Becomeing a programmer

[Drizzit Drow]

Currently I am in school to become a programmer, and I was wondering if anybody had any tips for me when it came to becoming a video game programmer. I've looked at some of the the UDK stuff but i haven't really had the chance to drive into it. I also feel like I'm not being prepared for the career I want, and I fear that I will leave this school expecting something much greater then they are preparing me for and end up as a IT guy for Best But my whole life.

Any advice will be well appreciated.

Thank you,
Drizzit Drow

[Sly.]

If you intend to work as a coder/programmer with the Unreal Engine generations 1 - 3 (most likely 3 as the UE1 and UE2 have outdated graphics), you will have to become familiar with Unreal Script (often nicknamed "Uscript"). But since Epic Games announced their Unreal Engine 4 and released a changelog and talked about some features in a developer interview, there is no need to learn Uscript anymore, if one intends to work with the (yet) unreleased Unreal Engine 4. The UE-programming language Uscript will be (or was by now) entirely removed and replaced with C++ featuring own classes made by Epic, so if you get familiar with C++, you will have a much easier start in programming for Unreal Engine 4 projects. Other than that, there is Kismet, but that is mostly a "tool" for mappers which was introduced with UE3. It's a modelling programming language, you are basically pasting actions, linking classes to them and changing variables in the properties of these "nodes". Mappers need it for setting up events in their levels/maps.

Any knowledge concerning programming can be handy if you want to learn programming in Unreal Engine - no matter what generation.

And I suggest that you don't just give up your school, a backup plan is always useful. There are many people who intend to work in the video game industry and not everybody will have the chance to, so it would be best to be on the safe side and have another job opportunity, in your case becoming an IT guy, as a backup plan.
Success in the video game industry is not always granted after all.

I hope this post was somewhat useful for you. I suggest you check out the "Tips in getting into the Video Game Industry" thread in this subforum, it might answer some more of your questions.

[Drizzit Drow]

Thank you, Sly for the feed back. I have taken a course in C++ and i loved it. I enjoy just getting on my computer and writing programs just for fun with it. I just didn't know where to go as certain scripts or specific languages for programming.
And do not be worried i wont give up on my schooling just yet I've already put to much money in to back out now. My main problem is that the school I'm attending offers a programming degree but I've spent most of my time doing nothing but networking classes.
And thank you for directing me to a proper page to post my silly questions, I've never been good with forums and such.