RealDev

So I decided not to blog last week mostly due to the fact that I gave a talk at the South African Game Development Community meet in JHB, so I figured having talked enough at the meet I would rather share the video for people that havent yet seen it (or werent there). Im posting this today as I would rather not write something on Wednesday (after my Math 2 exam).

False Eden @ South African Game Development Community Meet - JHB - APRIL

So, last week I toyed around with the dilemma of how to make a dubstep themed game that didnt feel gimmicky, or like some gross approximation of how people envision dubstep, but did no work on anything to do with the game dev challenge. I have however fiddled with making dubstep in FL Studio, and I'm pleased with the fact that I can make some awesome sounding bass, but unfortunately I am not the greatest composer, so perhaps with more practice and experimentation I can get the music part of the dubstep game done. (I figured having a custom dubstep track would make most sense as I could tailor it to whatever game I made)

False Eden is coming along nicely (although most of the new work was done today during my allocated MSIT work hours, so I honestly havent spent enough time on it this last week), I have adjusted the turn-based structure to allow for leniency with bad targetting, added in the base structures for the dialog system, and started adding UI to the game. As part of this I am preparing and modifying the code base to allow for the combat system I designed.

The most time consuming part of combat will be the targetting system, though I am sure that I will somehow find a decent system for managing targetting between the 3 major system types (I imagine a system where I just build a structure of all possible targets for target specific combat systems – melee, ranged, targeted magic - and when you select a tile it gives you the options available according to your equipment, and then for AoE based skills it would be started by selecting any block). The reason for this decision is in the end I think this game would work well on the mobile platform, the reason being it follow the same pick-up-and-play for a few minutes style that Pokemon games capture. Later on it can be ported to other platforms, but for now it will be WP7 for DBP.

So, basically the target for before next week's post is to build in the combat (with the item system), and hopefully if I get time also to build a rudimentary editor for me to place world blocks which will work with XNA WinForms to have an "in game" view of the current world (though zoomed out), as well as allowing me to place NPCs, as well as add dialogs (the structures for which are already in the game, but having an editor for all 3 would make it easier to start working on storyline).

This weekend will be a bit rough as I will be taking part in Ludum Dare (while doing the Nokia Lumia Hackathon), basically meaning I will start the hackathon late, and finish Ludum Dare early if all goes as planned. It should be quite an interesting challenge, but I am fairly confident that I can pull it off. (Must just remember to practice with my tablet on Friday night before I go to sleep for Ludum Dare)