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Hi. Before I begin with my questions, I would like to mention that I am a total novice at building or creating a video game. I do have some experience with programming, mainly Java 2 and php. One thing I learned with writing any program was that organization is the number one priority.

In April, some friends and I came up with an idea for what we believe would be a really good video game. I thought since I could program already this would be a snap to do, just a little time consuming. I realized how wrong I was rather quickly. Although coding is an important part, that knowledge didn't prepare me at all for the 3D world. I really need to get organized here and need a little help.

This is what we have done so far:

1. Game Concept - We came up with an idea of what we want our video game to do, the theme, characters, levels, etc.

2. Model Creation - After much frustration with which programs to use and learning how to use them, we have finally created our two main characters and objects for inside the game such as weapons and vehicles. Although we are no where near finished with every item and character, we are coming along with it very well.

3. Level Creation - The first level has been completed.

We have divided the work between us. One is writing the music for the game. One is doing the level creations. I am doing model creations (I was an idiot to give myself that task). We have all worked on the story line.

So far the programs we are using are: Cartography Shop, Blender, and True Space. I am about to go purchase Dark Basic Pro.

I suppose my question now is, what do we do with it all? We have built all these graphical things but have no idea what to do with them. My programming skills have been limited to web design and right now we feel like we are bouncing from one thing to another and accomplishing nothing.

You program it. Use your Java knowledge. Get some code from the codebase at the top of the page...
looks like $c

If you ask me, I think you should have learned to use DBPro before you went and bought all of those things for DBPro. they may come in handy after you learn though! Trust me, it may be awhile before you can start to create your game in DBPro if you have no programming knowledge in DBPro...

you might want to purchase the OGG supplement pack as using mpgs as audio in a commercial package will cost a pretty penny.

depending on your game you may want to buy a few add ons that will make life a little easier in some components.

I'd advise you start like everyone else, look around for tutorials, and write e few simple apps such as pong, and then start on some basic 3d programs.

Because you already know how to program, the learning curve will be a lot less steep, but you have to teach yourself the basic game concepts like coordinate systems, cameras and such. Once you've got that, your programming skills will bring you a long way

Thanks for the info...Incidently, the only program I actually had to buy was Cartography Shop...And it really has served two purposes...My husband runs his own business which builds stairs and rails commercially and I've had a blast playing around with that making models of everything from his blueprints. I've browsed around and seen that not a lot of people like Blender but I have absolutely fell in love with it. I've found that I'm not as artistically handicapped as I thought I was. Also, I downloaded the DarkBasic Pro Basics tutorial and gave it a quick look over...I'm about to show my age here...It's extremely similar to just plain ol' Basic that I learned many many (not going to get to carried away with "manys" here) years ago in college (1984 - God I'm old! lol) I think the only real program I ever wrote in that class besides the infamous "Hello World" and other such junk was one to balance my checkbook. It's sad the things you forget over a course of 20 years (I suppose you can probably tell by now my dad wasted his money on my higher education lol).

Yes, the core of the language is very similar to what you have probably
worked with in the past. The major difference with DBPro is all of the
more modern commands that handle the graphics and sound for game making.

My suggestion is pretty much the same as what was said above. Search
the forums, ask questions, and studying some of the tutorials. Start
with something simple and build up from there. Try to keep things you
write yourself modular for easy inclusion and upgradabilty in larger
projects.

Yeah, again, what everyone said. I'd take a look at tutorials, and feel free to ask questions here, modify current code, play around with it. I think it's awesome that your making video games at your age especially as a female, I don't know any women near your age who have the slightest clue about video games, much less want to make them, lol. Good luck!

I'm pretty much on the same plane as Gil is. Now, I've tried to learn Java (just a little) and I find the languages are not at all alike. I don't think that experience will help you any. But knowing how to program a, er, program is just what you need. Many noobs find it difficult when first learning and accepting a program's structure and what tasks should be implemented and when. I'm sure you'll do fine. Dark Basic is...basic. I don't know about DBPro though... My understanding is that you will be doing art and 3D modeling in this project, not programming. Unless I missed what you wrote.

I'd also like to post my two cents: I think it's pretty cool finding an "old" (sorry) programmer and one who's female!


Otherwise, I'm sure you'll do just fine. Tutorials and this forum are all you'll need. Just be sure to give us the details on the project, its design, and how it's all coming together