Around one year ago I started learn Java. Today I released my first game. And this is short story – how it was.
Just tried to find my “Hello World” applications sources – and was not able to do this. But found an old one – maybe first eclipse project – called “battle”. I knew that I want to write games – so it was everywhere:) It used awt and swing (don’t know why), have only one class and was look like this:
Really impressive, isn’t it?:) Before and after this one it was a long way learning Java. But I wanted to start doing games – I was here because of them. So, first I wanted to try it out with simple cover of old game – Battle City. Remember it? It was about tanks, top-down action, where you need to protect your base against enemy tanks. I found some tutorials (exactly about learning development on this game exercise) and started learn basics. And you know – it was really cool to learn programming on such simple and pretty example: not as boring as usual programing learning (you know this – “let’s create classes – Vehicle, Car, Train” – and so on), but not so hard as develop game from “your dreams” – like “Ok, I will start my game dev carrier from simple Online MMO RPG with dragons, archers, towers and make simple Skyrim killer”;).
I went in colors, textures, texture atlases, game circle – some basics of game development. Then implemented simple tanks, simple levels, even simple level builder:
And then – physics begin:) For such simple game – you really don’t need to do some hard physics. Just detect collisions between tank and tank, tank and wall, tank and bullet – that’s it. Goal is more simply when you remember that tank can move only in 4 directions (up, down, left, right) – and bullets can move only with same directions too. Really simple – you can write it using I think around 4-16 if-else statements. And sure – I did it, and it was really nice and fun to see how your first real (if I can call so:)) game characters make some interactions with each other. But it was not enough for me. And …
And here was my dreams about “MMO RPG Skyrim killer” failed me to finish this simple training project just in few weeks:)
Go to next part – and see what will going there:)