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Become a Modder

2ltben

Grizzled Veteran
Nov 22, 2005
682
0
Learn to program.

Microsoft is offering free, for the next year, copies of Visual Studio Express. It's not the full studio, but the only things not avaliable are the upper level Computer Science features, nothing you'd really make use of for game programming and the like.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

To download, just choose your package. There's no limitations on what you can download, so you can get all of them if you'd like. The offer says "Free for a Year", but it means that the offer is up for a year, once you download the package it's yours to keep as long as you wish.

Also, with each copy of Studio are free video tutorials from learnvisualstudio.net(charges $30 a month normally). These just arn't a couple of lessons, these are upwards of 8 hours worth of footage. They say it's for "beginners", but some of the stuff that's covered goes far beyond beginner level. They even deal with XML. Just click on the "Easy to Learn" tab and go to the Video tutorials, there's 8 for each studio. All accomplish the same thing, just in their respective language. Everything you need to start mod programming and far more is in those videos.

Microsoft is being incredibly generous with the launch of the new Visual Studio. Don't pass this up.
 
First:
I agree.. it is good for MS to make a free version available. I've used Vstudio alittle bit when I was playing with .NET, and it's pretty easy to use.

Second:
I generally recommend the Eclipse IDE.. mostly because it's free, cross platform, cross-languge (even a UScript plugin), and fully extendable.. but also because I'm still a Java Programmer by Trade


Third:
If you're looking for info on modding the Unreal Engine is particular, the Unreal Developer's Network (UDN) is the place to be. I believe alot of people use WGotReal.
If you don't already have a copy of UT2k4, I recommend just getting it for $10.00,. but you can get a demo version of the UE2 Runtime from UDN and start playing with that.

It'd be a safe bet to learn UScript even though I imagine much of it will change between gen 2 and generation 3 engines.. I don't foresee the Unreal Engine disappearing anytime soon, and if you want to go Pro, there are alot of studios that use it.
 
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I'm a linux-only user and have done some UnrealScript using the linux SDK. There currently isn't a linux version of UnrealEd, but that will change with version 3 of the UnrealEngine. Several months ago Ryan "Icculus" Gordon revealed that he had worked with Epic to rewrite UnrealEd using a non-Microsoft widget set (now using wxWindows widgets) in order to support more than just the microsoft OSes.

If anyone is interested in playing with UnrealScript on linux please let me know via PM and I'll help you get the linux SDK setup.
 
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The video tutorials are made by a guy who has no connections with Microsoft, they just use Visual Studio, which is avaliable for free. Plug the Unreal Engine as you might, the majority of modding is done in the C family and Python. Learning C# or C++ will pay off bigtime, VisualBasic is a very good program for creating plugins and actual tools for modding(so is C# for that matter, it's what Windows is programmed in), and if you actually have a good knowledge of a C language you will be far better off when learning others.

These videos arn't meant to get you to the front of the class, only experience and further learning can do that, but these are some of the best introductions to a programming language you could do.
 
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Learning a language is not so important at the begining if u want to become a programmer. It is the second in the list of priorities :)

Learning the concepts of programming and learning the limits is way more important. The programming language is just a tool that helps you to implement your very good concept/analyse.

For any one who want to start in oo programming I would recommend the title "Design Patterns" by Gamma as a Bible of OO design.
 
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The way I learned object-oriented was in what amounted to a three-step process. The first was learning how to make objects, read classes, and eventually make simple classes. Then I went on to how to make objects and classes work together. The third, which I'm still working on, is object modelling and how to make classes work with eachother.

Unless you incorporate both language learning and programming concepts into one, you won't get anywhere. Study encapsulation all you want, unless you know how program a class you won't reinforce, or probably not even wholly understand the concept and it won't stay with you.
 
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