Game Development

[Gator F]

Hello, I've been programming C++ for around three years now and I have good knowledge of the standard C++ library and the Win32 API. I've tried making video games before but I've always never had a graphic artists, or never had a good story line, or wasn't really wanting to finish anything (I guess due to lazyness).

The farthest I've gotten is Pong with the SDL library. I've tried learning SDL, Allegro, SFML, Irrlicht, Direct X 10 (Don't like it because it is Windows only), and Open GL. I got a little bit into them then decided to learn something else. I don't know how to keep myself learning the same thing, but it is getting really annoying.

Right now I'm think I should restart with 2D, and make something good in 2D and then move to 3D. My ultimate goal in 2D is to make an online RPG, but I know that is far from happening because that requires a lot of work and is a horrible starting place.

What do you guys recommend I do? What steps should I take? What libraries should I use? What should I do about not knowing any good graphics artists?

I would really like any advice from anyone who has (or hasn't I guess) made a game before.

Thanks for reading.

[ascii]

What do you guys recommend I do? What steps should I take? What libraries should I use?

Well, you should stop starting over! Choose a library and just stick with it. Most of the people on this forum (including myself) will recommend SFML because it's easier than SDL and more capable than Allegro. However, if you've learned some OpenGL and didn't have any trouble with it, by all means just dive into it. You don't seem to have any troubles with the programming aspect of game development, so as long as you start making games and mastering a library, you should be fine.

What should I do about not knowing any good graphics artists?

If you're just starting out and writing games you don't intend to release, you can pretty easily rip a bunch of sprites from other games off of the internet. If you're working on something where you want to avoid all of the stupid copyright BS, recruit on a forum devoted to graphics artists?

[S G H]

About modeling, you can get some free models just googling, or, if you bought a Source Engine game (Half Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, Portal, or also Team Fortress 2 which is Free now on Steam, it's more than 3Gb of models and textures!!), you can get the entire map with Crafty (Nem's Tools), but, what was a dynamic object becomes a static object. If you have 3DS Max (2013 doesn't work with the SMD Importer yet) and CannonFodder's SMD Exporter you can get model by model, also with joints and animations.

If you plan going on 2D, I suggest you SDL and SFML.
If you plan going on 3D, I suggest you Irrlicht for Graphics, BASS for Audio, RakNet for Networking and Bullet for Physics. SDL and SMFL already got all gfx/audio/network by themself or with plugins that come with them (Only physics are missing)

Then you are free to look around.

[dunmerthief]

Sounds to me like you need to spend alot more time planning your game before jumping into programming.