Well if you are determined to learn and want to make games yourself. Take this advice: Forget FPS and those engines for now and start small.

I can't really stress this enough since if you go directly to hard stuff, you can't make heads or tails of what you need to know and eventually just get depressed and scrap the idea. Make a text adventure or roguelike first. May not look like much but it gets you started and you can use the same constructs later when you move onto more complicated stuff with a lot more understanding.

To be fair most of the major problems seem to be related to WPF support which is incomplete and crap to say the least.

Well, what I would like to be able to do is make a 2.5D game, you know, how where it uses 3d models and the levels are 3d, but it is a sidescroller. I thought Unity would be good for that, but I was wrong, at least until I learn more. That is actually the type of game I want to make, a 3d sidescrolling shooter, but I thought a FPS would be easier.

If making a 2.5D game would be easier, I am all for it, if I can find an engine or something.

I would dispute this, but only slightly - I see what you're saying, but I've played around with making both, and the skillsets involved in making a roguelike and those involved in making an FPS are quite different - programming in 3D space is a totally different kettle of fish. If his goal is an FPS game, I would suggest that he stick to 3D space, since learning how matrices etc. work is pretty important if you plan to work with anything involving a 3D camera. Roguelikes can still require getting to grips with some complex stuff like search algorithms and so on, anyway.

But I'll confirm this:

Start. Small.

Maybe make a small game that involves driving a tank around a small 3D area and shooting at spheres or something. It won't be the best game ever, but you'll learn stuff from it. Build up from there. My first game was a simple remake of Space Invaders with a 3D camera.

On the other hand, making a text adventure or roguelike can be a lot of fun too, so I wouldn't can the idea if that interests you as well, sloganvirist -

I'd recommend Ren'Py as a text adventure framework. It's really quite easy but you still have to program most of the game yourself (In Python, which is a good beginner language), so it's a good start. Look at making a Flash game too, maybe. A lot of programmers sneer at Flash/actionscript since it encourages some bad habits, but nevertheless, you can make a quite good game in it.

If you still want to stick with a 3D game, make sure you pick one of the more newbie friendly frameworks like Unity or (somewhat more difficult) XNA. If you try XNA, look at these tutorials. Aim to eventually build your way up to C/C++, because that's where you can really do impressive things and what most of the powerful engines out there are written in.

But if you want to get anywhere, you'll need to learn some programming.

Well I don't absolutely know no programming language, I know some of this and some of that, but the only one I really knew well was Unreal Script, but that was only for UE1. Unfortunately, UDK won't run on my PC.

I am not that concerned about making a 3D game, as I said, I would like to make a side scrolling shooter, but using 3D models.

U can render the 3d modeles as 2d images ans use tthem in that way.

http://www.scirra.com/construct2
http://www.blitzbasic.com/

That is a 3D game, you will still need some sort of a 3D engine in order to render the models in real time unless you do as AdiJager suggests and render each frame of animation as an individual sprite.

Just read through this topic, quite interesting to see how much you have changed what you are trying to achieve, and how to achieve it, based the the feedback you are getting. That's great - you are obviously willing to adapt, learn and take advice - some of the most basic skills you are likely to need.

Someone mentioned XNA, I dabbled in that a while back - just out of curiosity. I found this site was excellent - actually includes full worked examples from nothing up to working projects, with step by step instructions and explanations of what is going on.

http://www.riemers.net/

I can confirm that VS2010 is a bit of a bar steward - I use it day in day out at work,. However, I have heard that the "free" version is nowhere near as bad as the professional version for some strange reason. It is also a whole lot better as long as you stay with C# - in C++ and C++/CLI it is a nightmare - and don't even get me on to mixed mode debuging.

A good alternative (and they can co-exist) would be QtCreator, we do most of our coding in Qt and only shift to VS when we have to.

Start small is the best advice I've seen on here.

Someone else said that 3D requires a different skill set, whilst this would seem to be true I would argue that it is an additional skill set you will need and should be built on other skills.

But, it all depends on what your goals are. If you want to quickly build a game you and your friends can have fun with then a mod-able game would be a better approach. If you have longer terms goals in mind - maybe freeware/shareware game development or even doing it professionally, you will need to learn coding skills.

Lots of good info in this thread ... am favorite-ing it!

Another small tought.

It used to be that game development was mostly software development. This is no longer true - there are a growing array of othert skills required that do not require coding skills:
- art
- 3D environment modelling
- 3D character modellnig
- level design
- sound design
- etc.

If your interests lie more in one of those areas you may be better finding someone to team up with who is interested in the coding side.

In fact, finding someone to team up with is a good idea anyway - having someone to bounce ideas off and who is learning at the time time as you would help big time.

I have got GM5 and still use GM7 sometimes, but GM 8.1 would cost money for the licence, no?

Well, that is a good idea, but any suggestions where to find such people?

Glad it helps! lol

Thanks. I have got XNA, just I need to download all that crap which it requires to be pre-installed, so I will have to wait til' i get those.
I would prefer to have it actual 3D, maybe even with ragdolls, kinda like Megaman X 8 or Megaman: Maverick Hunter X. If you do a google image search for it you can see what I mean.

If the worst comes to the worst then I probably will just do that, just to start I would like to 'fullfill my dream' so to speak.

As I just said, if I can't use real 3d then I will have to revert to that.

But thanks everyone for the advice so far.

Actually, would the UDK run on a laptop with 3gb RAM and an Intel GMA x3100? I quite liked it on my other computer before it broke, but I didn't think it would run on my current one.

Thanks.

EDIT: It ran kinda laggy on my desktop computer that had:

512mb RAM
Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT (512mb RAM)
Intel Pentium 4 3.0ghz
WD Harddrive 120GB

And as I said, it ran quite laggy. But I thought since I had 3GB in the one i've got now, it might run actually playable. :)

I'm not educated enough on hardware to know really. Anyone else have any idea?

It's slightly weaker than the integrated in my laptop. It won't run it or more likely won't run it well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_X3000.2FX3100_on_Windows

Oh ok. I was quite good at UDK, but then as I said, my desktop broke, so now I am stuck with this laptop. That is why I wanted something about the same level as Halo or Deus Ex 2, as they run excellent maxed out graphics. Thanks all the same though.