This weekend is going to be very productive. In addition to getting a prototype up and going for some elements of WOTS, I'm also going to be doing a lot of other maintenance things that I've been meaning to do in regards to my website and other public logs. I kind of wanted to go a head and finish building the server this weekend too, but I'm going to hold off on that until sometime next month. Things are still a little vague at this point. But this weekend will allow me to get more specific. The main things I'm going to concentrate on this weekend are :
1. Adding python interfaces to my game engine - The character narratives of the game are going to be highly dynamic, as well as their actions. Scripting is going to be necessary if I don't want to have to constantly recompile every time to check shit, which is essentially what I've been doing up to this point. It's been something that I've done a lot of research on the last couple of years, I've even done some small test apps, but I haven't added it to the engine yet. This is very high priority.
2. Add the damned mouse handling routines - This is fairly simple and is something that shouldn't take a lot of time. I just never got around to adding it to the engine as it wasn't something that was planned for barricade and there was stuff that I considered more high priority at the time.
3. Develop specific classes for the game - I need to start writing the classes for the games character and object types. At the very least get some generic classes started, derived from the engines sprites class of course, so that I can have something to get on the screen by the end of the three day weekend.
4. Finish the GUI - I started designing a GUI system for my engine months ago, I never implemented it though, beyond a command console. I need to finish this up as well.
5. Decide on a graphical style for the game.
6. Finish the main back ground and plot concepts up through part one.
7. Develop the basic frame works for six of the management systems that will control different game play elements and character control and interaction.
8. Develop or acquire some decent graphics to get up on the screen.
9. Complete the front end of the games introduction/splash screen. (Just to get something on screen to keep me motivated and test out the gui.)
10. Complete five to fifteen minutes of test gameplay to demonstrate everything that was accomplished over the weekend.
This seems a little ambitious, but three days is a long time. Three complete days, especially if you work on something full time, are full of caffeine, and are really excited. The main thing that worries me is getting to involved in one area and not moving on, for example the python interfaces. There is so much that I can do and want to do for the engine with it in general, but I just want to concentrate on working on the game more then the engine right now, so I have to keep an eye on things like that and keep myself moving forward to complete this check list. Anyways, wish me luck, I'll keep things updated.
