Elysian Shadows

Hey Guys,
so I've been designing a computer equivalent to tabletop wargame for about 6 months now. It's in-depth enough that I have yet to even touch code. I'm about to the point where I wanna begin coding but have hit kind of a brick wall in that regard. I know I'm gonna need 2 editors: a map editor, and an army list/starting formation editor. I'm afraid my coding experience is too small for such a grand design and would love to get an actual team together to get it rolling properly.

CWFitz1399 wrote:Hey Guys,
so I've been designing a computer equivalent to tabletop wargame for about 6 months now. It's in-depth enough that I have yet to even touch code. I'm about to the point where I wanna begin coding but have hit kind of a brick wall in that regard. I know I'm gonna need 2 editors: a map editor, and an army list/starting formation editor. I'm afraid my coding experience is too small for such a grand design and would love to get an actual team together to get it rolling properly.

Designing, woah lets just stop the train here, regularly you don't start worrying about design till after you got an engine and your looking for a team to do it for you ? are you insane? just learn to do it yourself this forum provides many links to great tutorials, i advise watching this video:

Light-Dark wrote:regularly you don't start worrying about design till after you got an engine

Lmfao.

He did post this in the art/design thread.
You can be a game designer without knowing how to code an engine.
How do you know what sort of engine you need to make, without at least some basic game design
But it does sound like a cry for help.
CWFitz1399 - Write a design document if you want any hope of attracting a programmer to help you.

k1net1k wrote:He did post this in the art/design thread.
You can be a game designer without knowing how to code an engine.
How do you know what sort of engine you need to make, without at least some basic game design
But it does sound like a cry for help.
CWFitz1399 - Write a design document if you want any hope of attracting a programmer to help you.

agree, i recommend putting together a design document with all aspects of the game. Maybe discuss modes, control style, difficulty, ai, players, gameplay, art, etc.. maybe it will attract some programmers if they like the idea, it's very possible. Someone just saying that they have an idea though is off-putting to most programmers, because EVERYONE and their mother has the best game idea's ever...

I am by no means an expert at all, but i do have a couple design scope documents on projects that I am working on, I would be happy to let you take a look, who knows maybe it might help

Your probably right to be daunted, especially when looking around here, because folk here tend to be at a higher coding skill level than most indi/hobbyist developers.

I would firstly decide if the game is going to be 3D or 2D, because that can make a big difference in which language and engine you should use. If you want to make a 2D game, then I would look at AGK (http://www.appgamekit.com/ - it's designed for mobile platforms, like the iPad and Android - but it's BASIC and really easy to learn - you could develop your game for several mobile platforms and PC, at the same time, with no major need for platform specific stuff. Imagine having your game on several platforms, even playing multiplayer games between different platforms. AGK will even support C++ in the near future, if you want to expand your horizons.

If your game is 3D, then maybe looking at Unity would be an idea, or another incarnation of BASIC that has 3D, like DarkBasicPro. DBPro is quite well setup for an overhead RTS game, lots of terrain systems, great shader support. In fact have a look at my terrain editor, that was designed for RTS games, and was written in DBPro.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rndPdaTClJ8

People have to start somewhere, and there are languages out there that are very easy to learn, you don't have to use C# or C++, which take a long time to learn properly. I've been writing PC games for over 10 years, have about a dozen finished games, and am only just now finishing up my first C++ game for iOS... and even that, the PC version was finished ages ago in DBPro.

I would highly suggest that instead of working on a big project, get some smaller projects made first.

There's multiple genres and styles of games that can be made at a lower scale and there's tons of engines to play around with to get a better understanding of how the system works. Reason I suggest creating small projects first is because of the experience and trials you'll endure from each project, mistakes will help you solve problems you'll encounter in the future and be able to fight the stress easier.

Some simple concepts you could utilize are:

Movement/Control- Create a spaceship that speeds through a obstacle track in space.
Collision- Create a side scroller that lets you solve puzzles to get through the level, (e.g. move blocks in a certain place and structure to jump on to a cliff)
AI- Create a board game that tests the players skills against a computer's AI
Interface- Create a RPG like "Kings Quest" with a short story, (e.g. Your character is trying to find a golden dagger, solve clues and puzzles to find the lost golden dagger) try to make the game utilize dialogs and the rest of the interface more.
Database- Create a text based RPG that keeps track of a players stats and login information. (e.g. make a quick match fighter with 4 basic attacks, the client is text and button based.)

All these games would be simple to make and a great learning experience, You'll get to have all the wonderful stressful moments but at a less stressful and smaller workload scale. Also these are games 1 person can make by themselves.

The next step would to create a small team and create small projects together to get experience working with a team of people. Find out how annoying it is when someone in the team is lazy, or losing team members, gaining team members, finding one member hooked up with your sister or something, I can't list all the great experiences you'll obtain from working on these small projects.

Also some great engines to play with are:
vbGORE Link: http://www.vbgore.com/Main_Page
netGORE Link: http://www.netgore.com/

I can't remember the other engines I used to play with back in the day but those two are some really good examples, they also have a lot of materials to help you learn on their websites.

dandymcgee wrote:

Light-Dark wrote:regularly you don't start worrying about design till after you got an engine

Lmfao.

!

Soganatsu wrote:I would highly suggest that instead of working on a big project, get some smaller projects made first.

...

Very good advice!