Hi, I've got a desire to code a simple game.... - it's a simple shooting game - it's just 2D (though I could probably extend it into 3D in the future) - needs only a few geometrical shapes moving simultaneously - needs to support real time mouse input - simple sound support would be nice - oh yes, it's got to be FREE, or an extremely trivial amount of money I'm a professional programmer, but I work in an office environment. I code in a couple of languages... one is PowerCenter, a Data Warehousing / Data Migration tool, and the other is OpenInsight... a sort of PICK version of Visual Basic. I'd love to learn a bit of Java or C, or any other 'useful' language, but as I've had very little exposure to anything outside of OpenInsight and PowerCenter, I don't know what's best suited to this task. I did consider Flash, but is there a free dev environment for this? Any input much appreciated
there is ajax animator that i know of as a flash dev kit, but other than that, i dunno. You could always use java, wouldn't be as simple as flash, but would probably be a more useful language to learn.
One of my modules at uni last year was 'Games Programming' where we used Java to make 2D games (on placement now, go back next year and start '3d Games Programming') The game I made was a really simple vertical-scrolling shooter, like a Raiden-clone, if was really simple and fun to make, but I screwed it up because I had to work too much and couldn't spend enough time on the project. I had the basic game mechanics built, just didn't put enough though into the level. The most fun thing is making algoritms to control different enemies movements. I had great fun finding ways to make my enemies move, follow my ship, avoid fire, circle the screen etc. I suppose it all depends on what language you're used to.
Thanks for the replies The language I'm used to is BASIC, the original PICK BASIC I've used is very much like Tandy TRS80 Basic (which is what I learned to code in), with extensions for file handling through an in-built relational multivalued database. The Basic in OpenInsight has further extensions for handling user interface components, but it's much more of 4th generation language than the likes of even VB... there are no worries with memory handling, pointers blah blah blah, which is why I'm going to find anything 'modern' 1) a bit of a culture shock and 2) a bit of a step backwards in ease of use! Anyhow... I was going to post the same question about this over at Tech Report, but came across a sticky with lots of freeware utilities... buried in that was a link to Microsoft C++ and C# 'Express' editions - free taster versions And linked from there is the 'Dark GDK'... a Game Dev Kit, which is related to DarkBasic but looks a bit more like C. So I'm going to try that first, and see what it's like link: http://www.microsoft.com/express/samples/gamecreators/Default.aspx Oh, and there's also XNA, which is probably a few steps up in complexity, probably overkill for what I need.
