I still remember the first game I played and addicted to is this game called SimTower from Maxis. What classic game actually leaded you to become a programmer?
Then there was a 'game maker' video game that I forget, and the I played Cyberstorm but my first experience really doing coding was in making levels in Warcraft 2 and Starcraft with heavy use of the trigger system. Then I got 3D Studio Max, and learned MaxScript as my first serious programming language, but my machine was so underpowered I didn't end up making many scenes, just models. (I learned a lot about NURBS, though!)
The games that really had the most effect on me were Alpha Centauri and Sacrifice. Alpha Centauri was amazing from a game standpoint, but what really hooked me was the science, philosophy: in essence, literary merit. Every technological advance was at least plausible, but included a wonderful quote from one of the main characters, or a famous philosopher or scientist from our past. It was this game that really immersed me in our intellectual history, and held me fast to science.
Sacrifice was a beautiful game. There was a big map making contest run, and I poured myself into it. I couldn't legally compete (I was 12) but Shiny let me anyway, despite the objections of some of the other competitors. Of the 21 finalist maps, 4 of my maps were there :-) I got fourth place, and I won a nice sound system which I gave to my brother. It was the first creative endeavor where I competed and won against those much older than me, and it was a lot of fun to make things and win something. And people played my maps for a looong time :-)
A very impressive implementation of the original:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene for the young.
Making fire, water, a seemingly spinning flubber effect, all of them are just a few lines of code if you just know the trick. So rewarding and gratifying to see something cool happen because of something so simple.
I even had a tv show about teaching game programming back when I was 15 yrs old, on TechTV's call for help: http://www.courseptr.com/gamedev/maneeshsethitechtv.mpg
Good times---book was a bestseller and translated into like 5 languages. Good times for a 14 yr-old :)
I made the connection that typing in programs equaled fun.
Eventually, he found a book for me that had very simple programs and I start with my first print/loop program -- and I was hooked immediately. The programming became more entertaining than the game!
I could control the computer. I loved it. And have continued to love the "game" ever since!
I remember finding a level editor for that game and I'm sure I spent a solid two weeks messing with it and subsequently learning VB (this was 5th or 6th grade).
Typing something in was a great way to learn how it worked. The Shootorials section of Kongregate is our attempt to recreate that for Flash games - http://www.kongregate.com/labs
I used this book:
http://www.librarything.com/work/202092
And this book:
http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/501846/Collectif-Pc-I...
Mostly.
Eventually got into programming with a friend in middle school with a Borland C++ compiler. I got caught in middle school trying to get into the grading system and changing admin passwords (I actually didn't get caught, a friend ratted me out who got caught). I took a break from the stupid connotation of "hacker" (the 'Zero Cool' sense that is) and resorted back to online game hacks and web coding. Started looking towards entrepreneurship at about the time I was leaving high school, when I started doing contract work.
This was the game which got me hooked to programming as 1. Seeing this game, it looked something cool .. and more importantly something which I can build. (If you played AOE, and thought you could build it .. more power to you.) 2. For some reason, I could just see how I could go about building it.
I built it in pure Java, btw .. The source for it is lost, thankfully. (My first program, I didn't undersand arrays, and had code like char varA, varB .. varZ). The next game I built was probably better, and has the code http://code.google.com/p/spaceoddece/ and http://shabda8.tripod.com/java/
Then I got a job .. left game programming ..moved to database/web development and Python. Hangaroo was how I started programming. Ah Hangaroo
Oddly enough, when I introduced my girlfriend to the game, she instantly showed the same obsession with it. At university, when most other people were out drinking, we'd occasionally start playing Friday evening and play for most of the weekend.
Although I didn't start programming based on it (I started programming because soldering increasing networks of an increasing number of logic gates became tedious and expensive) I did start learning graphics programming because of it. I dream of creating a worthy successor to it one day. (I'm too scared to start, considering what playing it does to me)
More than ten years have gone, and now I'm an almost happy R&D developer at www.milestone.it . ;)
For me it was Adventure and Mercenary:
it led me to edit the save files and change the hex value (i think i used norton commander) for abilities & resources
i did the same with civ1, had 65535 gold at 4000bc, stuffs like that are now easily changed with cheat codes / editor
not really programming, i know, but that started my interest
Well, I wanted to program games too, but they just seemed too far fetch at the time, and I had no idea where to start.
The first big programme I ever wrote was a text adventure, and the book that got me started down that track was "Exploring Adventures on the Vic 20" by Peter Gerrard. I can't find any references to it (in its Vic 20 form) online, but I did find this: http://retro.icequake.net/exploring_adventures_on_the_c64/
I'm posting it here because it's a fantastic example of a dsl. This is some of the cleanest code I've ever read.