I am currently in a High School AP Computer Science AB class. After we take the AP exam, since there is nothing more to learn, our teacher has given us a project to write and create our own game using java.
My friends and I have decided to try and create a small text-based rpg.
I was curious as to if anyone had any resources, help, or tips in any way that might be useful in our creation of this. thanks
Figure out the rules and gameplay before you start coding.
Then figure out roughly how you will design the overall game. When designing think in terms of objects.
Eg. Hero object contains the properties, name, defense, speed, ...
Hero object has methods (behaviors) attack() run() etc...
Hero object has (reference to) Sword object. Sword object contains properties attack, name, etc...
http://almy.us/dungeon.html
To quote the master:
"plagerize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
That's why the good lord made your eyes,
So plagerize, plagerize, plagerize...
Only remember, always to call it 'research' "
So there is a pointer to the original classic Dungeon Adventure game, one of the first small text based games ("You are in a twisty little maze of passages all alike")
Download it an play it. (I don't endorce the site I pointed you to. I don't even know if the downloads actually work or the game actually plays. I just knew what to Google for)
If you are serious about your research, it is possible that you will never get out of this phase of your project. You could be playing this game for weeks.
On the other hand if you are serious about your project, the advantage of studying an ancient ground breaking, market winning game like Adventure, is that it was written back in da Stone Ages, where there wunt no 3D graphics cards, no Mice, Icons, Windows, etc. There weren't even computer screens. You played this sucker on a Teletype printing out what was happening on a long spool of paper at 10 characters a second.
This was state of the art back when text was the only game in town and 16K was a whopping big amount of memory.
The advantage of studying old code like this is that it is fundamentally very simple because the machines were so simple back then. (and of course because us cavemen were so stoopid, duh!)
The architecture is transparent. You can pick up and drop things and you can move from one room to another. Shouldn't be to hard to figure out how to do something like that now.
Furthermore you have the wonderful advantage of having huge fast machines now, so that you don't need to do ANY of the actual work that was done in creating the original, which was trying to make it small enough to fit into memory and trying to make it run fast. I mean if you want to have real fun, try writing this in FORTRAN using TECO!
So go forth and play. Memorize this useful phrase, "Mom, please, I'm working on my school project. My teacher is making me do this. I'm gonna be serious hard core about this for the next couple weeks so just leave the food and get out."
The phrase doesn't actually work, but it feels so good to say it.
Enjoy!
