Currently I am programming my own Java Game / Engine for a top down procedural generated world game. It is very early in the project and I wanted to share the entire process with everyone. Since it is so early in the project I wanted to get started working on something. Currently I am working a full time job and also teaching a couple classes a year as an adjunct professor of computer science. But for the summer I am not teaching, which allows me to work more on this project. Also with the current situation in the world I don’t know how long I will be working my current job, which is why I am starting this new venture in my life.
This weekend I spent some time working on some grass tiles as well as a bush tile for my game. I was happy with the way some of the basic grass tiles and the final bush tiles turned out. I don’t think I will use all of them but it is a start. This coming week I want to start working on the sprite sheet for the main character. I typically start with a gray-scale sprite and then add the color once I am happy with the way it looks. I know I may be working a bit out of order but I like to mix up working on art and programming so it stays interesting.
Also in this coming week I am going to be looking into using Perlin Noise or another method to start working on terrain generation. I think it is going to be a long road but I would like the game to have procedural generated 2D terrain. That way each time you generate a world it will be unique. Once I figure out the Perlin Noise part of the generation then I can move on to displaying the proper tiles depending on the values. I also will probably implement more layers of procedural generation to handle rivers and other necessary parts of the overall generation. For instance tree and brush locations. I have never done it before and I am looking forward to learning how it works. I know so far that I have not done much but I had to start somewhere.
