New Member Trying to Choose a Path

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hello All,

I’m a new member to this forum and feel glad to check out other’s people’s progress in game development. I’m a college student and wanted to apply some of the concepts I’m learning to a project and I said to myself why not try making a game as it seems to bring me the most fun at the moment. I had tried slick2d, lwjgl, unity etc before (mainly sticking to java suff), but I always failed to actually stay on track.

Now I’m wondering what to actually stick with and follow that. To apply all of these concepts I’m learning at my classes (oop, uml diagrams, rebus ability, etc.) I was thinking about making an asteroids clones and initially came back to lwjgl and saw the learning curve relative to slick2d seemed a bit larger, and switched to slick2d, but the community there doesn’t seem active (as in not many users online). I’m thinking about going back and sticking with the lwjgl library , but I wonder if anyone has any advice to provide? I would definitely benefit from hearing what others have found useful.

Thanks a lot!

#2

Hi and welcome.

Slick is more or less dead, but still nice.
I recommend you LibGdx, just google it.

Feel like going lowlevel? Chose LWJGL just a OpenGl wrapper for java.

Are you programming to recive a product or to program?

-ClaasJG

#3

Not sure of what you mean by to receive a program. But assuming I interpreted the question correctly I do it on my free time just for fun.

Thanks for the warm welcoming and recommendations as well!

#4

my usual advice - if you want something not too time consuming, easy to learn and watch results your screen rather quick - give processing a try see if it flies with you.

http://processing.org/ :point:

basically it’s a sketch book, if you make something nice you can port it to whatever later on.

#5

I recommend LWJGL then, it maks fun to get the hands dirty :wink:
Using things like libGDX you can be way more productive,
but as I said, its a nice fealing to get the hands dirty too :wink:

ClaasJG

#6

Besides the aforementioned Processing: http://forum.Processing.org/two/discussions, there’s Greenfoot too: http://www.Greenfoot.org/home.

#7

[quote=“vaironl,post:1,topic:51138”]
It may be best not to stress so much about which library to use. There’ll never be a shortage of people urging you to take up their favourite library, or ones they’ve written themselves and are trying to gain user base for - it can be a bit of a distraction.

If you’re really interested in utilising the OO stuff you’re learning I’d say just stick with the baseline tools available wherever you’re working. If that’s desktop/Eclipse (and why not - it’s free and excellent) just use Java2D which is right there, and has oodles of doc. I mean for asteroids and stuff you only need about 3 graphics functions anyway - any API is as good as any other. K.I.S.S.

Still, it all depends whether you’re really interested in learning game dev libraries or learning to program.

#8

Thanks for all of the responses, all!!!

As the previous post highlights there are quite a bit of choices mentioned. It’s a bit tough trying to make a choice, but I’ll do some more research on all of these. Glad to see that regardless of the path I choose there are quite a lot of resources online, including this forum.

#9

For now, the library you choose doesn’t matter as much as what you learn from using them.

  • Jev
#10

You’ve mentioned a very important concept. I should be getting something out of this.
I’ve decide to initially stick with java2D as there are some pretty cool things I can do with it alone and then switch to lwjgl when I feel more comfortable. I bought an opengl super bible book sometime ago and I guess I could put it to good use.

I eventually want to try and learn how Notch makes his 2d look like 3d. I’ve found quite a lot of resources on this including the following http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=28554.0, and a guy in YouTube called the cherno has some tutorials on this. However this use beyond my scope at the moment. It’s just one of the few things I would like to try.

What I truly want to accomplish is 1. Have fun developing stuff, 2. Actually finish a game, 3. Enter a LD competition

#11

good choice :slight_smile:

#12

Don’t! TheCherno has absolutely no idea what the hell he’s talking about! For his “3D” Game Programming Series he just ripped all of the code from Notch’s Prelude of the Chambered from Ludum Dare and denies anybody calling him out on it. He can’t explain the code properly and he doesn’t even have the basic principles of 3D rendering down. When he explains the code he only tells you what the output of it is, not at all how the code itself really works nor functions. At the time he recorded the videos he had only 1 year of Java experience and in nearly all of his videos he’ll spew out at least one random line of complete bullshit, i.e: “It’s not hard to load 3D models in this type of engine” and, “This is a raycasting engine, incase you didn’t know.”

If you want to lose a few IQ points, go right ahead. But let me just tell you, he’s an idiot.

You have been warned.

  • Jev
#13

Yeah, watch out for youtubers and internet tutorials in general I say, too easy to be looking at either woefully outdated or just plain bad tuts and not know it because you might not know what a good one would look like.

I was helping someone who had been following a YT series and was having problems with speed, lo and behold there was stuff like linked lists everywhere, being used in the exactly worst way possible. Tutorial maker obviously didn’t know the first thing about basics like time complexity, code organization, etc, and was unfortunately fairly popular IIRC.

#14

This is why I like the types of tutorials that don’t teach you so much about “Game Development” as a whole, but say, small chunks like “How to make a while loop” or “how if statements work”. They don’t teach you any actual design/implementation. Just the basic tools. It’s really helpful to learn how a screwdriver works before you try to make a radio.

EDIT: Fixed my URL debauchery

#15

The best way to be a game programmer is to be a programmer.

#16

The best way to be a game programmer is to be a good programmer.*

  • Jev
#17

Well, I guess I meant the best way to become a game programmer is to be a programmer first.
If you’re good that’s a bonus.

#18

err, was referring to sticking with java2D and not jumping openGL to early.

#19

Pardon my post I meant how to recreate some of Notch’s game like the Lundum Dare (Not a main objective, just seems like a fun thing to do). Thanks for pointing out YouTube tutorials, I’m actually trying to change my bad habits of watching YouTube tutorials for nearly everything and reading a lot more.

I do have to confess I have a lot of trouble explaining to myself some of the most basic OOP concepts. I can build a small scale program, which is extremely disorganized and could barely explain it, so I have to work on all of those. I hope that this forum serves also as some sort of journal in which I document my progress.

#20

It will come eventually. I’m sure everyone else on here including myself remember what it was like before everything “clicked.” I personally remember not being able to get a simple calculator working :point: