How difficult is it to develop Mahjongg ?

How long can it take to complete a Mahjongg game?

I already made a short global list. Some things are not solved in detail.

The tiles must every time be placed on a different position, so the tiles must be placed at random position every time at start of the game. Every tile. The board lay out is the same.

Every tile need a value, to check if it is equal with the other value. If the two belong together.

Classic play:
Classis play use the rule that there must be free space to the same (value) other tile. There is free space between both tiles, so there need to be checked if there can be made a line to the other tile. See it as a path. I didn't figured out how to solve that.

>How difficult is it to develop Mahjongg ?

It all depends on your programming level.

>How long can it take to complete a Mahjongg game?

from 1 week to several years it depends how often you work on it, and what level of quality you want to place in the product. You can probably do a real sloppy job in a day or two.


>See it as a path.
a recursive routine could be a solution.


pat.

Is there anything useful one could do with a simple Mahjong clone written in day or two?

You could keep working on it. What do you mean by "useful?"

Originally posted by jhocking
You could keep working on it. What do you mean by "useful?"

"Usefull", perhaps something commercial. I doubt it. I think you need to have something special.

hey, here's a free (used?) idea

make different sets of cubes...

Making mahjongg was a little trickier than I expected it to be. I expected it would take me a week or two to write a decent one but I ended up (as usual) spending much longer. I've written one and I'm working on a 2nd now using the code from the first. I think what's been said above is correct. You can have something crummy up and running in a day or two, but the real difficulty comes into play when you want to polish it and turn it into a viable product.

The trickiest part is probably the display. The isometric nature of the tiles means that you have to have a nice way to clip bits when you do effects for tiles fading away or being selected. Shadow casting is pretty tricky and without shadows it's hard to tell one level from the next. In the end I ended up approximating it with blurry alpha. It's not perfect but does the job ok.

Lastly there are a number of issues you'll face with regards to gameplay which you probably aren't already aware of. Like how do you hand the end of the game? What if all the tiles left are in a single column? Do you let the player break the column in two? How do you handle wildcards? etc...

And finally... For a mahjongg game to be successful you have to offer something a little different. Most of the mahjongg games that are selling on the market already have great graphics, tons of gameplay options, lots of layouts, lots of graphics etc.. That's a lot of work to match. I have noticed that some very simple mahjongg games sell well though even though things like kyodai are around. Perhaps it's their simplicity and limited options that appeals to a different set of players.

It all depends on your programming level.


It depends more on the resources you can scrap from other projects (like UI code, art and others).


What do you mean by "useful?"


How about launching the game as freeware and adding lots of ads in the game (on a sidebar, not interfering with gameplay) to other successful indie games (or your games), using RegNow affiliation?