Hey again. I've been reading "Accelerated Cpp" for a while now(up to chapter 8, if anyone has it too) and the exercises from the book aren't that much fun anymore. Don't get me wrong, I think the book explains Cpp really well, but the "change-one-function-in-the-program-we-made-in-this-chapter exercises" don't really fulfill my needs to program fun stuff. So it's time to make some fun stuff. And nothing's more fun than making games, right? The problem is that I can't think of anything to make... Of course I have some ideas in the back of my head for when I master Cpp and sdl/opengl/direct3d, but for the moment I'll have to make do with the console. I've already looked into some threads and found one idea that would be possible to make: a simple battleship clone. A text-based rpg is also an option, but that would probably include using classes and I'd rather avoid that, because I haven't worked through classes in the book. Now, my question is: Do any of you have one or more game ideas for the console? I do like a challenge so the really simple stuff is not really an option. I've already done Guess the number, tictactoe and some other really simple stuff. Also keep in mind that I'd rather not touch too much stuff explained in the later chapters of my book (roughly: templates, classes, inheritance and memory management). I already know a bit about those concepts, but I'd rather exclude them until I've worked through them in the book. On the other hand, I'm always open for discussion, so if you think I _should_ use classes, polymorphism and whatnot right now, please say so too. Well, this became a longer story than I had in mind... Oh well. [edit] It has come to mind that everyone here has always been helpful and I haven't really contributed much to the forums. So,if anyone has a nice idea, I'd be happy to keep a record of the development of the game for fellow newbies(maybe for some discussion, idea sharing, or just so you can laugh at my progskills ;). That is, if anyone is interested. [Edited by - @root on October 17, 2006 4:42:23 PM]

Now, that looks like a fun idea to work out. Thanks alot!

It appears, however, that the time has come to create a system for console drawing(the continuus stream of chararrays rolling down the console won't do this time).
I remember gametutorials had some stuff on this subject, but since they've gone all commercial and are asking money for the tuts now, that's a no go. What I did find was this. Would anyone consider this a decent way to do console graphics?

Also, if anyone has some more ideas on games, please let me know.

Well you can make almost any game (well mostly turn based games) in console.

Go for poker, lights out, the tower of hanoi, checkers, Mastermind. Heck if you wana get complicated you would write a 2 player chess (the AI would be ridiculous to try at this point)

Just don’t let yourself be stuck on graphics. Sure when you think of a knight from chess you think of the horse head shaped piece but using the letter K works just as well from a game play standpoint.

I thank you all for the replies.

Just a couple of responses from my side:

@Fruny and others: The guides that were mentioned aren't "direct hits". They give some curious errors and the ascii chart seems to be limited to '?', as opposed to the 'A' that the guide presents. But I guess I should look into it somewhat better. The read it through and ctrl-c ctrl-v method might not be the best. The 3h competition has been interesting to look into to, though. I'm convinced I'll find some usefull information there.

@Joystickgenie: I agree. I never had the intention to make great looking ASCII graphics. I'm just looking to make/get something to make simple character manipulation easy to implement in my games. Even for semi-static games like chess, being able to draw characters(the 8x8 grid with the K's and Q's P's etc on it) without having to draw one board under another is just so much cleaner. Again, I'm not going for pretty, I'm only going for functional(at least, for now).