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[Lordtac]

Hey everyone I'm new here, and I have a very very small background in coding, I'm good at figuring things out but honestly the only smidge of code I've ever written myself was in LUA for a star destroyer I designed from the ground up in roblox.

I'm familiar with C# and C++ in the sense that I'm aware of their existence.

My question is what is a good way to really learn the language (To a professional level)

I am considering practicing with the UDK (unreal development kit) or the unity engine, to get used to the syntax. I have been trying to practice in other ways lately (writing tiny programs in MS-Visual C# Express) but I don't feel like I'm learning anything, and its getting pretty demoralizing.

I would go to college to learn C# or even C++ but there aren't any college's in my area (as if I could afford them) that teach "Any" form of programming.  

Please help if you can  

[Geeze]

Books. Get a book that teaches basics of the language you are learning (and by basics I mean everything you need to know, all syntax, most OOP stuff, data structures, file IO, threading, etc...)

[Lordtac]

Books. Get a book that teaches basics of the language you are learning (and by basics I mean everything you need to know, all syntax, most OOP stuff, data structures, file IO, threading, etc...)

can you suggest a good book? I have a crummy reference that hasn't helped me much at all.

[Serapth]

C# Language/Library/Tool/Book/Links suggestions for someone wanting to get into Game dev with C#.


The C# Programming Language is a great book to own, as a reference.  Not so much to learn from.  You could learn from it, but it is very dry and written in a highly technical style.  That said, it is "the source" for the C# language and a handy book to own.

Head First C# is much more newbie friendly and highly recommended, but the style can be a bit... off-putting.  Check it out first before buying.

That said, there are some links, free ebooks and tutorials at that link and you can easily start there.  If you are more of a visual learner ( I very much am not ), Microsoft has made a literal ton of materials available.  Probably a few thousand hours of video lessons, spread across msdn.microsoft.com, channel9 and create.msdn.com.  That's one wonderful thing about MS, their developer support is unrivalled.


Another thing to consider, at least while you are learning, is Safari Books Online.  It is pricey in a relative way, as I think I pay about 40$ a month, but wow does the 40$ serve me well.  I get access to a catalog of about 15K books.  Since subscribing to safari, I haven't purchased a single dead tree technical book.  Given the cost of books here ( about 60$, we Canadians pay a 10-20$ surplus for no particularly good reason ), Safari is about equal in cost to purchasing 8 books a year, a number I used to easily hit.  

[Lordtac]

thanks I'll get started on those free resources tonight and see if any of the non-free stuff can help later.

[louisdeb]

anyone know of any unity + c# specific books ? which are good for beginners to both?

[Chill3r]

Quick free tip: youtube.com/thenewboston
-programming introduction (java/c)
-networking
-websites (html/php)

Really good work, so check him out:)

[Gregg Williams]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/hh341490

Video tutorials on C# from microsoft themselves, might be of some use.

[wccrawford]

Books are a good way to get the basics, but to become truly proficient in the language, you'll need to use it.

So get started now.  Pick an engine that uses C# and start making things.  They don't have to be pretty.  Just use boxes and scale them to size.  The important part is to not let art get in the way of the coding. 

And do a *lot* of coding.  It's the only way that you'll truly get good at it.

[forwardresent]

anyone know of any unity + c# specific books ? which are good for beginners to both?

A book called Unity Game Development 3.x Essentials uses C# and Javascript, code is provided for both paths. It's very handy, I'm reading it so I can finally stop using Javascript.

[louisdeb]

A book called Unity Game Development 3.x Essentials uses C# and Javascript, code is provided for both paths. It's very handy, I'm reading it so I can finally stop using Javascript.

Just what I needed thanks, even had an amazon voucher for it.

[Vithium]

What wccrawford said is very true.  My main lanquage is C#.  If you have any questions I will try to help out.  But there is nothing better then just getting your hands dirty. This is how I learned programming.  I am a self taught programmer, and many people are.  I never went to school nor had the time with family and work and all. But I was so determined and love programming so much I never gave up.  Just start simple. Open up VS express and just start coding.  Make small simple things and as you go when you have a problem, just start researching a solution.  Google is very good.  I still use Google all the time to refresh my memory real quick or to just get information on how something can be done.  

Another good thing to realize is that you will get frustrated and lost from time to time.  But don't let that get you down.  If you have to just take a break and walk away.  When you come back to it with a clear head it will help out.  I don't know how many times I was having a very hard time and then came back later and the solution just came to me out of thin air.  

Another good site that is good to learn from and learn a lot about programming and how it all works from the nitty gritty details to the more higher level stuff is http://www.wibit.net/.  They start you down from the core of just simple C and then work you up to more complicated stuff like objective-C, C++, java, and even some c#, and its free.  The value I think that you can get out of this site and watching these videos is the core concepts of programming itself. Like memory usage, variables, classes, object oriented programming concepts, and more.  There are a lot of concepts and things that can also help you out that overall apply to any language.

Work hard at it, never give up, and enjoy it. Good luck!!

[capnramses]

I made a little starter sheet http://antongerdelan.net/teaching/3dprog2/xna-tut0-helloworld.pdf (it was actually a lab worksheet for a university course) using XNA Game Studio if you're interested in learning 3d graphics. You'll need a bit of basic C# background, but XNA is pretty easy to get started with.

The book that I mentioned - Aaron Reed's "Learning XNA 4.0" (O'Reilly) is really very good for beginners, and has a chapter on virtually every game development topic that you'll want to play with. Check out the TOC on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Learning-XNA-4-0-Development-Windows/dp/1449394620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292689866&sr=1-1

[userXDev]

I found this website great when I was learning c#. Although its not centred around game coding, it'll definitely give you the fundamentals:
http://www.functionx.com/csharp/

[Pedrosanchau]

http://www.freewebs.com/campelmxna/tutorials.htm

Learning C# was really easy with this tutorial.

[kotogames]

Hi,

For 2D, 2,5D games in C# games I recommend http://www.flatredball.com/
It's very easy to learn, lot's of tutorials.

I used it to develop my game http://kotogames.com/DraggoFury.html

[Guryon]

Hey Lordtac. I'm new here too, in fact this is my first post.

C#/XNA is something I got in to only recently. I tried to teach myself using tutorials on the web and reading books (I had no prior programming experience) and I just ended up getting so frustrated that it almost put me off.

But I didn't. I went and found a class and signed up, and forgot about trying to teach myself until the class started. And it was absolutely the best thing ever. It was the most satisfying learning experience of my life. Having a tutor to discuss problems with and who could go over my code with me was absolutely invaluable to me. The course was 20 weeks and only focused on 2d games, and while I don't remember the cost, I didn't find it at all unreasonable.

Once my tutor was able to help me get my head around the basics I was really able to take off and ended up being the top student in the class, which is very much a first for me. With the basics down, the books and web tutorials all became comprehensible and I'm pretty confident that I would be able to teach myself anything else I needed to know about C# now. I'm sure there would still be frustration, but I have enough confidence in my abilities that I would not get put off, as I did when I first started trying to teach myself.

Good luck. And don't let yourself get put off. If it's something you really are interested in, it is so worth it.

[Hedgehodg]

Personally to learn C# in depth I'd recommend picking up a book such as "Murach's C# 2010". 810 pages of text to simply learn C# may seen daunting, but the time you invest to learn the language with that book is really worth it. For 2D graphics I'd advise that you go with SFML. It's a great library that hides that complexities of building a game in vanilla Open GL, and allows you to focus on creating the game itself.
    I'd also recommend SFML over another API such as XNA because it's portable, both in the way that it's available on multiple platforms, but also, multiple languages (bindings are available for C++, C, Python, etc.) Later on, when you're comfortable with making 2D games, head straight for Open GL (2.0 or over). It's far superior to XNA.

[Murach's C# 2010] http://www.amazon.com/Murachs-C-2010-Joel-Murach/dp/1890774596/ref=pd_sim_b_10
[SFML] http://www.sfml-dev.org/index.php
[OpenGL Tutorial] http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/

[eyeliner]

I use this: C# Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners
The person is clear, seems friendly and in depth enough not to be tiresome.

I'd also grab Visual Studio Express for Desktop and make something just to get a feel for the thing. Also, MSDN is a damn goldmine, so spending money on books is not necessary.

You want books?
Here are the books from Rob Miles.
Free web eBook, you can purchase it, and it's fairly reasonable.
Here's a little one, needs a register at the site, but use Mailinator to tell them "love you sexually".

Get a good grasp of the language (shouldn't take you long) and get a feel for the language's particularities before jumping to Unity or other engine and start doing stuff, because there will be a time when you get errors, exceptions and a lot of crap that you will want to solve and you better know what the messages mean and how the errors came to be.

Also, you, using Unity or other engine, will not learn the language specifically, but an adaption of the language tailored to the specific engine.

Spend a couple of weeks tinkering and then go make a simple game. Rob Miles' book is good for that.

My personal opinion, feel free to disregard.

[Zenfar]

One really great place to start is to write a Console game in C and build up from there.  Here is a really old article I wrote on doing just that, you will have to use a more modern version of Microsoft Visual C++ (they have a free express version that should work) or gcc or other free C compiler.  The code will still work and the basic ideas are still valid.  The trick is to start small and work your way up.

http://www.rpgplanet.com/features/articles/simplecrpg/