iOS Beginner: Need Help Coding Game Apps

[hustlengrind]

Hello everyone,

Long story short, I am a beginner coder who is absolutely fascinated with the gaming industry and creating and designing games.
Specifically, I want to code gaming apps that can range from simple side-scrollers like the Bouncing Ball app to complicated and beautifully designed games like Clash of Clans.

Before anyone tells me to use the search bar or Google my questions I just want to state that I completely understand as a coder I must be able to look things up on my own; however, I am completely unsure where to start and what questions to ask.

First of all, which coding language do you guys recommend I primarily begin using? Javascript? Python? Swift?
Where can I begin to learn these languages and develop these codes?

What program do you guys recommend works best with developing games? Xcode?

And honestly, what is the best way to begin learning these? Are there any books you guys recommend I buy off of Amazon? Or is the Internet the best place to start.

Sorry if some of these questions are redundant, I am a complete beginner and would love to pick this up as a hobby as gaming and coding have always interested me.

All the best and thank you for your time.

 

[grandM]

Hi as far as games is concerned many people are using Unity
The language used is C#

 

[AxoNeuron]

Unity.

But I'd warn you there's a lot of people who want to be game developers but few have the persistence to actually do it. It takes a lot of patience to learn programming. But it's completely worth it. My only suggestion is don't try to do too much all at once. Learn how to make a few "Hello World" apps and move on slowly from there.

And take an enormous, gigantic amount of notes. For every new piece of code you write, write it down in your notes too, and write a lot of explanations to yourself. Make them look nice, formatting, and make them easy to read. When I learned iOS development I took over 500 pages of notes in Pages (small font too!). I am the type of person that doesn't remember stuff like that unless I write it down. I still go back to those notes in some cases, to look up some arcane method or class and it's definitely helpful.

What I did was, I copied my code from Xcode, then I pasted it in to the OS X TextEdit app. Then I was able to copy it from the TextEdit document into my Notes in order to maintain the correct formatting. For some reason, copying directly into Pages didn't work.

So yeah, notes, notes, notes.

And be patient. It's going to be hard for a few weeks but eventually programming will become so fun that you won't think of doing anything else.

 

[hustlengrind]

Thank you very much for your input.
Do you guys recommend Unity specifically for gaming apps though? Like for iOS and Android development specifically?
Also, where should I start learning the code specifiically? Are there any websites that will teach tutorials for C# and unity specific tutorials? Sorry if these seem like really stupid questions I'm just new to this.

EDIT: If I do not want to spend money yet, is Unity Personal Edition worth it? What's better about the subscription?

 

[1458279]

Thank you very much for your input.
Do you guys recommend Unity specifically for gaming apps though? Like for iOS and Android development specifically?
Also, where should I start learning the code specifiically? Are there any websites that will teach tutorials for C# and unity specific tutorials? Sorry if these seem like really stupid questions I'm just new to this.

EDIT: If I do not want to spend money yet, is Unity Personal Edition worth it? What's better about the subscription?

Last I checked, Unity was free. It's been a while, but I think the cost of Unity is based on sales or what level you want. You should be able to get it for free.

Learning C# is different. It's been around a long time now and there should be tons of tutorials and books out there. I'd start with websites and YouTube.

Before you get too deep, I'd check what version Unity uses. Standards change over time and you don't want to waste time learning something that's not used. As far as books go, I'd guess you could find tons of entry level books dirt cheap. I've bought used books from Amazon for dirt cheap, old programming books have little retail value.

Once you get past that, look for Unity specific books. I've seen several of them. Unity has a bit of a learning curve past programming. You'll need to learn their interface.

 

[*SteveB*]

Unity have a bunch of free tutorials on their site that cover pretty much everything you need to get you started. That's probably not a bad place to start. https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials

The trap with Unity is that you can get sucked in to spending loads of time playing with lights and particle systems and never actually learn to code. If you feel that happening, then abandon Unity and learn C# in a standard IDE first. There's lots of things to 'play' with in Unity, and it's pretty fun, but if you can't code you can't build anything decent, so that should be your primary objective.

Don't just stick to just one learning resource. I found a really good book to use as my primary resource, but had to go an seek out explanations from other authors where some aspects weren't explained in a way that I found easy to understand. You will undoubtedly get stuck and feel pretty stupid when you can't grasp it, but keep persevering, find other explanations to read, and you will eventually get it.

One other thing. Don't get too caught up in worrying about which language/framework/engine to learn. Do your research and go with whichever you think is the most appropriate, but remember that all the skills you are learning are relevant if you change later. It took me nearly a year to get my first Objective-C application for iOS in the store with no prior experience, and then later took me 2 weeks to build my first Android app in Java.

Good luck!

 

[grandM]

Thank you very much for your input.
Do you guys recommend Unity specifically for gaming apps though? Like for iOS and Android development specifically?
Also, where should I start learning the code specifiically? Are there any websites that will teach tutorials for C# and unity specific tutorials? Sorry if these seem like really stupid questions I'm just new to this.

EDIT: If I do not want to spend money yet, is Unity Personal Edition worth it? What's better about the subscription?

I recommend unity for gaming apps. If you'd like to make other apps then Unity probably isn't the way to go. Knowing C# you can use Xamarin to make apps being ported to several platforms. Of course you could still learn swift or java. Though I presume when you just learned C# you're not tempted to learn yet another language.