Tiled Maps
I decided to use Tiled Map Editor to create my game maps. On top of Tiled being free and very easy to use, Libgdx has built-in support for rendering maps create with Tiled. I did run into a major hang up though.My game is based on a grid of hexagonal tiles, which the main version of Tiled does not currently support. After some Googling though, I tracked down a branch does. You can find it here; at the time of this post, that branch is fairly up to date with the main development branch of Tiled.
Game Progress
I spent about a week stubbing out the majority of the game's framework, only implementing methods that were trivial, and writing TODO comments for everything else. Then I began tackling the list of about fifty tasks that had accumulated in the process. Each task ranges anywhere from half-an-hour to a week's worth of work. The list is not exhaustive, and I'm still adding tasks as I work.Here's a list of the high level tasks I've completed so far (in order):
- Stubbed out the game's framework
- Import and display maps created with Tiled
- Code for adding/removing towers to/from the map
- Implemented a state machine to handle user input and execute the resulting commands
- Implemented the A* pathfinding algorithm for army movement
Here's a screen shot of what the game looks like after a few clicks (it looks pretty bad, but that is to be expected at this stage).
Useful Resources
Here's a list of the resources I've found extremely useful in the last few weeks.
- Artificial Intelligence For Games - this book was recommended to me by a very experienced AI developer.
- /r/gamedev - general game development talk
- Amit's Blog - Amit Patel writes some amazing game dev tutorials. I found his hexagonal grid, and pathfinding tutorials helpful.
- PixelProspector's Indie Guide - an amazing list of resources for indie developers, covering art, music, marketing, and a lot more.
- Art Portfolios - Unfortunately I am not artistically talented. I'll probably need to contract an artist, so I've been keeping an eye on this forum. I've seen some really talented artists post here.
- /r/gameDevClassifieds - I've also found some good artists here.
- /r/gameAssets - links free game assets
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