Well, now that my Mathstrack is finally finished, I have a couple of months until uni starts again and thus a couple of months until I start Computer Science.  So I’ve been thinking, I might get a start on designing and programming my first game.  Granted, I shouldn’t make too much of a deal out of it considering there is a very high chance of it not being all that great.  But I might as well, because really, this is the main reason why I’ve been wanting to do computer science for so long.

Having never programmed games beyond a tiny text adventure in C++, I am a little bit daunted by the choices but  I have narrowed down my options as to how I shall program my first game.  After some deliberation I have come up with 2 choices.
Flash or XNA Game Studio.

Why these two? Well, both have bucket loads of free tutorials, both use languages that a very common in game development and both are easy to get your head around.  But now to pick and begin my fun and, no doubt, rather stressful journey.

Lets do this in pro/con lists!

XNA Game Studio

Pros

  • Extremely large collection of official learning documentation.
  • Language is C#.  Which is good because I’ve done quite a bit of C++.
  • Free
  • Extremely large community.
  • Tons of tools.

Cons

  • Not always free. Some premium content will be required….eventually
  • Windows only.
  • Very Xbox360 centric but several articles help with PC only stuff i.e. deployment.
  • Art may be harder to achieve.

Flash

Pros

  • Cross-platform, both development and runtime.
  • Language is ActionScript3 which seems to be rather simple.
  • Mainly 2D which is much better for me artwise.
  • Probably the quickest to learn and produce a playable result.

Cons

  • Flash will always be flash.
  • After 30 days, gotta pay or pirate.
  • I really don’t know all that much about the specifics.

That wasn’t very helpful was it? Especially as I had made up my mind long before I finished writing these lists.
For the types of games I want to start making (RPG/RTS/Adventure), both bits of software have excellent results with all of these genres but I do believe that XNA has the upper hand.
XNA has a very centered community (The XNA Creators Club) and Flash has the millions of people that have written articles, e-books and other such things.
Both C# and ActionScript3 have their place in game development but for my purposes now and over the next few years while doing the degree, C# would be better.

And thus, my decision is XNA Game Studio!  I shall start downloading it right now.

I really hope I get committed to this and update this GameDevGo! feature often.