New to game developement so noobie questions

[Patrick]

Hi all,

I'm doing a game based on the Warhammer tabletop games from www.games-workshop.com Its a hobby project to learn C++. I've got the game logic and units sorted but I've no experience of working with graphics.

What I need are 3 essential elements:
1. A control panel along the bottom which will have a set of dice, statistics etc. on it.
2. A global/radar view of the tabletop which shows the whole thing in miniature
3. A closer view which shows the specific area the units are in.

Anyone who has played Command and Conquer/Age of Empires RTS games will be familiar with the interface I want to make.

Is Irrlicth the right tool for this? If so, are there any code examples of similiar projects? Most of the projects I see linked to seem to be FPS/RPG type games which don't have a control panel or radar view of the map.

Thanks in advance.

Patrick

[corban]

Hi all,

I'm doing a game based on the Warhammer tabletop games from www.games-workshop.com Its a hobby project to learn C++. I've got the game logic and units sorted but I've no experience of working with graphics.

What I need are 3 essential elements:
1. A control panel along the bottom which will have a set of dice, statistics etc. on it.
2. A global/radar view of the tabletop which shows the whole thing in miniature
3. A closer view which shows the specific area the units are in.

Anyone who has played Command and Conquer/Age of Empires RTS games will be familiar with the interface I want to make.

Is Irrlicth the right tool for this? If so, are there any code examples of similiar projects? Most of the projects I see linked to seem to be FPS/RPG type games which don't have a control panel or radar view of the map.

Thanks in advance.

Patrick

ok, the good news: irrlicht is the right tool.

1) you can draw in 2d using images and static text, you also can use the 2d gui elements from irrlicht.
2) you can use multiple views in irrlicht, so different views of a scene are possible. due to speed issues it may be good to actually have 3 different scenes (with more or less details)
3) see 2)

i'm not familiar with this sort of games, but even when you want to use isometric geometry, this is possible with irrlicht. of course, this all requires some coding, irrlicht is a game engine after all and not a game builder tool, but that should not be a problem at any rate.

greets

[Patrick]

...snip...


ok, the good news: irrlicht is the right tool.

1) you can draw in 2d using images and static text, you also can use the 2d gui elements from irrlicht.
2) you can use multiple views in irrlicht, so different views of a scene are possible. due to speed issues it may be good to actually have 3 different scenes (with more or less details)
3) see 2)

i'm not familiar with this sort of games, but even when you want to use isometric geometry, this is possible with irrlicht. of course, this all requires some coding, irrlicht is a game engine after all and not a game builder tool, but that should not be a problem at any rate.

greets

Great - I can see there's a tutorial on the 2d images which I can use for my control panel as well as a UI tutorial.

Still need to find out about how to create the terrain and enable the user to navigate using the mini-map.

The UI will involve a mini-map and a focused map. The focused map will be 80% of the screen high and 100% wide. The mini-map will be embedded in the control panel along the bottom. To move from one end of the map to the other in 1 jump, the user can simply click on the mini-map and the main focus will move to that area.

Has anyone an idea how to go about doing something like this with Irrlicht? If not, does it seem like a fundamentally different approach or is it simply a matter of extending some part of the engine?

Thanks in advance.