For the past couple of years I have been running a fantasy hockey league, but the simulator that I use is not that great. I have always wanted to create my own simulator but I have never had enough time or I didn''t know where to start. Now that I have some more free time, since I graduated, I want to start writing this sim. My question is how would I begin to write the game simulation engine? Basically this game will have no graphics. The engine will take two teams each with 20 players. Each player will have stats such as speed, strength, etc... The engine will then simulate a game and spit out the results. By the way, I''ll be writing this sim in c++. How should I structure this engine? I''m mainly looking for some general ideas to help me get started, nothing too specific. Thanks

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out with this.

Thanks in advance.

Design, design, design.... I know it sucks to hear this, but design is the key to victory. I am not sure how much programming experience you have, but if you were like me, most of my experience came from programs for homework. Back then you did not need much design because the programs were small enough to finish in a few hours. But this project is probably going to be bigger than any other you have undertaken. So try to do lots of design.

Write out generally what you want your program to do. I know you probably already know but do it anyway! After you have a broad outline of what you want your game to do, start fleshing out the details. You could start with a struct/class for your hockey player. When designing a struct or class, try to keep in mind all the interactions between other classes and how the main program will use it. When you have designed some game logic and more classes go back and look at the interactions between them to make sure you are not forgetting anything. And once you have it all designed you can start coding. After you start coding you will see what areas you missed while designing. And that should help you out when designing future projects.

I hope this helps,
Eck

Also, when you log onto GameDev. Click on "New? Start here" near the top of the page. It has a bunch of detailed information for most problems you might encounter.
Later,
Eck

I have thought about doing a hockey sim too. Something along the lines of the popular football game FrontOfficeFootball. However, I''ve thought a lot about the game AI and I don''t think that I could do it. Have you had any luck lately?