Hello,

I am a complete beginner when it comes to Game Development. I am wondering if there are any software out there to help with game development and AI.

I am basically wanting to make, for a starter project, an electronic animal. So let's say if I make a cow:

It would start as a calf, it would grow to be a cow and would then only breed(create a new calf) with a Bull.
I would want to have it so it is inside a fenced area and will walk around within the area and not try to walk outside.
I would like to add a thirst/hunger hidden bar for the animal and so it would eat or drink itself when needed.
Etc. etc.

Could anybody please direct me in the way of how to make this project? I am not trying to make a game from it, this is just to help me learn while creating a project.


Kindest regards,
Gaz

For your title question (How hard would it be?), I would say "not easy", and certainly not a beginner project.

For the main body of your post, there isn't really any good answer. There are at least two seperate components to this: the simulation itself, and the representation. The simulation could range from simplistic (simple hard-coded state machines) to complex (complex adaptive agents, physics simulation) given the information you've provided. Likewise with the represenation: are the cows/world represented by ASCII characters in a console window, or by fully 3-D models? If the latter, do you have access to the art resources (or artists) needed?

If you are looking just to get into artificial life or agent simulations, you could try using something like Breve: http://www.spiderland.org/breve/

With Breve, or any other programs, could I create a (let's stick with the example - ) cow and make it walk and gain hunger etc.? I guess make it sort of like a Tamagochi if you remember them, but in a field where you may have numerous 'cows'?

Breve is one system to create these types of simulations, and it provides certain things for you (such as physics simulation and rendering), but you still would have to program in all the other things.

However, if you are just beginning, with no or very little programming experience, this is far too much of a bit to take right now. Even using some sort of framework like Breve, this sounds like it would be major project for an experienced developer.

There are many posts here that have advice for beginners, I'd recommend starting with much smaller goals and slowly working your way towards something like this.

What are you asking for is not easy at all. I suggest you first learn C++ then the basics of the 3D math (also known as Linear Algebra) and then those concepts applied to computer science.

Also, physics.

Good luck

A state machine representing an animal (squirrel in this case) was a second year project in a C++ sequence my friend took a few years ago. There were no graphics involved, it was only the simulation of how the animal reacted to a few different inputs. But, if you want examples of similar projects, search this forum or google for fishtank - making a fishtank is a standard moderate difficulty game programming exercise. There's not a big difference between a fish in a tank and a cow in a field, though most basic fishtank sims don't include breeding.