When I first got into Game Development I thought I had a fairly rough Idea of what I was getting into.
I can program (i’m fairly proficient having learnt several programming languages along the way), i’m crap at art but so what and i’m good at concept and designing.
First thing you find out when you get to the graphical side is you need on other thing
Maths
Which I used to be good at in school all those year’s ago but these day’s, I have a computer for that – Damn
From all my meanderings I’ve gleamed some parts of knowledge
1:
First what are you getting yourself into this for?
Fun
OK then just enjoy

Professional

Time for a wake up call, you’ll first need to choose which area you intend to work (Design, Graphics, Physics, AI, Engine Programming, Behaviour Programming . . . . .), there are lots of areas and for all but the smallest games, one man don’t fit the bill, even specialising in 2 areas will take a lot of effort.

Also for most area’s that include programming, unless you’ve done something similar then the rough timescales for learning this stuff is about 4 years! ( Digipen www.digipen.edu, specialise in Computer games programming courses, suggest this very strongly, possibly longer depending on your programming level)

P.S – understand where the ideal may sound grand the reality is that it is a very hard road, tight deadlines always looming and in a lot of cases the money is not great.  You really need to be in the game if you love the creation of something for people to get there teeth into and enjoy themselves.

Me, i’m in for the fun of it and what I learn along the way, i ai’nt going to be writing the next version of doom any time soon.

2: What is the scope of what you want to achieve?

Start selling games right away

This is one of the more adventurous goals, in this most of the guides suggest a strategy of using tutorials and guides and follow the complete game creation process:

Concept – Design – Review – Prototype – Programming – Graphics/Modelling – Test – Bug fix -Review – Packaging – Documentation

There are several good guide for following all this, most of the work (graft) will be done in the first three stages, without even touching a programming IDE, it’s a lot of work you should only spend about 20% of the entire project’ish programming the beast (on your own)

Learning for fun

The approach I’ve been taking which suits me best at the mo is to learn more before I attempt the above, most guides tell you to start in deep and learn the tough way.

Personally I enjoy the learning itself for now, use what Time you can to understand what is required from a programming point of view, by all means layout a game design goal (2D, 3D, RTS,RPG, FPS) and learn across that route first, learn about the Game cycle (one thing I never thought of), the different methods for graphic placement, Bitmaps graphics and such.

Learn the wilds of OOP (object Orientated Programming) in a gaming concept, it does have it’s own wilds (so i’ve found)

If using DirectX for a foundation for your game, start reading up on it from guides and such.

I’ll blog more about my approach as weeks go on ( and probably start getting shouted at)

Oyou’ve though about these points, choose the approach that fits you.

My way may not suit others, everyone has there own path, albeit some through a firery chasm, over a long wooden walkbridge just to answer my questions three. ahem

If your here for fun or dont mind my incessant rablings (findings) then I hope you enjoy the future.