Slick Forums

Somebody said to me long ago, if you want to make your dream real, you must do it yourself. And so, this time came (not so long ago), when I decided, that I want to start making game.

In my own head I already know every aspect of it, how it must look like. I write down crucial aspects of game, that will help you give me right advices, where to start from:
1. It will be based on space setting, where you're flying on ship.
2. It will be 2D with top-down view.
3. It will have deep RPG elements.
4. It will have Singleplayer (Solo Sandbox).
5. It will have Multiplayer (Somebody hosts/joins).
6. It will have Online Mode (login and join to main server).
7. It will have Physics, such as collision between ships, gravity & etc.
8. It will be P2P if possible in order to reduce server load.
9. It will have more action during combat and will rely on skills of player.

Basically if you will take Starfarer and EVE Online mix them, remove skill learning and level upping, add same module fitting system that was in good old X-COM 3 on ships, add multiple procedurally generated galaxies beside multiple procedurally generated star systems, you will get right direction of what I'm aiming to do.

My Java coding knowledge quite good. The problem is, that I never created any other Java programs beside console based ones, I never coded anything that had even slightest GUI, all programming languages, including java were used only to make console based applications.

Why I chooses Java? Because it's object oriented and it can be easily work on all possible PC OSes. I want to make game so it will be available for all OSes, that it could take advantage of 64-bit systems, SLIs, Crossfires, Multi-core/Multi-threading CPUs and in addition to everything have seamless network gameplay.

Creation of this game will be more like hobby for me, while I will continue with my standard work. I know, creation of such game could take couple of years. And I came to this forum to ask people with experience who know taste of failure and happiness of success for advice, where I need to start, where I need to begin, what Java/Slick libraries I need to use for creation of such game. I count on you and your advices.

Hi WarStalkeR, making games is fun I'm not that experienced in game development, but I do know that it is good to start making something very simple first, and finish it into a completely playable game. Just to get a good feeling of what is involved in even a small game. A big risk is to start with a project that is way too ambitious.

In your case, maybe a good starting point would be to make a simple top-down space asteroids clone? That should also lay some groundwork for more complex games such as the one you describe.

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| Last game

I think Gornova is right, the best way to start is to implement basic stuff. Once the prototype is playable, you can add whatever you want. Keep in mind that this means you have to organize you work well: it is not simple even to make a simple game (even though it is a lot of fun, and that's the important thing of course!). It is particularly important to desing classes well, because when the game gets bigger it is difficult to modify it.

Since you'd like to add RPGs elements, I suggest you to take a look at Artemis entity framework: There is a section here in the forum about it. I personally find the entity-component-system approach great for games, even in small games I noticed how I can add/remove things easily, without changing much in the code. And I think it is particularly suitable for an RPG, because if you organize things well I assure you that every game object will be able to do anything you want with a very little effort. On the main page of Artemis there is a link to an article on the T=machine forum, which will explain you everthing about what an entity framework is. It is a series of 5 articles, but it's worth taking a look