End of Week 3 Reclaimate

The weeks just fly past now. And thats good, because you want to be staring at a completed project sooner than later. July also has a lot of side stuff going on. For me this is the month where everyone seems to have their birthday. There's been a lot to do all around. So where am I at? Lets recap the list for this week.

• Controls Fixed
  • Can attack multiple times without being unable to att anymore - DONE
  • Can go direction and not get stuck going in same direction
  • "Slide" against walls - DONE
  • Circle collision - DONE
• Weapon combos - DONE
  
  • Hit Stun - 90% done
    
• Weapon Inventory Screen
• Pick up new weapon
• Path Finding - Pushed to next week
  
• Triggers - Done
  
• Wave system- 20% Done
  
• Creatures - All items pushed to next week
  
  • Rough art
  • All moves in
  • All AI states in
  • Drop essence
• Wall Tiling - Walls looking different based on surrounding walls. - See below
  
• Sound Hooks
  • Sound class with list of items - DONE
  • Actual sound hooks in everything
• Restructure Game directory so class files properly named and in proper directories - Pushed
  

So a lot was done, but not nearly as much as I would have wanted. And I have 2 more weeks until it's due.

Prioritizing

If you want to know how I prioritize at this point it works out like this.

I have a list of features greater than the amount of time I have left. So after I complete a feature I quickly play the game, and take a look at the list of remaining features and ask myself;

"Which new feature would add the most fun to this game?"

And thats the one I implement. Sounds simple, but you run into times when you know a certain feature will add a lot to the game, but another (not so fun) feature has to be added first. For me this happened with triggers. Triggers aren't necessarily "fun" on their own, but they allow for a lot of situations that really add to the game. So I have to combine the estimated time it would take to do the desired feature and the supporting feature (be conservative in the estimate) and compare that to others. So not quite as simple as it sounds, but with limited time it's necessary.

Wall tiling and art

I'll be frank, the game wasn't looking as pretty as I wanted it. Not even close. One of the major sticking points was that all walls were blocks. And to make them look at bit more realistic, they had have a different "look" based on what walls were around them. I had to scope out how much time and effort this would take. I ended up spending a lot of Friday doing this. The answer unfortunately was it was going to take a lot of time. Not the answer I wanted to hear.

Notice how the coast in the 2nd picture is "rounded?" It means each tile looks different based on the other tiles around it. It looks realistic compared to the blocky version above.

But this is still good. When you have a clear estimation of things you can spend your time more efficiently. I do want to make proper wall bits, but for now I'll just have to do the best I can. A lot of next week will be devoted to making the game look better.

Summary

The more work I do on reclaimate, the more I'd sort of like to do a sequel. One where I can get all (or most of) the features in that I wanted to. But I already have a plan for the next game, and it's a decent one. After Recliamate is out, and the initial week or two of maintenance is over. I'll have to take a good look (once more) at all current ideas and make sure they fit a marketing model.

Because I was behind a bit, next week will still have to have some major features introduced, as well as improving art.

No screenshots this week. They wouldn't really show the improvements as most haven't been done graphically.