About
My name is Abe Pralle. I’m a Computer Science lecturer by day at Northern Arizona University (in, er, Arizona) and a game programmer by night.
My recent accomplishments include writing an awesome little language called Slag and an awesome little 2D game programming framework called Plasmacore. Check ‘em out here:
Also, feel free to gimme a holler on Facebook or MySpace!
okay, I have no idea how to add you to my blogroll.
I had a tough time finding it the first time too: you just log in, go to someone’s page, and then click on the “Blog Info” button on the top-right of the page.
I eventually want to develop games and an app that I have in mind but have no programming skills or such and I want to learn. How do I go about learning. What are the first steps I should take. Thanks in advance!
If you don’t have any programming experience at all, a great place to start is by playing with “Alice”: http://alice.org . It lets you use a drag & drop interface to program 3D scenes using commands that are very similar to general purpose languages like Java and C++.
A good next step after that is to move onto “Greenfoot”: http://www.greenfoot.org/door and do some actual Java programming.
After you’re comfortable with all that I’d recommend using Plasmacore to start making real games. It’s a little intimidating to get into (with the compiler being command line based) but it’s really easy and painless once you get started: http://plasmaworks.com/wiki/index.php/Plasmacore
And of course take some Computer Science courses if you can!