Alright, so I want to program a game…

I’m sure threads beginning like that are nothing new, but dammit, I’m serious about this. There’s a type of game I’ve wanted to create since I became familiar with the genre in 1992, but I never had the programming chops to take a serious stab at it (I’m more of an artist than a programmer, but I can pretend). I want to create a 2d turn-based strategy game along the vein of Langrisser(Warsong in the US). I suppose a moremodern comparison would be Advance Wars, or Fire Emblem, etc. I’ve always loved this style of game, and the beautiful thing is once the basic engine is in place, adding new scenarios seems like it’d be a breeze.

For those of you unfamiliar with those types of games, we're talking about something that looks more or less like this:




I’m trying to keep my requirements humble, but so far I’ll need at least the following:

1. Units that move around a square-grid map in a turn-based fashion.

2. A battlesystem where when one unit attacks another, health gets reduced, experiencegets rewarded, etc.

3. Units with specific characteristics such as attack, defense, movement, etc.

4. Terrain that modifies movement and combat variables

5. A system to purchase units with resources before each battle.

6. An XP system that keeps track of hero’s experience and levels them up accordingly.

7. Rudimentary AI

Those are the bare bones as far as I can tell at the moment. Obviously there are some bells and whistles I’d like, such the game cutting to a separate screen when combat takes place ala AdvanceWars/Langrisser, but that stuff can be tacked on later. I don’t have a lot of programming experience in general – I’ve done some basic stuff like NWN scripting and module design – basic if/then stuff, triggers,etc. Nothing earth-shattering. At this point I don’t even know what language to work in. I’ve been thinking about Java because I don’t see this game as being a resource hog (2d turn-based), but I’m open to suggestion.

Essentially, I’m not sure where to begin. I have noillusions about the complexities of programming, having spent many a night banging my head on my desk finishing a NWN module – but I figure if a few people in the late 80s could program something like this, all hope isn’t lost for me.

Well first you should learn a programming language, of course. You said Java, which is fine, but I would highly recommend C# with XNA for your graphics API, as they are very good combo. If you decide to go with C# don't worry about XNA, until you understand C# pretty well, then you can move on to learning XNA. There's not too much to learn about XNA if your just using 2D, so it shouldn't take you to long until your somewhat comfortable with it. From there you definitely want to practice by making some smaller 2D games, and later learn about AI. You might still need some experience at that point, but you should be able to start on your game! Of course practicing more before you make your game will allow you to write the code for it faster, more neatly, and there would be less "learn as go" involved. So depending on how hard you practice/learn, maybe a few months until you are ready to get to coding your game.

Thanks beatlefan and boogyman - that was a very helpful push in the right direction!

I'm certainly not opposed to learning programming, but the path of least resistance does sound appealing if I can pick up some solid concepts/fundamentals along the way. I've never messed around with anything outside of scripting languages, so I suppose that would be a good place to start.

Thanks for the serious responses.

Even though it is still a work in progress, I am puttin together this post for people in exactly your position. I hope you find it useful, let me know. Its a veritable wall of text, but I like to believe when you are done you are going to be much more informed then when you started.

Oh, beautiful - this should be stickied!