I looked at the site and liked the design though I agree with the rest of the comments here about SSL etc. One basic question I have is why did you choose Motif as against others such as TradeKing or AmeriTrade or E-Trade. Any particular reason for that?
I am also interested in knowing an answer to this. In these designs, I often see people ignoring network costs. Can someone with practical experience comment on this aspect?
I am still a student so donated $50. I know its not much but neverthless.
PHP is the first language that I ever learnt and it has had a great influence on my life. Thank you for everything you've done Richard. Please spend the rest of your days peacefully.
Any suggestions on where to start with the artwork for a complete newbie? I'm very interested in game programming but the artwork has somewhat discouraged me for quite a bit.
3D: get Blender and focus on learning it. Treat it like learning a programming language. You get out of it as much as you put in. The only reason people don't use Blender is because it's not 3DSMAX or Maya and that was what they used in college, so that is what they've spent the most time on. Blender is much better now than 10 years ago. It was garbage 10 years ago, but I've done real work in it and found it to be quite easy to use even 2 years ago.
2D: study cartooning. Buy a Wacom tablet. Suck it up and buy Photoshop and Illustrator.
Adobe Creative Cloud membership is $50/mo, which is basically the price of Photoshop alone in a year, but gets you access to everything.
Audio: I started using Audition because of the CC membership, and it's been great (I've also put together a few, simple videos with Premiere because of CC). I find Audition is actually kind of fun to use.
Get yourself a drum machine of some kind. I have one of the older Korg Kaossilators, a handheld device that runs on batteries. The new ones are even better. I plug the headphone jack into the microphone jack of my computer and I record directly into Audition. Making serviceable music for games is quite easy with it. Just remember that less is more when it comes to music, and don't be afraid to do non-traditional stuff, off beat, dissonant. It's easy to make and creates much more atmosphere.
Neither I was able to figure out on my own, but they were all quite easy to use after reading a few tutorials on them.
Just remember, treat it like programming. You're not going to get it overnight.
Oh, the documentation for Blender does suck, though. There are certain key UI features that were moved after the documentation was written. Your best bet is to get into an IRC channel or a forum.
You can easily make music in software. Download Cockos Reaper and add some free VST synths. Its MIDI editing features aren't superb, but they'll do the job.
I have never done game programming. Can anyone recommend whether it is easier to pick this up compared to Unity? Also, isn't Unity expensive [edit: for a newbie]?
Sorry! Made an edit to my post. I wanted to ask if there was a cheaper way to learn game programming than investing so much in Unity upfront. Thanks for the pointers anyways.
