Conker5295

Hi all, I am a new member to gamedev, long time reader, first time poster. I have been working on a city building simulator, which will be a hybrid of many of the good games I've played over the years. I have developed a foundation for the housing structure, store mechanics, resource collection, etc. Then moved over to the graphics side, using GIMP, and come up with a decent tileset. Now I am currently working on the art for the buildings.

I'm just curious how you've been working on that without allot of programing knowledge? I don't mean offence by this i have a huge interest in simulators

I'm currently learning the basics of java using a site called http://www.codecademy.com.

It may not be a book but its free and is quite helpful.

Please don't move your topics yourself, it just looks untidy - next time put a note for a moderator at the top of your post and/or pm a moderator to move it for you

I apologies for that, wasn't sure where to post and wasn't sure how to remove it should have looked more into rules and guides first, witch i have now. wont happen again.

Well try and get a basic 2D maze working first - you'll see it's not as easy as it sounds to generate convincing mazes. Then you can add 3D, and perhaps even go 4D (check out some youtube videos, it's mind-bending). Always prototype simple things before moving on to the real thing. Adding features is relatively easy once you've got a solid base to work on, but the solid base isn't so easy to build (this is where most of the refactoring happens, as you go from design to design trying to find one that you feel comfortable with, repeatedly throwing away code until you get it right).

I understand where your coming from with this, I hadn't even thought about random generation to be honest, i was just going to make the levels myself(now i feel that is not going to work)
A solid base is going to be very hard i understand but i have nothing but time

If this is your very first game, you may be aiming too high (but at least you're not trying to do an mmorpg). I suggest you dumb down your game design to a basic 2D maze - perhaps a Pacman variant - and then try and add features in later. Go the extra step for 3D only when you've learned how to cleanly separate logic from rendering. It is not as easy as it sounds, unless you use a crapton of libraries and just piece stuff together, in which case you, as a self-respecting developer, probably won't feel any satisfaction anyway.

Yeah I've noticed allot of the fresh developers aiming too high and getting struck out sometimes never to return, i don't want that to happen; i am very determined and i think i can accomplish a game such as this, i have previous experience in 3D modeling(i know, completely different ball park) and some in java coding but not much (that's why we can learn:D) If i do fail on this one i will come up with another idea and take another stab.

This is my honest - and apparently unwanted - opinion, make of it what you will.

Not really unwanted, i'm glad to see your opinion and i think that part of the post was misunderstood. you gave allot of backing to your opinion, i absolutely despise when someone reads a post and strictly states "Cant be done don't try" without entailing why or what gave them that idea and that's what i meant to refer to.

Thanks allot for the detailed advice!