Game Development Questions.

[pablolo997]

I want to be a game developer and I have close to no experience at the moment.
I heard Python and C# were great choices for starting out.

So the language I plan to use is C# because Rimworld and Terraria are written in C#(I think?) and I love both of those games.

What I was wondering was if someone could please explain to me the concept of engines and frameworks?
What exactly is Unity3D, XNA, and Visual Studios?
Are these all the same kinds of things?
Sorry if it's a dumb question.

I'm thinking Visual Studios is like a compiler and it helps with showing errors and highlighting stuff while Unity and XNA have something to do with helping game development somehow? I tried google and I still just don't quite get it right now.

Am I supposed to download Unity AND visual studios? or just unity.
I know I want to use Unity. I heard a lot of people say that is what I should start with.


I was thinking about watching a bunch of tutorials and lectures on youtube, then making some tests. Then  buying Tynan's book and also trying to work on mods for rimworld in the far future. I heard Tynan started off with making mods and he seems pretty smart so I kind of wanted to learn the way he did.

Does this sound like the right direction to go in?

[longbyte1]

Unity is a game engine. It has a free, downloadable SDK along with it. You can use Unity if you'd like, but you can experiment with smaller engines first (or your own).

Visual Studio is an IDE (integrated development environment). It has a really nice interface, helps in project/solution management, and also has a built-in compiler. You'll need this if you want to do a lot of C# stuff, including XNA (but it's not required for Unity). An alternative is SharpDevelop + Mono, if you'd like. But that can be considered a more advanced approach.

Game engines, in theory, eliminate unnecessary work for the developer. Why should the developer toil for months without end coding and recoding small elements just to make a simple game when there can just be one central and bug-free library that everyone can use?

If you're going to do game development, I suggest you do modding first for a specific game, and just make more complex mods that replace more and more in-game elements. Once you've outgrown the game, you can start programming independently (no game engine, no nothing) or start on Unity or XNA.

[Fergurp123]

What engines or compilers do you recommend for java?

[longbyte1]

What engines or compilers do you recommend for java?

LWJGL is a very powerful and popular game engine. You don't really have any choice with Java compilers; it's either Oracle's (included in the Java Development Kit) or Eclipse's (in the Eclipse IDE).