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I just got DB Pro for Christmas and my head is spinning. I have a slight idea of what I want to do for a game but I have a few questions.

1) How would I make a 2D world? (Think Zelda Links to the Past from the SNES, the overworld)

2) If I was to make a zelda type game (which I might try when I'm more experienced) how would I make it where the character is a sprite?

3) Relating to question 2, if the player presses, lets say enter I want the character (the players sprite) to attack, how would that be coded?

4) How would you make a Zelda type menu system?

5) what are some good freeware 3D modelers that can make 3D worlds and normal character models?

EDIT: Could you also help me with one more thing? I'm trying to decide on a game to maybe start once I'm more experienced so could you rate my ideas with a 1-10 scale (1-being very easy, 10 being insanely hard)?

ok, here are my game genre's I'm trying to decide upon...

A- A fighting game

B- An Adventure (Maniac mansion sorta)

C- An action/adventure (think zelda)

D- A sidescroller (either mario like or like megaman)

E- A FPS (like perfect dark)

F- A game kinda like GTA (grand theft auto, where you can steals cars, kill people, etc.

1)You would need to write a 2d tile engine, this should be attempted once you have grapsed the darkbasic language, if you look at the examples that came with dbpro and experiment with all of the 2d stuff then you should be able to have a good crack at writing one.

2)As above if you learn darkbasic pro then you will be able to answear your own question - its simple enough, you just need to learn how darkbasic works.

3)This would require you to test for all the keys you want to use as input then acting accordingly, so if enter was pressed you would want to change the image to the guy attacking, and check wether you hit anything. If you did then you will want to do all the damage as required. Read up on functions, these can be helpfull for things like this.

4)This can be done using simple 2d commands and simple input commands, ie drawing the menu and then waiting for the user to interact with it with either the mouse or keyboard, then acting accordingly.

5)Wings3D is a good open source modeller, also there is 3d canvas which is a good free 3d modeller. If you dont mind spending a little bit of money Milkshape 3d is pretty good.

To get started with Darkbasic you really need to start off very simple though, try writing something like a pong game, wich will require you to use 2d graphics, input, displaying information on the screen and a basic knowladge of programming.
Then you can move onto Space Invaders or something liek that, you shouldnt really bother with 3d until you are comfortable with Darkbasic and programming as a whole.

Hope this helps.

TwoBits

Hey Zenkai, just for some more opinions I'll answer as well.

1) Make out a grass bmp in paint, then a tree bmp, then a rock bmp, etc., etc. and code it to copy-paste them all over the place where you need them, and then you can program collisions, this is really just a cheap explanation of a tile engine.

2) Have series of bitmaps that would animate actions in different directions. Download a demo of the app and just look at the tutorials, they kinda stink but they are worth something. Or you could buy the Beginner's Guide to DarkBASIC Game Programming book which has a demo of DBPro and DBClassic and more indepth explanations of programming in general.

3) You will find that the hardest part of a game is not always the coding, but the illustration of graphics. I highly recommend a program like Paint Shop Pro if you're focusing on 2d. There are input commands in darkbasic that detect keys being pressed.

4) Design one first. Draw sprites(because sprites can detect collision), detect cursor-over-button_sprite collision, detect button press of whatever the button it is you want to be 'A' or however it goes. Take a good look at the program, try it out.

5) There are not many plain free modellers. But you can use gmax (discreet.com) to export to .md3 format, then use 3d exploration to convert to .x format. The only problem here is that you'll need something to create animations. trueSpace3.2 is free, but very limited. Right now (until I can buy gameSpace ) I'm doing that whole gmax export thing then animating it in trueSpace3.2. To get anything nice you'll probably have to pay. Another free but limited program is Anim8or.

Do what 2bitsshortofabyte says, and do a real simple game. Maybe not pong, but a text adventure, or something where you're the letter "A" and you have to hunt down and kill "B" and "C".

I'll rate these for ya, though, because if I know beginning programmers (like my best bud, we're still working on that darn FPS), they can be a little stubborn. Which is good! Determination is your friend. I'll rate them in order of hardest to least hardest, though.

GTA-type game. Hardest, because of all the features you'll have to code (stealing cars, police chases, hookers...well maybe not that).

FPS- Very difficult because of DB's funky camera controls, definitely possible though.

Action/Adventure- 2d world creation is very simple, 2d is easier for art in general. The hardest part will be the code, and that's easier than modelling 3d objects.

Fighting Game-combos will be difficult. You will also have to detect strength of attack, direction of attack, etc. At least it is in a controlled environment unlike FPS or Action/Adventure

Sidescroller-Easy calculations. If player is in jump mode, and collides with enemy, enemy dies. If player is not in jump mode, and collides with enemy, player dies. If player's bullet hits enemy, enemy dies.

An Adventure (Maniac mansion sorta)- Maniac Mansions is old dude! But this would definitely be easiest. There are not real-time calculations (determining gravity and speed and all that). And it will be just like charting causes and effects as far as the design goes.

hope this post wasn't too long,
juvy

ok, I got some new questions (but feel free to answer the old ones also).

1) If I was to make a game, how would I do one of those screens where it says this company made this game (like um... on PS2 games like final fantasy X-2 before the game itself loads there's a screen with square enix's name/logo on it)

2) How do I make one of those papers (I think you call them development papers or something like that) for my game, cause I've been seeing people saying make one of those to plan out you game in-depth, and since I've never been good at making large extensive plans for any of my games it would be nice if this could be explained.

EDIT: 1 more question...

3) Does anyone know is 3D studio max can do animations? (of course it makes 3D models but I want to know if it can animate them as well because I've been thinking of getting it for a while now.

I hope you can help me with these new questions.

hello again!

1. You could do this several ways, but the two easiest are as follows: If you don't want your company logo to be animated, then just draw a bitmap/jpeg/whateverformat logo and load it in, then dislpay it for a certain amount of time, or until the user presses a key. If you want an animated logo, then use a program like Macromedia FlashMX, or Paint Shop Pro with Animation Shop 3, or even just using MS paint (it would be tough to use paint, but it is possible). You're going to need either a bunch of bitmaps that could be flipped through to make animation, or you can just save it as a gif. Then using load image commands you can load your sequence of bitmaps and flip through them, or if you're using a gif just use the load animation and play animation commands.

2. It is difficult to describe a format for writing one of these. Many beginning programming books have tried to outline this aspect of game design, but really it differs for each type of game. There are still some basic elements to be found in a design document for any game:
A: A brief paragraph summarizing the game/app.

B:The purpose of the game/app (usually this will be something like "to have fun playing as <whatever> fighting with <whatever> and exploring <whatever>, but if you're designing a utility application then it might be "to provide an easy interface in which the user can manipulate directories" or something unexciting like that.

C:Story. Why are you trying to kill the dragon? What is the point of making the blue tiles disappear? If you are doing an RPG/action adventure thing this section could get lengthy because you'll need to write a story for each level.

D:A section on how the user will interact with the game. From clicking on "Start New Game" button, to hitting certain buttons to perform combos, just about everything must be covered.

E:A section on how the AI will work. You may also need to have several different types of AI for different types of NPCs and enemies. "AI #1 Berserker>Runs straight toward player as fast as possible trying to reach the player before the dynamite in berserker's hand explodes. If something is in his way he goes around it."

F:What you will need as far as character models, world models, weapon models, sounds, music, special algorithms (algorithms are sections of code that perform a special function, like AI). This is where you can figure out what to work on, then check it off as you go along.

There's probably a bunch I didn't cover, but go ahead and include those. If you're starting with a small game it doesn't need to be very lengthy (imagine how big the design document for PONG must have been...half a page?). In the designing phase you have to think about how your program will work.

example: First load all media (worlds, models, animations, sounds) into memory. Second put everything where it's supposed to go. Third check if user is pressing buttons, wait a minute, how will I check this? I will write a function called CheckButtonPresses() to check if the player is pressing buttons.

3. 3d Studio Max does everything. period. no further discussion; but it is also $3000 dollars. If you can bounce it, go right ahead, because it will be all the money you will ever need to spend on 3d modelling, unless you want to make indoor/outdoor level or character design easier. If you've ever used Macromedia FlashMX then you're probably familiar with keyframes, 3ds Max uses keyframes for its animation, very powerful but easy to work out.

glad to be of help ,
juvy

3d Studio Max would probably over kill for you. Try Milkshape, or Animation Master is awesome for the price.

Milkshape is only 20 Bucks www.milkshape3d.com modelling, animating, uvmapping, the whole package

Just search google for "Game Developement Document Template" or something.

RPGamer