I want to make a game project without getting help from anyone(which I normally do) for practice. However, I cant really think of anything. I would like it to be text only, and a little more complex then something like tic-tac-toe for example(still not to complex like a full blown RPG) does anybody have any ideas of an interesting game I could make? what kind of game would you like to see made?

that might be an interesting idea. I could practice loading strings from a file. anybody else have any other ideas? I guess I should say that it doesnt nescesarily have to be a game.

You could try your hand at some basic AI stuff... Maybe an A* algorithm. You could start with a world composed of tiles, then work your up to an implementation of A* or mabe flocking. This allows you to work up to some fairly complex code without having to learn a lot of complication graphics calls/APIs.

Dwiel

I was actually interested in text only, as I said in my original post. Perhpas ill try that when I move on to things like that. anybody else have any ideas?

Oh sorry about that. I guess I skimmed your post a little too fast. Still, you could do all of the 'graphics' with text:

+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+|  |  |  |==|==|==|==|  |+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+|  |==|  |==|==|  |  |  |+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+|  |==|  |==|:)|  |  |  |+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+|  |==|==|==|==|==|==|  |+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+|  |  |  |**|==|  |  |  |+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

Where == is a wall :) is the AI player and ** is the goal. I just find that Ai in general is very rewarding and requires very little to no graphics progamming skills.

One thing that I find handy is a command line tool (a GUI might be nice) for editing a large amount or single mp3's ID3 tag(s). The ability to do a large scal ID3 tag change comes in handy quite often. Maybe one that creates a complex folder structure with each mp3 occuring in many places using hard links, with BTW, ARE available on NTFS formatted drives. A similar program which created a playlist with all your music removing all hardlinked copies might then also come in handy for importing music to your favorite player.

I have found that these kind of tools come in handy often and are good starter projects.

Dwiel

That might be interesting to make. Is AI really that easy? perhpas it's just becuase I dont have a whole lot of experience, but it always seemed like AI was hard to me. A game like you said with simple text graphics might be fun to make. my only problem is that I still dont fully understand arrays(which I would use for the grid) The book I have does a terrible job of exaplining them. is there a good online source that exaplins arrays well? I understand what they do, how to create them, etc. but what I dont understand is how you move things though them, and how you know exactly where you are in the array.

Make one of those little slider puzzles, and then when it works add an AI to solve it.

AI really is hard tho, he makes it sound easy by saying that you dont have to use graphics programmng. AI can be just conditional statements but it is hard as hell to figure out when it comes down to actually doing it with all of the math that you need to know to get everything to work correctally.

Notice: I might make some invalid assumptions. Sorry.

If you still dont know about arrays, an A* algorithm is probobly not the best idea. I'd say that you should try to learn about arrays (I'll try to find some and post a link at the end), and then maybe work on a simple text-based game. In a text game, there is, obviously, no text. Everything about the world is printed to the screen for you to read. You can interact with the world using simple commands type in such as: north/south/east/west for moving in one direction (normally the charactor moves between 'rooms'). Other examples might include: pick up sword. attack monster. drop knife. rest. eat gummie bear of health. etc. These are fairly popular as online games called MUDs. It is pretty basic to make a very simple one and it is easy to keep adding new features as your skill level increases.

The mp3 tag stuff would still probably be something to check out if it is something that would be useful to you. Utilities in general are normally, simple, and actually helpful, and so are good to start with.

I am assuming you are using C/C++ You might check out: A tutorial on Pointers and Arrays found right here at gamedev. Maybe you have already looked through it, I don't know.

Dwiel