Just a few questions about programming....

[Polarbear53]

I have 4 friends, and one day we were like hey, lets make a game. I know lightwave great(althogh my stuff isn't great :wink: ) and 2 others know it o.k. And then my other friend and I took a basic programming class in High school(pascal programming). Next year were taking the C++ class, and then we've decided that after that we will begin to make a game if we still feel like it. So for the next few months we will spend our time getting down what we want to do and how we wanna do it. But i have a few questions.



Question
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How do you make a game? Now what i mean by that is. I know you write physics, and I know you write render engine, and A.I., but when your writing it and stuff, do you create an editor, so you are able to put stuff into the game easily without having to code and say use this car here. Do you have a link or somthing explaining stuff like that or does someone know?


I'll get more questions as i start to think.

[Ostsol]

There's a lot of resources on the subject. Check out the Articles section of GameDev.net (http://www.gamedev.net/). Here's a decent article that provides some good, basic pointers to beginners: CLICK (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article906.asp).

EDIT: There a pointer in that article that I really have to emphasize: apply what you learn! Even if it doesn't become part of a larger application, write small demos, mini-apps, and other test programs to apply what you've learned.

Every time I'm trying something new, I first write a small program to make sure it works. There's a heirarchy of little programs on my hard-drive, some being programs to test algorithms or techniques used in a slightly larger test program. Too often I've tried to implement a totally new idea into one of my main projects only to break it all, or otherwise cause enough damage to leave me too frustrated to continue. Get it right in a small-scale program and then implement it.

[Polarbear53]

Thank you. The gamedev.net seems to have tons of resources. I think we are using visual studio.net 2003 for our compiler. I'll have to take a deeper look into gamedev.net whenever i get some more free time. But does anyone know about the making a game editor for the game? Or just coding it in?

[ERP]

Do yourself a favor...

Do the design first and make sure that the scope is reasonable.
The better defined your design the more chance you have of building something. If you just start coding and authoring content with no real direction, you'll loose interest before you finish.

As for the tools thing, I estimate I've spent as much time writing tools over the years as I have writing the code for the games