Probably going to get dogpiled...

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

OK. I’m sure you’ve all heard this one a thousand times before:

I’m a business student living in france who’s always had an interest in video game development. I have recently gotten the opportunity to produce an online board game (unpaid internship). For this internship I decided that java would be the best bet, but I’ve never done much with java (or any object oriented language). I’m not having too muhc trouble learning java, but getting the project off the ground is a tad overwhelming. In essence, I’m not really sure how/where to start (aside from learning java).

Here’s what I’m thinking I’m going to need:

I’m hoping it will be a browser-based networked game supporting between 2 and six players and the ability to support multiple games/types of games (sort of like a yahoo games set-up).

For the game mechanics:
A method of placing tiles down on the “board”–all paths have to connect.
A gui that can show basic info about the other players, extended info about yourself, a chat pane, and a window that can show a scrollable map (of the "board’)
A “card deck” of sorts
There are “enemies” of sorts that are moved around by players. When an enemy is encountered (player’s location and enemy’s location are the same), simple dice-determined combat (with modifiers from the cards in play) ensues. There are several “victory conditions” (which shouldn’t be hard to figure out).

Learning java is going pretty well, but getting started on the project itself leaves my head swimming. Any helps/tips on how best to accomplish some of this stuff? bonus points if you can figure out what boardgame i’m porting into the online arena.

Also: I want to use java because I want the ability to make extra rules/conditions possible and I want to be able to extend the game/reuse the sever/client archetecture in the future.

Thank you for your time and if my questions have been answered elsewhere in this forum please just toss me the link and I’ll profusely apologize for not lurking hard enough.

#2

Awesome. Thank you guys so much for even acknowledging my presence.

I realize my questions probably seem retarded, basic/uninformed and “too much like a handholding session” to be worth any of your time. I’m more than happy to do all the work on this myself. But I am completely lost as to how to begin. I know that I need a scrollable map and the ability to rotate and place tiles that have nine squares each on them. I think that’s probably a good starting point.

At this point I have read several hundred pages of tutorials and am still clueless as to how to begin. I guess I’ll just start reading another.

Again, thanks for the help. I’ll be sure to come back when I’m something other than a “cluless newbie” and can ask better questions more worthy of your precious time to answer.

#3

dude… I’m not much of experienced programmer but it’s like you are not asking for help but just talking things what you need… there isn’t a good anwser since we aren’t you and don’t know what you need or know.
You need something… build it step by step. Think how the game will process, what do you need to create first and what comes later, and try to build one by one.

#4

thank you for the reply. I assumed this was for people that were new to java programming projects in general and I had some questions as to the overall process. Sorry to convey a different intent.

#5

The usual advice we give to people at your level is start small with a simple project and build skills from there.
So forget about the current project and make a TicTacToe game. It wont take long and you’ll learn things that you can use later and you’ll have that very eluse item called: “a finished project”.
It has 2 players, some simple rules, its a board game (no animation), you dont really need drag’n’drop, has victory conditions.