DarkBasic Professional
Surely this must be one of the easiest games programming languages available. The original BASIC language was created specifically to make programming easy for the absolute beginner and Lee Bamber from The Game Creators has added many extra commands to make games programming simple.
You can even create a spinning cube with a video playing on each side of the cube using less than a dozen statements - amazing!
The Hands On DarkBASIC Pro book has ended up being split over two volumes. This is simply due to the sheer size of the subject.
Volume 1 covers all the basic ideas of software design, testing and programming as well as the basic statements and everything 2D. In this book you'll learn such things as:
- The basic constructs common to almost every programming language
- How to create and test programs
- How to display images and sprites
- How to give the player control over movement and firing
- How to detect collisions
- How to add sound
and a whole lot more.
Volume 2 covers all the 3D stuff including:
- How to create simple 3D models
- How to use 3D models created in other packages
- How to handle 3D animation
- How to detect 3D collisions
- How to use the hidden ODE physics engine commands
- How to create networked games
- How to write your own DLLs
Both volumes use the usual activities and solutions approach to learning of the Hands On series. There's nothing more boring than a programming book that doesn't give you lots of interesting exercises to do. There's even complete and partial games for you to enter, expand and modify.