Youtube: Getting Started... Really ?

[koolgraph]

Hi,

Well i know that the topic title may be kinda aggressive but i'm not here to say it's bad cause it's not. It's really a great job for those who are lost and never programmed or never saw or thought about a way to program a game, but i'm here for two things. First, i wanted to say that even if it's a great job, i call it some sort of... incomplete. Well after have learned any languages and a graphic API, after have learned a way to get input and to make your program react to it, where do you start ? I mean, yes, we almost know how to do it, except maybe for some game specific logic like collision detection but we almost know everything to get started with, but still, where to begin ? There's so much to do, do you start on the Map Structure, on the character's one ? You got me ? Well i hope you do, 'cause this is all about the second thing i'm here to discuss.

The second thing is what would you recommend me to start programming. I already start the Map structure which i think is over (at least for the moment) i got some tiles rendered ('cause yeah, in my case it's a 2D Tile Based game) but i'm not sure if i should have start with this and what to do next. I was about to start the Character's Structure or a MapEditor and while wondering i found the Youtube Game Developement Series, thinking it was gonna answer me but i think i found more than an answer.

So thanks in advance for any advices leaved on that topic. Hope to talk with ya'll soon, see ya.

[Firzen]

I guess I won't speek for everyone here with this, but here is the advice I'd give you nevertheless.

What is important is to have an overall concept of how things in your game will work together in the beginning. And I really mean that, if you do not know how you want each part of your game to interact with each other part it does not matter which part you start with. It will be HELL after some point. It might be when you notice that your Mapsystem can not load Character Data properly, because Characters require a map as a parameter in their constructor. So you start to build a workaround so that you can add the reference to the map later. And in the end you have alot of patchwork in your games engine, which is a bad thing. It makes it almost impossible to keep an overview about what which class does. So the single most important thing is to keep your design clean, especially for big projects.

If you keep that in mind it is not all that important which part of your game you start with, because ideally they are completely separate or at least depend on each other in a very minimal way.
So if you start writing your character class, you want to write it in such a way, that you do not require a map to exist, but so that you can still tell your character class.
"Hey, here is a map, so use it to check if you are colliding with something, how to move from A to B in the quickest way" and so on.

It's good that you have your mapsystem working. It really is. Just keep all the other stuff you want to have in your game in the back of your head at all times, so that you can keep the code clean and maintainable.

In general I would suggest starting with a small project and then gradually stepping up to bigger things. I guess everyone on this forum has found themselves rewriting their engine once or twice or 17 times. Everyone makes mistakes, especially when just starting out. So write the bits that you find most fun, preferably some that give visual results, because it is quite hard to keep yourself motivated sometimes, and in those cases it is great to be able to look on the screen and say to yourself "Look, that character running there? I made that".

tl;dr:
Keep everything you want in your game in the back and you will be fine, no matter what you start with.
Start small and get bigger, and when your motivation drops write things that give visual results to motivate yourself again.

[koolgraph]

Really, i think your answer may be the best one i ever had and maybe the most valuable i'll ever get. Well maybe not that much, but still it's gonna make me think about it a bit more before starting into work. I don't think i'm gonna make the character class needing a map in the constructor, but still i got the example.

i still don't really know what to do, how all those things are gonna work together but i'll sit and work on it, and if i need a bit of help, i know where to look at.

Thanks again.

[Van-B]

I agree with Firzen, but just wanted to add a point or two.

Mainly, don't expect to get it right first time - organising a videogame is something that is best learned through experience. I'd actually advise people to do a small game project, just so they can get the practice in. It can be really tricky, in fact it's always tricky - if it's not, then you forgot to include something . You can't apply organisation techniques until you learn them, and nobody can really teach the techniques, because it's something you have to know. The best way to learn, is through necessity.

You have the map system in place, which is an excellent start - there will always be something visual to work on in the sidelines as Firzen says. Once you can design a map and have it load and display in your engine, you can add a character, then go onto enemies, items, particle effects. It's really a natural progression if you rely on your instincts, decide what you want to see it do next, then proove the concept with a small tech demo or mini project. It might take several projects before your organisation is good, because nobody is psychic... no matter how many games you write, there's always things that are ill considered, or not considered at all. The more projects that you do, the more cases you have to deal with, and the better you get at dealing with them.

[koolgraph]

I really appreciate your advice and I'm glad the way of implementing things you told me was the way I thought I should take. I'm still gonna think about what things gonna need and how to link them all together.