i need an idea for a first major game

i've done other games before (basically, wait for user input type of game) but i want one where things happen all at once (things moving, as well as the player moving). i figure this would be the best way in figuring out how to make a larger scale game. now here where you guys come in. i need an idea whats easy to do. also, i'd like ot be able to read up on it too (maybe a site that has theories about designing the game)

my main problems with game design is #1, things happening at the the same time (enemies moving around) and #2 collision detection. so please people, post up some ideas, and if u have them, sites that teach the theory about that game design (i remember seeing/reading one about pong)

Go with Pong or Tetris.

i was thinkin of that. but like i said, i'd be nice if i had a site that i can refer to. i really dont understand how to make things move and what not. :(

yea, i know i suck, but, eh
i do suck

Have you checked the links in the sticky at the top of this forum?

I know you haven't.

i shall...

Quote:

---

Originally posted by confuted
Have you checked the links in the sticky at the top of this forum?

I know you haven't.

---

any site inparticular?

Something quick and basic would be good to start off.

maybe something that moves is a good idea but maybe u are running before you can walk if you want to try something where everything moves at once

tetris is a good idea but if you want something challanging then try a new variation on it

i've done a turned pased "battleship" type game where the computer places the ships and you have a certain time to find them, as well as a certain amount of bombs to use

i know my way around c++ pretty well, i'd like to think
but i just have no real experiance making a game with moving thingies and collision detection and what not.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by revelation437
any site inparticular?

---

Bah humbug. Read them all.

Or read GameDev, the Allegro, and SDL sites first, and then read the rest.

You COULD start off by making Space Invaders (Note: space invaders, not space shooterz :p Shooterz took me all year to figure out and get working).

Computer AI (if you could call it that) would be simple to make (just move back and forth and down, randomly shooting lasers) and the ship would just move back and forth and shoot lasers when you hit fire. Collision detection should be fairly simple too.

:cool:

I've learned over the past two years that when you want to learn something, check several sites for tutorials and read several tutorials. The problem with the internet is that people who know nothing about programming at all (you know the type, the ones who just copy and paste) can put their "tutorial" on the net. It just leads to widespread message board posting saying "Why doesn't this work" or "this is so ugly and slow". My most hated sight is someone using a array of hard-coded ints representing a map. They say "this is the easiest way to do it" simply because they never had to actually make it work for an entire game, they just made a demo and thought that they knew tile engines.:rolleyes: Sorry, I'm just such a tile engine freak that I always bring that up :).

Oops, I got caught on a seperate tangent. The enemies moving and junk isn't really too hard. What it is is that people don't plan things out. A lot of people don't put too much thought into it and don't have any kind of structure for their entity management (an entity is any object, may it be a spaceship, a sword, a rock, an alien, or sometimes it can even be used for stuff like particle engines). I personally use the FSM model for entity management. The entity has a number of flags that can be set, and if the object needs to do something, the corresponding flag is set. The next gameloop the entity checks the flags and does what it needs to do. AI can be modelled this way as well.

Collision detection is just as hard or easy as you want it to be. Just think really hard and you'll be able to think of how to do it. Commonly used methods for 2D are bounding box, circle, hex, etc., and tile intersect.