Thread: I want to start working on my own game...

Right, so I want to make my own simple 3D engine and my own game...

Most of you are probably going to say "Use C++" and if that's the best thing to use, then I will.

But where do I start? Where do I use C++? Is there a base template on the internet I could use to start a game?

All help would be appreciated.

The only game programming I've done is with OpenGL and C++. It was for a computer graphics class. My group made a very simple first person snowball throwing game that took place in a dungeon. You might want to check out some OpenGL tutorials unless someone that has done more game programming else has some better ideas.

Keep in mind that even creating a simple 3d engine is no simple task.

You don't mention if you have any programming experience....
(I'm assuming not)

C or C++ is probably the best thing to learn
almost every other language out there bases itself on the syntax of C
learn C or C++, and other languages will be simple to pick up

Also, games (due to the need for speed) are almost always in C/C++

If you don't know C or C++, then starting with complicated games is probably not the best way to learn

First up is to learn the language

you'll need some references and tutorials, so have a browse through these
www.cprogramming.com
www.cplusplus.com

Get the basics of programming down

then make a really simple game
(hangman, snake, digdug, whatever)

Moving on to real, complicated games, can I suggest you start out modifying an existing game.
To jump straight in the deep end will leave you completely confused
and making your own game engine is probably out of the question (have you ever seen any? they make your head hurt)

Pick an open source game that you're interested in
then change it

After that, you can take an existing open source game engine, and make your own game using the engine

Open source is your friend
learn from what others have done

I'll probably go for the simple stuff, then work on editing Half-Life or something...

3D engines are easy, the problem comes from optimizing them. Most games have millions of objects on the screen at once. OpenGL can render then all, but it will take forever. The "engine" actually sorts and clips the parts out that don't need to be drawn. That's hard and requires you to know how to use and implement an Octree Data Structure, and BSP mapping.

C++ is a good language to learn, but there are some things in it that make it difficult to understand at first (pointers, virtual methods, polymorphism, mutlithreading) Most programmers use smart pointers, but when working with graphics, that's impossible. I recommend writing things like AI and such in C++, but using something a little more powerful than OpenGL for the actually graphics engine. Dark SDK is a C++ wrapper around the Dark Basic engine. I'm pretty sure that Dark SDK is free, and it's easy to use and does clipping and such for you. The only problem is that it uses the some-what deprecated DirectX 9.