Choose Your Weapon
What programming language is best for you?
Do you want to start programming or want to try your hand at another language? This breakdown of the most popular languages should be able to help!
To find out what language would suit you best you need to consider what sort of coding background you have (do you know C++ or VB already?), whether you would be willing to put a substantial amount of time into learning a new language and what you want to achieve in your game. If you have the attention span of a gnat then you may be better off with the easier packages, though if you want to create the next Half Life 2 you'll need something a bit more powerful and a lot of computer time!
The best suggest we can offer is to see what tickles your fancy from the list below and then spend a little time with the demos to see if you're happy with the language/interface/results. A trip over to the community sites for each language will give you an idea of the support that's available if you get stuck together with examples of what has been achieved by other coders.
So, here are the options...
Blitz 3d - Available from Blitz Research
Blitz3D provides a simple yet powerful environment for game creation - simple, because its based around the popular and easy to use BASIC programming language; and powerful, thanks to a highly optimized underlying 2D/3D engine. Blitz3D includes many commands to help you out with game creation - but not too many! Rather than confuse you with tons of commands, Blitz3D's command set has been carefully designed to provide maximum flexibility for minimum effort.
Blitz Max - Available from Blitz Research
BlitzMax is the new, next generation game programming language from Blitz Research. BlitzMax retains the BASIC roots of Blitz3D and BlitzPlus, but adds a ton of cool new features and abilities.
Blitz Plus - Available from Blitz Research
BlitzPlus provides developers with a complete 2D programming solution for the PC. Utilising a BASIC/C hybrid language for use with its compiler, BlitzPlus is capable of creating any type of 2D program, with minimal development-time and with minimal hassle. Just run the included IDE (or use one of your own), type your code and your Windows executable file will be created, ready to be run on any computer running Windows 95/NT 4 or later.
The Games Factory - Available from Clickteam
The Games Factory provides everything you need to manufacture Arcade games, Platform games, Adventures, Screen Savers, and much, much, more. You simply click on an object, drag it to the play field, and click on the action it should perform. We supply all the heros, monsters, powerups, and other objects you need, plus the sound and music for your games. Of course, you can easily add your own, custom items if you choose.
Multimedia Fusion - Available from Clickteam
Multimedia Fusion is the most flexible, powerful, and full-featured authoring tool available today. Best of all, you can get superior and impressive results with no programming skills or knowledge required. Discover the secret tool used by so many multimedia pros, game creators, and people from all walks of life.
Jamagic - Available from Clickteam
Jamagic provides powerful 3D capabilities that transport your creative insight and production requirements into new dimensions ... at lightspeed. Never before has this kind of 3D power been available so affordably.
Dark Basic - Available from: The Games Creators
DarkBASIC allows you to create your own games, demos, slideshows, even business applications using the easy to understand BASIC programming language. Even if you've never coded before, just follow the in-depth tutorials and you'll be generating results in minutes! Harness the power of Direct X and make 3D objects come to life in just a few simple commands.
Dark Basic Professional - Available from: The Games Creators
DarkBASIC Professional is the most advanced games development package built on the BASIC language currently available. No other package out there makes it as easy to incorporate all of the special features and effects you see in todays games and no other package natively offers the benefits of Microsofts DirectX 9 technology.
Gamemaker - Available from: The Gamemaker Site
Have you ever wanted to be able to design computer games, but didn't want to spend countless hours learning how to become a programmer? Game Maker is a program that allows you to make exciting computer games, without the need to write a single line of code. Making games with Game Maker is a lot of fun. Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions, you can create professional looking games within very little time.
Div Basic - Available from: Div Arena (DOS only)
Create the games you want to play with DIV Games Studio 2. DIV 2 uses a specially designed coding language that is easy to follow and requires NO previous knowledge of programming (… just the love of GAMES). DIV has become a cult classic with its incredible programming language designed totally for writing games. From RPG's to 3D shoot'em ups you can do it in DIV. New features in DIV 2 include 3D with environment editor, network play and over 130 new commands. Now more than ever, you have no excuse.. Get creating & get playing!
Pygame - Available from: Pygame
Pygame is a set of Python modules designed for writing games. It is written on top of the excellent SDL library. This allows you to create fully featured games and multimedia programs in the python language. Pygame is highly portable and runs on nearly every platform and operating system.
Allegro - Available from: The Allegro Site
Allegro is a game programming library for C/C++ developers distributed freely, supporting the following platforms: DOS, Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris, Darwin), Windows, QNX, BeOS and MacOS X. It provides many functions for graphics, sounds, player input (keyboard, mouse and joystick) and timers. It also provides fixed and floating point mathematical functions, 3d functions, file management functions, compressed datafile and a GUI.
SDL - Available from: SDL
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."
Fenix - Available from: The Fenix Site
Fenix is the codename for a GNU project to create a free compiler for a language derived from the one created by Hammer Technologies for the Game Developement Suite "DIV Games Studio". Our goal in Fenix: Project 1.0 is to recover the original spirit in Fenix coming to a stable 1.0 release version on the basis the official release 0.71b (you can find it in http://fenix.sourceforge.net) correcting the maxium number of bugs and misfunctions. Once in the 1.0 release the goal will drive us towards new functionallity thus making Fenix a real simple yet powerfull light & portable videogame developement suite.
Others
SDLBasic
Pure Basic