Introduction

[asdfarkangel]

Hi all of you. I post this here because I haven't found any introduction stuff here and I feel like it's polite if I join a community I introduce myself. My name is Sebastian. I started with Pascal a long time ago altough I haven't gone too deep with it. I made a database handler program not long ago and now I think I would go further like even designing games. Altough I don't know much about graphics or AI and what I know about OOP is like I used Game Maker which is not too much... I think I can find most of the information I need for starting in the existing topics and I'll try not to ask stupid questions oh important note about me. For me programming time is like 10% writing the code and 80% correcting the bugs. The remaining 10% is banging my head against the wall for the stupid mistakes like a misplaced else or a f***** up array definition which took me hours to find. That was me if I become more advanced I'll even try to help newbies like I am at the moment See ya have a nice day!

[chronozphere]

Welcome Sebastian!

Hope you will enjoy your stay.

and I'll try not to ask stupid questions

These don't exists (but please ask google before posting ).

I used Game Maker which is not too much...

Game Maker is very nice for beginners. If you know all its concepts, things will go a lot easier.

banging my head against the wall for the stupid mistakes

Actually I'm about to do that right now. It's not uncommon behaviour for programmers.

[asdfarkangel]

Oh thanks. Well I used game maker for 2d space shooter games mostly. The last one I created there was a very basic AI I was proud of. The enemy planes check that if they shooted in the direction they are facing(they change it randomly from time to time and if they hit the border they also change) and they hit me then they shoot. I don't know if there existed an easier solution(my signature of my programs is that they are ALWAYS overcomplicated...). For that I calculated with a square around my plane and lines coming from the enemy plane in their direction and did some coordinate-geometrics calculations if the imaginary line hit the imaginary square. That was not that easy though I didn't want to try and get the equation of the square I checked for the sides of it. Lots of maths. yeah maths is something I don't lack. Routine is something I do Other than that I started a strategic game with game maker but that project stopped. Another important note about me: Whenever I am finished with the hard part of the game I loose interest. I don't want to draw sprites, do the animations and do the damage calculations and other things I am sick bored of I might get one of my friends to draw for me Then they could even say they did something for the games to be done.

[Carver413]

It's alway nice to see new people comimg in. tell us what sort of games are your going to work on ?

[asdfarkangel]

Well I specialized in 2d shooting games and platform with game maker because that was the easiest. Altough I am interested in strategic and logical games too. I think I'm going to study free pascal and the possibilities of OOP for now. And I really don't feel like but I think I won't be able to avoid Delphi. And programming graphics is something I'm totally new to. In Game Maker it was there. I just created an object and added its sprite and some animations. But using OpenGL or DirectX seems so advanced and scary to me haha I don't know ANYTHING about how those work. Or how will I implement them in my Pascal games. I never called another application in Pascal before I don't even know how to do that. Once I tried to make a funny program that calls an exe that would call another exe that would call the first exe but it didn't work. It compiled it just didn't work I don't know pascal's file handling systems well either. I know how to use text and I'm able to use binary files but image files and sound files and other applications I have no idea So I've got lot to learn yet I might consider later what kind of games will I create when I'm able to make a Snake or Tetris or something like that.

[WILL]

Hello Sebastian and welcome to PGD!

It's always nice to have a new person come to join our community.

Do you know what compiler/IDE you want to use? Most of the new or current ones will support both Delphi or Lazarus, but it's good to know which developer tools you are using. If you don't want to pay anything Lazarus is a good choice as it's completely free. If not and you have some decent cash to throw at your developer tools, there is Delphi or Delphi Prism. You used to be able to get older copies of Delphi in books or at events and such but not so much anymore.

Once you have that figured out, I would suggest that one of the first things you try out before you start to make your first game is look at some of the libraries that are available to you. JEDI-SDL (SDL is an alternative to DirectX and OpenGL for graphics) is always a nice beginner library and of course code_glitch is developing a new game library for beginners that makes use of SDL as well. SDL is great for graphics, input controls (keyboard, mouse and gamepads) and even sound too.

I personally use SDL to develop my games. I even started a tutorial series to show how to make a game using it. You can read it in the Articles section of the site.

There are other libraries that are really good and allow you to make games also, but most of them take a bit of intermediate to advanced knowledge to use and can be frustrating for someone new to making games with Object Pascal. If you have more questions feel free to post them. Once you've made your 10th post you'll find that you won't have to wait anymore for a Staff member to approve it. Sorry if this is a bit annoying, but it's our best method of preventing spam from showing up in the forums.

I hope you have fun here and learn how to make some cool games.

[asdfarkangel]

I totally understand and I don't mind it I am going to reach 10 posts in no time I think as I will have some questions. Well you asked what compiler would I like to use. Thing is I don't know. I don't know any of the compilers as I've only used free pascal's built in compiler so far. It was quite easy I wrote the program pressed Alt+F9 and it was compiled Maybe I will look at this JEDI-SDL and see how it works and what exactly it does because I don't even know that yet
Oh and by the way first newbie question. I didn't give this too much attention but now that compile was mentioned... Can someone tell me what's the difference between Compile, Build, and Make?

[phibermon]

For me programming time is like 10% writing the code and 80% correcting the bugs.

Hello Sebastian, it sounds as if you are rapidly approaching the golden ratio anyone that would claim a ratio in excess of twice this is probably on the verge of discovering a whole new type of super bug

And if you are familiar with databases you are going to find that of great use in writing games, there are all kinds of ways of looking at a game world that are very much like a database. Think of an RPG, all the players are records in the database, the different areas they can travel to could be thought of as tables, as well as the players inventory etc

Looking forward to discussions in the near future

[asdfarkangel]

And if you are familiar with databases you are going to find that of great use in writing games, there are all kinds of ways of looking at a game world that are very much like a database. Think of an RPG, all the players are records in the database, the different areas they can travel to could be thought of as tables, as well as the players inventory etc

Looking forward to discussions in the near future

Well I didn't say I'm familiar with them I just made a program which could handle records in binary files. There were options like reading one by its number, adding a new one, modifying one, listing all of them, writing the stored data in a textfile, and searching for particular records by tags(this was a hell...) and clearing the database( I didn't make a single delete because till then I would have made it I was fed up with the program because the modify and search methods caused me a lot of headache. I messed something up with the handling of stringarrays and it gave windings-like characters as results which made it impossible to search for them or to read the new values in the modify method. I don't know what it was or how it became resolved it's just fixed now)