The first step in a long journey!
Hello.
This blog is an account of developing a 3D PC game. I intend to work on it (the blog and the game) over the summer, which for me starts in 3 weeks when my exams finish. Blog posts will probably not be regular – hopefully that will be due to my addiction to developing the game rather than a lack of progress!
The game is a smuggling in space simulation. The majority of the game will be flying a spaceship in 3rd person. The controls will be keyboard and mouse based, and intricate enough to be enjoyable to fly and fight. Visual design will be semi-realistic futuristic (like mass effect, star wars, sins of a solar empire) but as I am only one person, the 3d art quality may have to be sacrificed to allow me to concentrate on programming.
The programming will take up the majority of this blog and my time. I would like to use C++, but regarding game engines/ APIs, I haven’t made a choice yet. I am tempted to write systems implementing OpenGL, but this may be too much work, so I will look at other engines as well. I don’t have much experience at all, and am trying to get to grips with this book, which is fantastic but a slow read for me: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Gems-Series-v/dp/1584502339.
Please get in touch if you have anything to say, including ideas for features, opinions, or just telling me I’m doing it wrong! Thanks for checking this out,
Patrick
Spaceship Smuggler Game 
If you need any art done, I’m hoping to improve my realism and just painting skills in Photoshop as a whole over summer, gimme a buzz, I’d love to try. Though if you find someone better, go for it! XD
Thanks Fia, I am sure to need concept designs of ships, and game textures in the future. I don’t know if you’ve done any texture painting before but it requires pretty similar skills to any painting. It would be great if you helped, thanks!
It would be a shame to do it in C++ I think, when you could do it in C# or Java and save lots of time. By save lots of time, I mean it would still take months; I fear that in C++ it could take years.
Years? Gulp. Why do you think it would be so much quicker in Java/ C#? Because of managing/ garbage collecting objects in memory easier? Obviously it would be easier to do in Processing or something, but one of the main reasons I’m using C++ is that we have to use it next year for our course, and I’ve spent a few months learning it now. I would probably get confused between the two languages if trying to do it in Java!