Game Dev/Modding 101?

Development Code
#1

So I'm interested in learning some programming skills to play around and make some mods for games, or maybe my own game. But I have sever questions.

  • What language is best-suited for this type of application?
  • I've read tons of programming tutorials, but none of the lay out the software needed and how to export your code into something that works. They are usually just like "yeah so write this and export it and it should work." Um, details please?
  • What is an IDE? What is a good text editor? What is a compiler? How do I use these?
  • Are books a better reference, I should I stick to tutorials?

Try to put your answer in layman's terms please.

#2

Modding usually involves using developer tools they already give you and maybe following structures of code found in scripts and various files. This changes from game to game and you just apply generic programming concepts to whatever your presented.

I'll start with IDE. An IDE is a developer environment so something like Visual Studio or Eclipse right down to Unreal IDE that helps you develop within the Unreal engine. Imagine MS Word. That has all the tools you ever need to make Word documents. An IDE is that for programming or development.

Good text editors? I'm not too clued up here I just use the same ones every time. Notepad++ in Windows, Sublime Text in OSX and just GEdit in Linux.

Releasing code? If you were using something like an IDE, like Visual Studio, every time you build your application it compiles your code. Go to the project folder and into the bin folders to find the executables or releases.

Otherwise if your doing it from text editors in something like C++ you have to compile the project manually. A compiler does this. It turns your source code into executable programs.

Programming games is pretty solid. I'd consider dropping the head on game approach and just pick up C++/C#. Both can be done in Visual Studio. Spend time doing that until you understand a fair bit. Books are great. Thenewboston on youtube is pretty big. Online web tutorials though are really hit-n-miss and many would only be understandable to programmers.