I am currently working on a new role playing game called Icefall, and to help maintain clear thinking, correct decisions, etc etc etc, I’ve decided to document the development journey on this website as a blog. That way, once Icefall is released and becomes hugely popular (:D), I will have a solid record of how it happened. As the game is currently about 25% complete, it’s a good opportunity to summarise the progress to-date and take a look at the ‘big’ decisions, which have already been made:

Decision: Role Playing Game

Many of the very first games I got hooked on were RPGs: Moria, Ultima 5, Death Knights of Krynn) but each of them always had things I thought “if only it did…”, so creating my own game would be my opportunity to put that into practice. I’ve started to create many RPGs over the years, but I’ve never finished one or even got it largely playable. This was due to various different causes, either I’d hit a wall somewhere (pathfinding, AI, memory, and graphical speed have all defeated me over the years) or a new game (Halo, World of Warcraft) would come along and I’d abandon my development for long enough that I forgot the intricate workings of the code, and rather than dive back in I abandoned it.

So I’ve still never made a role playing game. Time to fix this!

Another good reason is that it’s within my ability. Making something like a first-person shooter (at least, a good one!) just wouldn’t be possible for me because having decent graphics is too large a part, and my graphical ability… well, let’s just call it “Programmer Art” and move on.

Decision: Free Pascal

Having decided on the type of game I’m making, the next step is to choose the programming language. These days there are more languages than ever, and some of the new ones are really good. C# + XNA would be my ‘high level’ choice, it makes it ridiculously easy to get graphics on the screen and a game up and running…

But…

I’m not just programming to make a game, I’m also doing this because I want to be challenged. I want to take fundamental, low-level control over everything my code does in every situation. Using a low-level language (C++, Pascal…) means there’s a lot more up-front effort involved (getting graphics on the screen isn’t one line of code anymore, it’s a couple of hundred) but, to me, also much more satisfaction when it works!

When I want to add a function, I can’t just copy a C# code snippet from the internet, I’ve had to go away and install the DirectX SDK, read the documentation for each instruction, look at the example code, re-interpret it to suit what I’m trying to do, and play with it until I get it to compile. The reward (and the knowledge that is acquired as a consequence of having to research every call) is worth it. (This is the same reason I’m not using an existing ‘game engine’, I’m creating my own with LX7).

Having decided to use a low-level language, my choices are C++ and Pascal (I don’t want to learn another language at the same time as creating a complex game, the game at the end would suffer too much as a result of my learning-while-doing). I chose Pascal because, I’m not really sure why, I just “like it”.It has all the language constructs I’m going to need (primarily Classes), and I like that it’s not quite as low-level as C++, which gives me a little bit more room to spend on game logic but without having to sacrifice anything.

Finally, choosing between my Pascal options, FreePascal and Delphi… I think FreePascal is superior! It definately compiles faster and makes smaller executables. It doesn’t support Windows GUI very well, but Icefall like 99% of games will have custom UI anyway. It’s also free. Finally, the platform is far less common than C++, and there aren’t many games in development using it (especially on Windows), so when the game is done and LX7 (the graphics/game engine I’m creating to support Icefall at the same time) is finished, I might have something to give back to the FreePascal community. So it’s settled!

Next time, I will talk about the third key decision for Icefall: whether to make it real-time, or turn-based?