Friday, December 26, 2008

New Year's Resolutions

Well, I'm not one for long lists, but here goes mine:

1. Don't let my blogs go through long absences. Had a couple months there that were sparse, and I've been posting more often in an effort to get it to average out to once a day.

2. I resolve to get some kind of start on my Untitled Platformer beyond plotting and worldbuilding. I'll see who I can get to help me develop the basic engine.

3. Start on a new game franchise. My standard series aren't paying off as much as they used to. Any suggestions?

4. Read more. I've got books to catch up on.

8 comments:

King of Ferrets said...

Do you mean we're actually going to do some sort of programming on UP? Gasp and shock!

Don said...

New franchises...Hmm. Well, you liked Atelier Iris, but I can't really recommend Atelier Iris 2. Not nearly as good as the first.

I really dig the Trauma Center games on the DS/Wii. Also, I will recommend Fallout 3 to anyone and everyone, as it is goddamned amazing, and will kill more time than you want it to.

MWchase said...

I'd suggest basing the engine off the same framework that I'm trying to make for Mindhack (it will be very flexible) except that that would require exposing other people, people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, to the Byzantine horror that is my half-finished codework.

On a more plausible note, you could bug me to work within more reasonable environments. It doesn't have to be me, but I'm happy to help. And pretty much obligation-free for much of January. (Sadly, I'm just starting out, in that I periodically forget all programming knowledge, a condition that I'm attempting to remedy. If anybody is more experienced than me, which is not that hard, I will defer to them. Pretend I somehow signed that, because it's really important that I stick to it.)

MWchase said...

Addendum: staring into the dark heart of my ad-hoc mess has convinced me that there are viable (read: sane) alternatives. I have a pretty good idea of a general outline for making things work together, so I can do that if nobody else is interested.

Lifewish said...

Let me know if you find a sane heart-of-darkness alternative. I'm hitting a similar problem (been thinking of implementing BB's NodeWars concept). In my case, the problem is mostly due to a bad tendency to seek the most pythonic solution rather than the one that actually, y'know, works...

MWchase said...

Well, if you don't mind having more power than you could ever reasonably need (the idea behind it is that it takes as loose a collection of code as possible, and then creates compatibility code to tighten it. I'm not sure that this level of flexibility is needed anywhere besides the intended use: creating roguelikes), and told me which languages you were using, I might be able to get you this, anyway.

At the moment, I'm seeing if I can write workable stuff with pygame, and then port the (game logic) result to pyrex. If all goes well, I should have a somewhat wonky tetris clone coded in a few days, and confidence in myself. Feel like giving that a shot for yourself?

MWchase said...

So, I now have a better idea of my limits... Layout and graphics look to be tedious and frustrating for me, and I've only managed some basic game logic... It needs well-definedness. My algorithm intuition seems a bit weak...

(No, I did not get frustrated by attempting Tetris graphics. I got frustrated by working out case testing for rotation. The graphics that frustrated me were for solitaire.)

Lifewish? Interested in maybe collaborating at Node War? The problems I can solve, I'm pretty sure I'll handle differently than you would... (What I was thinking for node connections is very not pythonic... Though I admit I'm not quite sure whether it would work.)

Anonymous said...

If I might suggest a franchise, I suggest you give the Shadow Hearts series a go, especially the second game. If you like secret history storylines, a different pace in battles, and characters that are both unusual and cool, then it's certainly a must.