Heya, I'm sorry if this has been answered somewhere but i did a cursory search and didn't really find anything that satisfied me.

So my question is, what is the best language to develop games in? Standard windows stand alone type of games. And what is the best compiler to use?

I don't know if there is a definitive "best" per se but i'm looking for opinions.

There isn't really a definitive "best," just whatever you are most comfortable with.

C++ is the most widely used language (my personal favourite). Then, Java is fairly widely used, some of the libraries can be a bit slow, but the speed is definitely coming along for game programming in Java.

C# is also used, with the XNA framework... I haven't tried it, but I've read some good things about it.

One of my previous posts, I think it has the answer to your question.

Yeah its relative really, if you wanna make browser games then flash or java are the way to go, java would also be quite capable of making a very nice 2d game, but for a powerful and large game engine with all the fancy frills of the latest games then i would use c++ which is also my personal favorite.

some people might disagree but i think OOP is excellent for game programming if done right

good luck

p.s i started with flash actionscript

Agreed

As stated above, there is no standard "best" language for game programming, however if you are just getting started I suggest C++ because not only is it widely used, but if you are just beginning there is a wealth of knowledge for you to obtain and learn from.

I've started to get into game programming myself and if you want to get started quickly I would definitely recommend C# with XNA there are tons of tutorials and a lot of those are video so if you don't like to read you can just watch. Here's one website that I've been using: http://www.riemers.net/eng/tutorials.php

You can find many more if you Google for XNA.

The more important question you should be asking is "What is the best library/engine to make games?".

To that I would reply "What kind of games do you want to make? What platform are you targetting?".

i haven't started anything but i'd like to go for straight windows game
If your going to use xna couldn't you use Vb.net as well? I've heard that xna isn't that good for complex games, is that right? Sooo the impression i'm getting is that by using it, it's kinda a jump start into games programming but if you want to get serious about it your eventually going to have to use c++. Is that right?

This post has been edited by Damage: 2 Jul, 2008 - 08:30 PM

If you know what you're doing, it doesn't matter what language you use. As I said before, it's the libraries you're using that are important, not the language.

You aren't going to be writing games on the level of Quake anytime soon. I don't mean to burst your bubble, but the many "features" of C++ aren't going to help you for a long while.

Find a language that you like, doesn't matter what language, and get very good at using it. You might also want to study up on your maths. If you can't write normal programs or do trig, you won't be able to write any kind of decent game without using a significant amount of "cookie cutter" code. The less work you as a programmer are doing, the more generic your game or program will become.

You might also want to consider your target audience. Face it, whatever you make isn't going to be flying onto people's computers like hotcakes. Why exclude anyone from playing your game? Do your best to make it crossplatform. That usually means using standard libraries (like OpenGL), and following closely the standard of whatever language you're using. A well written C/C++ program will run on any OS which has a decent compiler on it.

thanks and don't worry i'm under no illusions as to creating a crysis clone by next week I was just hoping to slowly learn in my spare and was just wondering which language i should start learning in