January 9, 2010
Sorry it's been so long since I actually updated the game interface. There should be a fairly noticeable difference to everyone who cares to check it out. The big change right now is the (partially implemented) system window, which will serve as the main control interface for all of the planets in the system. It will also save me lots of development time and game players lots of time wasted on micromanagement.
Also worth noting is the stripping back of resources, which have been simplified down to materials and energy. A consequence of this is that it will be harder to corner markets and certain resource types, but the plan is to replace that with a way of deliberately draining your opponent of one of the key resources (energy, material, or money - different sorts of things require more of one of these).
December 29, 2009
Hey everyone,
So the facelifting is still going on. A string of overtime at work slowed down progress for several weeks in a row (I'm currently on holidays, said project causing overtime ends early January so progress should be better again). Also, it's worth noting that my use of terms like "facelift" and "cleaning things up" could better be replaced with expressions such as "I turbo-frakked everything".
Yeah.
Right now the simplification process is still being done. I mentioned before that Flash was crashing left and right, and that was certainly continuing. I'm still not 100% sure where all of the guilty parties are but the worst offenders have now been routed.
Also, part of the simplification of the game rules has also happily coincided with simplifying a major micro-management problem with turn based strategy games that allow you to settle multiple planets in one system. But I will not spoil the surprise. Just stay tuned. I won't make you wait as long next time.
October 21, 2009
Just a small update as to what's going on in the programmer world: I am still fixing things up. The new planet object may be starting to work out. I just reorganized it into a more efficient data structure (little known fact: I handled planets differently from all the other data types and it was bad of me to have an exception to all the others). I'm starting to work out the kinks with integrating it into the main game interface.
I also spent some time at a Flash conference since Flash In The Can was in Edmonton this year, and that was a good learning experience and I got acquainted with a few things that will be quite helpful soon.
Finally, I revisited a 2D combat engine that was in the works months ago and am refining some of the math in it. I may post an interesting demo in a little bit.
October 6, 2009
I just finished gutting my old planet data object. I'm not sure if it will work yet (actually, I'm positive it won't right now) since I haven't gone through the game itself and corrected how it uses planets (right now it will be looking for a lot of types of data that don't exist anymore). Overall I like the new planet object better and I'm very happy with my decision to simplify things a bit. What we've got now is both simpler and superior...er.
The next section on the hit list will be buildings, and I expect after I visit them not much will be left, because the data object for buildings is extremely large and complex, and when examining the idea of "fun" literally 99% of the content for buildings ended up getting purged. In the spirit of FAWRCS, it may come down to the situation where there is only 1 type of building to be built. We'll see.
I've also given the tech tree a lot of attention lately. A lot of that is going to be pared down, and we'll see what we'll have left. My original philosophy with the tech tree was "How much can I put in it?" This philosophy will now be meeting it's evil twin "How much can I remove" and hopefully it will result in a pleasant equilibrium. The end result tech tree will likely be about the same size due to how ship designs are going to be handled, but the complexity will be much lower.