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Have to program a game for uni


Question

Basically, got into uni today and we have been given a project to do. 15weeks to program a game.

It can be any game we want (Has to be graphical, no text adventures) in any programming language we want.

The only problem is i do an I.T course, and only touched some very basic J# two years ago. I have no clue where to start.

I was reccomended to use Python, and pygame, but i don't like the look of it.

What would you reccomend, that has alot of tutorials and example code available?

Cheers.

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Ahhhh Python... die die die die die.

That and Ada.

/is so glad he bailed on Computing Science

What course is it you're doing/What Uni?

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I had to do the same sort of thing when I was at Uni and ended up writting a simple game of Checkers. Try VB.net or C#.net. There are loads of tutorials online. You say you are doing an IT course but have very little programming experience. Seems a bit unfair to demand a programming project if that's the case.

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Python really is one of your safest bets as it's pretty easy to pick up and heavily english based. I've never used Pygame before though, so can't comment on it :/

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Not allowed to use DarkBasic :( (I can do bits in that)

But yeah, it is unfair, but that is the Uni of West scotland for ya. DON'T JOIN IT.

I asked if we could use one of these point and click programs, such as Game Maker. But no, have to program it, even though only two people in the class have proper programming skills.

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Honestly, it won't be as hard as you think. Just make a very simple elementary game. They're not asking for the next Halo :p

Seeing as you have Java experience you should be able to handle some of the easier OOD languages. Just read up on whatever language you choose as much as you can (Y)

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I had to do something very similar in my first year at Uni doing Comp Sci - we had to do it in Java however.

Although the graphical side of things was messy it's a good language to use for something like this - you can write some nice object oriented code for pieces on a chess board or something. You could even implement some form of socket/RMI feature to allow 2 player mode over a network. Good luck.

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What about C# and Microsoft XNA Game Development?

I attended a seminar 2 months ago.

The guy developed a simple jump and run game in 1 hour! ( just 1 level of course)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/xna/default(en-us).aspx

Can't do that unfortunatley. I have tried in the past, i just don't understand C#

I was thinking of VB. I have touched that about 4years ago, and managed to get some basic programs out of it.

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Have you had a think about what you want to try and program? As others have mentioned there are plenty small games you could create which are also graphical, such as Connect 4, Tic Tac Toe, Checkers, BlackJack...etc As JediMark mentioned having a network option would be pretty cool too if you're looking to show off a bit.

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Visual basic would be the winner for programming a graphical game..

BEYOND EASY..

I made several fun games in vb..

Cracksniper

Frogger

Black Jack

and a side scrolling adventure game.

for someone who doesnt have very much experience with programming this would really be your best and only route.

EDIT:

Do you guys realize that he has no programming knowlege at all?

How the heck is he supposed to implement a network stack into his game..

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Do you guys realize that he has no programming knowlege at all?

How the heck is he supposed to implement a network stack into his game..

Hmm.

It seems your Uni is being pretty unfair with the project they are giving you if you have no programming experience. Unless of course, they are assuming you already have experience.

True, the network option is probably pushing it. Sockets programming isn't that difficult though. It wouldn't be too much work to send some messages between two clients.

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Personally I'd recommend using XNA since all the tools you need to create the games are free anyway. Plus it has a pretty good community now and it's growing. Just check out these:

http://www.xna.com

http://creators.xna.com

http://www.blender.org (for 3D modeling if you want to do 3D stuff)

Edit: Just saw that someone else mentioned XNA and you said you weren't comfortable with C#. If you can do J#, you should be able to do C# with no problem. The syntax is very similar, the biggest difference would probably be the key words.

Edited by IceBreakerG
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It seems your Uni is being pretty unfair with the project they are giving you if you have no programming experience. Unless of course, they are assuming you already have experience.

Nope, they let people into the course after sitting an exam in the summer a few years ago. If you passed, you got in. Simple as that. Bloody joke.

Cheers for the comments guys, but i'm thinking about Actionscript.

I'm very comfortable in the Flash interface due to a couple of years animating (I'm not very good at drawing, but i know how to animate in Flash and Toonboom).

Anyway, i'm happy in the program, so all i have to do is to concentrate on getting some Good tuts.

I am thinking make a break out game... Using that code i can adapt it to make pong, space invaders and a scrolling shooter of some sort...

Could then go for a 4-in-1 Compilation :D

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If you have prior experience in Flash then I say go for it. But if you feel like learning something new my vote goes to XNA. You have 15 weeks. In 4-5 weeks you can be familiar with C# if you follow a good tutorial and work fast; once that's done, in 2 weeks you can get a fairly complete game with XNA, because the framework is really simple and intuitive to work with. Then you spend the rest of the term either making a new game or polishing your initial project.

As for VB, it's not easier than C# at all, or if you prefer, C# is exactly as easy as VB. C# is just slightly less readable to someone who either never saw any code or is already familiar with BASIC-style syntax. ( "if ([condition]) {[consequence]}" is not as intuitive as "If [condition] Then [consequence] End If" ). Anything you can do with C#, you can do with VB and vice-versa (at least for a beginner).

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I've always thought tetris is a great "learn a language project".

It scales well as a thought exercise. At it's basic level you'll be snagging input, tracking states, basic work with half-a-dozen data types, writing a few run loops, doing some basic calculations, tracking states, basic drawing/text processing, file handling, etc. It really touches on every important aspect of the language but isn't particularly partial to an OOP or functional approach.

You can scale out to multiplayer to play with networking libraries: all you need to do is transfer changes in score and declare a winner when somebody sends an "I died message".

The game play is well understood so it's easy to keep the problem-space in your head and to spot irregular behaviors.

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how good are you with physics? i had to write a simple game for my matlap class so i just made my own sun, 4 planets that rotate around the sun and a little man with a missile. you pick the angle and velocity of the missile and try to use the gravitating bodies to bend it towards the target... it was very simple in terms of it's graphics which for me was the hardest part of the code... it did involve a lot of equations and knowing how to solve them numerically but matlab is built around that so it was easy on there...

as for the language pick something big so there is lots of information and examples online. VB is very easy to pickup and is often the first programing language you learn.

btw i am sure he isn't going to be on is own for the next 15 weeks. the final project is the game and for the first few weeks you just think of it and as the class moves forward you learn different things and figure out how to code it.

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Nope, they let people into the course after sitting an exam in the summer a few years ago. If you passed, you got in. Simple as that. Bloody joke.

Cheers for the comments guys, but i'm thinking about Actionscript.

I'm very comfortable in the Flash interface due to a couple of years animating (I'm not very good at drawing, but i know how to animate in Flash and Toonboom).

Anyway, i'm happy in the program, so all i have to do is to concentrate on getting some Good tuts.

I am thinking make a break out game... Using that code i can adapt it to make pong, space invaders and a scrolling shooter of some sort...

Could then go for a 4-in-1 Compilation :D

To be honest, I'd just make space invaders and be done with it. Don't over complicate your work. You only have 15 weeks and you're a game programming novice. Also, to do collision detection (which with all of those games you'll need to have) you need to apply some trigonometry. However, it's not too hard to figure out (hopefully).

Trigonometry, as you may know, is this: a? + b? = c?. So, applying this to games is as simple as changing the names of the variables: x? + y? = l?, with x and y being the x and y locations on screen, and l standing for location (for easiness, all 3 letters are completely arbitrary). To figure out the distance between two objects, you just apply trig to the two objects, and take away the two variables. So, (x1? + y1?) - (x2? + y2?).

Lastly, you do an if statement saying if ((x1? + y1?) - (x2? + y2?)) < 6), or "if location 1 - location 2 is smaller then 6 units away", then the two objects are colliding. In C++, the formatting would be like this:

if ((x1? + y1?) - (x2? + y2?)) &lt; 6) 
{
&lt;response for collision&gt;
}

I'm not entirely sure how this would be formatted in AS, but I hope this helps. I've done my own version of Space Invaders in C++, so if you choose to do this game, I can try and help if you want it.

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To be honest, I'd just make space invaders and be done with it. Don't over complicate your work. You only have 15 weeks and you're a game programming novice. Also, to do collision detection (which with all of those games you'll need to have) you need to apply some trigonometry. However, it's not too hard to figure out (hopefully).

Trigonometry, as you may know, is this: a? + b? = c?. So, applying this to games is as simple as changing the names of the variables: x? + y? = l?, with x and y being the x and y locations on screen, and l standing for location (for easiness, all 3 letters are completely arbitrary). To figure out the distance between two objects, you just apply trig to the two objects, and take away the two variables. So, (x1? + y1?) - (x2? + y2?).

Lastly, you do an if statement saying if ((x1? + y1?) - (x2? + y2?)) < 6), or "if location 1 - location 2 is smaller then 6 units away", then the two objects are colliding. In C++, the formatting would be like this:

if ((x1? + y1?) - (x2? + y2?)) &lt; 6) 
{
&lt;response for collision&gt;
}

I'm not entirely sure how this would be formatted in AS, but I hope this helps. I've done my own version of Space Invaders in C++, so if you choose to do this game, I can try and help if you want it.

I'm curious as to why you would use such a thing for Collision. Bounding Rectanges are much simpler for 2D stuff. If pixel perfect is needed then you would then look inside that rectangle at colour data.

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I definitly vote for flash.

That would be your best bet as it is quite popular so there would be tons of tutorials and it is also the easiest to use.

But it seems to me your university is quite a bad place to learn anything.

In general when they do this, they just want you to learn everything on your own.

So for the whole course it will be the same, they'll barely teach you the basics, give a huge project even though you don't have most of the knownledge and they won't even help you if you ask them(mostly because they won't have the skills to do so).

I think if you are serious about programming, you should have a personnal project, take all the time in the world to finish it,then release it online.

Being able to prove that you are capable of programming and finishing a project speaks much louder than any diploma you can get(though it does help to have one).

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Ah, the good old days of programming a game. Back then I too had little experience in creating one and I made a mess out of it. I created a Java phone game using J2ME and it wasn't the best out there although it did work, albeit with a lot of bugs. And then there was RPG Maker, where all I had to do was just click a template and load it to edit and program it. Strangely enough, I was able to create a simple messaging program with VB and it worked, and that was much harder for me.

All seriousness though, Flash is one of the easiest platforms to use so I would advise you to use it if you're comfortable with it. Plus there's a lot of tutorials so you should be covered there if you ever need any guides.

Scirwode

Edited by Scirwode
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Every good recommendation so far you either "don't like" or "don't understand it". Well sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you're gonna have to start liking and understanding one of these languages, there isn't one magical one out there waiting for you thats super easy. You stated that you only did some J# so every language suggested here you're "not going to understand", because you haven't used it before. Nobody is going to suggest a magical game development platform for J# because it is a dead language, so move on.

Python and PyGame is your best bet simplicity wise, then C# and XNA. You already stated you can't use stuff like darkbasic and game maker so you're gonna have to pick one.

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