Hello,

I've been doing web programming for quite a while, but have not done any other programming in decades.  I'm not even certain if this would be considered a game.

I want to create a video interface to run an "America's Got Talent"-like (or any of the other talent style shows) show we are doing at our church.  It's been so long, I don't even know where to start.  I just want to create a simple interface to be displayed on the big screens with buttons for the "Judges" to be displayed on the screens when pressed.  Of course, I'd like to have some sound files and be able to change the Judge names, etc.  I believe I have the hardware worked out with arcade buttons to keypress, but not the software to run the displays.

I have the feeling this would be a fairly simple application, but I don't even know what platform would be good to look at.  I've checked out several, but they all seem to be geared more towards arcade type games or FPS.  I'm sure we could do it with video clips or something, but I thought it would be fun to attempt to write something.

Any suggestions would be most welcomed.

Thanks in advance,

Byroniousness

Start with the various screens that you want to display to the audience I think. Make mock-ups; pen & paper could work, or a paint program or so.

The screens then define what kind of information you need to have available, and from which screen you can go to what other screens etc.

Next problem is then how to get the information you need to display, where does it come from, is it fixed information or decided on the spot? Who enters it? When? At what screen? Using what interface? (More screens to mock-up!)

Play this game for a while, start from various points, eg each person involved, what does he/she needs to do? what does he/she see, what needs to happen with corrections, equal scores, what not.

You could even make a complete script, or you do simulate things with pieces of paper being the screens, and a image or description what's on them.

You could write a manual for each person.

The whole point of all the above is to get clear how it works each step of the way, for everybody involved, also for the cases that don't happen often (or never). Once you understand what it needs to do, you can start thinking about building it.

10 hours ago, Alberth said:

Start with the various screens that you want to display to the audience I think. Make mock-ups; pen & paper could work, or a paint program or so.

The screens then define what kind of information you need to have available, and from which screen you can go to what other screens etc.

Next problem is then how to get the information you need to display, where does it come from, is it fixed information or decided on the spot? Who enters it? When? At what screen? Using what interface? (More screens to mock-up!)

Play this game for a while, start from various points, eg each person involved, what does he/she needs to do? what does he/she see, what needs to happen with corrections, equal scores, what not.

You could even make a complete script, or you do simulate things with pieces of paper being the screens, and a image or description what's on them.

You could write a manual for each person.

The whole point of all the above is to get clear how it works each step of the way, for everybody involved, also for the cases that don't happen often (or never). Once you understand what it needs to do, you can start thinking about building it.

 

Thanks for the advice.  I just received the script yesterday.  I'm starting to lay everything out.  I have a pretty good idea of how I want it to work and as I said I believe I have already worked out the hardware part so the "judges" can interact with the app.

What engine would be good for someone starting out?  I have been looking at some tutorials for Unity.  Is that a good starting point?

Thanks,
Byroniousness

I would assume it's mostly full-screen static display of some text, so any video library will basically do I think.

Bottom is likely a low-level library like SDL (that's C/C++, sorry don't know any C# libs for that, but they must exist). The screen is a collection of pixels, go draw on it! (more likely, make a set of images or SVG files, and display them)

A little higher in functionality is something like a full-screen web-browser, which also gives you input capabilities in a GUI-like setup, out of the box. For that matter, a standard GUI application (with buttons, menu bars, and drop-downs, etc) might also work. Display is then just a window at the same size as the video display, so all edges are outside the display.

A full-blown game engine will of course also work, although you won't use a large part of its functionality.