It's your first try, just go with something you are familiar with, don't need to be hard on yourself.
Also, being a beginner and having to fight against your tools is a great way to lose motivation when you aren't really spending time doing actual game development.
Great advice. i've sort of set up a system within my code that feels natural and makes adding new cities to the game feel much easier.
If it's working, that's literally all that matters. Everything else is a question of personal preference and priorities.
For example you might want to learn language X because engine Y uses it and engine Y also has feature Z that your game idea relies on.
Other than that, do whatever you want and don't listen to anyone making it more complicated than that.
Thank you everyone for your great advice and encouragement to keep going. I will continue in BBC BASIC for SDL as i am really starting to get a good workflow going with it just get slowed down when i have to learn how to use new libraries lol
Finish the game, doesn't matter how.
If you're serious about making games, it won't be your last one, so you'll have many more chances to try other languages, engines, environments or whatever.
Well depending on how complicated your game will be. How much time do you want to spend learning the new system vs. how much time do you want to spend coding/making your game?
If the amount of time you spend learning the new system exceeds the amount of time you would save coding it, you might quickly lose motivation to complete your project. So get this one done, and try out another language by either porting the same game or try your new game on it.
In almost every language I've tried including assembly, I've made a "Guess the number" game like a Hello world. (you have 6 tries to guess the number between 1 and 100 with only "less" or "more" as hints).
I'm pretty much on the same boat as you. I have been jumping around engines/workflows trying to get a feel for what would suit my projects and tbh I think moving around during the beginning prototype stages might be best. It lets you get a feel for what will work for you while never getting so invested that moving over to somewhere else seems almost impossible.