HayManMarc
Member
Hello Devs,
I'm beginning a large project and I need some advice on programming strategy. I'm just a hobbyist with little time, but I want to try to go about this as efficiently as possible.
My game idea is a space ship crew management game, in the vein of FTL, but with more emphasis on the crew of the ship (generally). I haven't programmed much for this yet except mapping a floorplan to a grid and implementing grid pathfinding movement (point & click destinations). I've also done some camera manipulation controls (pan and zoom), and made a quick little mini-map. Here's a screenie:
I want to make the game be sort of like a tycoon game, where the player can make the floorplan of the ship and manipulate the items inside. (Right now, it's just a manually created floorplan, like a 'level'.)
I'm wondering if I should work on this part of the game first (the tycoon/ship building aspect), or will I be able to implement it later easy enough after programming the item objects, crew stats, and other stuff?
The game will be a single-player, multi-character RPG (the ship's crew), with a tycoon-style ship building (and customization) feature. The individual crew members will have stats similar to tabletop RPG's (including skills and personalities) which will dictate their actions (AI), while the player assigns the crew's job positions and various tasks during gameplay. The gist of the game is managing the ship by hiring/firing crew (or replacing killed crew) from populated areas throughout space, and maintaining/improving your ship (or buying new) as you go through the story of the game.
As I've said, I've started development on this with setting up grid collision and pathfinding and I was going to start creating some GUI elements to help me get a better overall feel for the game. However, I couldn't help but wonder if I might be setting myself up for headaches later because I might be doing things in a weird order.
What would your method of attack be on developing a game like this? In what order do you tackle projects that you've found to be the most effective?
I'm beginning a large project and I need some advice on programming strategy. I'm just a hobbyist with little time, but I want to try to go about this as efficiently as possible.
My game idea is a space ship crew management game, in the vein of FTL, but with more emphasis on the crew of the ship (generally). I haven't programmed much for this yet except mapping a floorplan to a grid and implementing grid pathfinding movement (point & click destinations). I've also done some camera manipulation controls (pan and zoom), and made a quick little mini-map. Here's a screenie:
I want to make the game be sort of like a tycoon game, where the player can make the floorplan of the ship and manipulate the items inside. (Right now, it's just a manually created floorplan, like a 'level'.)
I'm wondering if I should work on this part of the game first (the tycoon/ship building aspect), or will I be able to implement it later easy enough after programming the item objects, crew stats, and other stuff?
The game will be a single-player, multi-character RPG (the ship's crew), with a tycoon-style ship building (and customization) feature. The individual crew members will have stats similar to tabletop RPG's (including skills and personalities) which will dictate their actions (AI), while the player assigns the crew's job positions and various tasks during gameplay. The gist of the game is managing the ship by hiring/firing crew (or replacing killed crew) from populated areas throughout space, and maintaining/improving your ship (or buying new) as you go through the story of the game.
As I've said, I've started development on this with setting up grid collision and pathfinding and I was going to start creating some GUI elements to help me get a better overall feel for the game. However, I couldn't help but wonder if I might be setting myself up for headaches later because I might be doing things in a weird order.
What would your method of attack be on developing a game like this? In what order do you tackle projects that you've found to be the most effective?