Like most people, I sometimes worry or stress out or doubt myself about this item or that task or this feature. I occasionally snap out of it quickly. Other times, I tend to linger in these thoughts as my motivation ebbs. When I do finish working through the laborious circle of doubt, I always end up at this conclusion: I am here because I chose to be. All the decisions I’ve made and every step I’ve taken since I left my last job have led me to this point today. Not every choice was good, nor every choice bad either. But they were each mine, one way or another.
And I still get to make every decision from this point today to whichever point I aspire to reach. No matter what else happens, I can take comfort in that thought. Whether I fail or succeed, it will be through my own decisions. I can’t really ask for much more than that.
So, yeah, things are kinda tense right now, with a tough two weeks ahead, but we’ll get there, and hopefully have something really cool to show. I feel bad for the readers who have been following this blog for a long time and who have yet to see something really tangible. That will all change come the first week of November.
I’ve mentioned the game Dyson a few times before. It has now been renamed to Eufloria and it come out today (Tuesday) worldwide on the PC. The game is being made by some good friends who have worked and struggled incredibly hard this last year to get the game done. Please take a look at the new trailer and the demo. If you’re lucky, you can still pre-order a copy with a 25% discount on Steam or Direct2Drive.
Work Done Last Week
I did a lot of work on the editor, continuing to improve some of the core systems. I focused mainly on the animation and checkpoint system, and never got around to the object grouping (although I have been giving it a lot of thought). The checkpoint area is a lot more solid now. And I’ve addressed most of the editor bugs.
I made a start on the shader/graphics side of things. I’ve now got framebuffer object support, and some initial cg shaders working, but I’m still running into a lot of issues. I’m having trouble converting one core piece of rendering code to fit in properly with the look of the rest of the game. I’ll keep investigating, but this area isn’t my strongest, and I’m weary of spending too much time going in circles when I can be making progress in other important areas (like gameplay and tutorials).
Work Planned This Week
This week is sure to be intense. I’ve got some clear goals, and time is running tight to get everything done in time. I would like to show the game to some fresh eyes at the end of the week, but it’s a race against the clock at this point.
Code-wise, I’m focusing on the event system, and editor support for this area. We need this system to unlock more complex gameplay behavior in the game. It’s gonna be tricky. I’ll also be tightening up the gameplay logic; there are a lot of edge cases that need to be covered properly. Boring issues like dying, restarting levels, showing the proper contextual help…they all need to get done.
And of course, more levels and testing. I’m reworking most of the introductory levels, and we’re putting some new scenarios together for the demo.
