Step one

Ok, so the “Step” system isn’t going to stick in this case. But the first question is always the same – what shall I make?

Originally, in my naivety, I thought “great, I’ll build an engine framework!”. I can say for sure that was the biggest mistake. I saw an article posted in this thread on Gamedev.net and just seeing the title caused some alarm bells to ring. Why am I writing a framework I have no use for? That’s when I came up with a basic idea for a game. Very basic.  I think the closest this comes to an idea for a game is the word “idea”. I am focusing on a sort of RTS style gameplay, maybe Turn Based instead of Real Time, I am still undecided. Not good I know, but my philosophy is, start working on something and it will come together. Otherwise I find myself planning out endless combinations of things that never get implemented. I want a basic shell to be able to build on. Something with networking too.

My target is to have a shell with the following features:

• User controlled camera looking into a 3D world
• Complex and efficiently rendered and textured terrain generated by heightmaps
• The ability to place objects (3D models) on the terrain with the mouse
• A networking system that can replicate said object placement between all connected peers in real time
• A GUI to provide the user with the tools to select and place objects
• A basic chat system

I think thats a reasonable feature list for an RTS “shell”. If anything it’s proof of my ability to write such an application, and it gives me something to do at the weekends.

I think I’m going to try and give my posts more interesting names from now on, so next I will go through my bullet points, identifying what I have done so far, and how I plan to do the rest.

~ by badgerr on March 3, 2009.