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Topic: Quickest and easiest programing language for noobs?

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All Forums : [THE GAMING PLAZA] : Game Development, Research & Modding > Quickest and easiest programing language for noobs?

#26 6 MAY 2011 at 7:35am
Strategy Centurion Posts : 315 Joined: 15 MAY 2003 Status : Online	The problem when starting with a non-OO language is that when you subsequently move over to OO, you will take all your bad habits over with you. Better to start with whatever language you hope to stick with. /Strategy Designer/Developer, [link=http://www.micabyte.com/]MicaByte Systems[/link]
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#27 6 MAY 2011 at 7:44am
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	All of you talented programmers out there - I just wish that I had half of your knowledge! Is it a lack of time or desire or interest that you don't code your own games? All of which is perfectly understandable of course! Had I the skills, here's my to do list: 1. Make a PC version of "Patton's Best", the old boardgame. There would be no "AI" to program - it's all on t he charts. The game would allow you to be a tank commander and you progress through the war gaining rank and experience along with your crew. The game would do all of the chart look ups and it would be a game with a story telling aspect to it. Seems simple enough to me Same could be done for "B-17 Queen of the Skies". 2. Move up this concept to the game "Carrier" (Victory Games). It's also a solitaire game that is heavily chart-based. Have the PC do all of that for you. 3. Finally work on the Holy Grail of boardgame to PC game conversions - creating an ASL game with a decent AI. SASL (Solitaire ASL - again heavily chart based solitaire version of the game) could be the basis for this. I can do all the graphics if there's any programmers out there interested! "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#28 7 MAY 2011 at 3:15pm
Strategy Centurion Posts : 315 Joined: 15 MAY 2003 Status : Online	I do my own games. Currently 240K (free) downloads on "Pirates and Traders" and still counting. [sm=cheerswine.gif] The thing to keep in mind, though: 1. The fun part of making a game is maybe 5% of the total effort - if even that. Developing games is ultimately just as much hard work as anything else. Few people enjoy doing hard work in their free time. 2. Developing games is low paying work. Generally speaking (there are exceptions of course), game developers have worse working conditions and lower pay than a corresponding job elsewhere in the industry. 3. Lots of developers start to code their own games. Most such efforts never get announced, for the simple reason that they don't progress beyond a few evenings work. Of those that get announced, maybe 0,01% ever get to a playable state. /Strategy Designer/Developer, [link=http://www.micabyte.com/]MicaByte Systems[/link]
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#29 7 MAY 2011 at 4:38pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6934 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	C# is essentially an attempt to make C++ modern; a Microsoft implementation of Java, in many ways (the two languages borrow heavily from each other). It's big strength and weakness is that it ties into the .Net platform; this means that you get excellent graphics support and better tools than for Java. The downside is that you are heavily tied into Windows. Not true. I am using c# for Emperor's Bane and can easily port to Mac, iphone, Droid, PS3, Xbox360 using mono. Java on the other hand would create issues - but it is possible to port to these using Javascript through mono as well. C++ on it's own is a pain because of all the under the hood management neccessary- c# then is a lot easier not having this hassle- or another option is to try Atari's lite-C---this is a full language and most c++ code will run without any syntax changes with one or two exceptions--and is the language A8 uses and is good for a new comer. all IO/memory management is already handled. The tutorials available however are pretty sparse but can be replaced by most c++ tutorials. As mentioned I do not recommend the fray languages--your just learn bad coding habits when you get to OO and the like and i generally do not think event scripting ala MMf2 is the way to go either. it's convoluted work flow actually is a lot slower and more confusing than what's found in a good engine and language combination- and though the book's title looks like something useful it's actual content has very little in the way of 'wargames' and moreso is simply a glorified tutorial to learn MMF2-- and it doesn't even take you to completion.
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#30 7 MAY 2011 at 6:23pm
Strategy Centurion Posts : 315 Joined: 15 MAY 2003 Status : Online	*Originally Posted By ghostryder* Not true. I am using c# for Emperor's Bane and can easily port to Mac, iphone, Droid, PS3, Xbox360 using mono. In theory - yes. I'll believe it in practice when I read about all the games developed on C# that have actually been easily deployed to Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, Xbox360, etc. Deploying an application across multiple platforms is never trivial, unless your application itself is trivial. Quite seriously, I've never yet seen a claim of cross-platform capability that actually worked in practice (other than Java - and that capability comes with a price). Write Once - Deploy Everywhere is the dream of every developer who has ever tried to develop on multiple platforms, and if a strong framework of this kind actually existed, developers would be falling all over themselves to get on it. But you are of course correct - using C# as a language does not as such lock the user into Windows (though - technically - Mono infringes on Microsoft patents left, right and center and thus essentially lives at their mercy). Personally, I wouldn't recommend someone wanting to use C# move to Mono, though - IMO, that is pretty much throwing away a good part of the advantage of using C# in the first place (the .Net platform). But I freely admit that it has been a while since I last looked at Mono - it has no doubt progressed since then. Another reason to stay clear of Mono is the current problems now that Novell has been acquired, but hopefully that will work out OK once the smoke and dust has cleared (there was a similar amount of noise about Java when Sun was taken over by Oracle). /Strategy Designer/Developer, [link=http://www.micabyte.com/]MicaByte Systems[/link]
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#31 7 MAY 2011 at 7:10pm
Braz24 Centurion Posts : 737 Joined: 3 AUG 2006 Status : Offline	As far as why I haven't programmed my own games BTW, I don't consider myself talented...just love programming...)...too many irons in the fire, even with programming. My big focus is artificial intelligence and similar facets. Genetic programming/genetic algorithms, swarm particle optimization, ant colony optimization, artificial life/cellular automata, fuzzy logic, neural networks, heuristics and numerous other topics. There's a lot to learn in anyone of those topics never mind all at once. The other thing is when I work on languages, I work with VB, C, C++,C#, Java, and python all at once. My mind is wired to be able to learn many things at once andnot mix them up...I quit fighting it and accepted that that is how my mind works and simply go for it with programming and MANY other passions. Needless to say, there areonly 24 hours a day and sometimes progress, due to learn multiple things at once, can be a bit slow (for my tastes anyway). Okay, so much for the boring personal story...for you guys on the fence about a new langue to learn "easily", check ou python. It IS simple and is very powerful...they say it is only a scripting language...well, it is a full blown language that can do darn near anything most of the other languages can program. The language can be dowmloaded for free, it has a zillion downloadable libraries, it does graphics and windows, plus it can follow OOP (object oriented programming). Don't let OOP scare you...it may take a little getting used to, but oneof the big benefits of using it is that it helps keep your code organized for those big projects with loads of lines of code, nevermind when you have more than one programmer working on a solution. I totally agree that C++ can be a beast to work with but, if you decide to start with C++, STICK with it and plug away at it. It is very much worth the time and effort and it is very powerful. I haveto admit,not having to work with preprocessor directlives and the numerous other C++ complexities is nice, but I am so glad that I took the time to learn C++ (and there is still plenty more to learn...). If you can get decent with C++, other languages will be a walk in the park. Food for thought...
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#32 7 MAY 2011 at 10:31pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6934 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	In theory - yes. I'll believe it in practice when I read about all the games developed on C# that have actually been easily deployed to Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, Xbox360, etc. Deploying an application across multiple platforms is never trivial, unless your application itself is trivial 40 percent of all games on the iphone are unity based-and most of them are also pc/mac. There is literally 2200 hundred titles that are cross platform using c# and mono with unity right now and a whole flood in development. The system works- and it works well. http://unity3d.com/unity/publishing/
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#33 8 MAY 2011 at 3:23am
Strategy Centurion Posts : 315 Joined: 15 MAY 2003 Status : Online	*Originally Posted By ghostryder* 40 percent of all games on the iphone are unity based-and most of them are also pc/mac. There is literally 2200 hundred titles that are cross platform using c# and mono with unity right now and a whole flood in development. The system works- and it works well. If there are so many of them, I'm just saying that it's very weird that I've never seen any of these many games that are available on both iPhone and PC/Mac. Linking to an advertising page for their cross-platform capability is not particularly convincing... my point is precisely that they promise way more than they actually deliver. Isn't it funny how none of the their showcased games demonstrate this amazing versatility that they claim? Just to be clear, I think Unity is a nice platform and I really hope they have a lot of success (being Danish myself, I rather enjoy watching a Danish development company strike it big in this field). I'm just not particularly impressed with their PR speak. Cross-platform always comes with a significant cost - either a lot of additional work or major limitations. And that is as true of Unity as any other solution (try developing anything for Unity Android that moves outside the very limited "box" of capabilities they've implemented, for instance). /Strategy Designer/Developer, [link=http://www.micabyte.com/]MicaByte Systems[/link]
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#34 8 MAY 2011 at 8:07am
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6934 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	Of course you are going to be limited if your shooting for mobile devices. The number one concern with them is power for example- so right off the bat you have to concider download size- and plan on backthreading. Then you have to be fully aware of the input limitations and GUI-- this alone limits just what type of game - however in practice if you've done your homework and your design fits there's a lot of internal tools that make this easier as it has ever been. For example I use a psd texture of 4048x4048 - not a problem on a PC but a huge problem on the 360 and certainly on a droid or iphone. You'd think I'd have to change the asset for each- but in reality I do not- I can with little effort have unity scale it back for each- using tjhe same psd for all. You do this when you import the asset-and youy can even convert your textures to normal maps so I do not have to go back and do it. The same thing is done with effects be it particles or shaders. Add to this I do not have to change a single line of code unless I am looking for a prioritory feature-- then I can at the time I am programing simply use #ifdef to specify the code for the platform. Audio can be streamed as well- see an example: http://unity3d.com/gallery/live-demos/index.html#character-customization buiding in runtime, combined with the profiler (must have pro edition for profiler) not only goes a long way in code optimization and debugging but even effects are visually on the fly. Here's an example: http://unity3d.com/gallery/live-demos/index.html#bedroom Putting a demo up on your products homepage is a breeze- no matter how graphics extensive- here hit esc and choose graphic and full screen- and see just how fast it loads -- http://unity3d.com/gallery/live-demos/index.html#bootcamp One example of an independant doing this is here: http://www.interstellarmarines.com/ They currently have over 4700 current supporting members and 100,000 have registered- and the game isn't even half done. But because of the webplay players are getting enough of a glimpse in the game they are signing up and sending money---helping with the dev costs. If you are trying to keep a buzz going and interest this is a pretty good way of doing it- watch the utube vid on the home page and try a couple of the webplays-- and read up on the project...this is looking like one kickass indy game. The best advice to beginners is do your homework. As you mentioned- nothing is as easy as it is advertised- but with fray languages and systems this goes double. Sooner or later for example your going to have to get to A.I.--and if your using MMF2 or Blitz or some other small priortory offering your going to be pretty much in the dark and on your own. If you are using C++ or c# there is a wealth of information and straight code examples-- and you will not only get it done 10 times faster but your end results will be far better. The algorithms work and are tested be it your trying to A*, stack based FSMs and Goal Oriented Action Planning- one of the biggiest mistakes is to try to dismiss or ignore this. Without good A.I. your design is really doomed- and you absolutely have to concider how you are going to tackle it and one thing is garanteed-the built in A.I. of whatever system will be poor and unusable- and stumbling with And,OR and IF statements isn't going to produce anything much better. If your not using a standard you will be beating your head against a wall-- not just on A.I. but on just about every step of the process from building, asset inports to compiling--and especially de-coding. In Unity and inside the profiler I can optimize and tighten my code as I build---I can see a visual presentation of every line frame by frame and drill down to see what is causing the performance spikes--Absolutely critical if you do plan to go to the droid or iphone but more importantly is the 'time' it took--and it is the fastest workflow going bar none. When your just one guy workflow and available help and resources is everything and will determine if you get done or if your just working on vaporware. 9 out of 10 projects don't see the light of day---and above all reasons why is choosing the wrong languages and tools. How many MMF2 strategy games have you seen released? How about in Torque? That's been around for over 15 years--yet there's only a handful of finished examples. in fact in 3 months after the windows release there was more published games in Unity than in all the different systems combined. Today-just 2 years later there are 260,000 licienced developers- 17 10 ten games on iphone (meaning over 2 million sold) - games like a tower defence game called Circuit Defenders -- for Windows, Mac and iphone, or openfire, Global Conflicts: Palestine, and Turret Wars - all strategy games released by indy devs multi platform. It's a working system. This should be the first thing one looks at. What has been finished. then browse the forums, look at available 3rd party tools, tutorials and overall popularity---because if you are a beginner you will need help in just about every area. What are the model limitations and how must I import them and in what format? What are the sound options? Can i use Ogg. or must I use MP3--where there's a required $3000 licience fee? On and on and each point can and will break your project if you run into an unforeseen wall. Because of this there's no way i can recommend something like MMF2 or Blitz whatnot---this are priortory systems with little outside resources--and what you see on the forums being offered is little in anything but a side scroller or FPS---but having dev'd in the latter and used the former I know both is painful, convoluted and limiting. For a beginner your choices really are JAVA, python, C# and C++ and probably the best fringe system Blitz. (Visual Basic as well but I have no experience in it) For engines there's Unity and A8----of all the others none are for beginners except perhaps BlitzMax combined with leadworks--but know leadworks has a pretty high systems requirement and the default IDE in BlitzMax is crap-- your need a 3rd party IDE and also a 3rd party tool just for GUI design. However if your looking for an easy basic language syntax it is pretty good.
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#35 8 MAY 2011 at 10:22am
Strategy Centurion Posts : 315 Joined: 15 MAY 2003 Status : Online	One of my best friends actually works for the owner of Zero Point Software, so I have some insight into what is actually happening there. Unity certainly hasn't been any kind of magic bullet for them - which is kind of my point. And to be quite honest, I am not particularly impressed by multi-platform tower defense games. ;-) Note again: I am not saying that Unity is a bad tool set - very far from it. I just dislike seeing it oversold, which - IMO - it tends to be. Our fundamental disagreement, in any case, is not really about Unity. When your just one guy workflow and available help and resources is everything and will determine if you get done or if your just working on vaporware. 9 out of 10 projects don't see the light of day---and above all reasons why is choosing the wrong languages and tools. I disagree 100% with this. The vast majority of projects fail because they are started by people who just do not have the skill set for the task they set themselves. Or they may have the skill set, but burn out long before they get to the point where they have a finished game - which is basically another way of stating the first case: projects that are way too ambitious relative to the resources and skills of the developer. A secondary reason for failure is when developers get distracted by tasks that do not directly contribute to the final product; like building tools or editors (or - in my case - get distracted by coding on parallel projects). Compared to the importance of these two issues (selecting the right scope and having the right focus) in a project's success, the choice of programming language or tools is rather irrelevant. /Strategy Designer/Developer, [link=http://www.micabyte.com/]MicaByte Systems[/link]
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#36 8 MAY 2011 at 1:17pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6934 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	I worked on a RPG project starting in 2006 with some of the best modeling and graphics talent you could wish for- mainly out of the Morrowind Mod community. Neuman from Better bodies fame, Princess Stomper of expanded cities fame, Emma (her companions are top rated and she currently has the top rated one in Oblivion) Qarl, who's textures packs are the standard-- full World redos ala The Underground- Vampire Embrace...etc etc, All this talent however was only familiar with the Morrowind Editor, Blender, UVwrap and the like- when it came to what engine and such no one could decide. Neuman was highly hyping Irrllict---and we spent 6 months getting everyone set up and familiar---but when it came to creating and importing segmented bipeds (as is done in bethseda games) we couldn't do it because Irrllict couldn't do it. Much like Zero point software which has to switch to Unity because of the limitations of thier expensive engine licience, we had to eat it and switch-- as this form of biped creation was necessary for the same modding options that was enjoyed in morrowind--using common free tools modders would extend the life and popularity of the game. By the time I finally was able to convince all the members to switch to A6 half was burned out by going 'round in circles and backtracking and redoing so many things. It was the best talent ever assembled by the modding community- and it was stiffled by constantly using the wrong tools and engine. Also no matter you skill level- you will run into something in any system that is new to you- and your going to need resources and learning tools to learn and get past it---picking a project in scope and size equal to your talent and time goes without saying--that is just common sense. Going with a system that actually can't do what you want- and learning this the hard way will surely kill you desire for a project faster than anything else. Having to learn something to get something done is par for the course but careless planning can doom the best talent when they discover there is no manual, tutorial or help in what they are trying to do, or even worse the system they are using just cannot do it. this thread is pretty representative of the problems I ran into in AGM--everyone had an opinion- mostly with no experience at all with what they were recommending - and by the time practice proved them wrong the nail in the coffin was already there. I've finished 2 games in A5 and A6-now it's up to A8- I've worked with BlitzMax for a popular dev on this forum and current I am using Unity. I've tried MMf2, and yes have the book- and I know from first hand experience neither is what it purports to be. I've worked with Torgue- which is a mess and nightmare to learn, at AGM we went through Iirllict, C4 and TV3d and after 2 years of banging our heads on those I can attest to stay away from all 3. C4 has promise but is underdeveloped and it is for the experienced. Unity itself has it's limitations--any engine that doesn't give access to it's source code will be-- and you have to make sure it will do what you need it to do. I wouldn't do a MMO with it-though there's about 5 out there right now using it and would even hesitate on a RPG--but for strategy games it's a perfect fit and i wouldn't recommend them if I was not sure they could get the job done as well as offering the best help, documentation and tutorials for the new comer-which is exactly what this thread is about.
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#37 8 MAY 2011 at 4:02pm
Strategy Centurion Posts : 315 Joined: 15 MAY 2003 Status : Online	*Originally Posted By ghostryder* --- Story about RPG --- From your description, it sounds to me like your project lacked proper planning, which is another common problem with IT projects in general (not just in indie game development). In other words, it appears to me, based on your story, that the choice of tools was merely a symptom of other issues within that development group (however talented it may otherwise have been). picking a project in scope and size equal to your talent and time goes without saying--that is just common sense. In the words of Voltaire: Common sense is quite rare. If you think that this goes without saying, please visit any game development message board, read the project proposals on there and come back and say that with a straight face. [ ] but for strategy games it's a perfect fit and i wouldn't recommend them if I was not sure they could get the job done as well as offering the best help, documentation and tutorials for the new comer-which is exactly what this thread is about. See, I agree with a lot of the stuff you suggest, right up unto this point. It may be a perfect fit for some kinds of strategy games, but this statement is just way too general for me. I did two strategy games for the Droid last year, and I know for a fact that neither of them would have been easier to do using Unity - quite the opposite in fact. Secondly, I don't see the point in recommending a 3D framework for a beginner wanting to do a strategy game. Programming is hard enough to learn without the added burden of having to learn the intricacies of 3D graphics as well. IMO, a beginner should learn to code first (and for that, Java and/or C# are IMO the best mainstream languages right now). Once a person is at a level where they can actually develop a simple 2D strategy game, then it might be worthwhile for them to consider going to 3D. I say "might be", because unless you're going mainstream or your game has gimmicks that specifically rely on 3D, I do not believe there are any advantages to 3D over 2D. It is not a coincidence that many of the longest-living 1-man indie studios out there have portfolios made up entirely of 2D games. Speaking of common mistakes - I need to listen to my own suggestion about keeping focus on what is important. We're starting to go back over old territory here (I seem to recall a similar discussion last year) and I need to get back to Eclipse if I am to reach my goal of finishing another two games this year. Lest I forget to say this later; thanks for the discussion. /Strategy Designer/Developer, [link=http://www.micabyte.com/]MicaByte Systems[/link]
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#38 8 MAY 2011 at 4:33pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6934 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	I absolutely agree 3d is not necessary and it's the basic programming structure one should get down first and foremost- but I have never found working with 3d engines difficult- and in a lot of ways it's far easier than trying to mess with 2d sprites, draw commands and the like. Games like Vogel's Spiderweb RPGs are a good representation of successful 2d platforms -not to mention all the HPS offerings and the like- so certainly if this is the type of game someone is shooting for you can forego the 3d. If on the other hand your shooting for a game like The total War series, or perhaps something akin to CM games format in many ways 3d is a straight forward path. 3d engines like A8 or Unity are not difficult to learn -and learn quickly- and assets are pretty abundant. If a new comer spent a month of weekends with either they'd be comfortable. From your description, it sounds to me like your project lacked proper planning, which is another common problem with IT projects in general (not just in indie game development). In other words, it appears to me, based on your story, that the choice of tools was merely a symptom of other issues within that development group (however talented it may otherwise have been). More a clash of ego when you boil it down. When in a development meeting the creater of Better Bodies recommends Irrilct they tend to vote in his favor- when myself I am not a modeler. However knowing one's way around 3d Studio Max isn't really the same as knowing IDE's and compilers and engines. Of the group-which was quite large, well over 20 members- I was the only one who had worked with engines before. Simply everyone was browsing engine sites and reading feature lists...window shopping at best. I was but one vote-and since i had been moreless pulled into the project I didn't fight real hard to point out the errors of free open source undeveloped renderers (which are quite different than 3d engine packages) or the problems scripting languages like LUA posed (used in irrilct). i had my own projects going on the side- and really was going through the motions thinking eventually with experience others would catch on. Many did but the desire was gone- and i simply moved on and filed it away under lessons learned. I am most productive on my own, or at most working with one other person. 20 members- or game design by committe isn't my cup of tea.
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#39 9 MAY 2011 at 4:18am
Saint Ruth Centurion Posts : 108 Joined: 3 APR 2008 Status : Offline	*Originally Posted By GJK* All of you talented programmers out there - I just wish that I had half of your knowledge! Is it a lack of time or desire or interest that you don't code your own games? All of which is perfectly understandable of course! ... I can do all the graphics if there's any programmers out there interested! Do you design games yourself? Do you do much graphics? Mine are fairly crap (see below)...I of course copied the tank/inf/plane pics. I did start doing a game (it's playable but no AI yet)... http://members.upc.ie/jeanette.kelly/ Not sure if I'll continue that or do it again in 3D (still hexes, but 3D hexes), which ironically would have been easier as I had to do the 2D "engine" myself, but there are existing Java 3D game engines... Doing a game (or any large coding) loses its appeal to many people when they've to spend hours hunting down pesky irregular bugs... By the way, I said avoid OO languages at the start, but as they say here, it probably is better to start with an OO language if you're going to code one...OO languages just make coding (in the short term, learning-wise) more complicated...just don't start with C++...I still get a headache thinking about pointers to pointers...
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#40 9 MAY 2011 at 6:52am
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	*Originally Posted By Saint Ruth* *Originally Posted By GJK* All of you talented programmers out there - I just wish that I had half of your knowledge! Is it a lack of time or desire or interest that you don't code your own games? All of which is perfectly understandable of course! ... I can do all the graphics if there's any programmers out there interested! Do you design games yourself? Do you do much graphics? Mine are fairly crap (see below)...I of course copied the tank/inf/plane pics. I did start doing a game (it's playable but no AI yet)... http://members.upc.ie/jeanette.kelly/ Not sure if I'll continue that or do it again in 3D (still hexes, but 3D hexes), which ironically would have been easier as I had to do the 2D "engine" myself, but there are existing Java 3D game engines... Doing a game (or any large coding) loses its appeal to many people when they've to spend hours hunting down pesky irregular bugs... By the way, I said avoid OO languages at the start, but as they say here, it probably is better to start with an OO language if you're going to code one...OO languages just make coding (in the short term, learning-wise) more complicated...just don't start with C++...I still get a headache thinking about pointers to pointers... I do: [link]http://garykrockover.com/graphics/[/link] And don't misunderstand me, I do understand the hours upon hours and hard work that it takes to code anything - I make ecommerce websites for a living so I understand that. I'm actually in awe of the talent here and just wish that I had half of that knowledge so that I could code up something like a PC version of an existing solitaire only boardgame. "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#41 9 MAY 2011 at 3:19pm
toonces Commander Posts : 2322 Joined: 21 MAR 2006 Status : Offline	GJK, I actually have the same idea as you. I got a copy of the "Going to War" book a few weeks ago and have it sitting here on the desk beside me. My idea is to make a computer version of Downtown. The AI shouldn't be too hard to do since it's all table based. It looks like it will be time-consuming to do, but for what I'm trying to do- port a boardgame to computer- the Going to War/MMF method seems to be a good bet. "I am always fondling my nut sack, just to be safe. " - bboyer66 "It's like Mount and Blade got together with Total War and had a game baby." - Bison36 on Real Warfare Northern Crusades
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#42 10 MAY 2011 at 1:48am
Saint Ruth Centurion Posts : 108 Joined: 3 APR 2008 Status : Offline	*Originally Posted By GJK* I do: http://garykrockover.com/graphics/ Very nice! Clean and crisp!
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#43 10 MAY 2011 at 6:55am
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	*Originally Posted By toonces* GJK, I actually have the same idea as you. I got a copy of the "Going to War" book a few weeks ago and have it sitting here on the desk beside me. My idea is to make a computer version of Downtown. The AI shouldn't be too hard to do since it's all table based. It looks like it will be time-consuming to do, but for what I'm trying to do- port a boardgame to computer- the Going to War/MMF method seems to be a good bet. Yeah, there you go! I was beginning to feel like the idea of a straight boardgame to PC conversion was just crazy! I know with Patton's Best, and the reason that I'm starting with it, is that I have the graphics already drawn. The AI is already there - in the game itself, I just need to learn a language or use a tool that will let me put a map on the screen, allow the player to move pieces, add a GUI with the option to save the game and have the game be "aware" of where the pieces are, when to roll and look up things on a the various charts and I'm sure a whole other mess of things but it certainly must be a lot less work than learning C# or Java and programming something from the ground up that I've designed. My copy of the book should be in any day and I just hope that it gives me enough to get going with - and I think that it will. I've already gone through a few tutorials for MMF2 and so far it's pretty darn simple to make a pong type game and other non-related type games. Let me know how you get along with your project and maybe we can collaborate if one or both of us gets stuck. I can help with the graphics too if you need. "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#44 10 MAY 2011 at 6:56am
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	*Originally Posted By Saint Ruth* *Originally Posted By GJK* I do: http://garykrockover.com/graphics/ Very nice! Clean and crisp! Thank you! I actually have about a 100 other maps, counters and what-not's that I've done over the years that aren't shown there. Just a fun little hobby of mine. "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#45 10 MAY 2011 at 5:06pm
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	Ok - my copy of Going To War by Jason Darby came in today and wow, I can't wait to get started. Just quickly browsing through the TOC, it looks like it has a wealth of information to get me started on the project that I'm wanting to do and more; implementing maps and terrain costs, weather, enemy movement, combat, leader units, defensive positions, maps (scrolling, mini-maps, FOW), income and more. Is there a similar book for C#, C++ or Java? I'd be interested to see them if so! "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#46 10 MAY 2011 at 6:55pm
Braz24 Centurion Posts : 737 Joined: 3 AUG 2006 Status : Offline	2 You guys with "Going to War"...Do you get unlimited use of the Macromedia Fusion 2 program or is it time limited? If it's time limited, how long and how much is the activation cost? It will be interesting to see how you guys do with Going to War...keep us all informed about your progress. @GJK...good work on the projects shown on the link! Do you know Dean Essig from The Gamers personally? If so, I may have met you while doing collates in Homer, Illinois pre-MMP days. I know Dean personally (but recently haven't kept in touch since I moved to the inland Northwest) and I did a number of small projects for Dean, collates, and lots of playtesting of his games before they were published, etc..
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#47 10 MAY 2011 at 7:10pm
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	Braz- The book comes with the demo version of MMF2 - you can fully create a project, you just can't compile (thus can't share it unless that person also has the MMF2 demo). I've seen copies of MMF2 Developer on ebay for around $50; I will have to just make sure it's not some pirated copy. The regular purchase price of MMF2 is $119 and for MMF2 Developer (the one you'd probably want) is a pricey $369. I'll cross that bridge if/when I come to it. Yes, I'll keep posting here. It may go like other wargaming projects that I start - they fizzle out when I hit too many stumbling blocks or I may see it to fruition (as is usually the case with the graphics that I do). No, I have not met Dean in person though we have chatted online. I did work for Adam Starkweather of MMP as well, who knows Dean. He was really nice when I chatted to him seeking permission to reproduce his maps for the VASSAL modules. "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#48 11 MAY 2011 at 5:05am
Staggerwing Colonel Posts : 3317 Joined: 4 AUG 2007 Status : Offline	To GhostRyder (and anyone else who uses Unity), Can a project started in Unity for Mac OSX be carried over to the Windows version? Lets say I start a project in Mac and work on it for a while then when it's time to 'compile' the game I want to do so in the Windows version can I 'import' the project or the folders and will the Win version be able to take the project files and related assets and convert them where needed? Will that include any scripts as well or does that depend on what language I've used? Wit Ye further, or how...? -Voluspa (Poetic Eddas)
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#49 12 MAY 2011 at 9:41pm
GJK Centurion Posts : 744 Joined: 1 FEB 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	Ok, I know that I'm over-hyping this here, but but WOW, MMF2 is so darn simple, really. So very simple to assign values to pieces and to and reference those values for calculations in things like remaining MP's or combat values. And since it's drag and drop code, you can just drag a common action to each piece that it applies to instead of copying lines of code and doing the same. I dunno but I just think that this is really a great tool for making simple to medium complexity 2d games (hex and counter games for wargamers). You wouldn't use this for 3d or complex games with 1000's of units but for a lot of boardgame to PC conversions, this would be a very viable option to look into - IMHO. "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." -Dean Vernon Wormer
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#50 12 MAY 2011 at 10:09pm
Braz24 Centurion Posts : 737 Joined: 3 AUG 2006 Status : Offline	@Gjk...So does the software also have built in AI or is this pretty much face to face via computer? Also, how detailed can you get your maps to look? Pretty generic/plain? Or maybe pretty nice and detailed? Sounds like a cool program and book!
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