Starting a Java Game, Where to Start? Eventually want to be network multiplayer

There is nothing wrong in the do it all yourself approach (I am doing it myself :)), but be prepared for a long project. Also be prepared for lots of diversions because you will be taken in a lot of directions and you will end up re factoring your code a lot as you learn more things. (A lot is an under statement)

What you ask sounds quite simple but to do what you want to do you will need to understand graphics, networking, controls,threading, sound, physics (maybe), game design, resource loading, etc and in each of these categories there are quite detailed sub categories. That is quite a lot to take in all at once.

If you are still keen on doing it this way,you might want to start with code that people have already done, ie using libraries (lot of good suggestions here already), and then slowly replace bits that these libraries do with your own code. The one thing you aren’t going to understand when you first start is what its going to look like at the end, people who wrote the libraries do so learn watching others.

Also it looks you are quite lite on Java experience (apologies if this is not the case) and this is also going to hinder you at the beginning because just knowing how to program in java won’t make you a good programmer, it takes a lot of learning from experience.

But don’t let all of this scare you too much, use it to your advantage and I am sure you will get to your goal eventually, good luck. Keep us posted on your progress!

Yeah, I was referring to the stuff that comes after the Gradle setup. Such as not being able to get graphics to load on all platforms unless you put your graphics into the “Android/assets folder” (due to some kind of LibGDX backwards compatibility thing with Android) and then point your entire project to that folder. It’s little things that you do get used to once you use LibGDX, but it takes some research to get working because it’s not really intuitive. My first time setup took a while just to be able to get the stock default program that displays the LibGDX image to run. And then I ran into more problems when I tried to get Android working…but that may have just been an Eclipse issue as I ended up uninstalling Eclipse and the Android SDK I had downloaded separately and used the Eclipse+Android bundle instead.

I haven’t tried Android, but in my experience the libGDX project setup (including gradle, note I have no experience there either) was a painless 30 second procedure from opening the gui to having the libGDX default program running.

I believe you can use any asset folder you want for the desktop version, but if you’re also building for Android then your entire project has to point to Android otherwise Android will not work. My purpose for using LibGDX was to develop for mobile devices, so that’s probably why I had a more difficult setup since I was fighting with Android right from the start. LOL

I still use the android folder etc. for resources. Maybe you just had something weird going on with your eclipse/gradle install.

Ah, ok. But if you don’t know to use the Android/assets folder then it makes for some head scratching and research to figure out why things aren’t working when it seemed like they should be.

The other problems I had were specifically related to Android and after trying several things to get Android to work, installing the Eclipse+Android bundle was the key to making it work finally. Then I had to update several things (Android libraries, maybe? Can’t remember exactly, it’s been a few months since my initial setup) and configure the build path inside of Eclipse to select an Android version.

It just seemed to take quite a while before I was finally all up and running.