designing and writing my own game from scratch. am i doing this right so far?

[psiphre]

I am taking on a project way bigger than my britches for my first project because i believe in baptism by fire.  this is to be an RPG with similarities to final fantasy tactics.

I identified the need to have a class for actors, and i think i need subclasses for all of the different characters and character types.  this is what i wrote up, it is the first part of my program (i don't even have a game loop yet).  did i do this right/intelligently/usably/extensibly or should i go back to the drawing board?

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public class Actor {    private int level;    private int hp, maxhp;    private int mp, maxmp;    private int patk, pdef;    private int matk, mdef;    private int[] elementArray; }  class PC extends Actor{    private int xp;    private int[] jobs;    private int rosterNumber;    private int partyNumber;    private int partyPos;    private String lhand, rhand, armor, jewelry, acc1, acc2;     }    class monster extends Actor{     private int xpValue;     private int goldValue;     private String loot;     private String[] Abilities;      }    class npc extends Actor{     private String job;     private String level;     private int energy;     private String project;      }

[opiop65]

Well that looks ok, but I think you really should your classes out among files instead of having them all in one file. I cant really say if its a good start or not!

[ctomni231]

I believe the fact that you are asking on this forum is a huge indicator that you should be starting a smaller project, but I digress.

When designing an tile based game, everything has to do with how objects interact. At the moment, you just have a bunch of variables all in the same spot. I'm not saying it isn't going to work, but there is a huge chance that if you don't write the objects first you'll have a bunch of problems.

That being said, here is a different version of tackling the same problem. It completely depends on your game though...

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//This class holds common elements for all characters in the game public class Character{          private int HP; //Holds the HP of an object         private int maxHP; //Holds the maximum HP of an object         private int MP; //Holds the MP of an object         private int maxMP; //Holds the maximum MP of an object          private int locx; //The x-axis location of the unit         private int locy; //The y-axis location of the unit }

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//This class holds all the abilities for warrior classes in the game public class Warrior extends Character{          private int attack; //Physical attack for warrior class         private int defense;//Physical defense for warrior class         private int magicAtk;//Magic attack for warrior class         private int magicDef;//Magic defense for warrior class }

then, you can structure your classes from there.

public class Monster extends Warrior

public class NPC extends Character

I would actually put the inventory and jobs in a separate classes to avoid it being mixed up with the player character.

public class inventory

public class jobs

Make sure the classes are split up by type in packages. Then you'll realize that you have leagues more code you need to write to make this game functional.