It's Official... I'm a (BAD) Game Developer OH YEEEEAH!

Soooooo, I set off to teach myself how to make games in the recent past, started a blog, and I'm trying to keep myself accountable by telling as many mean-spirited people as possible.

I'm also looking for some legit, honest-to-goodness criticism (doesn't have to be constructive, I can take it) so that I can learn from my (no doubt GLARING) mistakes.

If you'd like to indulge a budding programmer and check out my first game you can get the links at the bottom of this post: http://www.jdgamer.com/my-first-text-game/

Thanks in advance

Woooooot!

Quick critiques first and then some nicer stuff:

• The "take armor" command is misleading, I was trying "take breastplate" for a while until I tried the "check" command.
  
• Linebreaks between commands and text would help readability.
  
• Didn't really like having to type "look" every time. Think it should automatically say that sort of thing when you enter a new place.
  
• A few typos here and there. Nothing too bad.
  

Other comments:

• Pretty much bugfree, I think. Good job on that.
  

And now, as for code:

Spoiler:

Can be cleaned up with the switch statement like this:

Spoiler:

'switch' statement

And in this bit:

Spoiler:

Might be better to do something like:

Spoiler:

So that you don't have to double-check in Area.java with:

Spoiler:

And can just do direction.equals("n").

Those are the only things I'd change, everything else is spot-on and the OOP behind it is very well-organized for a first game. Nice work.

-Allow me to introduce the two of you to regular expressions:

Spoiler:

Don't make a text based game without it.

-to clarify, those two lines of code replace Snail's entire fourth spoiler block.

-You could also just use .matches("w(est)?") directly instead of having Snail's subroutine

-And don't tell people to open cmd to use your game. :\ Instead, supply a .bat file. Simply make a text file, put

Spoiler:

and name the file something like "runtextgame.bat".

-Spelling mistake: "basicaly"

-Items you take should disappear from the "look" descriptions.

-I can't write "take armour" :[

-Trolls you kill should disappear from the "look" descriptions.

-Your approach to creating an area isn't very dynamic. You'll want the constructor for "Area" to take a description as well as a name, and then probably read area name/descriptions from there. If you want the game to be more dynamic so you can drop several items in an area and such, you'll probably want each room to contain a List<Item> of items rather than just a single one, too. In addition, descriptions of items should be in the items themselves so that the room doesn't have to describe the item every time you pass by there, even after you've picked something up.

That way, you could write showInfo() like this:

Spoiler:

-This should go without saying, but "boolean monsterDead" has no business being in the Area class. It should be in the Monster class.

-You can rewrite public String doorDirection() as simply:
return door;

If the room doesn't have a door won't it be null anyways? Subsequently, boolean hasDoor becomes obsolete.

-Rewrote public Area exit(String direction) for you:

Spoiler:

Thanks a TON for the pointers guys.

Zed, you wrote the most in depth and helpful feedback so far, I really appreciate it.

I've seen the use of regular expressions here and there, but never did make a point to figure out what the hell was going on.

AWESOME feedback guys. Thanks again.

as a pre spectator- I enjoyed it.

nicely done

you've taken your first step in to a larger world.