UKC

I have been looking for many ways to get into game developement/coding
and i wondered if there were any good short day courses of game coding in the uk for 13 year olds.

Regards Seraphimian

In reply to uppersharpnose:

Install Unity 3D. Its a free games dev studio with excellent tutorials and free sprite sheets. You can write commercial games with it.

In reply to uppersharpnose:

I can't help you specifically with the gaming side of things, however there are several things you can do just to get some more experience coding (I am assuming you can already write some code - if not there are plenty of online tutorials for many languages). That will help when you come to look for jobs or apply for university courses.

First, I would find an open source project that you are interested in and see if you can contribute. You (probably) won't find any games, but if you have used any libraries or anything that you have found bugs in, contact the authors and ask how you can contribute. Alternatively openhatch.org acts as a repository for projects that need developers - you can select bugs to work on by language, project and difficulty of task. It's not the most exciting side of coding, but it will look good on a cv and give you some experience of working on a communal code base.

Secondly, see if there are any hacklabs/hackathons/open tech meetings going on in your area. These things are usually well advertised online and are a good opportunity to meet other coders and work on some collaborative projects and well as learn about new tools and languages.

In reply to uppersharpnose:

I wouldnt look at gaming alone but broader coding.
Depending where you are look for after school clubs such as young rewired state or codekids (although think thats for younger).

In reply to uppersharpnose:

reddit.com/r/learnprogramming has some great advice on all manner of topics.

In reply to uppersharpnose:

I am enjoying the udacity project, you can learn lots of different things including some game programming and the standard of instruction is excellent.

If you want to just get started and don't know any other languages try python with pygame.

In reply to uppersharpnose:

If you want to understand some of the easier mechanics of Game Development, go to gog.com and buy yourself NeverWinter Nights - this game comes with a toolset (Aurora) which allows you to easily build levels, plots etc with a wide range of triggers.
This can be extended with scripting etc and is a good starting point for a young person to understand typical mechanics of a game. I believe it is used at colleges around the UK for some of their courses (West Nottinghamshire college is definitely one).

Tutorials are available online.

Otherwise, there are free websites where once can learn to code:
codeacademy
code.org
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/10/21/so-you-want-to-be-a-programmer-huh-here...

In reply to uppersharpnose:

This course is game programming in Python:

https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython

It's excellent. Basically just learn to code in a simple scripting language. Something like Python, Ruby, Javascript, Perl.

Also learn Linux, as it seems to be the future on quite a few levels.

In reply to uppersharpnose:

Depending where you are in the country this may be of use:

http://coderdojo.com/

They run software engineering clubs for 5-17 year olds.

In reply to Macleod:

Those look good!

I have just emailed to enquire about volunteering at my local one