game development & it's requirements

Hey

I'm someone who creates sites for a hobby, and knows a little bit of PHP, HTML and um.. well, I guess that's about it.

What I'd like to do is to make a standalone application, a game, which people can download and stuff and have fun with.

Now, I figured that if I'd learn how to make a Tamagotchi (you probably still remember that one, and if you don't, it's a virtual pet) I'd get in touch with a lot of functions also neccessary to do other things.
I can make the sprites as well, but knowing no non-web language whatsoever I just don't know where to start, so basically, my question is:

What language should I start programming in (that is compatible with a 486 system (I know. Steam-powered.))?

Personally I like PHP's layout. You can make some really tidy code with that.

is my question that hard to answer or is it really that dumb?
I mean... 30 views and no replies?

I don't know much about web languages, or game creation, but I hear C++ is similar to php, and I think most games are written in it.

you can write games in any language... but most are pretty difficult to pick-up quickly (the intricacies of gui and graphics that is)

i would suggest starting with Visual Basic, as it has lots of ready made libraries and makes drawing to screen nearly effortless... you can write a small game within a few hours of picking up VB Studio if you look at the examples which come with Studio and DirectX libraries.

If you like PHP, have a look at C/C++. As illig said game development in any language is not simple but if your interested in learning a programming language anyway, it's always helpful to have a basic knowledge of C/C++. If your interested in web based games then it might be worth learning flash which is also great for general websites aswell. I've been doing C/C++ for a year now and am getting into writing games and even the simplest games such as tetris or pong are proving difficult.
Good Luck

Professional commercial games are generally written in C or C++ for performance reasons, often in combination with a high-level scripting language like Python or Lua for the game logic.

However these days a simple sprite based game is not going to be pushing the limits of performance, so using C++ for it would be overkill unless you are already highly competant in the language.

I would suggest using a high level language with a good sprite game library - for example take a look at pygame (www.pygame.org) for Python. There may be similar libraries for PHP, but I don't know of any as PHP libraries tends to be more focused on web development.

There are also 2D game libraries for Java and probably for C#, but development will be faster and easier with a higher level language.

Dave - The Developers' Coach

I just re-read your post, and saw the bit about being compatible with a 486 system. I take back what I was saying about C++ being overkill.

There were a lot of C/C++ game libraries that were written back in the days of the 486, but they may be hard to find now.

Dave - The Developers' Coach

If you want to get into game development you'll need to know C++ and you will also need to understand OpenGL & SDL. If you live in the UK, I can put you in touch with some people who recruit solely for the games industry and would be able to provide you with excellent advice regarding what is expected in industry from aspiring games developers.

christo

C++ isn't particularly hard to learn (well, small amounts of it, I don't think that anyone anywhere could say they know the entire depths of C++) and is, as others have said, probably the best choice for games development (actually, I'm not entirely sure why, but C is usually the language recommended for games)

However, since your idea is a relatively simple tamagotchi game, and if you're not too comfortable with programming, I'd go with illig's VB suggestion. I don't know how well it will run on a 486, but it will be easier to cut your teeth on than C++

Of course, there is certain merit to just jumping right on into the deep end