RoboWars - An Android Game
Who wouldn’t like to create their own computer game?
I’ve been trying for a while to find a good game idea to work on with my 11-year-old son. The goal is to expose him to the challenges of creating a full game, and have fun at the same time. Of course, I will do all the programming, and he will be the beta tester and decision maker, but the experience will hopefully be an educational one. Our target platform is Android, mainly because we’d like to take the finished game with us everywhere we go.
After lots of brainstorming, we ultimately decided on an idea where you program a robot to fight other robots in some sort of arena. The details are still evolving, but the player basically “builds” a robot out of pre-defined parts (body parts, weapons, armors, etc), then defines the behavior of the robot via a simple event-based programming structure. Finally, the robot is pitted against other robots in a virtual arena in a fight to the bitter end.
The tentative name: RoboWars.
I’m not too crazy about the name, though, so it will probably change in the future.
Our plan at the moment is the following:
- Start simple. Get something working as fast as possible for a single player.
- Enhance graphics as much as possible (want to help? Leave me a comment!).
- Release for others to enjoy and critique.
- Add other goodies (networking, more options, etc).
As for the platform, after a few weeks of deliberation, I decided on the following:
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Android 2.3
I probably can support older versions of Android, but won’t bother.
-
Libgdx for the 2D graphics.
I also looked at AndEngine, but the lack of documentation turned me away to Libgdx.
That’s it for now. In the future, I will be giving various updates about progress, sneak peaks, decisions and overall feedback.
Stay tuned.
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