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[Singularity-SRX]

So I've decided to start my own, due to my incredible love of them

The idea is to have a game with very good and realistic AI, be 2D, have dynamic maps and LOTS of weapons. Campaign and skirmish as well.

I KNOW it's ambitious, but I've got a lot of the project set up with a onenote notebook set up with the order in which to do things. If I can, I want it to be easy to add maps (although this will probably mean it will have to be tile based (and that's usually ugly )) and weapons and enemies and that kind of stuff.

So my question now is, where to start? I know which order I should do things, but I'm not sure which language to program it in. Preferably something fast and easy to use.
I pick up languages relatively fast, and it's the holidays so I don't really mind how long it takes.
Yes I know it takes a long time to make games, but I plan on getting at least a basic model of it up and running in a good time.

The aim to have right now is just have a basic map, a few enemies and a few guns (ie. one or 2 for testing effects) just to make sure the game will work.
So my goals right now are:

• Program a basic engine to handle basic events
• Create a few different weapons with simple effects and attributes
• Create a few blocks to test collisions
• Program a VERY simple AI so the enemy will at least try and kill me

If you want to know, here's a list of planned features (so far):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Tactical maps with strong points and weak points
• Customizable characters with equipment
• Dynamic line of sight with blurry peripherals (keeping you on your toes )
• Varied enemies
• LOTS of guns with varied attachments
• Varied (but rare) grenades
• Smart AI which will group and use an efficient pathfinding method (using waypoints and then letting the other part of the AI take over)
• Dynamic terrain effects
• Campaign and skirmish modes
• And of course a zombie mode

So if anyone can give me some help or ideas it would be greatly appreciated

[Supermikhail]

I've recently and suddenly developed an opinion that enemy AI won't be realistic if the PC isn't. And doesn't act realistically. With which I imply, probably, that it should be possible to one-two shot kill the PC, as well as AI opponents. Or apply the DF system (which is much harder).

On the topic of languages. Well, nobody here would tell you to choose one specific language, because there are, generally, no bad or good languages, although if one wants to be in game industry, one should probably choose either C++ or C#, and a lot of people do simple 2D games in Adobe Flash.

But, and under some assumptions of mine from what you've written, what languages do you know or are familiar with?

[Singularity-SRX]

I've done a bit with AS2, and know how to do most things, but it's fairly slow, and I'd like to make it so I can add maps and weapons by adding to a text file or something. In flash you can do that with xml but it ruins peoples saves with it.
Even though I love the movie clips in it and the way it's LITERAL-oop, I'd prefer to do it in something where I can easily edit the elements.
Done a bit with c++ as well. Only a very small bit, I've done a text based tic tac toe game

The language I've been looking at is python with the pygame libraries, I read an article on a guy who made an rpg in a week, without knowing any of the language, and apparently it's a really good language.

I know I sound like a noob, and I am, but I know a lot of the fundamentals, and REALLY REALLY want to do this.
Also I've heard that c# is very nice, so I'll check that out as well.

[Supermikhail]

Actually... HI-FIVE FROM ANOTHER NOOB! Basically, after some mucking about with C++, I've just started on Java, and I've just made it read data from a text file, so I'm pretty excited about it, but I can't speak for C# as I'm on Linux and as a rule programs in C# don't want to run on my computer. And I've never used python either, but good for that guy as everybody who uses python here doesn't seem to go beyond ascii, even with pygame.

Although, there was a guy who made pretty rad top-down shooters in C# with XNA, and I've even got his Youtube channel in my subscriptions, check him out, and I believe he goes by the same nickname here, whatever use it may be for you, as he hasn't uploaded any videos of his project in a while, and hasn't posted about his project either. Maybe you'll get inspired, XNA whatever it may be seems to be a very good thing for making games, if you're on Windows.

[MrWiggles]

Well if your goal is to have mundo AI, then work a few guns, then work on the AI fighting each other. Build a more dynamic environment along with the AI.

[Singularity-SRX]

That's basically the idea. Tactical maps FTW

Also, I've decided to use python, then slowly convert it over to c++
But yeah, gonna see if I can get a basic tile map up right now

[alfie275]

The first thing I would do is write a wrapper for graphics/audio, that way objects dont have to worry about that and you can easily switch to different graphics/audio engines later.