The New Game!

After working on my quadcopter for a while I decided to branch out and start a new project since I am waiting on hardware. I am fascinated by video games and the process of developing them so I figure making one of my own will be fun and a new learning experience. I always had a few game ideas floating in my head so now is the time to put pen to paper and start developing my very own game!

The Gist

Of all the games I have played, the ones that survive are games that have modding capabilities and a strong community that creates new content. Developers struggle to push out new content for their users in a timely fashion and it always seems that they are never fast enough. This problem can be solved by opening up modding and content creation tools that allows the community to create and share new things. The main focus of this game will be the modding potential and content creation by the community so I will need to create and expose tools that allow players the ability to add new stuff to the game.

What is it?!?

If you have ever played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Fire Emblem, or Advanced Wars this is basically a merging of features from each game that I find critical to fun game play. The main game mechanics that I like are as follows:

Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced:

- Dynamic Class System

- Laws that change each maps game play

Fire Emblem

- Permanent Character Death

- Large maps

- Shops in the map instead of ambient merchants available outside matches

Advanced Wars

- Buildings that generate resources and units

- Player specials (e.g. each commander has a separate but unique super move)

- Map Editor

Over the coming weeks and months I will be implimenting these awesome features into a single game and eventually releasing it to the world through some sort of marketplace. I haven't decided if I want to make it a mobile game or PC only. 

Starting Point

Starting off I will be building the map editor first since this is an important part of the game. My vision for this is to allow any player the ability to create a map and expose it to the rest of the community with little effort. The tiles will be hexagons with the sides being horizontal in orientation and can be stacked on top of each other to achieve height effects. I will be using Visual Studio as my IDE and for starters using only Components for the graphics. I have thoughts of moving it to Android and iOS but I will need to research the difficulty and effort needed to perform such a migration.

As always, feel free to post any questions or comments; happy gaming!