That should work alright. Last night I played Advanced Wars a bit to see if there was anything I liked that I should be sure to add, and one was displaying where a unit can move, where it can attack, and having the arrow to represent the path your unit will travel (if you finalize the move). So first and last of these could directly use what you said (loop through all terrain tiles, check if they're within X distance of a unit, and if so, can the unit move there). I'd have to modify it a bit to ensure I don't skip over tiles. I'm thinking maybe using a modified Kruskal's Algorithm to calculate where I can go might be efficient enough.

Thanks for the suggestions! I need to modify a few other things before starting coding this, but I'll let you know how it goes.

I worked mainly on improving my code, rather than work on movement. I've got what I think some could consider a "game engine." I have various states, such as menus, in-game, an 'intro' screen, and several others. The included image is of the main menu, with the mouse hovering over "Level Select".

There's some more optimizing I need to do before I'll start coding the unit's movement. Mainly with how things are stored/accessed.

P.S. Wheels2050, let me know if you mind me posting about my project in here.

Hello. I'm working on my own couple of games.

One's a retro Gameboy style RPG.
One's a modern 3D RPG.
One's a pre rendered adventure game much like Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom.

I make my own 3D graphics in Anim8or.

Eventually I'll make my own thread to scout for talent. But if you need help, just let me know.
I don't do any programming...sadly...but I'm the artsy guy.

Hey all, sorry I've been absent for so long - there's been a lot going on for me lately!

I'm still keen to get back into my game, but it may not be for a little while. I certainly hadn't forgotten about this thread, but have been spending little time on NL lately.

I'm quite happy for people to post about their own games here, as I think it will help to share ideas (if people are willing!) and have a central spot for this type of stuff. However, what I would suggest is that you start each post with the game you're talking about (e.g. Wheels2050's Game:) so that it's clear to others what you're talking about. I've renamed the thread to reflect this.

To answer a few queries/points made in this thread lately:

• C++ isn't native only to Windows. You compile a program for a target OS (e.g. Windows or Linux) but a given program can be compiled for several targets with minimal/no tweaking, depending on the program. My game runs on both Windows and Linux, and would run on Mac with a small amount of effort (as OSX is a Unix-like system). The Gnu Compiler Collection that I use is open-source and supports a wide range of platforms and architectures.
• @tsoltron: Your structure as you've listed it looks perfectly fine. The way I set out my engine is to have an 'Entity' class, of which specific units are child classes. They all have member functions such as "Draw", "Move", "SetDestination" etc. These functions are called from an external event-handling loop, so if a unit is selected and a valid destination tile is clicked on, the unit's destination is set and it then moves there. Without seeing your actual code I might suggest doing the same, such as having a class that does the event handling (so you can incorporate keypresses etc. all in the one area).

As for the path-finding algorithm, my maps will not be huge so Dijkstra is plenty fast enough for my need. I came up with a method to determine whether a tile is passable or impassable, based on a little icon in the sprite sheet. This then lets me create new sprites, as well as their passability, in the one graphic which suits my needs well. The tile class has a flag which sets the passability of that tile. Then, an impassable tile is given a weight of 999 in the Dijkstra's algorithm, meaning that it's avoided when pathfinding. However, this method using little symbols requires pixel-level analysis of an image, which isn't terribly complicated but you may prefer to refer to an external database for that sort of thing.

Anyway, my game is looking a little more refined than in the last video I uploaded. Once I get back to working on it I'll show you where it's at.

Good luck with the coding everybody, keep us informed of how you're going!

So...I said some things about a game I was making.

Simply put, that's not happening anymore. I realized that the project was too ambitious for what I had known/done (absolutely nothing), so I scrapped it. The good news is that I did make a game!

...And it's a clone of Snake.

Yes, it's disappointing, but this actually gives me experience in making video games (if only small ones) and this will allow me to build up my expertise to the point where I may actually be able to revive Project SD or do another, potentially more advanced game. Two imaginary steps back and one real step forward.

Well, it's a start, everybody has to start somewhere.
Wow, has it been 7 or so months? I forgot about this thread.

My first few "games" weren't great, either. At my school the first actual larger-scale project students complete is something similar to a 20-questions game (but with only a couple possible objects).

I worked on my project for another month before heading back to school, so while I have quite a bit of progress compared to what I posted, development is slow.

However, in one of my current programming courses we're learning how to make various games and apps for multiple platforms. A log for what I've done and some of the projects we did are at my website, www.tsolron.com.

V8_Ninja, if you have questions about game design, feel free to ask me. I haven't done much game design with Java, but I've worked with the language quite a bit.

Just wondering, but what tools and Java libraries were you going to use to make the game?

If I can add some information: A friend of mine recently completing a lot of these tutorials (with the intention of porting it to Android later on (part of the tutorials)):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1753131

Another friend used LightWeight Java Game Library (LWJGL) to make a MineCraft-style game (quite a bit different, but that same idea with blocks and such).
http://www.lwjgl.org/

I was just going to use the default Java libraries. If I were to revive the game I would still be dedicated to doing that, as the Snake clone I made was in 100% pure Java with no additional libraries used.

i am actually planning a series of mini-projects, 3 total games.

1.) this one is a journey to heaven, where when you finally reach the end, to meet your girlfriend who'd previously died, she kills you and you are sent straight to hell afterwards. this is actually a metaphor representing a love i had in my late 20's, but i was broken afterwards when she'd dumped me when i'd loved her so much.

2.) this is about a boy (who had previously led a crappy life of being bullied and beaten) who falls down a hole in the ground and can't get out. within, he discovers a network of old tunnels, where these engineers and construction workers had all died. but this boy is alone, and so begins talking to these rotted corpses, when they start talking back! led by his subconscious, the boy tries to solve the problems of these dead souls, and discovers that by helping them, they can construct for him a ladder to escape the tunnels! but the boy discovers he's made friends for the first time, and begins questioning whether he wants to return to his average crappy life, or if he wants to stay with people who actually love him. this is a metaphor for my own crappy childhood, where i had abusive parents and was bullied all until high school graduation.

3.) this is about a monster who'd woke up one morning in a neighborhood of men. but he wakes with amnesia, and can't remember a thing! but he realizes ist's possible to regain his memory by revisiting ruins of places he'd been before. once he explores an area, he can explore this area even further in his dreams. the more you explore the dream world and regain memories, the more of the real world you can explore, and your dream world can grow too! to unlock new areas in the real world, you are given a riddle related to a memory, and if you solve this riddle, you can locate something hidden in the real world (for example, a key) required to further explore the real world. each of your memories look like puzzle pieces. once you put all the puzzle pieces together, you will have regained your memory and your last objective will be riddled in the picture made by the puzzle.

i've spent some time on each of these projects, so tell me what you think of each, please!

Fun fact; if you're serious about making those games, you should probably shelve them and start small. From what I can tell, you've done nothing with game development and that's bad when ambition gets in the way.

If you really haven't done anything, here's a pro-tip; make a SNAKE clone. It's easy, you practice basic formula creation/handling (the player needs to move faster after each expansion), and input handling is very simple.

Heroes of mana is about the only SRPG game I've seen that actually utilized elevation differences effectively. I myself have been working on two games, one being an action rpg with a 3 member party system and the other being a Strategy RPG rendered in full 3D with a scope camera (because its also a horror title) ( the closest I can describe it is each battlefield is lain out like the floor plan in a dungeon crawler. They are both going to be heavily AI intensive.

i wouldn't say they're ambitions, more like stretch goals. aiming towards making these projects, i've learned a lot about programming in C++. plus, i have prior knowledge of coding from coding in different languages in the past (i've written code in html5 and java). i'm writing these in C++ as a sort of learning experience, and as i've said before, i'm doing this so i can learn more about C++. think of it like this; it is important to learn codes of different languages because if you only learn one, it becomes rigid and stale.

If you're going to make games to practice your programming, then you should maybe focus on making game mechanics. And maybe simple ones too if you're new to game development :/

So this is the place to post now when you're making a game? Alright. Here's what I'm working on currently:

Download link: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/216546-the-great-gatsby-be...
This is for a school project at the moment; but I plan on taking it much further. It's going to lean on the ridiculous side, and you can quickly see why shortly after the game begins.

I've got three levels so far. It's going to have a multitude of branching storylines. Every choice you make makes a difference!

Official description of this release:
BETA v.0.1
How well do you remember The Great Gatsby? Your goal is to recreate the plot as accurately as possible. If you make a mistake and alter the plot, you never know what might happen...

This early version contains the first 3 levels. Level 3 contains a door that currently leads nowhere.

This is looking to be the best game I've ever made! I'm excited to hear feedback on this early version of the game! (NOTE: Be careful not to accidentally hit the S key while playing; it's there for debugging purposes. It won't do anything in the final version, be be wary of it for now.)