I have been developing games as a freelancer and employee for many years using both indie and commercial engines. Now that I am starting to make games on my own I chose an engine that I am not as familiar to as the others: JMonkey Engine. While I have many projects I want to make. I didn’t want to spend time fighting trying to get something I want to work without knowing what I can and cannot do and the best way to progress. This mean that I had to do a project that would make me familiar with JME but at the same time I didn’t want to do just a sample project and continue from there. I needed a simple game project that would allow me to make a game that I can distribute and at the same time give me experience in developing with the SDK. Dominoes was the first game that came to mind.
Using a board game as my first game project was just what the doctor ordered. The problem that me and other developers that start by themselves when making a game we want without the proper experience falls into “scope”. Sometimes the project is either too ambitious or demand more things than what the engine can do or our experience can handle. After all, in many cases our games start as blank canvas where we have all the freedom we want. Dominoes on the other hand breaks away that convention.
A classic Dominoes game has a specific set of rules, a determine way to play and how it begins and ends. Just like any classic board game. By having these constraints I realized while I was programming I was looking for ways to optimize the game and use the best practices of programming and the strengths of the game engine at the same time. Starting was the difficult part but I was able to plan the different stages of the game that I want to reach. I was able to find some limitations the engine has in order to keep the performance high and how to get around them without sacrificing the integrity of the code. I learned that you don’t need to have an AppState or Control every time when a simple class can do that and saves you performance. It allowed me to apply critical thinking and problem solving with the tools that I have at my disposal ad the project progressed better than I thought.
Unfortunately I am not able to work full time on my projects since I need a job until my own games make me sustainable enough to be full time on it so the updates seem a bit on the slow side. But things will progress nicely as completion draws near
