I want to object to something:
obey wrote:
- Have the ability to extend my game into a multi-player one
It is possible to extend a single player game to a multiplayer game, but I highly recommend NOT doing it.
Single and multiplayer games are entirely different by design. It is not even close to "I have a single player game and now I just add more players", the entire structure must be changed.
So my recommendation is: Choose single or multiplayer, and then stick to it. For an indie game, if you want both multiplayer and singleplayer, I'd go as far as to advice you to make a multiplayer game, and in singleplayer mode simply set up a local server and only allow one connection (all automatically, of course - the player doesn't need to manually set up a server and join it), since any other way will be twice as much work...
Other than that, for managing a large project, I would recommend:
a) Object oriented - put everything into classes
b) Test these classes/modules individually, as much as possible. Write programs that just test the classes by themselves before putting them into the game, and keep the classes as seperate from each other as possible. Make strict distictions between the classes, don't let them overlap.
c) And make absolutely nothing global, if it can be local. This is a bit of a mess in Lua, since everything is global by default (probably the only thing I dislike about the language). So put "local" wherever you can.
So... any hints on what you're planning to make?
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