Making A Game With Xojo

Game Development
1

Having toyed with the idea of writing a game in my spare time for a long time, I finally decided a few days ago to spend some time and think about what I would write it in. The game I want to make is a 4X turn-based space game (think Galactic Civilizations or Space Empires) but more tongue-in-cheek.

I have followed game engine developments / blogs for years on and off and am aware of the many on offer (Corona Labs, Godot, Unity, Game Maker, etc). All of them have compromises. All require learning a new language and IDE and engaging with a new community.

Believe it or not, I’ve decided to attempt it with Xojo. This is quite probably a very bad decision. My rationale however is that I don’t need much in terms of graphics (I believe custom Canvas controls will suffice) for the game and I’m already very proficient in the language and the IDE.

I had initially planned on targeting iOS first but after a few hours tinkering with Xojo’s iOS offering (my first try) I was fast losing hope. I’ve settled on doing the desktop version first since at least I have a fighting chance of completing the game with that platform. Make no mistake, I am under no illusion that this game will have any form of commercial success - it’s merely something I want to tick off my bucket list.

Wish me luck :slight_smile:

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Luck

Have you look at Scene Kit from MBS for the mac version ?

Not sure there is anything comparable for Windows / Linux but there open gl might work still

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I’ve got the MBS docs open as we speak…

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SceneKit is pretty cool… I am writing a Solitaire in Swift (57 games so far)… All the cards are SKSpriteNodes. Makes it easy to move cards, rotate them, flip them around, the only difficult part is getting all the animation steps in synch, and knowing WHEN they are done, as some logic can’t be done until all the cards have finished moving. Toying with GCD to help with that

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SceneKit does look cool but since there’s obviously no love for Windows there I’m probably going to have to roll my own framework in Xojo.

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I know that we don’t have a lot of dedicated game developers on the forum right now but I need some planning advice.

The game is loosely formed in my head but I’m struggling to decide where to actually start. Should I start by sketching out the individual screens or the in-game artwork? Should I get the title screen up and running and then work forwards? Should I spend some time working on the fun logic to randomise star system positions in the galaxy?

I guess I just have no concept as to where a “good” place to begin is. Thoughts?

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  • design the basic game flow… don’t worry about the “graphics” other than perhaps the general relative sizes… You may decide later that you want things to look different than you do now
  • do things like the title screen, preferences etc as rough place holders
  • once the game play works, THEN put the effort into the “pretty”
1 Like
8

Good tips. I’m currently flowcharting the flow of the game (movement between screens, etc) using a really cool free flowcharting app called draw.io. I highly recommend it.