My very first game

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Greetings,

Seen this is my first post, I’ll introduce myself first.

My name is Anthony, I am 21 years old student and I live in Belgium (flemmish part) I have been very intrested in game development for years, and I’ve had a one year course in webdesign (css, html, AC3). Now that I’m an economy student, I’d like to keep game development as a part of my life… as a hobby.

Together with a bunch of friends we’ve had the idea to create our own 2d action game (with multiplayer features). I saw your members don’t like the “how do I make a mmorpg game?” question, so I’m going to be as accurate as possible.

None of us ever made our own game, except for silly flash games. So we have no idea how to work constructively. We all need to learn a lot, code wise, and we thought of hiring a concept artist for the graphics. So as I mentioned before, the game will be a single- and multiplayer browser 2d action game, made with Java.

I know the game is made with Java, the website is made by html/css, and the database is made by PhP. Though I don’t know how to make players connect with other players, for example. Another problem I’m having is that a lot of people are offering me their services (not for free) but that I don’t know how I should divide the game development in steps so that it’s easier for all of us to work together… if you know what I mean.

For instance; I’m making the game in Java, person x is making the database for website + game, and person y is making the website… well I have no idea how we should interact with each-other, or if it would be better to make the game step by step instead of all working separately.

I hope I didn’t annoy you by this cliche question but I’m really getting desperate here, I don’t want to give up on the dream I’m having at the moment because I really want to make it work.

Kind regards,

Anthony

#2

Welcome to JGO. Actually this section is used to ask/post some mysteries. For introduction you may want go to General Discussion.

#3

I’d recommend getting a degree in computer science :slight_smile:
I’m on my 4th semester, and we’re learning all sorts of ways of working together. Things like CVS, subversion, XP and UP are things you’d want to know about when working in groups. There are many ways to go about it, and it is very hard to explain without demonstrations or many lessons in it.

#4

Just a note-if you’re going to implement multiplayer, do it dead last.
Implementing multiplayer is very time consuming.
Also, I’d recommend you all work on the game and not on database/website; you don’t even know what the game is going be like! And you might want to consider using a 3rd party game library after you learn Java2D, because Java2D is both harder to use and slower than most game libraries (like LibGDX, Slick, LWJGL, etc.)

#5

yeah it is slower but most definitely not harder to use. If anything slick and is as easy and libgdx is a littler harder and then pure lwjgl can be very very hard if you go more then glBegin glEnd.

I would recommend libgdx for when you want speed with ease of use. It takes about 5 mins to setup and is really fast. Unless you want to create a engine/frame work from scratch which is what I am trying to do and it is not at all trivial.

#6

Probably not an advice you want to hear:
Your very first game should neither be a multiplayer nor a browser game.

#7

Thanks for all the feedback.

I know this isn’t going to be easy at all, and I knew from the start that this isn’t going to be a project of a few months… but close to a year maybe?

I’m studying Economy while having computer science in the back of my head… I’ve always planned to keep it as a hobby, and these days you can find any information on the internet… that’s why chose not to take computer science in school.

I won’t start by making a multiplayer game, though I will make a game that is going to evolve to that stage one day or another, hopefully…

So thanks for all your replies. Though the challenge is extremely hard, I’m not thinking about giving up, at all :).

Cya soon!