Okay, I want to start coding my own game engine, as a long term exercise to improve my knowledge and understanding (and to help me in the future). Because of the scope of this project, I understand that it will take a while for me to finish. I'm not the best programmer around, but I understand concepts in C++ like inheritance, virtual functions, the STL, MFC, and tree creation and balancing. I have also done a bunch of NeHe's tutorials, and I have made my own crappy version of tetris. Can someone give me some advice as to what I should do next? I don't want to create something overly sophisticated, but I at least want something that's fairly useful (console debug, either building my own level editor or getting an open source one). And I am willing to do the work that is involved in getting those things to work. This would just be a hobbyist engine, not a commercial or in any way retail engine. Any advice would be well appreciated. [Edited by - ojcme on June 2, 2007 4:34:11 PM]

One way to get direction in this case could be to just write a game, and then refactor the reusable components into the library you want to create. Hey, you'll need some way to test it either way :-).

Quote:Original post by ojcme
Okay, I want to start coding my own game engine, as a long term exercise to improve my knowledge and understanding (and to help me in the future). Because of the scope of this project, I understand that it will take a while for me to finish.

I'm not the best programmer around, but I understand concepts in C++ like inheritance, virtual functions, the STL, MFC, and tree creation and balancing.

I have also done a bunch of NeHe's tutorials, and I have made my own crappy version of tetris.

Can someone give me some advice as to what I should do next? I don't want to create something overly sophisticated, but I at least want something that's fairly useful (console debug, either building my own level editor or getting an open source one). And I am willing to do the work that is involved in getting those things to work. This would just be a hobbyist engine, not a commercial or in any way retail engine.

Any advice would be well appreciated.

It depends. What is your experience in game development to date? As in, describe all the games you have totally completed.

EDIT: Okay, I reread your post, and it seems that the totality is "your own crappy version of tetris". Assuming it is: What the hell are you thinking!? What will best serve you is making games, not making game engines. Writing a game engine at this juncture will result in a ridiculous and incomplete mess of code which will teach you nothing about game development.

Now, you didn't write a compiler before compiling your first program, so you clearly realize that in some situations, bottom-up is not the best way to learn things. Trust me: Now is just such a situation. Get a decent game engine from somewhere else, and make something from it. You will learn much more than you think.