Game making question.

[Jarade]

My friend and I have taken a couple of programming classes together, and are looking to make a VERY basic RTS, just to see if we can. I think, however, that JAVA is probably not a good language to do it in. So I ask the playground, what language is good for this/the most commonly used for games?

[Pyrian]

I'd recommend Flash, but using a language you know will save you a lot of time. For example, if I were to set out to quickly make a rudimentary RTS, I would use Excel (of all things!) because I already know exactly how to do everything I'd need to do in it.

[littlebottom]

wait... what?

you can use excel to make games? i did not think that was possible:smallconfused:

[Pyrian]

It's got a programming language (Visual Basic for Applications) with the capacity to perform timed operations. Everything else is gravy. But it's nice gravy - a dynamic grid-based display and value-storage system coupled with built-in click detection, plus the ability to add "buttons" and similar basic UI controls with standard event-based processing. I once wrote a complete missile-command style action game in an hour. Pm me your e-mail address and I'll send it to you.

EDIT: All that being said, I wouldn't recommend learning to program Excel just to make games, that would be silly, as much better tools exist, I'm just saying that programming with what you know is a lot quicker than learning something new for a single project. I recommend Flash in particular because there's a lot of real-business small game development in that environment, so if you're looking to make a rudimentary project and learn a saleable skill in the process, it's a good bet.

[KerfuffleMach2]

JAVA can be used for games. I mean, most games on cell phones run off JAVA.

But yeah, Actionscript (Flash) is probably better.

[Ichneumon]

We are taking about Adobe Flash here, now, aren't we? Just wanted to be sure.:smallconfused:

In any case, I think you should use what you are comfortable with.

[Pyrian]

We are taking about Adobe Flash here, now, aren't we?The idea of programming the comic superhero is amusing, but impractical. :smallamused:

[Starscream]

The idea of programming the comic superhero is amusing, but impractical. :smallamused:

It would definitely require some overclocking.

Yeah, Flash is great for gaming. But I wouldn't go out and learn it just for that. Pretty much any language can be used, so just pick one you're used to.

I would probably use C++ or perl for instance.

[valadil]

I'd do python with the pygame library. If you've already learned java you can definitely handle python.

[Tirian]

The best programming language for a problem is the one that you know. There's no reason you can't write an RTS in any language that has graphics and timer events. It might or might not make the most optimal machine code, but you are already know that you're just doing it for the lulz. If you get up to a certain point and decide that you are in the wrong language, then you will have a robust class framework to export to whatever new language you will be learning. And it's not like you can't write an RTS in Java; Puzzle Pirates is a real-time MMOG that's written in Java and it works as well as anything else out there.

[Delwugor]

Go with what you know, unless you want to learn a different language and architecture as part of the project.