ndssia

I think it'd actually make the game really involving for the the first wave of players, since you'd really be making a great deal of difference with your actions.

 

However, as you've stated, most players will simply create alts for this purpose; perhaps if there was gradual diminishing returns on profession effectiveness vs. profession level, instead of a hard-cap, that could be discouraged.

 

Regarding factional warfare, the issue with that is the snowball effect; once a faction secures a high quality resource for any amount of time, it'll will become more and more difficult for anyone to kick them out, due to their superior equipment. This may even reach a stage where the other two/ten/fifty factions working together are unable to defeat that one faction, unless of course there was some sort of betrayal, or lack of scaling against player numbers.

Yes - absolutely, which is often why we suggest C#/Python/Java as the usual language for beginners, since it's far more important to learn programming before learning the intricacies of each language.

C# is an excellent language. It would be nice to one day move onto C++ yes (although you should have console.h included with code blocks) but with the mono platform's popularity rising and the huge list of external .net libraries available I think we're approaching the point where you could launch a career in C# and never have to touch C++ (It is an aim for me to one day learn C anyway and then maybe C++).

Hmm, saying you'd like to move onto C++ is similar to a tradesman saying he's moving on from bandsaws into circular saws.

Programming languages are things you add onto your toolbelt, there is little to no "progression" between languages in the traditional sense.

Very little of your work would be reusable for PS3.

I wouldn't worry about that just yet though, Cell programming is not recommended for beginning programmers.

If you're primarily a C# developer, you'll want to start with XNA; it's a simple, powerful framework, and it'll help you learn the most important skill in Games Design:

Games Design.

I'm sure you've learned a thing or two about this endeavor, however keep in mind that all good programmers use all sorts of different references and resources, and most also provide back to the community by providing the very same.

I think you'll find that you'll improve more quickly if you improve your knowledge of the language first; learning how computers work with memory, then onto pointers, will provide you a great deal of insight and knowledge that you'll find useful if you wish to program without automatic memory management.

In terms of storing skill data - you might want to consider using XML or an SQLite database, so you can maintain consistent structure across skills.

Each skill, if "generic" enough, can be created as a generic skill with specific parameters.

i.e. Fireball is a "Basic Attack" with type Fire, BasePower 10, and SplashDamage = true.

Most custom stuff you will want to code by hand; in some cases you will want to hard code it, as scripting can end up being just as difficult as simply coding it, not to mention the time you'll spend handwriting your own scripting language.

I'd also advise you to split up that function, that will grow in size and complexity - you may wish to split it into "ReceivesDamage" and "CausesDamage" for the receiving and the attacking unit; the attacking unit generally does not care who attacked it (unless you want to assign damage credit), but simply what type and how much damage it received.

This way, you can separate the attacking unit's damage calculating from the receiving unit's defensive calculations.

Start by writing a single-player "MUD"; just make sure it's easy to get to all your game state data (good design will give you this anyway).

From there, you'll need to host a server that simply responds to requests from clients (Give me game state data from map coordinates (0, 0) to (10, 10), because my player is at (5, 5)).

Global chat etc. can be polled by the client or pushed by the server.

The natural progression from following tutorials (effectively hand-holding) would be (as above posters have mentioned) to write something completely by yourself; the next stage is for you to write your own programs.

Try not to use tutorials anymore, rather wrestle with any difficulties you encounter (and there will be many), and ask for help on a forum such as this, StackOverflow, etc. if you need help.

Don't worry about asking for help on forums, or googling for any issues you're having with code; or even for ways to do things better. Every programmer does this, from a 14-year-old beginner like yourself, to a industry veteran with 15 years experience.

If you have any programmer who would be kind enough to spend time code reviewing your work, I think you'll find that very helpful.