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Advanced Higher Computing Project

As part of my Advanced Higher Computing course I will need to make a major piece of praticial work. I was just wondering what other people on the forum have created during their final year at school and how far (Scale-wise) they went.

I've heard previous pupils have made card games, media players, server ping programs as some examples but all of them sound a bit... well lame.

I'll be honest, my programming experience is limited right now to Visual Basic (yes - the stupid persons language) and even then I am no expert, that said I do have until Feb next year for the final project to be complete and for my skills to improve or even learn a new language.

I was thinking about maybe a really basic RPG, or perhaps even a FPS either on Visual Basic or C if I learn it fast enough. Another (easier) idea I had was to program a (as yet undecided clone) game for the Playstation 2 using Yabasic (it certainly would get alot of wow factor, but would this language be too simple to credit good grades?).

I know this post is just aload of spraff, please make some sense of it for me :rolleyes:

MMJ

Reply 1

ponjavic

1

Madmanjock

As part of my Advanced Higher Computing course I will need to make a major piece of praticial work. I was just wondering what other people on the forum have created during their final year at school and how far (Scale-wise) they went.

I've heard previous pupils have made card games, media players, server ping programs as some examples but all of them sound a bit... well lame.

I'll be honest, my programming experience is limited right now to Visual Basic (yes - the stupid persons language) and even then I am no expert, that said I do have until Feb next year for the final project to be complete and for my skills to improve or even learn a new language.

I was thinking about maybe a really basic RPG, or perhaps even a FPS either on Visual Basic or C if I learn it fast enough. Another (easier) idea I had was to program a (as yet undecided clone) game for the Playstation 2 using Yabasic (it certainly would get alot of wow factor, but would this language be too simple to credit good grades?).

I know this post is just aload of spraff, please make some sense of it for me :rolleyes:

MMJ

If you're going gamewise please do not use visual basic. Also I doubt you'll have time to learn to create a decent fps, a sidescroller would be sufficient. I myself have created card games, 2d games, a small FPS and for my final project a software for basketball coaches to schedule practices create plays, keep diary and use a player database. It's GUI so it's not console :rolleyes:

If you'd like to get started with C/C++ (which I really recommend if you're gonna continue programming) I'd gladly help and I'd also be able to give you advice and suggestions on your project.

I'm not familiar with the difficulty of the advanced highers programming course so I can't really say what's needed to get a high grade! It also depends on what and how much you've learned during classes. If you've only learned basic C++ I guess a 2d game with graphics and a very small story line could be well enough and certainly doable.

Reply 2

Acaila

17

All I can say for AH Computing is: Good Luck :biggrin:

Reply 3

OMGWTF

1

The Dreamcast can do C, also reads unsigned code out of the box. You could easily make a Dreamcast game in C and burn it on a CDR

Reply 4

Camford

12

Java is probably the easiest one to use for simple games. You can make a fairly good Applet game with not so much effort. Without the need to know WinAPI and all that crap.

There are specific game making tools you can use if you can't be bothered to learn C/C++. If you are going to go ahead with your idea, I say be prepared to produce something like 50k lines of code.

I'm doing a simple diagram drawing tool at the moment as part of my uni work. It supposed to do simple UML Class diagrams. It's fairly simple. You might want to give that a try if you decide to ditch your RPG idea.

Reply 5

ponjavic

1

Camford

Java is probably the easiest one to use for simple games. You can make a fairly good Applet game with not so much effort. Without the need to know WinAPI and all that crap.

There are specific game making tools you can use if you can't be bothered to learn C/C++. If you are going to go ahead with your idea, I say be prepared to produce something like 50k lines of code.

I'm doing a simple diagram drawing tool at the moment as part of my uni work. It supposed to do simple UML Class diagrams. It's fairly simple. You might want to give that a try if you decide to ditch your RPG idea.

50k for a game, wooh man wooh, maybe if that's 40k lines of dialogue :p:

Don't let him scare you, you'd obviously do as much as would be needed for you to be satisfied with your project. A decent game can easily be done in possibly a couple of k lines and upwards.

+ for a high school student (or whatever you brits call it) making a game like tetris or maybe bricks in pure c++ I think should be quite enough for a high grade.

Reply 6

Madmanjock

OP

1

ponjavic

If you're going gamewise please do not use visual basic. Also I doubt you'll have time to learn to create a decent fps, a sidescroller would be sufficient. I myself have created card games, 2d games, a small FPS and for my final project a software for basketball coaches to schedule practices create plays, keep diary and use a player database. It's GUI so it's not console :rolleyes:

If you'd like to get started with C/C++ (which I really recommend if you're gonna continue programming) I'd gladly help and I'd also be able to give you advice and suggestions on your project.

I'm not familiar with the difficulty of the advanced highers programming course so I can't really say what's needed to get a high grade! It also depends on what and how much you've learned during classes. If you've only learned basic C++ I guess a 2d game with graphics and a very small story line could be well enough and certainly doable.

Thanks for your post, the thing is my school only teaches Visual Basic, I know C/C++ is better and once I reach Uni I'll have no choice but to use it (so I might as well get some practise in now) however I would have to teach myself the whole language - I know other people have been able to do it, but right now with my Advanced Highers, Highers and a token INIT2 I don't have as much free time as I used to.

OMGWTF

The Dreamcast can do C, also reads unsigned code out of the box. You could easily make a Dreamcast game in C and burn it on a CDR

Good point, this was something I was thinking about myself but was unsure of how different it might be getting my code to work on a dreamcast (would it complie from PC to DC with minimal effort?, for example in a simple 2D game) add to the fact I'm not even able to code in C/C++ yet on any format :biggrin:

I think what I plan to do with my time is get a stronger grounding in Visual Basic, then move onto Yabasic (or just plain basic), and then C/C++ :smile:

Btw 2 years ago I did have a little play around with C for a weekend and made a calculator, but I've forgetton it all know :p:

Reply 7

ponjavic

1

Madmanjock

Thanks for your post, the thing is my school only teaches Visual Basic, I know C/C++ is better and once I reach Uni I'll have no choice but to use it (so I might as well get some practise in now) however I would have to teach myself the whole language - I know other people have been able to do it, but right now with my Advanced Highers, Highers and a token INIT2 I don't have as much free time as I used to.

Good point, this was something I was thinking about myself but was unsure of how different it might be getting my code to work on a dreamcast (would it complie from PC to DC with minimal effort?, for example in a simple 2D game) add to the fact I'm not even able to code in C/C++ yet on any format :biggrin:

I think what I plan to do with my time is get a stronger grounding in Visual Basic, then move onto Yabasic (or just plain basic), and then C/C++ :smile:

Btw 2 years ago I did have a little play around with C for a weekend and made a calculator, but I've forgetton it all know :p:

I understand the way you're thinking but frankly getting a stronger grounding in visual basic is a waste of time

If you are sure you will start with c++ later on at uni or similar there's no reason not to start now, you will save loads of time on it later. And yeah if you're gonna work in visual basic forget games.

Quickbasic :biggrin:

Reply 8

Fragsta

Visual basic teaches you bad habits. For my project I'm creating a CMS and support ticket system in PHP & MySQL. Quite easy to learn, you could give that a look, but not if you want to make a game.

Unless it's a text-based MMORPG.

Reply 9

ponjavic

1

Fragsta

Visual basic teaches you bad habits. For my project I'm creating a CMS and support ticket system in PHP & MySQL. Quite easy to learn, you could give that a look, but not if you want to make a game.

Unless it's a text-based MMORPG.

Goto =D what the hell is a loop :confused:

Reply 10

ThePants999

14

As usual, a lot of groundless prejudice here. No, Visual Basic should not be used for making games, but that's not to say it's useless as a skill. You'd be surprised how much commercial applications development is done in VB... scan an IT jobs board and see how many job adverts ask for knowledge of VB.

Personally I would not suggest writing a game for an A-level or AH project, as you waste too much time learning and using skills that are not on the syllabus, such as graphics programming. A good coursework project should be strongly data-oriented in my opinion.

Reply 11

Fyska

9

I wrote a media player in VB for mine, nothing too exciting but it means you can sit around in class and listen to music, pretending to be testing it :smile:

I got 91% for it :biggrin:

Reply 12

Ronaldinho_88

I don't understand how you could do own media players and softwares. I mean, how do you start? Which programming language do you use? I use C++ myself, but I don't know if it's necessary to learn C language.

Reply 13

technik

13

for my HND i did a computing/networking e-learning package built in VB but linking with other applications like internet explorer for displaying online material or macromedia director for movies/quizzes. basically involved a series of forms talking about the components of a machine, networking topics such as the topologies, hardware, cabling types, routers/configuration of routers etc. also had it linked in with microsoft word to display formatted versions of the forms that were printer friendly.

it wasnt rocket science but often in these sorts of projects they like a bit of interaction with other applications.

word of warning...2 guys in my class tried to do a game in VB...i think it was some variation on dungeons and dragons or something like that. we had 7 hours on a thursday each week from september to the end of may and they didnt fully complete all the features. they still got a good grade though

Reply 14

SuperhansFavouriteAlsatian

I intend to write a form of CMS in PHP/MySQL. It will basically be a way for everyone in my Government and Politics class to submit political news storys to a database, with summaries and keywords, and then a link to an actual news story (on BBC, for example). This can then be searched for keywords when looking for something. E.g., if you had to write an article about how the Commons have interfered with the Lords, you could search under keywords for "lords commons authority" or something, and it would show up!

I wrote a version using VB and Access last year, but it was all local - everyone had their own one (not that anyone used it, not even me). I hope that if it is online (i have hosting) that more people will use it, if we're all doing it together.

Does this sound feasible? I mean, would it be advanced enough to get the grades, assuming i do it well? (I'll have to write a secure logon script, etc)

Reply 15

ponjavic

1

Ronaldinho_88

I don't understand how you could do own media players and softwares. I mean, how do you start? Which programming language do you use? I use C++ myself, but I don't know if it's necessary to learn C language.

Well using c++ you will have to learn where to find stuff :smile:

there are different "packs" that include functions possibly a sound-lib that you could use if you'd want to create a media player that played sound.

These libs (which are basicly compilations of precreated functions) naturally utilize core functions such as win32 for windows.

For windows win32 and console programming most things should be able to be found at www.msdn.com but in the beginning it is very hard to understand what to use and how but just try it and work with it and eventually you will learn it. Get help from others, join mailing lists where you can ask questions and post topics on forums such as www.gamedev.net and people will help you.

You will never need anything but c++ for most things (but other languages might be easier or be better for the certain project) except maybe for web related stuff.

When she said media player it's not like I knew ahh of course I that is how you create a media player but I instantly knew where I would be able to find how to do it and also I know I'd be able to do it.