Anyone ever write their own game?

[hobbs]

in making games, the only making i have had expierience with is, RPG Maker 2002, 2003 and the XP Trial.

[GHDpro]

Oops, (also) discovered this thread a bit late.

I've written a few games in the past, but they were all REALLY simple:

- My first game was a space invaders style Star Trek themed game (Enterprise VS Klingons)
which was build in QBasic (for DOS) and used ASCII graphics.

- I can remember creating a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Planning out the rules of the AI for that was
quite fun -- although my AI wasn't that great because with the right strategy you could win
each time. This was written in Pascal but still used ASCII graphics (not a big deal for this type
of game though).

- I can remember writing a succesor to my first game (inspiration wise). It played the same,
that is space invader style (shooting down enemies that fall from the top of the screen) but
was much more "evolved": -- full (but crappy) graphics, double buffering (flicker-free screen),
collision detection etc. Also written in Pascal.

- I've also tried to create a few clones of VGA Planets (a email-based turn based game) in the
past, which never got completed, although I can remember getting pretty far at one time.
(getting the full circle of host program -- unpacker -- client program -- command compiler done)

Anyway, if you are trying to create a game, I would recommend to start small if you've never
done created (or finished) anything before. It's hard to create say, FFX from scratch, but easy
to start with a "FFI" type game and then improve on it, if you get what I mean...

[Babak]

Ok, after reading through most of the thread (didn't bother reading it all before..):

I have to say that I'm really impressed with your ideas and such, this far.
I am definately going to check it out when it's done.

[Naflign]

I worked on translated remakes of Nei's Adventure and Amia's Adventure, as well as a a nowhere near usable yet rpg engine called Iridium.

The two Adventure games were written in a little language called Euphoria, with DirectX bindings. Iridium in python with wxwidget bindings(the editor) and C with SDL (the engine). The Adventure games I did in windows with a text editor, and iridium in linux with Boa Constructor as the IDE for the editor, and the kate text editor for the engine along with gcc as the compiler.

My personal advice is to go with SDL and C. It's nicly portable, and a nice benifit is that using this method getting it working on the dreamcast is pretty simple. There's just something kind of neat in seeing ones work running on an actual console, even if its a little old.

But most of all, my biggest bit of advice is something you're already doing - staying with open standards. Almost every problem I had with the Adventure games stemmed from it using multiple closed libraries. I kept on finding problem areas, but couldn't do a thing about them because the library was both closed and no longer being activly worked on. Worse, porting to another api/language is pretty much a matter of having to write everything from scratch, something I'm still not finished with - a couple years after switching to Linux.

Good luck - it sounds like you've got some pretty cool ideas, and I'm a huge fan of snes style rpgs!

[Roots]

Originally Posted by Remian

Eventually as you get older, if you want to make that software that helps the world(how noble)you will need to learn coding. Grab Dark Basic from the local computer hardware store and take it for a spin some time. using RPG maker is alot more fun than coding, coding takes....knowledge......

Umm I already have my bachelor's in Computer Engineering and I'll be 22 in a few days. I'm quite familiar with how to write code, and I've written a multitude of programs in MIPS Assembly (designed a microprocessor based on MIPS archtecture too BTW), C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, and several others.

Originally Posted by Remian

anyway, I hope your game will be fun. And dont make it boring PLEEASE!!!!

I will try my best not to make it boring. If you liked the prologue story and the general idea of the MAPS/battle system then I think you will enjoy it. I have a great imagination and its about damn time I started making good use of it

Originally Posted by Remian

and what RPG maker are you using?

I'm not using RPG maker. The game is being written from scratch using C++ and the SDL libraries, which should make it relatively easy to port to other systems and gives me the freedom to put anything in the game that I want. I'm not a big fan of the whole 'rpg maker' concept, though I've never tried it myself.

Originally Posted by Babak

Ok, after reading through most of the thread (didn't bother reading it all before..):

I have to say that I'm really impressed with your ideas and such, this far.
I am definately going to check it out when it's done.

Thanks The biggest challenge for this project for me personally is going to be time-management, since I start my grad school career at UT Austin in August.

[Sanjuronord]

Originally Posted by GHDpro

- I can remember creating a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Planning out the rules of the AI for that was
quite fun -- although my AI wasn't that great because with the right strategy you could win
each time. This was written in Pascal but still used ASCII graphics (not a big deal for this type
of game though).

Lol, yes i wrote one of those two way back in my freshman year using ada95(which I'm glad to finally be rid of, was annoyed to have to start in that for two semesters instead of c++), my computer was impossible to beat, you had to hope for a tie.

[mikey_68]

I actually completed my first game not too long ago. The second will be out shortly. Although this has become more of an RPG thread, maybe you'd like to give it a try. http://www.manga.sk/atp/bpencil/bpencil.htm It's the bishoujo ren'ai style.

I agree with Roots, that time management is everything. There is no worse thing than getting out of a creative flow. Sometimes that happens in bigger projects, you do nothing for 2 months and then it's hard to ger back - "now why is THIS line of code here..." ^_^ you know...

[Roots]

Originally Posted by mikey_68

I actually completed my first game not too long ago. The second will be out shortly. Although this has become more of an RPG thread, maybe you'd like to give it a try. http://www.manga.sk/atp/bpencil/bpencil.htm It's the bishoujo ren'ai style.

Hey that looks pretty cool! Wow, you did that in just 2/3 months? Well I suppose that dating sim games aren't too complicated to program, but still that's a really fast turn around time. The art looks pretty good too! You should hire a coloring artist to enhance the game, althought the pencil look is kinda cool. It gives it a 'manga' feeling I guess . Well I would download it and play it, but you only made a Windows version! Why don't you see if you can port a Linux or MacOS version out of it? Unless you used directX libraries (weren't on your system requirements..), I don't think it would be too hard.

Originally Posted by mikey_68

I agree with Roots, that time management is everything. There is no worse thing than getting out of a creative flow. Sometimes that happens in bigger projects, you do nothing for 2 months and then it's hard to ger back - "now why is THIS line of code here..." ^_^ you know...

Yeah I'm commenting my code religously. There is another game that is similar to mine (because it uses the same libraries, etc.) called Battle for Wesnoth. Its an RTS and its actually really good, but I took a look at the source code and I was like . The guy hardly commented ANYTHING so it makes trying to figure out what anything does nearly impossible (the code is spread out over some 60 header and source files).

[TronDD]

Originally Posted by mikey_68

I actually completed my first game not too long ago. The second will be out shortly. Although this has become more of an RPG thread, maybe you'd like to give it a try. http://www.manga.sk/atp/bpencil/bpencil.htm It's the bishoujo ren'ai style.

Woah, I was just about to ask about making bishoujo games. Did you make it from scratch or is there game builder software out there? I want to play around with making one and I don't want to have to reinvent the wheel if I don't have to.

[mikey_68]

Roots >> Yeah, about 2 months, I mean I am still really amazed... The second game is in development since Feb, so it will be a healthy half a year... It's all because baka me always has to put new storylines into it... (and let's not forget the others, who were behind schedule... )

Black Pencil uses a very windows-based cd menu program with scripting capabilities, and I am not convinced our programmer can do this, so multiplatform is a no can do at this stage (***enviously looks at Battle for Wesnoth***)

TronDD >> There are some, for instance http://www.geocities.com/greaterghoul987/ or RenPy http://renpy.onegeek.org/. RenPy should be fairly uncomplicated, good for experimenting around.

[Kurei]

Forget time-management, motivation becomes a problem when working on a project and not seeing enough reward (eg. monetary) , especially for ambitious RPG projects.

I've worked on enough hobby projects to know I have a limit - about 2.5 months of working and thinking about it every day before burn out sets in. I don't learn though, always setting my goals high regardless, rarely meeting them. Part of me wishes I did some scrappy pixel-shaded DirectX9 overhead shooter - something *very* small ( < 2 months) and COMPLETE that shows I can finish a game project and work with bleeding edge tech, to the end of securing a position in the game industry. But another larger part of me dreams of completing a game that can compete with commerical products, and launch me into a career with my own studio.

Anyway, ideas, as you know, are cheaper than a dime a dozen. I'll save my praise until I see them implemented. Keep at it.

[Roots]

Originally Posted by Kurei

Forget time-management, motivation becomes a problem when working on a project and not seeing enough reward (eg. monetary) , especially for ambitious RPG projects.

I've worked on enough hobby projects to know I have a limit - about 2.5 months of working and thinking about it every day before burn out sets in. I don't learn though, always setting my goals high regardless, rarely meeting them. Part of me wishes I did some scrappy pixel-shaded DirectX9 overhead shooter - something *very* small ( < 2 months) and COMPLETE that shows I can finish a game project and work with bleeding edge tech, to the end of securing a position in the game industry. But another larger part of me dreams of completing a game that can compete with commerical products, and launch me into a career with my own studio.

Anyway, ideas, as you know, are cheaper than a dime a dozen. I'll save my praise until I see them implemented. Keep at it.

Ahh, so its lack of progress/success that kills you eh? I certainly know about burn-out, though in a different sense (try taking 6 EE classes and Japanese in one semester and you will be burnt to a crisp). But you see the great thing about this game is that we don't work on it for 2-3 years before we release it. The modular development of the game allows us to crank out results within a matter of weeks/months, not years. That's the ingenious behind it all! I know for a fact that if I was working on this same project and I planned to release it only when the entire game was complete, I'd never even get close to getting it done.

By releasing new additions to the game every so often you:

1) Have a fan-base pushing you for more (assuming that people like your game )

2) Can set modest goals and milestones to complete that won't take you the rest of your natural life to meet.


Anyways I'm done with my 5:50AM rambling. Time to go start my day.

[Kurei]

> The modular development of the game allows us to crank out results within a matter of weeks/months

Thats the beauty of MMORPGs (in my case), the nature of the game allows you to release them in bits and pieces (ie. ragnarok online alpha). However, getting to the initial release is still very difficult. Things always look simpler looking from the outside in - you know you can do it technically, but the details end up taking too much time.

I see you're using SDL and 2D, that's cool, but what about an engine? A lot of ground has been covered with 2D SDL, rather than reinventing the wheel you should take a look at what's out there (GUI widget library, map editors, particle systems).

[Roots]

Originally Posted by Kurei

However, getting to the initial release is still very difficult. Things always look simpler looking from the outside in - you know you can do it technically, but the details end up taking too much time.

I see you're using SDL and 2D, that's cool, but what about an engine? A lot of ground has been covered with 2D SDL, rather than reinventing the wheel you should take a look at what's out there (GUI widget library, map editors, particle systems).

I definitely understand the first 2-3 modules we release are going to be the hardest to develop. Over the last 2 weeks or so I've definitely found game programming to be more difficult than the 'regular' programming I do (small applications, GUI, etc).

As for our engine, so far I've just been building it from the ground up. I already have all the audio code finished and working perfectly and the core of the video is nearly finished and working as well. I'd rather put the engine together myself so I can have greater control over it and design it for my own needs. I have been looking at other work that has been done, though I haven't found anything yet that really caught my eye.

Thanks for your advice, I value it.

[mikey_68]

Originally Posted by Roots

By releasing new additions to the game every so often you:

1) Have a fan-base pushing you for more (assuming that people like your game )

2) Can set modest goals and milestones to complete that won't take you the rest of your natural life to meet.

You just have to make sure you DO more than you TALK, don't want your project to become a forum-game...

[Remian]

I just finished a game called:

Nightmare Hunter

Ok the name is pretty dumb, but it adds myster to the game.

You take control of a Nightmare Hunter(people who have access to the Nightmare Realms) named Sho, who just happens to the be the Legendary Nightmare Hunter. From there, a vast world is given to you and you can do whatever you please. Its not really GTA style, what I mean is that you can accept missions and Bounties for certain Nightmares. You can also search the Earth for other Nightmare Hunters, and Dream Hunters (to fight). You can also gain access to the Drea Realm, and get more missions and Bounties, but you encoiunter Dream Hunters there.


I made this game 1 year ago with RPG maker, and then I remade it using coding. I wanted to post it for download here, but when I attempted to get it to work, My comp crashed. sorry all.

Roots, i hope you make that world changing program today.

[spedz_fx]

errr so let me guess non of u guys use flash .......bugger ¬¬ i did (and still miight) have flash and swift 3d some where as they are pretty good to use for espically if u r gonna make rpgs!! u could use sprites to give it that rustic ff/ps (phantasy star) feeling (btw i'm trying to make a suggestion coz i'm quite good at it if i HAD the motivation. )

[spedz_fx]

SO no 1 uses flash/ swift 3d .........bugger coz if u guys did i would hellp (once i found my back-up cd ) coz i know how to make some RPG scripting

[Roots]

Its been a while, so just wanted to let you guys know that my game is progressing slowly but surely. Its a heck of a lot more work than I thought it would be! But I have almost a full staff now, I just need some game/sprite artists and an OpenGL programmer and I think we'll be set for the time being. After talking with some SDL users, they recommended that I use OpenGL (even though my game isn't 3D) because it will help a lot with adding visual effects and making the game faster.

By the way, a lot of you are talking about games you made but not posting any links. I'm too lazy to google so post links!!! I'll leave you guys with the boot screen for the game, which one of my fine artists created from scratch.

[lavarock]

The only game I made that is semi-complete is the final project in my Java class, in which we have to make a simple 2D game. I made a snake game, the very simple one in which you have to avoid to collide with the wall and onto yourself, etc. The game have complete levels, has score features, etc. However, it's still premitive.
However, I know some friend in the CS master program is doing a lot of graphic designing, game developing, etc. Some are learning Direct3D and OpenGL in their own. This kind of things are always interesting but extremly time consuming.