/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General★

Just learn to program normally, it's a useful skill even if your not making games with it. There are a number of tutorials for making such games, but a city simulator is probably a littler over ambitious for your first attempt.

Although I would be interested in seeing a full fledged simulator of some sort programmed into excel just for the novelty.

>>25781

>>25781

the city sim actually works pretty well. The part where I stopped is in making a newspaper that tells the player what's going on.

What language is the most similar to excel formulas? What has stuff like CONCATENATE(list one, list two)?

>>25782

>What language is the most similar to excel formulas?

There are none as far as I know, I know how to program in excel as well, but it's just a different mindset. I'm not even sure where to begin explaining the difference, but I guess normal programming is a notch more abstract. you might just be better off finding a tutorial and starting from scratch.

Which language you learn first doesn't matter so much, they're all similar enough that you should be able switch between them depending on needs. Maybe C# to go with the Unity engine, it's free and has a lot of support.

Seriously upload your excel city simulator, I'm sure other people would be interested in it. I don't have excel though, you'll have to get it to work on libre office.

>>25785

Alrighty I will start working on a tutorial this week and post it here when it's ready :)

Spreadsheets loosely fall under the definition of functional programming. If you want to stick to "programming with formulas", you'll probably have to learn some functional language, IIRC Haskell is the popular one.

BUT

FP is very unpopular in game development because the concept of pure function is orthogonal to mutable states that are so popular in game logic. Also imperative ("normal") programming can be considered way more accessible than FP, and for "normal programming" you'll definitely find more materials on it, larger usergroups, etc. I'm not going to say "don't go any further" but this is definitely a less popular route. You won't get away from learning a new language that doesn't look like Excel formulas just by sticking with FP and it's fairly easy to start leaning "normal" programming anyway.

Please disregard the well-meaning Haskell anon and learn C++11 instead.

Then learn about data structures. Then you can do anything.

>>25839

As a Haskell Junkie I can confirm that learning C++11 would be a better decision.

Any declarative language is a lot like plain formulas. Haskell is one example, and you could probably make games in it, there are even tutorials for that. C++ is not at all like plain formulas.

It is not very easy to program games in functional languages though, but there are some examples of games and engines written in Haskell, so I guess if you could do it in fucking spreadsheets, you probably can in Haskell. Or any other programming language for that matter.

>>25780 (OP)

Wow anon, I'm the original creator of the picture you posted, I'm surprised that someone saved it! My ego feels good now, thanks.

>>25839

Did you even read his post? He suggested OP pick an imperative language

>>25782

There is an entire language based on manipulating lists in a similar manner to your example which is called LISP

It is not a language often used to write videogames, although here's an example of when it has been:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131394/postmortem_naughty_dogs_jak_and_.php

there's a game written/that runs in excel

>>25780 (OP)

> necroing the shit out of this, because languages are my fetish

TL;DR

> go erlang or julia

As other anons have said. What you want to do sounds a lot like declarative programming.

I'm kind of suprized nobody said prolog. But then again not, because wrapping ones head around it can be a major pain in the ass.

> haskell

Has been mentioned numerus times. It enforces correct static types and has the most complex type system that is actually useful. in contrast to c++ and scala which can be just as labourious to use, but that's due to them being badly designed - less due to their power

Fully understanding what haskells inferencer does at compile time is as much work as learning two other programming languages and needs decent a decent foundation in theoretical comp-sci and a very math-oriented mind.

> std ML and ocaml

Also statically typed but less complex in design.

Haven't used them myself, so i can't say much on them.

Ocaml has been used sucessfully for games.

All languages below are dynamically typed and probably better recommendations to anyone without a boner for theoretical comp-sci :

> common lisp, scheme/racket, clojure

The functional languages, all others are measured at.

Medium learning curve, insanely powerful.

Maros - the feature that makes beginners heads hurt - can be ignored until you want to use them.

This is not true for the static type systems above which need to be understood to get your shit compiled at all.

My fav languages for everything that doesn't have tight correctness criteria. pros mitigate by implementing ad hoc static types

Due to OP probably not needing the power lisps provide, there are more convenient alternatives.

> erlang

Very easy to learn.

Very cleanly designed.

Does not need a lot of experience to produce code that is easy to read and easy to reason about.

AFAIK it was used to build the server side backends for MMOs, library support for gamey things ( graphics/sound/input ) is abysmal though. On the other hand SDL bindings are available for everything down to wrist watches.

> julia

Is a lisp dialect that hides those nasty parenthesis behind a python like syntax.

Was developed by statistics/data mining guys who were sick of R.

The community is likely to be similarly minded to OP.

What makes it interesting for games is that it is :

- fast

- can very easily integrate C libraries ( experimental support for C++ )

- has bindings and tight integration for LAPACK out of the box ( think AI, physics engines)

once they get their concurrency shit stable it could easily be a good option for commerical grade games.

/autism