I want to make a game

Summary:

Introduction thread.

I want to make a game

Anonymous (68.49.39.x) 25 Aug 2007 14:42

Hello everyone. My name is William McGrew, I am 24 and live in Washington DC. I have played videogames since I was 5 with the NES all the way to the Playstation3, and I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about design, theory, development, and the industry. I've also played plenty of boardgames, collectible card games, and Book-and-Dice Roleplaying games, and even tryed to create a few. I have always had ideas for videogames, but never any way to make them. I have only taken some beginner computer programming classes in High School but I wish to begin again learning and coding with a programming language.

My current project that I have been picking at for about a year is typical fantasy setting a la Dungeons and Dragons, but with substantial tweaks based on a series of cartoons sketches I've done. Here is an outline that may be informative. My grand scheme is some form of MMORPG, but that might be out of my league for right now, so I was going to focus on what I think is a more likely concept: a videogame version of a Customizable Card Game. The program I am envisioning would have a system of drawing cards from a deck, creating stacks of cards to represent armies, moving armies around a map, rolling customized dice to acumulate a pool of energy, and then going through the stack in order, spending that energy to activate abilities off each card. Something in the vein of Ogre Battle for the SNES, but using overt card game paradigm.

So my question is fairly broad: What do I need to do, and in what order, to begin? I've been browsing the internet and have come across several Game Programming wikis and resources, I've downloaded a C++ studio. I've sampled some "Game Creators" like Game Maker and Klik 'n' Play(when I was much younger) and I've found those inadequate for the interface I was looking for. I figured I would ask some real people and get any advice or wisdom I could. I will check for replies here, or you can drop me a line at mylakovich @ gmail . com or contact me at [http://www.ikwiki.com/Mylakovich]

Thanks in advance.

Re: I want to make a game

bmatthew1 25 Aug 2007 16:36

Hi William, programming a MMORPG in C++ could take you an awful long time without a highly skilled group of Programmers working with you.

I think you have made a good decision starting with something simple like an RPG Card Game.

A lot of the Programming here at GDN is done in either FreeBASIC or Basic4GL, in fact nicky on the Basic4GL Forum was trying to use Basic4GL to create a YuGiOh Style Card game a few Months ago.

My Advice would be to get a copy of Basic4GL (it's Free) and start Creating. :)

Re: I want to make a game

Linkage2 26 Aug 2007 01:03

Yeah, MMORPGS as first projects aren't good ideas. :P But of course, if you were to keep on programming for a while and got quite good at it, at that point you could always give it a go and have a decent chance at pulling it through.

As for the card game, sounds like a good idea. I just got up and as such can't be bothered reading the full outline right now, but in terms of being within reach it sounds good, and in general sounds like a fun game.

As for what language to start with, BASICs are generally easier to get going with if you don't have much programming experience. With C++, which I'm learning now (although I primarily use Basic4GL), you may find yourself learning a whole heap of things but, unless they apply to your game, not really having much to apply them to, and as such forgetting things because you aren't using them often. You'd also need to learn a fair bit of graphics programming (such as OpenGL) to really get anything more than a concept demo going with your project, whereas with something like Basic4GL you don't need to worry about all that.

Basically, a BASIC will be easier to get started with, although it partly depends on just how much programming you learnt in High School, I can only assume it wasn't much.

Oh, and welcome. :P

Re: I want to make a game

u9 28 Aug 2007 15:32

Hey Will,

i recommend you start my making many (crappy) games first. Your first game WILL be crap! :) If you have never made a game before then maybe you should try making a tetris-clone or join in on the snake project. I'm sure everyone is eager to help with any questions you might have. Your card-game might also be simple enough.

Alternatively you could team up with someone who was good at programming and just take care of the story yourself :) there are many elements to game-making.