Friday, October 10, 2014
I was feeling a bit reflective and abstract today, so instead of the usual -- devising crazy ideas that will never see the light of day
-- I decided to take my 'planning day,' which I didn't do yet this month.
Most of what I've laid out for October is about the overhead testbed. This is really going to be my powertool of the month. Within it, there are a lot of pieces of content on which I'll be iterating: system layout generation (which is basically nonexistent at the momenet), zone generation
and gameplay, fleets & formation play (I can't wait to see some large-scale AI battles from my map and, in particular, play with the procedural generation of AI formations), and, of course, AI in general.
On the other side of the content, it's imperative that I get a simple 'model viewer' widget up-and-running this month. The need for me to iterate rapidly on ships, stations, planets, and asteroids has never been greater. To do so, I am going to need a yet-nonexistent testbed in which I can watch the results of a single content generator. But! That's more exciting than it may look: the model viewer will pave the road for the final version of the in-game ship / station editor. Don't you love this paradigm of transforming testbeds into in-game functionality? Me too!
Finally, I'm going to be looking at large-scale universe structure via a universe testbed, which will eventually become the in-game universe map
I had a new idea last month for the way that the universe is structurally generated, which I believe will completely blow away my current system in terms of elegance and power. It's also filled with neat mathemagical tricks and exponentials
I
really need to begin looking at inter-system play, and right now I don't have the tools to do so. Let's change that this month!
As usual, we have a lot on our plate, but it's a whole lot of exciting stuff to explore...and with all of my shiny powertools, I think I'm going to be one happy kid this month