Day 50: 24 March 2013
8:35: Here we are, the day before the midway point. I had seriously hoped to be much further along with my game than I am.
Perhaps this is going to sound foolish to you. I does to me. I knew it was kind of crazy, but I had hopes of getting to where I’m at now (or where I’m hoping to be by the end of the day) on that first weekend. On day 3. Clearly, I was way off, and it’s probably time to rethink what I want to actually accomplish in the 100 days, because I’m certain now that I won’t have a “complete, awesome, working game” by the end. (Not that what I have won’t be functional, or playable as a game, or even something less than awesome, just that I need to establish a more realistic vision of what can be accomplished.)
Anyway, I’m hoping to get lots done today, but I know there are going to be a couple of interruptions during the day, so we’ll see how things go.
My plans for right now are to get the battle screen back up and running completely, after tearing it apart yesterday to integrate in the player’s actual ships.
9:52: So all morning, I’ve been working on getting the player’s ships to work in the battle. I can how control my ships’ movements in the battle screen, using the player’s real ships. And the ships’ speeds are controlled by the number and size of the engines the ship has. Also, the distance that the player can see is based on the radar/scanning abilities of that ship. The only thing not working yet is being able to attack.
This, of course, brings up a lot of other questions about how the AI is going to work, which is something that I know I won’t be able to address by the end of today. So I have an alternative plan: just allow the player to attack his/her own ships. Treat it as though it’s a training exercise. If I can get that working, it would be enough to kind of showcase how combat will work in real life. But even doing just that represents a whole lot more work than I usually accomplish in a single day.
If only I had spent more time programming yesterday, and less time playing KSP. I seriously need to just uninstall that game for the time being. 😀
At any rate, I mentioned earlier that I’d be away from my computer for a couple of hours, a couple of different times today, and now I’m off to get ready for the first of those.
11:18: OK, I’m back for about an hour and a half. I was noticing that my ships are basically all facing backwards. When they go to a destination, they basically back into it. I’m trying to decide if that’s a problem. It works, after all, and changing it means changing bits and pieces of logic and drawing code throughout the program. I’ll have to think about that a little more.
12:22: The battle screen is coming together pretty well. I need to get guns firing, but as far as selection and movement go, it’s working like it should now, I think.
20:01: I’ve been hard at work for the last three or so hours, getting the battle screen to do what it’s supposed to do, this time, with your own ships. It seems like it’s doing what it’s supposed to now, with, of course, the exception of some (meaning lots) of unfinished features. The point is, when you guys get the end-of-sprint release here in a little bit, you’ll be able to get an idea for how the different pieces affect the game.
I want to tie together some loose ends with file saving and loading so that your whole fleet is actually persisted between sessions. Everything else, at this point, is probably going to need to wait until next sprint.
21:48: New sprint review incoming…