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4X

10 (28.6%)

RTS

6 (17.1%)

Fortress

3 (8.6%)

Idc what you say I want that one you can't do

5 (14.3%)

I'm voting for the lolz

11 (31.4%)

Total Members Voted: 35

[engineer13]

Alright I found the mistake that was screwing it up (simple math mistake...seriously all I did was change something akin to varA *= (256/varB + 1) to varA *= (256/(varB + 1)).  Now the graphics seem to be working correctly so here you go:
http://www.megafileupload.com/104F/main.exe

The next step is kind of gonna be a big overhaul since I'm changing from turn-based system over to a real-time system.

[engineer13]

Alright, quick update.  I have set up a box in which you will be able to move your ship.  I also have prepared the ships with variable coordinates.  Next step is to allow you to right click to move it and then setup a system to detect where you get hit.

[engineer13]

Been kind of busy as of late with life.  Tomorrow I should hopefully be able to put some more work into the program.

[Retropunch]

Been kind of busy as of late with life.  Tomorrow I should hopefully be able to put some more work into the program.

I don't mean to be rude, but it's probably best to only update when you've got something big if you want people to keep checking! Lots of updates of 'I didn't do anything' aren't very interesting and just clog up people's 'new replies' screen.

[LordArchibald]

I can program any of this stuff.

It's almost irrelevant. There is a saying that there are only two kind of people, those who know how to do something and those who do it

My issue is that every time I begin a project in game creation I will work on it for a while ranging from a few hours to a week or so, but then something will happen that distracts my attention and suddenly all my drive to complete the project disappears and I never finish it.

Like 99.9% of people who want to make games are in identical situation you are You are not alone, that's for sure I have been there for like 15 years before I overcame it and learned how to actually finish games.

Unfortunatelly, I have no simple advice
Work on your discipline, set deadlines (these work miracles, really), try to "make a game in one month", etc. Overall, treating time as a scarce resource is the key here.

[Servant Corps]

Meanwhile, I have just realized I am already making games, and I hate it.

Oh, I just accepted into an educational program to help me learn how to code. Let me practice first by programming a Rock/Paper/Scissors game, a Greed dice roller, and a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game. No, scratch that. Two Choose-Your-Own Adventure games.

Oh cool, I just learned how to use Enumerables, let me use that to program a variant of the Josephus Problem where everyone picks a number, a person is randomly selected, and then more people are counted based on the number the selected person has, and then that person gets eliminated, and then you repeat the process. It's more confusing than it actually looks.

Now, this week the educational program I'm in tells me that I get to program a Guessing Game...

...and a Bingo Game...(and by the way, that Bingo Game is equivalent to an exam, I heard one student get a bad evaluation on her game because her code was not elegant enough).

So, by the end of this week, I have programmed 7 games. And none of them are at all "fun", though the point may be not to actually get good gameplay, but to improve your coding skills so that you can do well in a 9-5 cubicle job. It seems interesting though that programming a game seems equivalent to producing a regular old non-gamey application, only that a game does not actually need to serve a purpose.

[dorf]

Try ganging up with a group of similarly minded people and make a game together. One person will need to spearhead the project so that it doesn't die.

[bahihs]

Try making a simple game you'd enjoy playing

[Retropunch]

So, by the end of this week, I have programmed 7 games. And none of them are at all "fun", though the point may be not to actually get good gameplay, but to improve your coding skills so that you can do well in a 9-5 cubicle job. It seems interesting though that programming a game seems equivalent to producing a regular old non-gamey application, only that a game does not actually need to serve a purpose.

This is unfortunately exactly the case. Programming isn't really 'fun', it's the outcome which makes it worth while. This is why so many people try and fail, because they expect the making of the game to be as fun as playing it.
Luckily, as you get better it becomes easier to concentrate on the broader aspects rather than worrying about syntax, but it never becomes 'fun' in the same way as playing a game is.

If you really want to do it then you need to do all of the basics first - you can't skip over them and there's nothing that will magically get you past it. It just depends how much you want to make that dream game.

[Araph]

Meanwhile, I have just realized I am already making games, and I hate it.

Programs like that suck. I'm actually planning on switching majors from computer science to animation for that exact reason.

Computer science courses are designed with an engineer's mindset (i.e. all logic and very little game design) and have the end goal of teaching someone to learn how to solve a set of someone else's problems with code. Useful, but not fun. It's way better if you learn to make games on your own instead of being told to create endless variations of simple puzzles and logic problems (they barely qualify as games as it is).

Seriously, fuck those programs. No, I'm not bitter.

...

(I'm really bitter.)

Try making a simple game you'd enjoy playing

Go do this. It's way more fun and, if you're moderately dedicated to improving, you'll learn just as quickly. I know people who have taken entry-level programming classes and come out the other end with tic_tac_toe.exe and pong.exe and whatever other BS they had to write to pass without understanding a single line of the code they wrote.

[dorf]

Interesting views on programming!

As a person with an engineer mindset, I loved my comp-sci study programme. I also love solving problems.
I guess making and completing games is easier for someone like me vs. a person who goes into gamedev solely because they love games?

[Servant Corps]

Yeah, I should clarify that while the games themselves are terrible clones, I do like programming them. It's just that it's not fun knowing that the end product is, indeed, pretty terrible.

I'm not interested in game design as a job, so the only games that I would make are the ones required for learning the languages. Still, programming a simple game that I actually would enjoy playing might be a good idea to explore.

[Retropunch]

Yeah, I should clarify that while the games themselves are terrible clones, I do like programming them. It's just that it's not fun knowing that the end product is, indeed, pretty terrible.

The problem is, so many people skip the basics and just try to rush to making DF2020 or something. If you don't understand the fundamentals you'll never make a good game. It's like trying to speak a language without know grammar.

What I always did when I was learning those basic assignments is just try to do one thing to make it mine. So if it was a snake clone, I'd add in a second AI snake. If it was drafts I'd add in a piece that exploded when you touched it. Just simple stuff, but enough that I didn't feel like I was just going through the motions.

Also, remember that even something simple done REALLY well will be enough to attract people. Take something like Risk of Rain - it's a simple platformer, but it's so well done that it's beaten loads of AAA games.

Just keep pushing, and don't skip the basics!

[Servant Corps]

Update on my life as a careerist game developer:

After making a prototype "time-modification" game in JavaScript*, the school has cooled off on its game-making craze. Most of the work we're doing now are somewhat more practical. However, there are still a few extra credit assignments that I ended up doing, and the toughest of those assignments was to remake Battleship. The AI is pretty terrible (just random shots all the way), but you got player versus player, CPU versus CPU, and player versus CPU. I even added my own story about the game taking place after a nuclear World War 3, and some people seemed to like that. (Future expansion would be a better AI, of course.)

Some of the assignments can be twisted into unique games, if you wanted to. For example, one of our mandatory assignments were to make To-Do Apps, and isn't HabitRPG just one big To-Do App with gamification? Another extra credit assignment, called "Self-Replicating Robots", enable me to trace the rise and fall of a robotic space empire, which, you know, seems to lend very well to any game that deals with space empires. I'm interested in expanding on the "Self-Replicating Robots" challenge, possibly by using Iron Testament's economic simulations.

Again, the aim is not to go into game design. The point is to gain enough skills and talents that will enable me to work in a cubicle. But it might be interesting to develop your skill set properly, and it does seem slightly more fun than building Fibonacci algorithms.

*"Zybourne Clock Redux". The prototype was interesting, but some more tinkering needs to be done to make the game fun.

[Antsan]

PTW