I thought I'd provide a bit of information on the game I'm currently starting because I'll be updating the journal often to talk about what I'm doing, what I've done and how I did it, and anyone that's interested in seeing how this project goes will know a bit about what to expect.
I was going to post an Outworlder post mortem in this entry, but I think I'll leave that for the next entry so I can put a bit more thought into it and get some screenshots and whatnot for it.
So even though no one would have noticed, this topic I made yesterday pretty much reveals that I'm making an RTS. I've actually wanted to make this particular RTS for a while now (which I'll probably talk a bit about in the Outworlder Post Mortem) and being fairly confident that I could, I've decided to just do it. I've followed a couple of RTS games made by independent, online teams for a while now: Dawn of Fantasy and 0 A.D.. The quality of these projects is inspiring, but I'm hoping to complete my game in a much shorter time than they've been in development.
While I've got some story details, factions/units, a tentative title and whatnot in my head at the moment, I'll hold off on talking those sorts of details at this point because they're pretty insignificant at this stage of development.
What I will mention now is some of my intentions with what I'll be programming and how.
Engine
I've been working on my engine for a little while now. After the mess that was the Outworlder code, I really wanted to create something that was clean and well structured for my next game.
I'm not that interested in creating a rendering engine at this point as I don't think it would ever really be of benefit to the end product so I'll be using Ogre again for rendering.
I'll also probably look into using Havok for physics when it's released for free, but at this stage there would only be minimal need for a physics library in the game.
The Object Factory is what I've probably spent the most time on at this point, but it's essentially finished. I really wanted one factory that could handle every single object in the game (it's templated, obviously) and handle all memory stuff (dead pooling, etc) and it's now doing all that nicely.
Scripting and Data Driven....ness
So before this project I'd never actually used a scripting language and external data file usage had been minimal. While I'm still doing lots of speed testing, I'm intending at this point to use LUA scripting for a lot of stuff in the game. I'm hoping every unit would run a LUA script for it's logic, every game state would just be a base state class and have all it's functions (entry, exit, logic, rendering, etc) written in LUA scripts, etc. Most of the logic heavy code would be written in C++ functions and I'd just give the LUA scripts access to those functions.
I'm also going to use a lot of external files for pretty much everything I can. I want to keep game specific C++ code to a minimum. There's a few reasons for that which mainly revolve around keeping things clean, development without much compiling and allowing easy modification to the game by the end user.
Tools
I'm intending on making tools (or one all encompassing tool) for creating/editing some of the things that will be in the external data files. At this stage I'm definitely creating a Level Editor that will allow for terrain deformation and texture painting (I just spent a couple of coding this already) and placement of environment objects, etc. Beyond that I might develop an in engine cutscene creation tool. Anything else I'd only develop if it was something that wasn't easy to do just by writing text in the data file.
Graphics
I'm going to be pushing the game as far as I can graphically. That may not mean technically pushing the hardware as far as I can, but instead it may mainly be the art direction and quality. I'm going to get some core systems working (terrain, unit selection, unit movement/pathfinding, RTS camera) and will then spend as much time as is needed to get the terrain, a few units and graphic effects looking as good as I'm after. During this period I'd also be developing the effects framework in the engine because graphical effects and particle effects in Outworlder were just hammered out all over the place. I'm looking forward to have a clean interface for adding effects.
So I'll post the Outworlder Post Mortem in my next entry and after that I might have something to show on my progress with terrain editing and/or pathfinding.
