5punk

I've been playing UD for about a week now, and have also signed up for Shartak, Nexuswar and Pixelworld, which also seem pretty good.

Anyway, I really like the concept, and am interested in making my own similar game. I kinda see mine as focused more on building, maintaining and conquering settlements. I've been thinking in a fair bit of detail about some of the design elements, but I need to know some of the technical limitations of the medium before I can put together any serious plan.

Can anyone point me in the right direction as per programming languages/tools to use and places I can learn to use them? Does anyone know how many people worked on the development of the above games, their expertise, and time frame? I'm not asking for help in the actual production of my game (tho if you want to, you're v welcome), just some tips on where to get started.

I have some experience of programming languages, but wussy ones like QBasic and VisualBasic and DarkBasic. I've got a book on teaching yourself C sat on my desk that I haven't really looked at. I'm taking a CompSci degree @ Warwick, though not til Oct 2008, though I want to get more programming experience before I begin - I'll have a lot of spare time come summer when I finish my A-Levels, and I intend to use it.

So, anyone able to help me? Much appreciated!

I'd suggest you open that C book, particularly before you go to Comp Sci next year.

Microsoft stuff aside, the main webby languages are things like Perl, PHP and Java, all of which are either based on, or very familiar to people who know C and C++.

Good start is to set up a Linux box at home, either a Debian based one like Knoppix or Ubuntu, or RedHat or SuSE. They come with all the tools you'll need for compiling C programs and setting up an AMP server (Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP) which form the backend of most web-based games I've seen.

Some of the other guys around here have contacted the makers of the games you mention, as well as Atorian and can probably give you contact details if it isn't obvious from their game websites.

Warwick? WARWICK?

Shame I'll be leaving leaving the area, oh, and see if you can get put in a house in Leamington Spa in your 2nd year (or if you don't use halls). A couple of us can testify it's a studenty town.


If you're going to learn C (or C++ or java or anything), I'd see about enrolling on some courses if possible, it's possible to learn them on your own, but with a course you'll have goals to aim for and specific tasks to do plus help on hand.

Sounds really interesting, and please keep us posted if you get anywhere with this, however I don't really have anything useful to add I'm afraid.

The maker of Urban Dead replies to his e-mails, and he seemed like a very helpful chap when I asked him to change the way the add contacts thing worked on his site in order for our add contacts button to work.

I'd try him first, his contact details are on the site somewhere.

Iis wrote:I'm taking a CompSci degree @ Warwick

Your biggest problem here is gonna be the lack of hotties.

There are none found anywhere near the comp science building. Though the new maths building next to it might give you some nice eye-candy to look at out the window on occasion.

My best piece of advice.... go for a shit halls of residence. Don't go for he posh ones like Jack Martin as they have no fun. Don't go for Westwood campus either as that's where all the mommies boys get sent, and they're all called Charles. Halls is going to be your only opportunity to interact with the female of the species.

Good luck with it all!

Fear wrote:Your biggest problem here is gonna be the lack of hotties.

There are none found anywhere near the comp science building.

You studied anthropology, right?

Fear wrote:
Your biggest problem here is gonna be the lack of hotties.

That problem gets solved once entering Leamington Spa however

Thanks for all the advice! Especially the unsolicited but useful tips on females ... but since CS is far and away the most male-dominated subject in the country, I knew what I was letting myself in for.

Iis wrote:Thanks for all the advice! Especially the unsolicited but useful tips on females ... but since CS is far and away the most male-dominated subject in the country, I knew what I was letting myself in for.

Seriously, it might well be worse than you expect. (Seven out of a hundred and thirty people on my CS course were girls)

/went to Imperial (back when it was higher in the rankings )

Ye, can't find the source but I remember seeing a top ten of courses with the most extreme gender ratios. CS was somewhere around 85% males, at least 20% ahead of no. 2, which I think was engineering or something similar. There was no course as female-dominated as CS is male-dominated.

I've got an offer from Imperial, and am still undecided about whether or not to go there or to Warwick. I really liked what I saw of Warwick on the open day, but I think that Imperial is by far still top of the rankings (?). After MIT and some place in India, there's is supposedly number 3 CS course in the world. What do ye reckon?

I did electronics and that was about the same as CS I think. I can only think of 3 lasses in about 100 of us. There may well have been more I just didn't recognise them as female.

Iis wrote:I've got an offer from Imperial, and am still undecided about whether or not to go there or to Warwick. I really liked what I saw of Warwick on the open day, but I think that Imperial is by far still top of the rankings (?). After MIT and some place in India, there's is supposedly number 3 CS course in the world. What do ye reckon?

I got an offer from Warwick as well, as I recall - never really wanted to go there though. My main offer was Imperial (MEng in Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering), and my backup offer was Edinburgh (BA in Artificial Intelligence and Linguistics, I believe).

I'd definitely consider Imperial. It is sort of a depressing place, but it's in the middle of London, which helps. It has an excellent reputation nationally and internationally, the facilities in the computer science department are great, and the whole Masters-in-four-years thing is nice (until you get demoted to the BEng program for not doing any work - oops ). Also, the student union is great - at least when I was there, they weren't NUS-affiliated, so they had a huge selection of beers, and some good single malts.

My other comment on the Imperial program - you can put the C book down, because you won't need it. We never got taught C, as we were expected to learn it ourselves. Instead, they taught us to program with weird languages deliberately chosen so people wouldn't already know them... Haskell, Turing, and (least-weirdly) Prolog. Oh, and assembler as well. That's actually a pretty good idea, because I can still pick up programming languages very quickly if I put my mind to it.

(Obviously I have no idea how they do things at Warwick.)

The major downsides are the general lack of girls there (not just in CS, in the whole institution), and the expenses associated with living in London.

I should note that after three years at Imperial, I no longer wanted to work with computers for a living. That might just be me, though.