Help with picking a programming language.

[Chewique]

Hey! Im currently wanting to make my own very simple side scroller similar to mario games. 

My idea is a charactor riding a bike doing some jumps and tricks to avoid spikes and crowds of people watching. I will first make this app on a computer and later develop it into an app.

I have a very basic knowlage of python and tkinter but im not sure if they are the right tools for the job. Any ideas or tips to start me off and what laguage should i use!

Thanks! -Will

[dany_boy]

Are you planning to develop for iOS or Android? For both, either Java or C#. For android only, JAVA is the way to go. For iOS only I'm not quite sure but I think XCode.

[Chewique]

Just now, dany_boy said:

Are you planning to develop for iOS or Android? For both, either Java or C#. For android only JAVA is the way to go. For iOS only I'm not quite sure but I think XCode.

Well, at the moment i dont own any android devices so it will probably be apple. 

[dany_boy]

Just now, Chewique said:

Well, at the moment i dont own any android devices so it will probably be apple. 

Just so you know, developing for iOS requires a computer running OSX. Android can be developed and emulated on any PC

[Chewique]

Just now, dany_boy said:

Just so you know, developing for iOS requires a computer running OSX. Android can be developed and emulated on any PC

Ahh okay, I do own a mac. Do you have to pay to put them on the app stores?

[dany_boy]

Just now, Chewique said:

Ahh okay, I do own a mac. Do you have to pay to put them on the app stores?

Last time I checked (more than 3 years ago) yes, you needed to pay even for the SDK. Nowadays I'm not so sure since I've strayed away from OSX in general.

[Chewique]

Just now, dany_boy said:

Last time I checked (more than 3 years ago) yes, you needed to pay even for the SDK. Nowadays I'm not so sure since I've strayed away from OSX in general.

Fair enough. I will do some more research about it now.

[LUUD18]

You need to pay 100 dollars a year to publish an app in the app store.

 

For beginning language I would suggest C# or Java. If you want to go into web development I would suggest Javascript.

[SCHISCHKA]

You can download and devlop iOS apps for free. Get Xcode from App Store. You only need to pay money to publish an app and they have strict quality controls on the apple ecosystem. You might be better off learning html5

https://www.w3schools.com/graphics/canvas_intro.asp

[Gachr]

You should be able to make the game fairly easily with Unity3D, that uses C#.

[Dat Guy]

2 hours ago, Chewique said:

My idea is a charactor riding a bike doing some jumps and tricks to avoid spikes and crowds of people watching. I will first make this app on a computer and later develop it into an app.

 

You can do this in any language. Tried C or Perl?

 

2 hours ago, Chewique said:

I have a very basic knowlage of python and tkinter but im not sure if they are the right tools for the job.

 

There is no job which Python would be the right job for. 

[Dat Guy]

Thank you for your important remark. 

[Dat Guy]

PHP is still a thing? 

 

Seriously though (I still maintain some PHP code myself), it's always wrong to say "language X is the best choice for task Y". Even C (considering my signature) is not what I choose for just anything. 

 

However, it's been a while since I last thought "Python would be the best language for this". Years, to be precise. 

[SilicateWielder]

6 hours ago, Chewique said:

Well, at the moment i dont own any android devices so it will probably be apple. 

There are libraries you can use with Python that are built for designing multiplatform games. One I know of (Although I can't remember the name of it) lets you write games for Android/iOS in addition to PC.

[Necro_Infernus]

6 hours ago, Gachr said:

You should be able to make the game fairly easily with Unity3D, that uses C#.

Also Java, though I stick to the C# side myself in Unity. 

Unity is a great place to start learning to make your own games for sure. It's multi-platform (Android, IOS, Windows, Linux, Browser.. I'm probably missing some), meaning you write the code once and it can compile a working version in essentially any of the listed operating systems with minimal if any changes to your game/code. There's also a lot of tutorials out there showing how to get into things, and the documentation is decent for the most part. It's also completely free for developers making under $100,000 per year. 

[Dat Guy]

9 minutes ago, Erik Sieghart said:

Data scientists use python all of the time.

 

Which is a horrible solution when compared to R.

 

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python is so general purpose that it's usefulness often extends to just about anything, from web programming with django to backend, application, and most famously, general purpose scripting for automation and miscellaneous tools. It's also fantastically multi-platform, requiring little need to differentiate between multiple operating systems on your own.

 

Name one language which is different. (Except Object Pascal which, sadly, does not really work well outside the Windows world.)

 

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It's speed, wide library support, ease of use, and ease to learn make it appealing to many organizations.

 

In fact, Python's interpreter is the slowest of any recent programming language. Even PyPy is easily beaten by any other language of your choice when it comes to speed. The other three points are equally valid for other languages too - some of which are much less error-prone as they use brackets for syntax, not whitespace.

 

Also, if I was a company, I would refrain from using Python for long-term projects. The "progression" from Python 2 to Python 3 which is still not completed shows that Python 4 will be a nightmare for the development cost.

 

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It's probably because you don't know Python as well as you do other languages that you don't rely on it as much.

 

I did some development in Python (2 and 3), e.g. a (still running) website and a small helper tool for my command line. You can never have enough languages in your virtual Swiss Army Knife.

And I really don't think it was worth it, except for, probably, being able to maintain Python code if I'll ever need it.

 

(To be fair, most languages I played with were only interesting for my CV, not for real work.)

 

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The principles behind programming languages are more or less universal.

 

Not as long as Python's PEPs care more about style than about technical details.

[Beskamir]

You *could* make it in Python and it'd teach you the language which is I'm guessing is sort of the objective here but I think writting it in Python would basically limit it to Windows, OSX, Linux... If you want to target Android then Java would be suggested and for iOS you'd probably want to use whatever language they use (swift I think?)

 

Honestly if you're not targeting mobile devices I suggest you use Python with something like Turtle graphics and Tkinter (which you seem to already be doing). Although the language you use doesn't really matter. I made Mario in Assembly/C for a Raspberry Pi 2 as part of a course.

 

You could probably even use an engine like UE4 or Unity for such a project too but depending on how complex you want the art to be you probably don't need an engine.

[noahdvs]

On 4/21/2017 at 5:55 PM, Dat Guy said:

[snip]

I know you hate Python, but do you have to dump on it whenever anyone mentions it?

[cazetofamo]

If it's in C, C#, or C++, you could always convert it to a ROM!

[Mira Yurizaki]

If you already understand the fundamentals of programming, then I would argue it's more like what do you want to do programming wise? Pick the language to use based on that.

 

If you do not understand the fundamentals of programming, it really doesn't matter as long as teaching tool you're learning from is competent.

[WkdPaul]

Thread cleaned.

 

Please keep the thread on-topic (helping th OP)

[LegionOfOne]

First thing: Read everyone comments above there is some valuable nuance to be had there.

 

Now that you have read all the usual nuance and you understand that there is no "right" language etc etc, my recommendation for this task? Get savvy with Java, its a good strong language and you can find uses for it all the time for projects like this and much much more.

 

Good Luck!

-Luke