Spring RTS Engine

Hello, Spring Engine forum,

My little brother has decided to take on game development in college and is due to start pretty soon. Saying that he is over the moon and can not wait for this opportunity is an understatement. I personally think it's brilliant that my brother has chosen something he actually likes and that he is going to open up new doors in his life so I was thinking to get him a gift that is related to game development but I have no idea where to start and was hoping you guys could point me in the right direction of a great gift.

What did you guys need most when you started studying game development? Is there any hardware/software that would really help him out? I have never been into gaming as much as my brother so I am well and truly lost when it comes to this kind of stuff. All and any help will be greatly appreciated really looking forward to some replies and if there is any other information you need please let me know and I will get back to you ASAP.

Thanks

gajop: removed unnecessary image & moved to offtopic as it doesn't relate to springrts

There are many resources for game development. Most users here have many years (if not decades) of experiences, and things were quite different when we started.

If he's about to be a college student then I recommend he learns mathematics (especially 2D/3D vector math used in games). This is probably the most transferable skill for the future and also useful for jobs outside of gamedev. Otherwise I recommend he learns by trail and error. He could join one of many game jam (gamedev competitions) and try to make a game.

I wouldn't recommend books, especially if they're about specific frameworks (e.g. Unity). That kind of knowledge gets old very fast and there are usually better tutorials.

I agree with gajop.
I can't see any gift that could really assist me back in the day.
Not sure about the math thing though - I think most simple 2D games can be done with highschool level math.
Also, learning math is usually not fun. Jumping head on into coding games - that could be very fun!

Although, if you're in college then yes, math is important.

I guess my point is that you don't give him a math book XD

Hey there are good math books:

But i guess, jumping into game design, give him a voucher for a artist drawing concept drafts.

hokomoko wrote:I guess my point is that you don't give him a math book XD

The most useful books I read specifically for game development were math books (high school level math), but normally I wouldn't recommend books in the first place. Math books are still better than framework books.

Normally you don't need money to write games these days. There are many high quality free tools (some open source) that can and have been used to produce popular games.

Besides hardware (a decent rig is required), if you want to spend money, you could consider some online courses (coursera, udacity, udemy, etc.). I haven't used them for gamedev in particular, but they're pretty useful. Maybe you could get him something like https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse/ (you should do your own research).

Is he attending a college with a dedicated game design major / concentration?