Need an advice on programming language

Akora

Hello
I am planning to make an online multiplayer game with map in it with regions, cities, moving armies with their database and staff. I mean the cities and regions \plenty of regions\ will have their data’s \income, infrastructure etc\ unseen on map.
I liked this CC3 program and thinking about making a map with it. But there is one moment - I dont know any programming language. I have enough time and I am planning to learn one of it in a year and then create a game.
My question is - what language is better to operate with CC3 making an online multiplayer game? I began Java, but have doubts about it.
And another question - do I need macros and what is XP programming that is mentioned in this forum? Or CC3 and one of the programming languages is enough?

Thank you in advance.

Monsen

This depends on a lot of factors. If you intend to have the game interface with CC3, you will need to know C++ (And if you wish to involve .net, you can most in C#). I would not recommend this route though, as it will be a hard and painful experience if you are not an experienced programmer. It would be better to create the maps in CC3, then export them as images, and let your game use these, rather than try to have your game work directly with CC3. There might also be some licensing issues if you make a game that directly interfaces with CC3. As long as you don't try to interface with CC3, you won't need to know anything about macros or XP programming either.

Then it depends on what environment your game will run in. Is it a desktop application that connects to a server? If so, what platforms will it run under? Multi-platform applications should be written in C++ or Java usually, but if it is windows only, you can also go .net with c#. If it is a web-based application running on a web-server, the best choice is usually Java (But this require that you have a servlet container available, and not just a standard web server. Tomcat and Glassfish are examples of these), PHP (Not the best language, but it is easy to learn, and most web-servers support it), or ASP (Basically only runs in the MS IIS web server on a Windows platform). There are other languages out there too, like perl, python or ruby. For an absolute beginner, PHP is probably the easiest to learn though, although I would recommend Java if you have a server that supports it.

Akora

Monsen, thank u for the answer.
I cannot imagine how it will be possible just to export images and let my game use it, cause players will interact with map. Maps feathers \cities, regions, armies\ will have hiding datas, and by right-clicking on a city for instance u would see those datas, and this datas will change, and images of armies will be movable by players.
It will be browser online multiplayer turn-based game. The game must see different regions on the map, the land-sea borders etc. The player each turn see the results of privies - changing on map and datas, and make his turn by moving armies, building new factories etc, then press "end of turn".
Is PHP capable to deal with this?
So maybe the better idea is to make a map myself in Java \for instance\ not using any cartographer program, to make it easy interact with the code of the game?

JimP

There are programs that can be used to display maps online live. Some have chat capability.

Check here: Dragon's Foot Forums there are several discussions there about using programs to display maps online for games. The site is about 2E and previous versions of AD&D/D&D.

Akora

Thank u JimP, I ll check it.