New Start

[Demonkid43]

Hey guys i would just like to inform you that i will be starting my first actual game creation now i know what i want to do would seem a little ..errm big of a job for alot of people but i feel up to it and i feel i either have or can get the knowladge i will need to do it

i was thinking of a 2d game for now kinda much like the original zelda for snes but with more of an advanced battle system like summon night for gamboy advanced or legend of mana for ps1 or even a simpler non 3d version of the tales of symphpnia battle system for GC

now making people move is one thing but making them duck,jump , and atack with a few diffrent moves along with making the ai semi smart will be my chalange...

so if anyone has any suggestions im all ears and i hope you all wish me good luck...i may need it :?

[Traveler]

so if anyone has any suggestions im all ears and i hope you all wish me good luck...i may need it :?

Well for starters put some dots and comma's and capital letters in your messages so we can actually read what your are typing because now i have to read your message at least twice to understand properly what it is that you are asking us

but i feel up to it and i feel i either have or can get the knowladge i will need to do it

was thinking of a 2d game for now kinda much like the original zelda for snes but with more of an advanced battle system

Funny thing, I had an entire reply written, and then it suddenly hit me. Do a search for this guy. See what else has he been been asking. So I did and then I decided to delete my message and then proceeded to write out my reply (the short version), your future replies as well as the replies to those questions.

Disclaimer
Now mind you, I've seen posts just like the one you wrote here, more times than I can count. So instead of writing the obvious, I decided to put up something else instead. Mind you, it is not meant to discourage you in any way.
This is meant to be humerous, please try to see the fun of it. And try look for the message, because really there is one.

==================== start ==================

so if anyone has any suggestions im all ears and i hope you all wish me good luck...i may need it

-) That's simple, dont do it! You do not have the knowledge to create a zelda clone. Try a pong clone instead, then do arkanoid, then pacman, and then, only then begin to think about zelda.

Your next question:
Huh?

Our answer:
Tell us, what library are you using.

You:
What is that? I'm using Lazarus.

Our answer:
Well a library is a like a wrapper for opengl or directx, so you can more easily use images and sounds in your projects. It may also have functions and procedures to calculate, for instance, the collision detection. Samples for wrappers are Phoenix, Delphi, Asphyre or SDL.

You:
Wow, cool. So what do I use?

Our answer:
Well, since you're uzing lazarus. Phoenix might work there.

You:
Okay,.. now about Zelda.

We:
Now what did we just say a couple posts up. Really, do pong instead.

You:
Sigh, okay. So I gave it a try earlier today and I have these paddles now, but I dont know how to make them collide with the ball. How do I do that?

We:
See, that's exactly why we said you shouldn't do Zelda. You don't have the basics covered.

skipping a few posts now

You:
Guys, guys. I have it finished! I made pong! Here it is, please would you test it for me?

We:
Sure,.. whats the url

You:
oh, duh.. Pong
But, now that I made this, I think I want to do pacman next.

We:
Ah okay,.. well if you think you're up to it.

You:
Yeah you bet I am
Anyway, I found this site where I took all those sprites from. I'm not that good at graphics you know.

We:
Yeah, graphics tend to be the hardest to do

You:
Okay so eh, I want to make the level where pacman is eating the dots. How do I know when he hits a wall? I tried to use collision detection but my sprites wont move anymore after I run the game.

We:
Yeah, you can't use collision detection with the tiles. A better way would be to write your own detection system. For example you could check if the x and y values of pacman are going to hit a tile marked as an obstacle, right before you do the actual movement.

You:
Ehh, tiles as obstacles?

We:
Yeah, (still think Zelda was a good idea ) ?
So tell us,.. how did you create your tilemap?

You:
Oh ah,.. I found this tutorial about tiles. Too bad the guy who wrote it used delphiX.

We:
Okay,.. so what you could do is create a record
something like
[pascal]
TTileInfo = record
tilenr : integer;
obstacle : boolean;
item : byte;
end;[/pascal]

and then a create a two dimensional array using the record, like this:
[pascal]
TileInfo : array [0..25, 0..25] of TTileInfo;
[/pascal]

You can then mark each cell in the array as obstacle where want it to be a wall. Like so:
[pascal]
TileInfo[10,10].obstacle := true;
[/pascal]

Of course it wouldn't make much sense to do this for each and every cell, so the best way would be to create a utility that easily allows you to create maps and save them to a file, so you can read them in your game later on.

Anway, after you have marked each cell. You can use loops to draw the entire map.

You:
Great, that was a huge help to me!

A couple days later

WILL writes (because he's a kind person and likes to let people know that he (we) is still interested).
Hey Demonkid43, how are you coming along with pacman, is it done already?

And your final reply reads:
No it isn't, I couldn't figure out how to make the ghosts go after pacman. So I abandoned the game.


=================== end ===================

Your reasons are understandable. We all want to create that one game.
But really, if you dont yet understand how the jumping and running in a game is done, what do you think involves basic pathfinding, AI, and combat systems typical for pretty much any zelda game?

Go for the simple things first. Get to know the software, the wrappers. Know what's involved before you even start writing. Before you start, be absolutely sure you know that you can do it. If you dont, dont start and take a step backwards.

[Demonkid43]

First of all i would like to mention that your start of the post made you seem like a coomplete A hole.
now im sure this isnt the case as by the end of the post you lightend up a bit as you may notice i took notice to your grammer problem and what i really wanted to acomplish is a simple battle system like the games i suggested, nothing complicated and nothing with high graphics or anything.
just somthing to get me started on that colision detection, A.I. , and controls like jumping and ducking.
i have read a few tutorials alot from delphigamedev.com so i can atleast make a little character that will run around so i wanted to try somthing a little more complicated.
now instead of making a person feel like a complete idiot you may want to be a little nicer im sure you have seen alot of post like this and by the way, your role playing of me is way wrong.
now under the sercumstances maby i will try pong as it probly has some things in it that would help and being a simple arcade game wouldnt be extreamly hard to make


thank you for the advice and...lighten up a bit

now i would suppose creating a backround for the pong game may be the first thing i should do?
maby you have a better idea...let me know

[DarknessX]

Just use a solid black background

So you got home finally, did you?

Oh and just to help out a bit, he does know a bit more than he shows... He just doesn't know the etiquette to asking questions on a board like this

He's using Jedi-SDL, I think.

[WILL]

Well don't take Alex's (Traveler) sarcastic/satirical reply personally. He has been on this forum community even longer than I have, so he has seen his fair share of 'new people' who always tell the more experienced ones that they "know better" or that they are special and can do what even the most experienced of the community cannot. It's an old old song and you sung it perfectly to be honest.

The thing is that it is not a crime to want to jump ahead, we all have done it, but we all have also eventually learned that there was always a better, more productive path to where we originally wanted to go.


You see my first few 'games', after I got over my own large ambitions, were rather simple. Here is a brief recap of my own wild adventure.

I started with 'Super Amazing Pixel Guy'. It was a really exciting game which I had this pixel --wait for it-- and I moved it around with my arrow keys. Oh yes, quite the event back in those days [size=9px](you know when I'd walk 5 miles to school in 40 feet of snow up steep steep hills with nothing but 400 page--gasp--books! :lol: )[/size]

But the excitement didn't stop there. I pushed on and created a ground breaking sequel. 'Really Super Amazing Pixel Guy' (2 bah! no one knows how to properly name a game these days. ) This version I had him constantly moving around without stop. But that wasn't enough for me, I wanted a trail behind him. Yup, thats right, I turned it into a tron game. But not only just 'plain jane' Tron, it was much more complex. I added inside blocks as well as the outer wall from which you could crash. I added 3 other players too so that everyone had to huddle over 1 keyboard just to get a multi-player game in. [size=9px](Hey back then LAN networks were not a dime a dozen as they are nowadays. And 486 was king! :king[/size] I eventually added a menu and different player modes for single player and multiplayer; time shrink(walls would close in at a set interval), random block placement, plain arena mode, etc, etc... I toyed and toiled until it got more and more feature full.

Back then the games weren't too complex in visual style so we just used colour for collision detection. It served it's purpose, but as I got on I eventually learned how to confine detection of objects colliding using squares and circles. Arkanoid was the first game in which I did this. It actually started with a bouncing ball program.

It's rather simple, you make a 'ball', you make it move, then you make it bounce off the 4 sides of your computer screen. Thats some basics, so now you get really wacky and figure out how to put in some square blocks to bounce off of too. Heck now add 2 balls. Cool, what if you add more now... wait shouldn't the balls bounce off of each other too? Ha... ok so now it's doing that, why not see if you can optimize things a bit, make sure that we are making use of arrays of blocks and balls and use common functions of your own design to just do the collision on it's own without massive chunks of code to keep track of.

See how this kind of evolves? It's about learning how to do the little things that let you combine them to do the larger things down the road. If you are a self study, you just gonna have to break down and mess around and code some 'junk' for a while. Just get curious with simple stuff. Keep the graphics SUPER-crappy. In fact don't use any bitmaps when you are playing. Just pixels, lines, circles and squares, etc... You'll learn very quickly to make a function and how to organize everything in such a way that when you use the more complex stuff you have the basics down.


Now I tried to write this up in a funny way so that you and others can at least get a chuckle out of it, but I am quite serious about the kind of method I'm recommending. See I was in your shoes myself so I know what will help and what will slow you down to getting to the point of making that super cool Zelda game you want to make later on. You can do it, but not now, at least if you want to 'do it right'.

Even now I could start on some big epic RPGs akin to the Final Fantasy ones I know and love, but it's beyond my level so it would be a total waste of time. I'd be better off starting to learn the basics of 3D and light mapping, etc and so on...

Hope this gives you some perspective if nothing else.

[Demonkid43]

thank you for that post see i was planning things a little diffrently than just simply making a ball bounce
and then making the things it can bounce off of you made it simpler for me by saying that
and indeed i do inderstand that starting with smaller things would indeed be a better alternitive as i know see how the simple arcade games have a lot to teach.
At first i thought well yes it does have some essentials and maby pong does have some essentials, but so does every arcade game and when combined makes up all the big things.
So in carfull review pong indeed is going to be fun to make ...

wow went from zelda to pong how...erm couicidential?
haha

(and see i can get the knowledge for the zelda game...just like this haha )

[Huehnerschaender]

....and now you are right in the "discussion" Traveller posted

But let me tell you that this is the best way!

And let me tell you something more. Don't do the mistakes I always do. I use to start very simple projects. I have a simple idea and start programming on this. And there is not a single project of mine that did not grow into much bigger projects because I always have new ideas while programming. And so I never ever finished a single game as a complete release

I always do this! So if you are new, make yourself a solid RULE: Plan your project and finish it like it was planned. When the release is READY, you can add features if you want. But first finish it.



Greetings,
Dirk

[jasonf]

One of the guys on here writes Zelda type games. JDarling.

Check out his PGD2007 entry for an example: http://www.eonclash.com/JumpStart/v4/PGD07/index.php

The Jumpstart engine might be the way to go, I've not used it personally. I couldn't tell you if it's easy to pick up or not.. but he's put a lot of work into it so it should be fairly complete.

I don't know where where your skills lie, Art, Coding, AI.. or what level you're at..

The other guys have already given some good advice if you're just starting out and if that's the case, I'd heartily suggest that you start small as they say.

The reason is, we've All done it, started over ambitious projects only to have our hearts broken by seeing them fail. it really is soul destroying.

If you've got some skill though, then I'd pick up an existing engine and make your game if you can.

If you're an advanced programmer who doesn't mind doing everything from scratch in a way which best suits your game's requirements (assuming that they're different from all other 2D games and cannot be accommodated by any of the existing engines), then you should design and build your game engine and your game should work perfectly... after a few months, maybe a year.

Be prepared for a long slog. You'll spend most of your time getting your engine working properly and you may run out of steam for developing your game.

My next game will probably be a 3D, 3rd person adventure, platform, flight sim (I'm really taking this genre mixing to heart :lol but I'll be damned if I'm writing my own engine for it.. Nooo sir! I'm using pre-fab all the way. ready made physics, engine and libs.. I'll design it, write the story, make the graphics, sort out the sound and music and script the game, but I'm getting too old and too tired to tackle the entire code base. In the end, I want to write a game, not just another engine.

Best of luck to you, I'm sure we'll see more of you on here and don't be afraid to ask questions. Help is here if you want it.
But it is true, there are lots of people who want to write games and have absolutely no clue how to do it, they think it must be easy because games are easy to play or they look simple and they want to make a MMORPG as their first game.
Absolutely impossible.

My advice:

Write a design document first. Detail all aspects of your game.
Write down all of the concepts you'll need to fully understand before you even start. Don't underestimate the importance of design.
The only way I could complete my PGD game Crashblock on time was because I had a design which I stuck to (mostly) and refrained from adding additional features. (unless the gameplay demanded it)

I can seriously recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Gameplay-desig...8378856&sr=8-1

[jdarling]

Funny to see JumpStart mentioned . But, I would not recommend it to someone who wanted to learn pascal. Simply reason is that JumpStart doesn't come with the pascal source code and instead relies upon you building your game code and event code out in Lua. Of course JumpStart is built in Pascal and does run on Windows and Linux using SDL.

Instead, if your wanting to learn Pascal with a scripting language my "example engine" is a good place to start http://eonclash.com/ViewProduct.php?ProductID=23.

Basically its a very very minimal version of a "game engine". First thing I'd personally do is integrate the new version of pLua into it http://www.eonclash.com/LUA/pLua.zip and then get used to it. Then decide on the level integration and what support objects/methods your going to need.

As traveler said, we have seen this all before. And we are ALL guilty of the same thing, I remember back when I started I wanted to build a MMORPG (though it wasn't called that back then cuz we were all on BBS's). LOL sure thing here I am many years later and still haven't built the MMORPG . I have the knowledge but have realized that the funds are a different story.

As for starting point, try documentation out (I'll toot my own horn again). I wrote the 1st article on this http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com...67&p=1#article and have been working on the 2nd as I have time. If you can honestly take the time to spend building your documentation out properly you are more likely to complete your game. You will have the goals you need, and have check points to test against. In fact, even if you fail (and be ready to fail) you will at least have a tangeable asset to weigh the failure against and find solutions with.

Well, I've rambled enough... Let us know how it goes as we all love to see others go through the same pain we did (It's kind of like getting married, you think you know it all till its over with, then you realize you didn't know anything).

[Demonkid43]

can somone explain what a game engin is as you all are talking about it and i dont really know what it is...thank god i demoted to pong

:?