Re: wud like to design a game
- Posted by DerekParnell (admin) Sep 26, 2010
- 1045 views
wud like to design a role playing game on windows platform.i am not new to programing as i use euphoria already.i just need advice and tips from here and there on how to get started.any suggestions wud be welcome.
Is English your native language? There are a number of spelling and grammar mistakes in your posts, and that does not give me a good feeling about how you might go about designing, or even writing, a role-playing game.
Remember that designing and programming are not the same thing. One can be a good designer and a poor programmer, and visa versa. It is unusual to get both skills in one person, but not unknown.
Okay, let's tackle the design aspect first.
Can you write down, in simple English, what your game will be able to do and look like? Just roughly to begin with. Once you've done that, you can then go back over the description and add more detail, a little at a time, until you get to the point where you feel comfortable about starting to write a prototype program.
A prototype program is one that demonstrates the sort of thing your game would be like, and it helps you to workout more details for your design. You get to see what works and what doesn't.
Then go back to the design document and update it with the things you learned while writing the prototype. Add even more detail to the design. Get someone else to read the design and comment on how it could be improved. In fact, get a few people to read it. Add the improvements that these reviewers have made.
At this point you might write another prototype (from scratch) just to see if there are any more aspects of the game that need tweaking before you make the commitment to writing the real program. Never modify your prototypes to turn them into the real program; always write your real program from scratch. The prototypes are throw-away code that helped you and your reviewers to understand what your requirements were really about.
If you are thinking about a real-time animated game then you will almost certainly have to use a third-party graphics library that Euphoria can interface to, because Euphoria really isn't fast enough for anything except simple game animation. You will certainly also have to learn about physics and how to implement realistic behaviour in your game elements.
Then there's the AI to worry about - a subject in its own right.
I suggest you find a good book store and have a look through the many game developer's guides that are available.
And now for the programming aspect.
What sort of programs have you written so far? A role-playing game program is generally a lot of code, a lot of graphics, and a lot of audio. Expect to write about 10,000 to 100,000 lines of code. Can you do the graphics yourself? And what about the audio? And don't forget the documentation.
My advice is to start off with a simple text-based adventure style game. That should give you a feel for game programming. Then try a simple 2D scroller game; a good introduction to many animation tricks.
