Re: Where do I begin?

[Henningsen <alg@glinx.com>]

I largely agree with Steve's advice, and would like to particularly stress
this part:

>I strongly advise you to "Get Something Going Quickly" - that
>provides the strongest motivation for you.  Don't over-plan
>this stage - you'll end up getting totally bogged down in
>that process.

, and add this: 

Since you want to work with CrystalSpace, your best bet is IMO to take an
already running game, preferably a simple one like the "WalkTest" demo, and
modify this in the direction you want to go. If you want to work together
with other coders, you should fairly early decide on an overall architecture
that defines how to split the code into modules, and you should give
priority to fixing the interfaces between the modules. Expect major
re-writes though, unless you decide to ditch the first game early and
develop again from scratch.

The one point where I disagree with Steve is that I think if you want to
really write good real-time network code, you have to plan that in from the
start with a view to minimizing the size of the data you have to exchange
over the network in order to keep clients synchronized. This will have an
influence on the data structures you use to run your game. Or if you don't
consider this and later see you got it wrong, this is a good time for a
re-write. Remember this: One reason Carmack is so good is because he isn't
shy do ditch code and start again from scratch.

Peter Henningsen
alifegames.com
DungeonMaker1.2 is out - watch mazes grow - rendered with SDL
http://dungeonmaker.sourceforge.net/