As promised, I’m going to attempt to write weekly updates covering the development of my new game (working title – PPRPG). My aim is to chronicle my progress and share some juicy details with you. I’ll also include at least 1 screenshot related to the game or its development.
I suspect that the initial posts will be fairly dull since there isn’t much to show (and won’t be for some time). Still, they’ll help to keep me motivated and also give me some accountability.
So what have I been working on this week?
This week has been all about laying down some of the foundations. I want my level editing to be an integral part of the development process, so that the tools (and level quality) evolve at the same pace as the gameplay.
I’ve been working on the level layout/rendering part of my engine. I’m using a plist to store level data so at this stage I’ve mapped out a basic data structure and have some basic parsing working.
The engine is currently capable of rendering some placeholder assets specified in the plist. Since the assets are placeholder, there’s not much point in showing you anything yet. Instead, here’s a screenshot of the early Class structure (I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions from it :) ). Not very exciting I know but we are early in development.
My next step is to flesh out the above code to enable me to specify more information in the plist. In conjunction with this I’m going to start working on the level editing tool. I’ll also be focussing on adding the first of the gameplay mechanics.
Since I’m doing everything in this game myself, I’ll also be dipping in and out of creating the graphics and writing the story.
Something else I’ve settled on is my project management tool. I’ll be using pivotal tracker for this project. I had thought about using Brainwave again but it needs more development to get it to the point where it does everything I need. For now it makes more sense to have someone else focus on building the PM tools – after all, I have plenty on my plate!
See you next week.