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[Tsuchigumo550]

I need a java game engine to work with over the summer as a sort of self-training exercise. I was hoping to build an RPG with highly variable class customization, like my earlier posts in "Games you wish existed" and "Rollers Block". Basically, I need-

An RPG style engine- this can be anything 2D, free-movement or grid based. Something with classes- you know, mage, knight, and the like- and stats.

I need to be able to edit the classes freely. My plan is to build a system where you can hybridize classes freely, name the new class, and save it. This can be done in any way. The approach can be formulaic or otherwise. I just need to be able to do this.

[Anvilfolk]

I don't think such a thing exists - I've tried doing Java based gamedev for a while but I don't want to do low-level programming, such as using OpenGL (lwjgl). The one gamedev library that potentially seemed nice was Slick2D, but back when I tried it, it felt like a complete mess, and it was a pain just to get some letters on screen, and lacking documentation. Might be better now?

Good luck finding a Java library for making RPG games in particular. You're likely going to have to develop that yourself, I feel.

[Tsuchigumo550]

I've found a bloody ton of things that are probably useless but worth a shot.

Meanwhile.

FUCK. GITHUB.

Who can figure this out? Ever? I have NO idea what I'm doing with it's bullshit. Apparently, after figuring out what the hell you want out of the download, hopefully, you still can't do what it says you can do and get files the Github way.

It's bullshit. Easy to use my ass. Why is the hardest part of this shit GETTING STARTED?

[Anvilfolk]

I guess it's probably a good idea to understand git before using github. I'm slowly making the transition from SVN to git+github and am not particularly enjoying the process either... you can also use SVN with github, which might be more intuitive if you've not used version control before.

Would you mind sharing what you've found? I'm always interested in keeping up with these things

[Tsuchigumo550]

Nothing good. Something that looks like a straight rip of Elona, but with 12% of the everything...

So far, nothing.

Nothing I can use.

You'd think, by now, someone would have a simple clone of something else in Java. Fire Emblem, FFT, surely SOMEONE's managed to clone these in some way?

[Levi]

Java isn't really that popular of a language for making games.  Probably why there isn't that many good game engines for it.

[Killjoy]

FUCK. GITHUB.

So, you're too stupid to use git. Fuck github?

How about you actually learn what git is before writing stupid rants on a online forum..
Or alternatively, google it. "How to pull source from github" gives you This first reply would have answered you question.

[Anvilfolk]

Dude, not cool. Chill out. This stuff can be confusing.

Also, there's not that huge of an interest in tactics based games for the PC, so there's not a community. Also, don't underestimate how hard it is to develop one of these... or the motivation needed to get it done Heck, it's hard to find gamedev libraries that aren't for C++ in general, let alone for a specific language for a specific type of game!

Either way, if you're willing to go for ease of development, I would definitely recommend Python and its SFML bindings. Both of these are super accessible, though perhaps PySFML's documentation isn't the best. SFML's original documentation's pretty OK though. I don't think it's Java's SFML bindings are quite up to par, but they exist, so that might also be a possibility.

I'm currently working on an engine using that Python+SFML, but it'll probably take a while before there's anything usable

[Anvilfolk]

By the way, just found this:

http://roguelike-eng.sourceforge.net/

Could perhaps be interesting?

[Tsuchigumo550]

It's a horrible idea to ignore food until AFTER you've built up some momentum.

The link posted seems quite helpful, and I admittedly jumped into Java without really knowing the strengths and weaknesses of either language. Python is something that I'm not opposed to, but I don't know what SFML is. I've never had on official programming class because I'm stuck in farmer hell and I have to travel an hour or two to get to any non-Internet source of help.

Probably should have found an engine before choosing a coding language, to be honest. And being angry at Github was probably wrong, but I still find it an overcomplicated way of doing things with little to no user-friendly... anything. It expects you to know a lot of background information without really telling you what it is- if something is supposed to be widely used, it shouldn't need high levels of experience to understand and use, features should make sense and work consistently (not saying they wouldn't, but it didn't.

[itisnotlogical]

I've always found Python extremely easy to use compared to any C language, mostly because Python uses actual words in a way that makes sense to humans, for example 'def' means you want to define a function, 'print()' prints something to the console, etc.

However, I haven't had much luck finding game development libraries for Python. Unity3D supports scripting via a variant of Python called Boo, but Unity isn't entirely free. Pygame is free, but I found it poorly-documented and extremely difficult to learn. Panda3D is free, extremely well-documented (for Python anyway) and supports C++ as well. OTOH, you learn by doing with Panda3D since there's very few traditional "tutorials" available; generally, you're expected to know Python pretty well and strip the sample programs' source for code to use in your own games.

I recommend starting here. It goes through all of the things you'll use in every day use of Python in rough order of importance, and there's a section on Pygame if you want to skip straight to that as well.

[Anvilfolk]

Like itisnotlogical said, if you already know Java, jumping to Python is going to be a breeze. It's so much simpler, with so much less to worry about! Just follow a couple of tutorials and you'll see how much easier stuff is in general.

Regarding game libraries, SFML is a really neat and well-organised, relatively high-level language library for multimedia. It's definitely more high-level than SDL, and in my opinion, overall better. It's also hardware accelerated without having to be full-screen. If you're new to programming, more high-level means that instead of worrying about the nitty-gritty details of "this pixel goes here", you can instead just say, "draw this ship there, looking in that direction". This is obviously simplified, but hey

It is not, however, a game engine by itself. Meaning it does not organise or structure your game for you. It's also mostly 2D, but I recommend starting with 2D anyways.

Maybe some integrated development environments like Flash or Unity might be better to learn. It turns out it's pretty darned hard to organise code for games

[itisnotlogical]

Just tried PySFML. Did the developers of this library have some sort of bizarre capitalization fetish? Lordy. Other than that it's extremely easy to use, definitely much easier than Pygame. Will definitely look further into it

[Anvilfolk]

Heheh, I think the weird naming is because it is based off SFML which is for C++... and perhaps the SFML docs, or tutorials and stuff, are better than the PySFML ones. It should then be possible to use the PySFML API docs

[itisnotlogical]

Unfortunately, I just discovered a pretty terrible bug; the method that checks for intersection between two rectangles is broken. It seems like a really great library, but until the next version comes out and they've fixed that, it looks like I'm not going to be able to use it for very much