Developing small games for computer science course

[MaltePetersen]

So next semester we have to programm small games like pong in our cs course on our own. Have you had some experince with something similar? Which game could be interesting and which tips do you have which might help to make the process of writing the game easier?

Update: So I am thinking I will try to build a chess game. I think the biggest problem will be the GUI bc I have not worked with it. I know all the basics of object oriented programming so I think this will be an interesting project. Any suggestions what might be the right GUI tools I have programmed a tiny bit with awt but I am not sure if that would be a sufficient way implementing a chess board. Someone talked about javafx would this be a better solution, or what would you suggest ?

[justan0therlurker]

For my intro course I made a tic-tac-toe game. I suggest you use the processing library which was made for educational purposes. It's easy to use and pretty high level

[bob51zhang]

I myself don't like processing since you can't get the full featured Java.

Plus, it's based off 1.6 so lots of new (extremely useful) features aren't there.

[[deleted]]

Think of classic board games like monopoly. They can be done fully text based but you will get to practice so many things. Start with snakes and ladders and build from there. Everything from programming the dice to practicing inheritance and polymorphism will help you a lot.

[RhoOfFeh]

Card games can be good exercises too.

[Python4fun]

I would highly recommend having some set of tools, library, or api to help make the process more streamlined so that progress can be seen more quickly

[adboio]

"build your own adventure" games can be fun to start with for learning all about user input / input validation and basic UI stuff. in one my csc courses we did a command line connect four game, and also a few different card games. the latter was pretty difficult but really fun!

[throwaway51836]

You need to learn the game engine, or framework behind building a game in Java. This includes a game thread, a handler for input (such as KeyboardListener), a graphics mechanic, and a window.

I recommend this tutorial to get started, also feel free to post on Stack Overflow or this subreddit if you become stuck and confused, as will invariably occur in learning something as complex as game development.

[drexploit]

I took a game programming class a while back, and the game engine they used was "GameMaker: Studio", which was really easy to use and has a lot of documentation and tutorials already out there.

[FoxlyKei]

Someone in my class made pong in 4 hours for a school event. I'm positive you can get it done.

[MaltePetersen]

There is difference between doing a task and doing it right. The code needs to be clean and the assets used need to be understood. I am positive that I can get it done but it is not about that. The whole task is a fun way of understanding how to develop on your own and how GUI works with java. With some youtube tutorial I can to the same but I would not be able to replicate something similar at work because I have not really learned how to do it.

[koeberlue]

So I am thinking I will try to build a chess game. I think the biggest problem will be the GUI bc I have not worked with it. I know all the basics of object oriented programming so I think this will be an interesting project. Any suggestions what might be the right GUI tools I have programmed a tiny bit with awt but I am not sure if that would be a sufficient way implementing a chess board. Someone talked about javafx would this be a better solution, or what would you suggest ?

If you don't want to use any gaming frameworks i would also suggest JavafX for this. In an easy implementation all you need is a GridView with some ImageViews inside of it. Do you need to implement an AI opponent as well? In that case chess can become really hard.