Hello everyone,

my progress in my game has gone quite well, but recently I don't have the motivation anymore to continue my project. I'm doing it all alone and ran out of ideas to flesh out the concept. I ever wanted to create a game which grasps the core concept (primary: exploration, secondary: combat) of my favourite game (Zelda: The wind waker) and puts it into a small platformer.

I struggle with little things like the question which programming style fits best (CES or OOP) or how to do certain things like collision detection best, although I already got them working.

Maybe the project is just to big for me, maybe I just need a little idea to make my game more fun, maybe I should even drop the project and start off with a smaller game, maybe I just hit 'the wall'. I don't know.

Hopefully you can give me some feedback or opinions on what to do.

I attached a screenshot of my game.

[attachment=21603:progress.png]

Sincerely,

Strupf

You can read some articles about game programming and look at source code of similar games.

What do you mean by CES? How you programm highly depends on your programming language

(some don't support OOP and some don't support the functional paradigm) and your own

preferences so you might want to give additional information on which language you are

using and what you want to do.

One big motivator for me always is the community feedback. So maybe try to involve more people

in the project.

What do you mean by CES?

I think he meant ECS . Entity Component System. Also it's tagged [java], so I guess that answer both your questions.

Back on topic,

Honestly, unless you've got already a few projects under your belt and a relatively good knowledge of the language you're using I wouldn't recommend going for ECS. I don't say it's bad, on the contrary, all modern engines use this system. But, assuming here you've read about both, it's obviously not as easy to implement as a light OO approach. You'll have to write mostly "self-sufficient" classes/components, handle a messaging system between your components and so on. It's gratifying but definitively not easy.

In my opinion, you shouldn't worry to much about the coding style or the "perfect" collision detection too much. The most important thing is to make a game, not to find the perfect architecture (that remind me of this thread, you seem to suffer from the same issue as the OP).

That said, It's hard to tell you more, the rest is for you to decide. Having a small pet project can sometimes help when you are getting tired of always working on the same project.

And btw, I kinda liked the screenshot. It would probably benefit from a sky and some clouds in the background.

Perhaps you need to start thinking outside the programming mindset. A game is not just logic and it seems you have enough working logic right now.

Are the level editors smooth enough? Are the input filters reliable? Are the mechanics well understood? Is the story well fleshed out? Do I want to add more detail? Remove some detail? From where? Do I want another weapon? A new enemy? Extra towns?

Once the plumbing is done, it's time to get serious with gameplay. It's surprisingly difficult considering the little technical requirements.

Thanks for all the replies!

I think I'm just going to get a break for some days of the project to get some new inspiration from outside.

In my opinion, you shouldn't worry to much about the coding style or the "perfect" collision detection too much. The most important thing is to make a game, not to find the perfect architecture (that remind me of this thread, you seem to suffer from the same issue as the OP).

Thanks for reminding me, that's a thing you easily forget. I'll come to my game back later to decorate it with some new stuff. I really worried too much about the egine of the game instead of gameplay.

Sincerely,

Strupf