I am trying to create an old board game called panzer blitz, but I am unsure of how to start, please help

hi :)
what is the game about?
do you have any programming experience?

you can start by making a logical flow of the game. like "user 1 rolls dice" "user 1 moves according to dice roll" etc.
i am not familiar with the game, please provide some details.

izua.

well panzer blitz is an old style board game using hex map and little playing pieces called chits, I have a background in c++ and openGL

Hmmm, I rememeber playing that game. I liked it alot. For those who don't know it, like the OP said, its a hex-based (obviously turnbased) boardgame. It's set on the German/Russian front during World War II and tries to recreate the major battles their. If I rememeber correctly it was on of those games with very deep strategy layers.

Anyway, from a programming standpoint. You say you have a background in C++ and OpenGL which is the perfect place to start. Have you ever programmed any small simple games before such as pong or tetris? If you haven't, making a quick clone of one of those should be easy enough for you since you already know C++ and OpenGL, but it will help immensely when it comes to programming your panzer blitz game. I would reccomend you start with that.

c++ and openGl, that's great :)
i've checked up wikipedia, the game looks interesting.

well, have you programmed games before? i'm a real noob here, i'm making my first app - a 3D maze - which i can barely call game, but here's what I can advice you:

first - try to make a list: what the game required and how it was played, rules, units, cards, exceptions, etc. if you still have the papers with the rules, or the game itself, that's great. if not, i bet there's an isolated community online dedicated to this game.

next - think how you want the game written. i've learnt that OOP is good, so that's what i can advice you. one class for the tile, one for a player (or maybe even AI), one for units, etc.

3) try and make up a pseudo-code of your game. really. it helps. maybe you'll need a graphics, polygon or model class, too, apart from a player or tile. think what's best, and write it out. then, think how the classes will interact, giving the flow of the game - you can go with UML if it's easy for you to read that stuff, but i never got it.

4) start the actual writing of the classes, one by one. start with the board class. perhaps you want to make some modifications to the original gameplay, and have a variable-sized board.
or start with the player - think what he'll need: public variables: his position, firepower, a vector of what units he holds. again, another class, the units. think of them too: to whom they belong, where are they located, if they have a health condition, etc.


5) do some testing. after you finish each piece, write a simple app to see if it works the way you expect it. at least, that's the way i did what i did so far.

6) last thing i'll do is the game flow, and after that, rendering. perhaps you might even want to put a camera here, so the users can zoom in/out and move around the board.

when you do have something working, think of other features. a networked client would kick ass, but you'll need a server written for that. or maybe, animation, sounds, etc.

Well, that's what I can advise you for the moment.
Feel free to ask any other questions.

izua

Quote:Original post by izua
6) last thing i'll do is the game flow, and after that, rendering. perhaps you might even want to put a camera here, so the users can zoom in/out and move around the board.

All of the above is very good, one correction. I was assuming the OP would be making a 2D game in which case zooming a camera isn't really applicable. I would also very highly reccomend you make it 2D for your first game too. It makes things exponetially simpler.

As a side note, making a good AI for the game will probably be the hardest of all the components of this game. Not that its a bad thing, I actually like that because I enjoy doing AI, but its something to keep in mind.

I still have the game and the rules, but I am unsure of how to implement the graphic, openGl or win32api or direct x or gdi/gdi+ or what languge should I use such as c++ or c# or basic

if you have C++ experience I recommend either C++ and OpenGL for a native or cross-platform app, or C# and .NET.

Writing the user-interface and rendering is only about 25-40% of the work, the rest is the game logic ... game starting, saving, loading, turn processing, command storage, etc.

Of course with no game experience, I would recommend you start writing interface experiment / learning code early too, cause it takes some time to get the concepts down well.

I have already drawn a hex based map using c# and gdi+, but dont know how to put the playing pieces on the board,

off the cuff naive implementation:



You'll otherwise have to be much more specific about your questions. You are essentially asking: "how do i make a game".

If this is your first attempt at a game you might want to try something simpler like pong, tetris, breakout, etc. That will give you a better grasp of the basics and teach you a bit more of the skillset required to create this game.

-me