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[Xkill]

Hello everyone, i'm a new guy here, just registered in.

However, I want to make a game, something that I call a Roguelike Sandbox Life Simulation Game (Quite like Dwarf Fortress but in the Life Simulation Genre and the Modern Times and Space ones too in the later game.) I know that it looks quite strange, but I think its going to be cool.

Anyways, I would like to know a good Engine and Programing Language to make it, you guys know anyone?

[Xkill]

Yeah, I was planing on a complex game just like Dwarf Fortress, covering all aspects of life, right from the birth of a baby,then the beautiful creation of a fully developed human beign, and then death.

And even some sci-fi some years later with the development of Space Travel.

[alfie275]

Okay, just gonna say it, if you can't code, you really don't have a chance in hell of accomplishing this.

Maybe try something smaller first? Like pong, or pacman.

[Hugehead]

Only humans? You know, there's a really good game called "Real Life", I haven't gotten very far in it but it's very fun, have to balance all your needs like in The Sims but much more realistic.

Seriously though, the Libtcod engine looks pretty good, it can do real time and since it sounds like you can't take control of guys in your idea might work well.
Linky: http://doryen.eptalys.net/libtcod/

[Xkill]

Well, Libtcod engine isn't the engine for me I think, I do want to control my guy and control every little aspect of his life, like if I just got to my 18's, I do have to work on something then I just get out of my house get the newspaper and look for a job on it.

Or, I can just get out of the house and look for a job in the proximities, then get some money go to a cheap apartment and pay rent 'til I can get my own house.

[Omegastick]

First questions first, do you have any programming experience? If so then what?

[Virex]

Libtcod should still work. It's just a collection of functions for drawing stuff on a roguelike console, handling key input and some auxillary stuff like color functions, random noise, pathfinding and probably a few things I can't remember. It doesn't force you to make a single-player roguelike, that's just what it's used for most often.


As for getting started, get a bit acquainted with your favorite programming language (if you don't have any, pick a language that looks interesting and stick with it, that's the best advice anyone can give without going into personal preferences), then dredge up the libtcod bindings for that language and look up some tutorials (some languages don't have any tutorials, so in that case you'll have to figure things out yourself, but most do). Then you just start forming the world as you like.


And it's true we were planning on setting up an IRC channel. So far the problem seems to be that some are on European time and others are on American time.

[Sergius]

Try t-engine (comes with ToME 4). It may be good. I have no idea, but it supports modules to make different roguelikes.

[Virex]

T-engine would work as well, but it's only available for Lua out of the box. I don't know if ports to other languages have been made, but chances are you'll need to use a FFI if you want to use it with another language. Luckily, Lua was made to work as a scripting language so this shouldn't be too difficult, but it's still something to consider.

[Xkill]

Thanks you all for helping me, and No, I do not have any programming experience, I did was looking to learn it but then I did remembered of Visual Basic, Will it going to teach me how to program? And i'd forgot to say I've been thinking of an ASCII like game, does this makes the programming easier or harder?

I think that I'll look in the C++ Language for now.

[Virex]

Well, you'll need to get some basic things down before you can really start making games, but nothing really advanced. This site has some excellent tutorials and reference articles for beginning C++ programmers. Once you've got the basics of working with variables, functions, pointers and objects down, it's probably most fun to just start working on a very simple game and look up or ask things you don't understand as the questions pop up. The libtcod bindings for C++ are pretty good and tutorials for them are ubiquitous, so getting your own little @ to walk around the screen should be pretty easy.

[Biag]

This. Do this: http://tinyurl.com/pythontutorial.

That's the tutorial that really got me back into programming. It uses Python, which is my personal favorite language- it looks like real personspeak!- and libtcod, which is beautiful. I think that combination would be perfect for what you're doing, actually. And that tutorial specifically is stupendously helpful.

If you don't want to go the Python route, I would recommend C++. I'm pretty sure it's the most widely-used language out there, and it's not that much harder to read than Python. And it's fast.

And, with all that said and done, I'm working on something with passing similarity to what you're doing. In Python, and using libtcod. If you want to check out my source, pop me a PM and I'll see if I can send it on over.

PS- last piece of advice. Hit ctrl+S to save all the time. Like, all the time. I save after pretty much any change I make to the code and I've never regretted it.

[G-Flex]

Hello everyone, i'm a new guy here, just registered in.

However, I want to make a game, something that I call a Roguelike Sandbox Life Simulation Game (Quite like Dwarf Fortress but in the Life Simulation Genre and the Modern Times and Space ones too in the later game.) I know that it looks quite strange, but I think its going to be cool.

Anyways, I would like to know a good Engine and Programing Language to make it, you guys know anyone?

If you're going to program anything even remotely that complex, the first thing you need to do is learn how to program, and learn how to program well.

This isn't like wanting to bake brownies; you can't just read a short how-to and get going. This is the sort of thing you need to develop some serious skills for that you aren't going to learn over a weekend. If you want to program a game, first you have to learn how to program in general, and that takes a lot of time and commitment, and the ability to think a certain way.

[Virex]

You can make most programming languages readable if you stick to clear names for functions and variables (including Assembly, though you'll probably still need to note things down) and sometimes take a step back and ask yourself "what would this code here say if I return after 3 months". Another good guideline is to keep your functions to less then 12 lines, keep the lines short and stick to clear function names (don't worry about having small functions, you can always inline them)

[G-Flex]

Another good guideline is to keep your functions to less then 12 lines

Less than 12? Seriously? That's extremely restrictive unless you're programming something very, very basic. If you stick to this guideline, you're almost guaranteed to end up with weird spaghetti code with functions split up into multiple functions for no particular reason.