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World Maps for gaming
I am looking to create some fairly simple games in the Genre or Risk etc.
Since I am pretty low level at writing code I wanted to ask about creating a world map. Something that would be the background for the game and not change itself. Also I would like zones around the map for each player to store objects. I am not writing the copyrighted Risk boardgame to computer but it is the best example for the question.
Since I am pretty low level at writing code I wanted to ask about creating a world map. Something that would be the background for the game and not change itself. Also I would like zones around the map for each player to store objects. I am not writing the copyrighted Risk boardgame to computer but it is the best example for the question.
2d or 3d? 2d, you can it in paint if you really want. PS would be a little better, but there are probably better tools.
3d, then I believe Autodesk's maya does this job pretty well, and it's supposedly industry standard. Though it can be pretty daunting at first, as is any huge tool.
3d, then I believe Autodesk's maya does this job pretty well, and it's supposedly industry standard. Though it can be pretty daunting at first, as is any huge tool.
Nothing fancy just a 2d board, maybe start out with an existing photograph but how do I make each area a container to hold units per country etc?
You could just make a class called area and have a variable or an array that holds units per country. You might want to learn all of c++ before you take on graphics and a full fledged game.
You'll need a graphics API, either SFML(easy-medium)/SDL(written for c)/Allegro(??) as a wrapper for OpenGL, or OpenGL itself (hard)
The API I was thinking of trying out for this kind of task is CLUTTER. You can make an "actor" from an image file, and it doesn't have to be any particular shape. Then you can connect it to mouse or key events.
In your photoshop or gimp or whatever, you could draw the map, so that each area is bordered by an area painted a different color. That way, you can select by color, crop to selection, and export each country one at a time.
In the case of risk, where each country must be able to be different colors at different times, you might want to then repaint each country grey or something, so that you can then use a clutter colorize effect in your game to change it's color.
If you wanted to use a real photo, or map, you could just custom cut out each country one at a time in photoshop or gimp.
That leaves the tedious part; setting the positions of your clutter actor's (countries) so that they all line up right in your game.
Rather than moving pieces from actor to actor, it would probably be easier to just have each actor already have all types of pieces placed over it, and then hide or show them to correspond to it's state.
You'll definitely want to think through you design, and make well crafted classes and methods. Maybe a game class with a player class and a country class, etc.
I'm sure you could do the same type of thing as I described for CLUTTER, with different API's. QT would, probably actually be a good choice for a game like risk, because you could probably more easily port it to mobile devices. I've heard that QT paint has similar functionality to CLUTTER, but I've never used it.
Both QT paint and CLUTTER are for hardware accelerated 2D graphics and use openGL for rendering.
In your photoshop or gimp or whatever, you could draw the map, so that each area is bordered by an area painted a different color. That way, you can select by color, crop to selection, and export each country one at a time.
In the case of risk, where each country must be able to be different colors at different times, you might want to then repaint each country grey or something, so that you can then use a clutter colorize effect in your game to change it's color.
If you wanted to use a real photo, or map, you could just custom cut out each country one at a time in photoshop or gimp.
That leaves the tedious part; setting the positions of your clutter actor's (countries) so that they all line up right in your game.
Rather than moving pieces from actor to actor, it would probably be easier to just have each actor already have all types of pieces placed over it, and then hide or show them to correspond to it's state.
You'll definitely want to think through you design, and make well crafted classes and methods. Maybe a game class with a player class and a country class, etc.
I'm sure you could do the same type of thing as I described for CLUTTER, with different API's. QT would, probably actually be a good choice for a game like risk, because you could probably more easily port it to mobile devices. I've heard that QT paint has similar functionality to CLUTTER, but I've never used it.
Both QT paint and CLUTTER are for hardware accelerated 2D graphics and use openGL for rendering.
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