Semester finally over, all classes have been passed, now I have free time until summer semester starts full force. Not that I've had to do much anyway as classes were easier...
Anyway. This will be like a personal diary, so my rambling might be incoherent.
Speedrun
Yesterday, after exam passed, I came up on the idea of performing a programming speedrun, in order to see how fast, using tools I know, can I spit out working prototype of the game.
For game, I choose a simple gamplay: a ball which moves vertically at a constant speed, chaging direction when it hits an obstacle. Player navigates through the labyrinth using left and right arrow to control its horizontal movement and has to come to the exit while avoiding hazards.
So, armed with C#, XNA and Photoshop, I started at exactly 0:00 CET from complete scratch. 2 hours later, after basic code was written with some hardcoding of values, I've started to get something which looks like the game I had in mind:
At that moment, only level loading, ball vertical movement and vertical reflection were implemented. Code was a mess even at that point, but I didn't stop and refactor, but continued writing for 1 hour and 40 minutes, finishing the game with horizontal movement, hazard detection, camera movement and exit point:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/glbl4b9y5dmrfnm/BouncyBall.rar
(requires .NET 4.0 and XNA Redistributable)
So, in total, 3 hours and 40 minutes (pauses included) were taken for a complete game. And now, I'm in dilemma: what now to do with it? I've got so many questions for myself which I'm unable to answer. I could polish it in few days of pure work, but I don't know if it's worth it. Biggest issue with the game itself is rectangle-rectangle collision between ball and objects, which I left in the game to be faster and should be fixed as it is fake difficulty. Other basic additions are main menu, proper level progression, level editor and multiple obstacles and hazards. Code itself is also a complete and utter mess which should be sliced apart with refactor knife...
Screenshot showing how insane levels can be...
About other topics...
Tank City is still on hold until I raise enough will to finish it. I plan to do it before summer semester starts.
As a player of Star Trek Online and member of one fleet there, I've teamed up with one other programmer for a "fleet project". We've started work on our "Ship Build planner" to incorporate with our fleet site and, if possible, compete with STO Academy's Build planner. I hope I'll learn more about web developing, databases etc. from that.
On the artistic side, I've finally properly took pen and pencil and started drawing. After copying few images only by eye, I've set out to draw characters from my mind with as little references as possible. Results were... well... satisfying for me, considering those are 6th and 7th drawing:
I need to learn to properly draw eyes (big eyes aren't problem, but when I need to draw them small...) and hands. I hope I'll learn to use sister's tablet and be able to redraw them properly in digital format...
Thanks for reading!
