c.org/

For C++:
http://www.learncpp.com/
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/
http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c++-tutorial.html
http://en.cppreference.com/
https://isocpp.org/faq

If you choose dynamically typed/interpreted programming, you may want to start with Python. It is very easy to pick up. Here are some good sources:
http://www.learnpython.org/
http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/python

>BUT I WANT MORE SOURCES!
Read: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Programming_resources

>BUT I WANNA START WITH [language x] INSTEAD!
Sure, if you like. But the languages above are considered good for beginners.

>BUT I WANNA MAKE A COOL WEBSITE!
Learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

>BUT I WANNA MAKE iPHONE GAMES!
Learn Objective C and/or Swift.

>BUT I WANNA MAKE ANDROID GAMES!
Learn Java.

>BUT I WANNA MAKE PC GAMES!
Learn patience.

>>59177998
>recommending Perl and Ruby.
Python is bad too, but there is no excuse for those last two. Fuck you for recommending people to learn Python past like 2013 and those others ever. There's enough shitty performing shittily written games as it is.

>>59178126
I focused on C, C++, and Python. Or did you read only two sentences before you replied?

>>59177841
I will take a look.

>>59177877
I may be looking at a very long term project, at least as long as I'm working on it on my own. I appreciate the advice.

>>59177998
Thank you for the resourceful post!

>>59178126
Even if it's very basic, where do you think a good place would be to start?

>>59178164
Yeah and my main point was how bad of a recommendation Python on.

There's literally 0 reason to use Python over JS.
Python is dead. It only exists now to maintain old software and to be used among people that already learned it before it died.

You also said JS is only for websites, like a fucking moron. Don't give people shit advice. You invalided your whole long post. I hope that's just something you copy pasted and you didn't waste time writing all that.

>>59178179
If you want to make a phone game with Cordova or Phonegap?
Make some website extensions in in Tampermonkey. That'll teach you how to inspect other code and use it to create something new and useful on top of it.
Or make some webapps that are useful.
There are 2d and 3d engines for JS you can use but you need good JS fundamentals first.
Read the entire MDN JS page on the native functions and fundamentals of the language. It only takes a few days as JS itself is very lean. But there are some things that will take a while to really understand like function.proto.call vs function.proto.apply vs arrow functions.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript
Learn to use performance benchmarking modules in node.js to see which way of writing something is faster (less code is not at all necessarily faster)

To make a game in Unity or UE?
Mod some games.
If you learn one C syntax language, you can get comfortable with them all. Unity is usually in C#. And Unity does magic to make C# not run slow as shit.
So yeah if you just mod some Unity games like KSP and learn C#, that may take you months but then you can pick up C, C++, and JS basics within a few weeks unless you're retarded. (This is another reason you shouldn't learn a useless language with a stupid syntax on top of it like Python)

>>59178315
>You also said JS is only for websites
Reading is not your strong point.

>>59178315
>JS monkey brainfart

>>59178179
Forget about the programming part and focus on your game design. Only start thinking about programming once you've decided on every detail of your game, so you'll only need to program it exactly once. Otherwise you'll get caught up in reprogramming every design change 10 times, which will take you forever, since you're just starting out at programming.